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20s RTTS hands down.

TL; DR: RTTS in 20 is better as a career sim than 21 in virtually every conceivable way.

In 20 you have:

-A save file where all your player's info, appearance, and attributes are easy to find, read, and change. You can access your inventory at any time and change your player's equipment up whether online or offline.

-You start off every career as a scrub and naturally build him up over time with good play. Every new career you could choose your starting three pitches. One of those starting three pitches could even be a knuckleball!

• The only "narrative" is that you've been switched to a different position to try out and get a secondary position. You're secondary position, as a position player, was never SP.

-In 20 you can go to my player--stats and awards and check your performance trends (bar graphs that show your swing timing, contact/good contact %, discipline, and pitch recognition as a hitter. As a pitcher it shows your pitch location and pitch type percentages), a game log that shows individual game stats and the outcomes of every single AB or innings pitched for every single game you play in a season, stats by pitch type, stats by count, scouting report, career stats, and events and awards

-In 20 if you win an award or lead the league in a category your manager emails your inbox and tells you that you've won things.

-In 20 you can raise every single attribute cap to 99 overall and train/play your way to 99 in everything regardless of archetype. Any equipment you have, except for the attributes hard-capped at 99, will go over that 99 threshold.

-In 20 you can influence your draft spot through the showcase. You have the option to go to college and reject a team that drafted you.

-In 20 you can use showtime to locate pitches/hit

-In 20 you get promoted largely based on your overall compared to others at your position. If you’re on a terrible team with no depth then you can get yourself called up in May and June once the AI decides you’re the best option. However, the allstar game has always been a trigger for promotions.

-RTTS 20 has tired old code that actually worked with itself

In 21 you have:

• A ballplayer menu that changes your equipment to their default locations any time you check archetype progression, a graph that isn't totally clear on what parts of your overall/attribute levels are from, and you're entirely locked out of your inventory if the servers are down. You can only have one ballplayer with one appearance at a time.

-No naturally linear player progression. Get your CAP up to 50 once in the attributes and you can't go below mid-70s in overall with only an archetype badge active. You get to choose your pitches only once, upon the first setup. And once you get your pitching attribute up to 50 in every pitching category the game FORCES you to change out a pitch to get to your next appearance. I literally changed out my fifth pitch fifteen times in a single season.

-Forced two-way narrative (It’s actually happenin--!). It's stupid that my position player gets asked to pitch and my pitcher gets asked to hit multiple times every single season. You start out every career as an SP until you lock yourself in and you'll always have pitching/whatever position you picked to field as a secondary position.

-In 21 if you go to my player--stats and awards you only see stats by count, scouting report, career stats, and event and awards. To see your performances you have to go into the calendar and manually check the box scores to see if your character played in a game or not.

-In 21 if you win an award or lead the league in a category you aren't notified at all. You have to remember to go to the league leaders and awards menus at the end of the season to see if you won anything yourself.

-In 21 there are 6 unique archetypes for pitchers and 24 for position players. You have to mindlessly grind out stats and once you get to 100 in each diamond archetype you are given one diamond perk. There are 49 diamond perks in total, 21 of them pitching related and 28 for hitters. If you grind out every single pathway you STILL have to buy 19 diamond perks to get everything in the game related to Ballplayer/RTTS. At 8,500 stubs a piece, a common sell now price for perks, it would cost at least 161,500 stubs to get everything even after you've spent hundreds of hours grinding out every single one of these stupid archetype loadouts.

-In 21 you are forced into an unskippable cutscene and chosen by a team, always drafted in the 3rd round, and do not have the option to come into professional baseball as a 19, 20, 21 year old.

-There is no showtime in 21

-In 21 the call ups are so obviously scripted, even more than in 20. You can be a 95+ ovr and the best player on your team from day one and not get called up to AAA until the day after the AA allstar game in July. You will get called up to MLB on August 1. The “oh he’s blocked at the big league level” thing is painfully obvious too. I had a 96 ovr catcher on the A’s get traded because he was “blocked” by 82 ovr Sean Murphy. What?

-21 has the same old code that desperately needs improvement but now with forced new systems and progression without any thought put into how the mode works with two-way players and archetype loadouts. The overarching goal was clearly two-way player and DD integration above all but in doing that the mode was delivered broken in every way possible and devoid of most of the fun the mode provided in previous iterations.

Woo! I'm ready to be completely disappointed when you confirm that you guys were totally lying last year when you said you'd "leave the choices on where to play up to the gamers and their personal preferences" and that "a RTTS player should feel like they can freely progress by playing RTTS and only RTTS" because DD integration still hamstrings the game for RTTS-only players and is a blatant funnel to try to get them into DD!

Fix the mode's playerlock and menu bugs, take it back offline, remove DD CAP completely from the character creation, let us be able to naturally progress to 99 overall in every attribute if we want, let us be able to hold back from getting to 99 in any attribute we want without all the math of base stats+archetype+ (and -) perks +equipment, and let get to 99 overall at every single position.

If we're stuck with archetypes (instead of just going back to training points, you know, the monetized RTTS system you had before 18 that actually let RTTS players choose how they wanted their characters to play) make more than 1/24 of the position player archetypes viable and don't have multiple ones with the same primary that can't even get their primary to 99 overall.

Yes, a lot of us RTTS-only players have complained to SDS about the terrible changes since early launch when all the progression/loadouts/equipment wouldn't even work or apply properly.

• Programs don't progress if you so much as press next appearance because RTTS is directly tied to DD now and the people who were trying to quickly level their ballplayers up were "abusing" sim glitches.

• The implementation of ballplayer into RTTS and DD is so shoddy. There are no intuitive menus and it's stupid that I have to go into a game and filter through in-game menus to actually see my combined attributes and overall. Who knows why they designed it this way? SDS didn't hire a proper and full team of competent developers to work on their singleplayer modes? Bit off far more than they could chew?

• The ballplayer hub is bugged so that anytime you go into the loadout area of the menu it reverts all your applied equipment to the default location/settings. You have to go into appearance every single time and toggle the equipment how you want it to look. Yes, it's stupid that you have to do this any time you want to check your progress in a program or change your loadout.

-If I had to guess your overall probably went down with those perks because the primary position of your ballplayer's archetype "liked" boosts from the gold perks better. The archetypes system is overly complicated and also entirely restricting. Looking at it from a DD perspective, which is the way SDS would most bother to care about it, the entire system is [censored]. Secondary positions don't work in DD, there is no gold/diamond primary catcher archetype, visually your player card says 65 no matter how high your stats truly are, and no one asked for part of DD CAP to be hidden behind a RTTS wall.

RTTS was absolutely gutted this year. Between the forced two-way narrative that broke an already stressed and tired RTTS code and the fact progression doesn't at all feel natural for a linear career I'm back to playing 20. It's so nice to be able to have a knuckleball SP and multiple careers of different characters going at once.

Sorry that Xbox players don't have access to the previous games for a far superior RTTS product.

The promises SDS made for RTTS in the Ballplayer premiere still haven't been met. Ballplayer attributes are supposed to be from the up to 50 cap, loadouts, and equipment boosts. It's been three weeks since SDS took our money and launched the game and RTTS still only has 2 of the 3 working in some semblance of the way that was intentionally designed.

And even if it was all working properly, the intentional changes they've made to the mode have all been to the detriment of RTTS-only/mainly players.

DD is still tied to ballplayer. That's why they have 255 perks and equipment to sell you instead of letting RTTS players just create a character and get all attributes up to 99 without headache or a whole math equation to know your attributes.

Through the main menu, click on ballplayer profile and go to manage. There you can add, change, or delete your ballplayers.

I want the gameplay to be improved, especially with fielding. They broke the fielding animations for 2B/SS on steal attempts from 19 to 20 (2B rarely make it to the bag no matter how quick/forceful you direct them to cover the bag. SS often run endlessly. Lots of catcher throwing errors because the player stops in his tracks). Camera angles and distances with playerlock are much worse (can't see the action, runners on, can't look to 3B coach while running, etc). 3B playerlock has the camera snapping noticeably to a different angle at the start of every pitch.

Oh, and proper rotating interleague schedules would be nice.

I'm gonna say no

Are you up to date with updates? Are you simming any part of the game? You do not get any progress to archetypes if you press next appearance or exit and sim the rest of a game because DD players exploited it to make their ballplayer good without playing RTTS. Do you have missions tracking? I remember some people saying that the default is off and to turn it on in the touchpad menu and that might help.

Yeah, RTTS in 21 is absolutely terrible. I'm happier on 20.

You're right, that bug is probably still there. Just like the max-attribute forced pitch swap. Or the middle infielder cover animations that don't let you cover 2B in playerlock gameplay.

Promotions are based on overall. The best way to get promoted is to be at a position with little depth and a low overall MLB Starter. In 21, if your overall was good enough, you'd get promoted to AAA at the AA break and to MLB on or a few days after August 1. If you don't care what team you're on you can get called up fast at any position.

I know they've made it so that you can't earn any progress towards archetypes if you sim at all. Can't even choose next appearance when you're on the bases with all pitches on to get stolen bases and you're done stealing. But even with knowing that my pitcher archetypes aren't tracking at all. Went to get bronze pitcher archetypes up and the missions won't progress at all in RTTS for me.

At least some of it is still broken/rebroken. I hate how infuriating and limiting this mode has become.

It's only in playerlock (Franchise, RTTS, a handful of MTO moments) which means that SDS doesn't care at all because it doesn't affect DD.

Illustrated cover looks bad.

Making RTTS dependent on a singular universal CAP was a gutless and greedy move by SDS. The ballplayer thing doesn’t even work right in the DD portion of it because secondary positions still haven’t been fixed which sucks for DD players. It’s incomprehensibly bad for RTTS-only players. The fastest way to level up player archetypes is still by not playing the blasted game but simming instead. It’s absolutely terrible.

All I realistically wanted added for 21 was to have the cover animations fixed for playerlock 2B/SS, improved fielding camera angles more like 19s, and proper rotating interleague schedules like MLB actually uses in their old fully-fledged game mode. Instead I paid full price for the opportunity to try and make use of a hollowed-out mode, half-baked progression system, forced two-way player mechanics, the inability to add/change/and KEEP five pitches easily, far less statistics, no meaningful notifications, so many additional microtransactions that are absolutely insulting for the price I paid for this broken piece of [censored], a menu that automatically changes your appearance every time you go into it, and no clarity on when/how SDS is going to fix the mess they made of RTTS.

The only way I'm getting 22 is if RTTS is given far more thought and care and is less of a money-grubbing grind (TAKE ALL DD/ONLINE OUT OF RTTS)

@geemn_psn said in 22 Early Features:

Can anyone expand on this?

"Create and use multiple Ballplayers, beyond your Road to the Show personalized Baseball RPG experience, and customize your Ballplayers exactly how you want to aid in your progression."

It indicates "beyond your RTTS personalized Baseball RPG experience. I'm struggling to understand what this means. I did not buy '21 due to not being able to have multiple RTTS players and won't buy '22 due to the same reason if I'm understanding correctly.

I'd like to create a RTTS relief pitcher, RTTS SP, and a RTTS position player, and have them all be starting their career with their own stats and saved game files. Is that possible?

Much appreciated!

Create and use multiple ballplayers should mean that you can have more than one unique character on separate saves. The 'beyond your RTTS RPG experience BS' means that SDS wants you to go try out DD because of packs and microtransactions and hey stop playing a mode we don't have heavily monetized! Can't even have a dedicated RTTS bullet point without making you aware that it's a DD feature.

So you've encountered the playerlock middle infielder cover bug that has been in the game for a couple of years now. It is very, very hard to cover 2B on a steal attempt with the analog stick. I've found that mashing triangle/Y on stolen base attempts will get your player to make it to the bag and you'll actually see tagging animations. It still does weird things visually but it's much better than watching your second baseman pull up short every time.

If you're eager to play the game early access then just buy the MVP/Digital Deluxe version and get on with it. Or if you want the extras just buy 40$ worth of stubs on April 5th and you'll get the same or better value.

I remember the sharp disappointment I felt when I first played this trashed mode. I realized so many good features were taken away from RTTS either because of the DD/Ballplayer being shoved inelegantly into the game mode or the poorly implemented two-way player thing.

(what do you mean no multiple characters, why can I choose my starting pitches only once, why is Ballplayer so bad, why is equipment resetting/not working at all, why are there so many archetypes that seem so similiar but almost none of them have any good combination of perks at their primary to get to a 99 ovr, why is the knuckleball gone, where are my recorded stats for every game oh they took that out, why is progression so crappy and forced online in a singleplayer mode especially when the servers are this terrible thanks SDS, why does the manager keep asking me multiple times every year if I want to pitch/hit no I don't want to be a two-way player I haven't for the past five seasons so stop asking, where did the notification emails go to say you won awards/lead the league in something, why are secondary positions gone, what is with this forced storyline where if a player at my position is like 82 overall I can get blocked and traded can't you see I'm fully maxed out and instantly the best player on the team because there's only one CAP yes that makes total sense for having multiple careers, oh I'm fully maxed out and now training forces me to switch out a pitch because of course it is why wouldn't it be it's par for the course, why does the score bug not show if I hit a 2 run, 3 run, or grand slam anymore, what is with these distracting animations with the score bug during the post season that fade in and fade out but you can't show me who is leading in the series seriously)

I have the platinum and way too many hours in this year's iteration from hate-playing it because I paid for this game and Sony had the gall to say this game and mode wasn't completely FUBAR and offer refunds to unsatisfied customers. I hope that they actually listened to the RTTS players and didn't decide to take away even more player freedom and make it even more into a blatant funnel for DD under the guise of "interconnectivity." But they probably will.

I have next to no hope when the pre-order page says "Create and use multiple Ballplayers, beyond your Road to the Show personalized Baseball RPG experience, and customize your Ballplayers how you want to aid in your progression." Woo, being able to have multiple characters is the big feature they're touting for RTTS! How grand! I have absolutely zero interest in the beyond part. I know where the DD menu can be found if I ever want to play DD thanks. CAP and RTTS should have never been Frankensteined together and it seems like they're doubling down on their stance of "RTTS players get [censored]."

@thebootman88_psn said in Unrealistic Expectations:

If you went into that livestream yesterday expecting a massive overhaul of the game mode, your expectations were unrealistic. These games take years to overhaul and they just did it last year. We are going to have the ballplayer system for the next couple of years at least, that's just the nature of the development cycle. Expecting more just sets yourself up for disappointment. The best we could hope for is that they would tweak and refine the ballplayer system a bit to make it work better and add some Quality of Life improvements. If you went in with those expectations, then I would say it was a success, at least on paper.

I wasn't expecting anything and I was still disappointed with how little they did for any of their offline modes. Don't pat SDS on the back for returning some of the features they ripped out of the mode in worse ways than they were implemented before. This (all the non-narrative [censored]) is by and large the patch they should have rolled out sometime after the first entire month of 21 where RTTS was literally unplayable. It's definitely not what I'd consider a success.