Community Forum

Yes......

Folks, the first indication that I saw that SDS changed for the worse is when I conducted an experiment within MLB The Show 22 to determine how "fair" the collection schemes really were. What I discovered was very sad. SDS deliberately crafted the collection items so that a couple of them would be rarely issued to anyone, and thus make completing the collections impossible.

In my view, it was a deliberate effort to trap minors into paying for stubs in a mistaken belief they could then complete collections and earn the highly touted cards that they were after. This itself is a sad situation as the cards are worthless trinkets.

My conclusion then and remains in place today is that the collections are a trap and should be entirely ignored. I called out SDS publicly and like with all other issues customers have voiced complaints over, the smell of money and cheap coding drowned out all other considerations.

It's not your imagination. The game has changed in the timeline you reference, and not for the better. This is why the customers constantly say the game needs core improvements to remain relevant, not merely tinkering around the edges. Many people think MLB The Show was a better game from 2017 to 2022.

It's happening because a few years ago the leadership at SDS decided the game needed spicing up, and the code was skewed to make things more challenging. My guess is their egos got bruised by folks who speak loudly saying the game is too easy, and well, by God, SDS wasn't going to tolerate their game being too easy for anyone!

So, around the time that defensive chances got reduced down to nearly all difficult chances, hardly anything routine, we also got to see the game deflate the achievements of your fellow RTTS team players. The issue has been the subject of years of customer complaints in feedback, but nothing has been done to correct it.

Yes, it is entirely true. If your RTTS player is on base, you can expect to see the hitters behind him strike out about 90% of the time. If these players are batting about .250, they will bat a mere .195 or lower with runners in scoring position.

Ebbets Field
Milwaukee County Stadium

That's the ticket! But, you also have to download a stadium with the wall move code from the vault, and then you can further move the wall panels as you like.

I think it is possible (better than 50-50) that SDS wipes out all the customer created content game modes and uses the Lagrasa debacle as their internal excuse, as though their malice toward these three game modes were not already widely known among the customers.

I think SDS deliberately abused the revelation of this wall move option to justify what they've been wanting to do -- destroy customer created content in MLB The Show. So, yes, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they do what you think possible.

I purchased video baseball games as early as the 1980's, and have been a regular customer of 989 Sports and SDS baseball game releases for decades. It has taken a lot for me to decide to boycott future SDS releases, but that is what their malice has managed to do.

But, anger over what SDS does should not mask a critical reality. SDS could have kept Lagrasa out of the vault had they acted to block stadiums with any modified wall panel from online competition use. Sarge and I warned SDS privately of the risk months before Lagrasa appeared. We could anticipate the possible malicious abuse, and SDS should have worked honestly to prevent it.

We cannot control what SDS does, but we can control our wallets. SDS needs to sharply learn what that means.

They tried to shut it down but failed. Yes, there are many honest stadiums with the active code to create stadiums with modified baseline and backstop wall panels, and you can still use them in MLB 24. SDS only shut down the option in MLB 25.

@Suel21_MLBTS said in Five (6) Simple Things to Fix SC:

Right, you basically just repeated what i meant. Group then and have them function like the batters eye.

Fair enough, my main point is it won't take much programming effort at all. In fact, the main effort would be to ID and remove lock out code artificially put into our version of SC to disable otherwise available options.

Suel,

The bullpens are normal props that have been coded to make them unmovable in the customer version of Stadium Creator. I know this because I have been told this by the people who designed and worked on SC when it was first released.

All that SDS needs to do is ensure the entire bullpen prop is grouped together, and then remove the special code that locks down its position. Yes, SDS would also need to remove the ball boy's seat and position put in place to guard the bullpens, but that isn't hard to include as part of the bullpen group either.

Other items that most folks do not know are really just normal props that have been specially coded to be immovable are the batters eyes and the non-functional backstop netting behind home plate. The netting never has worked to actually block balls from entering the stands. Since SC was first released in MLB 21, these backstops have allowed balls to go right through them as though they are not there. They have been cosmetic.

However, they are normal props with the same code that determines that if the backstop walls are moved too far away from home plate, then this non-functioning backstop netting flags as being a prop on the field, one that you cannot of course move.

Sarge,

The jewelbox design as SDS created it for the customer version of Stadium Creator has never been used. In using the option to modify all the wall panels, I went back to the origins of the game and released a half dozen different stadiums all the way back to the day that the Cincinnati Red Stockings played the first game in American (world) history with professional players. It bore zero resemblance to the jewelbox layout SDS forced everyone to use.

The earliest stadiums were polo, cricket, and town fair grounds. When walls were first built to control crowds, the first generation simply took the walls down the baselines and extended them straight down the lines until intersecting with the foul poles, but then continuing straight ahead until intersecting with the center field walls.

Take a look at some of those stadiums I designed and you'll see what I mean. And yes, those stadiums are precise replications of the actual parks used at the turn of the century. A surprising degree of information, including original street maps and blueprints are available for these parks and so I was able to make the layout almost perfect to the real world. Only a few SC code restrictions have caused me to break with reality, but only in relatively minor ways.

Then, stadiums widened out down the baselines until halfway to the foul poles, and this is where things became mostly unique setups. The pinch in walls past the infields became predominant in the 1950's, and shortly after the bullpens started getting moved off the field of play.

In my view, SDS settled on their jewelbox because it was boring, with way too much foul territory down the baselines. SDS made a strategic decision to ensure that stadiums created with our version of SC would be boring, and incapable of featuring the same tight configurations devoid of not merely ugly dead space, but entirely foolish dead space that no baseball park built to produce revenue would set up. Why have empty space when revenue producing seats could be inserted instead!

I'm not providing SDS any more suggestions because I conclude they don't care. So, I won't buy their game going forward. Until loss of sales revenue endangers the checks to Sony, the executive leadership at SDS will remain in place and we already see what their focus is on.

@The_Joneser_PSN said in SDS needs real competition, badly:

@PriorFir4383355_XBL said in SDS needs real competition, badly:

However, you miss something elemental in all this. Humans themselves are not gifted with perfect eye-hand coordination, especially with a device as sensitive as a hand control pad.

Respectfully, I think humans are more likely to perform well where eye-hand coordination is concerned with a control pad than they are with a bat against a pitched ball. And that, in my opinion, is why a true input-based system of results is a terrible idea. Luck and chance, both requisite to actual baseball results, need to be introduced through game coding because manipulating a controller is far too easy, comparatively, and good players will tilt the game toward something that does not resemble baseball at all.

I think @Teak2112 nailed it with the post above.

As to the catch-up mechanics, I personally don't think they exist in the head-to-head format (but I do think it rears its head in vs. CPU games, with respect to the opportunities the human player is offered), but that is an argument for another day.

Undercut by one question. If your approach has merit, then why not have teams below .500 in real baseball use wider bats and pitch with balls having larger stitching? The reason is because the concept of fair-minded sporting contests between people is that everyone plays by the same rules, and we don't force handicaps based on previous records.

In short, if someone can devote enough time to fairly get that good with the controller that he consistently puts the bat on the ball, then he earns the right to good outcomes.

@The_Joneser_PSN said in SDS needs real competition, badly:

I see people are still complaining about the same things...

@c_lawson3_MLBTS said:

Look at the screenshots:
• A PERFECT PERFECT where my PCI is nowhere near the ball

Why write that your PCI was "nowhere near the ball" when your screen shot clearly shows the ball in the inner PCI? Maybe you're really good and also a perfectionist, but Perfect/Perfect has meant that the ball is in the inner PCI with perfect timing since it was introduced in 2020 (so that's what the feedback means). There is no issue, there.

• A routine pop-out with almost perfect PCI placement

The PCI is not the bat, and as such it is not meant to be an absolute indicator of where your swing will impact the ball (this is on purpose). It's where you want the bat to be, so, essentially, it represents where your batter is looking and functions as an odds generator. And it works like that because swinging a bat isn't like shooting a gun; it doesn't always end up where you're aiming, and that's the only way that a videogame can produce the kind of results that you'd see in a baseball game. While your PCI placement and timing are the biggest factors in determining those odds, other attributes (batter and pitcher) are still considered and play a role, and those other factors produce variance, which, this time, gave you a launch angle about 9 degrees too steep to produce the result you wanted.

Players who can aim as well as you will consistently have better results than those who cannot, and when two of you play each other, well, luck is going to be a factor if all inputs are equal. This is a baseball game made for people who love baseball, and if your goal in playing it is to prove that your input is more precise than that of the other person rather than to compete in something resembling baseball where luck and chance will always play a role, then you're going to continue to be frustrated and would probably be better served playing Call of Duty.

What you write has merit, and would indeed clinch the entire argument IF it applied to CPU based actions. However, you miss something elemental in all this. Humans themselves are not gifted with perfect eye-hand coordination, especially with a device as sensitive as a hand control pad.

I have written on this issue many times, but this is where the game coders miss reality because they bury themselves in their virtual world too much.

First, the odds you speak of should not factor win streaks or loss streaks into account. The natural odds of a person hitting the sweet spot with the control pad is and should be the wild card in a human-vs-human online competition game.

In short, you are correct about what SDS has done, except omitting the critical addition that SDS does skew the odds further based on a person's success or failure rates. That said, the results are wrong because they layer additional variance to the human variance that itself carries ebb and flow due to natural human circadian rhythms.

Online competition needs to be a clean stage, devoid of junk, where the human players' skill with the controller determines the outcome of each and every play. This is where SDS advertises something that they fail to deliver on. It doesn't matter if a person can win 10 or even 50 games in a row, or another person loses 10 or 50 in a row. The next game should remain devoid of code-enabled skews to level the odds of outcome.

Somewhere inside SDS there are marketing types slamming the tables at meetings demanding that bad players find the road easier and good players find it harder because equal interest is paramount. But, that defies the meaning of competition. The rules are not changed during the game because one team is winning and the other losing. And SDS needs to be bold enough to enable that model.

@Sarge1387_PSN said in Integral SC Additions to 26:

@Talkingben9558_XBL said in Integral SC Additions to 26:

This isnt directly related to stadium creator, but can we get actual minor league stadiums please? I love the stand ins we have, but can we put those on a seperate tab and have all the actual minor league ballparks. Is there an issue with getting them in the game?

While I share your desire, I think it's more an issue of the sheer volume of MiLB stadiums, something like 120 I think? That's a lot of travelling for scanning.

If they give us the things the community has been asking for for years, creators can replicate them.

This is absolutely true!

The main motivation behind me running with the discovered option to modify baseline and backstop wall panels in our version of Stadium Creator was to show the entire MLB The Show community what is possible by the single and simple option to move all the wall panels.

So, with this option in hand, I created historic ballparks that were almost perfect replications of the wall layouts of actual parks from the beginnings of professional baseball to the 1950's. This included the first Milwaukee County Stadium with fully accurate wall layout, including the baseline walls. Also done was Ebbets Field in the same fully accurate manner.

Yes, other artificial limits placed in SC by SDS kept Ebbets Field from being fully replicated, primarily SDS's stubborn insistence that one of their default batters eye props be placed in their mandatory fixed location. This is because SDS cares more about asserting their control over the customers than allowing reasonable freedom. Ebbets Field of course never had a so-called batters eye. Instead, like stadiums of its era, it had fans sitting in stands.

This is why pitchers back then could have success with a high curveball. The ball would get into the sightline of the fans in the stands in dead centerfield. I realize that this stuff isn't fair for online competition games, and that is why the code in our version of SC should have allowed such deviations from "standard setup," but invoked a ban on the resulting stadium from online competition play, including game options that allowed play versus the CPU to skew DD team strength.

But, the option to create such stadiums was the draw for Stadium Creator and why so many MLB The Show customers advocated strongly for its addition. When it happened, it was rejoiced, but that praise came with the expectation that the initial shortcomings would be corrected over time. We never expected it to be a "here it is now stop bothering us" game mode!

The person who created our version of SC is no longer with SDS. I know this because I have spoken with the person. He dreamed of a the community filling in the understandable gaps in stadiums, which is the whole point why the vault was created. It was hoped by him that the community would create lovingly crafted stadiums that including those historic venues and minor league parks the OP asked for.

Using the enabled stadiums with the option to move all wall panels, I created another version of the Class-A stadium used by the Carolina Mudcats. It finally allowed me to pinch in the baseline walls. Other issues prevent full replication. All these issues are easily solved by SDS, but SDS doesn't want to do it. They want to keep customer created stadiums degraded, even combined with the reality that SDS will never develop all the MiLB stadiums, just like they will never include all the MiLB teams in the game.

SDS would prefer to see the customers go without what they reasonably desire than allow even the customers to create the desired content themselves. It is selfish, coy, and entirely wrongheaded. I earnestly hope the entire MLB The Show customer base sees this accurately and raises a level of anger against SDS that forces wholesale changes in leadership there, which is the only way we get these long overdue improvements to the game.

@virusts_XBL said in Can we still use created stadiums in multiplayer?!?:

Created stadiums were disabled for online multiplayer because of a certain glitchy stadium circumventing the fence rules and allowing bunts to be home runs. There didn’t seem to be a good way of patching it so that feature was disabled

There was 100% a way to not only patch this issue, but prevent it from causing the issue that it ended up causing.

SDS merely needed to modify the code used to control Stadium Creator. Currently, the code in Stadium Creator bars any custom stadium from online play if the outfield walls are modified. However, that code was not extended to consider the modified location of wall panels down the baselines or the backstop wall sections.

SDS has their own version of Stadium Creator that they use to create their stadiums. This version allows all the wall panels to be moved. It allows a lot of other things also, things that people who make legitimate stadiums really want to have, but SDS added additional code to our customer version of SC to bar their use. SDS figured they locked down the option tight enough that they never bothered to extend that online block code to invoke when moving the baseline and backstop wall panels.

Months before the Lagrasa cheat stadium ever appeared in the vault, we in the custom stadium community privately warned SDS of the risk. You see, for reasons we still don't understand, someone figured out how to move the baseline and backstop wall panels in the customer version of SC.

When we realized the risk of this oversight by SDS, two people at this forum (Sarge and myself) sent SDS private messages warning of the risk. SDS spent that time working to lock back down the baseline/backstop wall moves, vice use the time to ensure that any stadium with moved wall panels (outfield, baseline, and backstop) would be barred from online play.

Yes, the larger community contains toxic people, just like the larger Diamond Dynasty community does. Some people just enjoy causing problems and enjoy the mess created. They are called the criminal class. Same kind of people who commit larceny, beat up random people on the street, or burn buildings just because they enjoy doing it.

Larger point being, SDS could have fixed this, kept the option for honest customers to make better custom stadiums, and kept cheat stadiums out of the game. But, SDS chose their version of control instead, and left the back door wide open, despite the honest people warning them months in advance.

So, with all that established, who is really the guilty party here? The malcontents who create cheat stadiums, or the leadership at SDS who handed them the keys to do it with!

API = application programming interface

An API links software written for two different applications or consoles or computers to allow transfer of operations and data between them. Think of it as a software-based hose that allows one to transfer water from one bucket to another and vice-versa.

@sullivanspring_MLBTS said in Stadium creator is great. I built a fantastic stadium:

I understand the frustration for those who would like to see more and here's why I think SDS isn't spending developer resources on it.

I'm a franchise exclusive player. The game used to have year to year saves. It no longer has that and the explanation is not enough people use the feature. I think they are wrong because it's a feature a person only uses one time a year. For stadium creator I create my stadium and I'm done aside from an occasional tweak.

They don't think enough people use the feature for it to deserve developer time. I'll likely skip MLBTS 26 due to no year to year saves and I'm not along among franchise users. Don't want to have to throw away my franchise and start over.

It's frustrating because in the case of Y2Y saves and stadium creator it's doable but they are unlikely to budge.

I respect your point of view. But, in the business analysis, if what you say is indeed true -- that Stadium Creator, Logo Editor, and Uniform Creator are just too much a niche part of MLB The Show's customer interest to justify development time over the last six years -- then it would have to be equally true that these modes should be discarded entirely.

You see, I don't believe that is the case. Else, SDS would have done exactly that. The historic reality is that Stadium Creator was universally demanded by the customers years back, and given that rival sports games had such customer created content options, SDS decided to create it to much fanfare.

I have spoken with a person very much in the core who developed SC and his insights also drive my own commentary and criticism of SDS.

No, the truth is far uglier than a simple business calculation. It is driven more by a desire to appease the egos of employees and management within SDS. These customer created content modes are very much in demand and if they were withdrawn then SDS knows they would face an avalanche of criticism. But, SDS has determined they will only exist as degraded modes, entirely incapable regardless of customer talent, to create anything that can rival what's in the game.

Anyone who has played the SDS created legacy stadiums can easily recognize there are many props used in those stadiums that are included in Stadium Creator. One example among dozens is the scoreboard used in their Crosley Field. In SDS's version however, that scoreboard is fully supported. It features an illuminated clock and backlit manual scoreboard pieces. So, it is effective at night. But, the version in SC lacks this illumination. Now, the only way that degradation can happen is if the SDS team choses to disable the code that supports the scoreboard illumination.

Want more proof? OK, let's return to not only Crosley Field, but also the myriad of other SDS stadiums used for the high school and collegiate games. They feature smallish stadium seating options plus chain link fence options that have been asked for over many years to be added to SC. But, they have not been. For those who need more proof, there is the always existing code that allows for full customization of the entire perimeter of wall panels -- outfield, baseline and backstop.

This option has always been present in SC, but was deliberately locked out by additional code layered into Stadium Creator. We know this not only because SDS has their own internal version of SC used to create all their stadiums with, but also because somehow, some way, this lockout code was bypassed and suddenly we custom stadium creators could finally customize the entire layout of our stadiums.

The ONLY time SDS got off their collective duffs and actually coded anything that changed how SC works this year was when they discovered this expanded customer option, and they got busy locking it back down, only they did it in such a ham-fisted manner that they left the back door wide open for nefarious people to abuse it, causing an avalanche of protests from DD players due to the cheat stadiums created to spite online play.

No, this isn't a business driven decision, it is an ego driven decision, and that's why there will never be any upgrades to these three customer content game modes. Until this current leadership at SDS is replaced, customer content creation will be barely present in the game, but always deliberately degraded.

All of your suggestions fall within the realm of greater depth of immersion. The avatar player character you create and play having these items working would of course increase the immersion factor. Immersion has always been a core goal of software coders to achieve in any RPG, and RTTS is very much an RPG mode.

Moreover, these sidelines should all have meaning and purpose to the development of your player. Right now, all the interviews are empty because they lack any developmental connection.

Finally, all of this stuff is quite easy to code up compared to coding up 3D moving graphics and a game engine to replicate the physics of baseball. This is why other companies have gone to these increased depths and put SDS way behind.

SDS won't do any of this, not one single item. In fact, I predict openly that they won't even do you the base level courtesy of providing you with any meaningful reply to your OP. And prior to my reply, I would have bet they would provide you with no reply at all, and likely still won't.

@gseAPEX_XBL said in Need More Custom uni slots and choice pre game:

This code is already in the game when you play RTTS or offline etc you can select your different uniforms you want to play in.

For DD they need to expand the custom uniforms to a home , road and at minimum a single alternate the before each game give the option to customize uniforms selection no different than what already exists in other areas of this game or games like madden and ncaa football.

Having 3 uniforms that can be mixed and matched seems like a no brainer updated.

There is a ton of code already in this game which SDS has stubbornly and steadfastly refused to extend to the customers for use in customer-created content. You are giving SDS way too much leeway they don't earn.

There is code in the game for one home and road alternate jersey, plus for a city connect jersey. Yet, SDS has refused to extend Uniform Creator to more than one home and road uniform concept, only two unis when the software supports five. The only reason for this is that SDS wants to ensure that all the customer-created content game modes are deliberately kept sub-standard. SDS does not wish to see customers create content that could rival what SDS employees create.

This selfishness is as appalling as it is self-destructive. SDS sales numbers for MLB The Show have been kept secret since 2021, when SDS reported 2 million units of MLB 21 sold. SDS did not release sales figures for MLB 20 but figures for MLB 19 were 2.52 million units sold. Therefore, MLB 21 suffered a 20% reduction in sales.

SDS released sales figures for April that showed MLB 25 achieved record initial sales, but has kept any further sales figures secret. One can bet this is because it showed a sharp downturn since April. MLB The Show 19's numbers were the best recorded for the title, tying the figure precisely for MLB 99.

For a game title that is the only licensed product for MLB, when you see sales figures plummet by 20%, it represents a very serious issue. No competition, and yet people in large numbers are not buying their product who used to purchase it.

SDS has lost sales because they have refused to upgrade the basic game engine and refused to upgrade the graphics to the level supported in the latest generation game consoles. But, there are other reasons. SDS has gone on a warpath against customer created content. They have sold their souls for online competition mode play. And yet, they have not even spent the money necessary to support their online gamming community on their SDS servers, hence the huge volume of customer criticism this year due to poor server performance.