@The_Joneser_PSN said in Timing and directional hitting are so nerfed:
@Jacky-Chan1_XBL said in Timing and directional hitting are so nerfed:
There seems to be major timing forgiveness for zone hitting and massive timing penalties for any other hitting. The zone hitting timing forgiveness is unreal. I see replays where guys start their swing when the ball is over the plate and they hit a home run.
Wow. We need to get you in a room with some of the crazies that think every time they lose it must be because their opponent is using directional or timing. That would be a fun time.
Nope the OP is mostly right. The PCI size and flexible hitting window makes it recommended by pros and SDS has given players more benefits for using it. You can hit the ball well outside the zone on lower difficulties and with skill on higher difficulties.
Timing only works better on rookie and veteran but higher difficulties it's recommended using PCI.
There were ranked games I played using timing only where I could only score one run and a few hits. As soon as I changed it to PCI I ended up getting an additional 5 runs. I won the game but I was extremely uncomfortable. I prefer timing vs CPU but against other players I had to switch if I wanted a better chance of winning.
I agree that the OP is partly right... there are definitely some rewards bestowed upon Zone users. I'm not saying they're entirely unwarranted, as it is difficult to place the PCI against anyone who can pitch, but the OP is absolutely correct in that your timing doesn't matter as much in Zone. You need good timing, at least, to get good contact if you’re using the Timing interface; I don't get HRs with early swings, and certainly not late. They just don't happen on AS.
I use Timing with analog inputs, which makes timing a bit different from the way people typically describe it; you do have to swing to location (limited) with analog, using a straight up for middle of the plate, and diagonals for inside/outside. And that choice of swing location matters very much -- always weak contact, or no contact, if you get it wrong. The result: more realistic baseball results, and a more intuitive interface that feels more like a swing. When I win games (I'm only like 6 or 7 over /500 in about 50 games), I score around 5 runs, and they aren't all solo HRs, so I think it's a better experience. Of course I get blanked sometimes... I'm an A's fan, so that also feels like baseball.
Zone allows you to get underneath pitches almost in the dirt and hit them out, which is stupid and makes the game worse, and the forgiveness in timing allows middling players to hit a lot of HRs (and good players to make the game almost unplayable, unless you're into beer league softball). There are times, against spamming pitchers who aren't very good, that I'll switch to Zone and camp in the pitcher's preferred location. Leaving it in Timing in those instances results in the smattering of bad AI placement, so the chances of success go down... but using Zone in those cases turns me into a machine; camped, the placement is there, and with timing being more forgiving, the results are way better (I don't do this often, as not many people are this predictable, and because I hate Zone... and, admittedly, because I'm not that good at Zone when people move the ball around).
Still, that the timing seems to be more forgiving for Zone hitters, at least at AS level, is believable to me because I've experienced it.
I have a couple of counterpoints for you. As you say, zone is more difficult than timing or directional. There are two aspects to zone hitting - pci placement and timing. Directional and timing rely solely on the user's swing timing. To say that zone is more lenient with swing timing is only partially true. Yes, it is true in the sense that you can have slightly off timing and still make good contact, but that is because there is another aspect, the PCI. If you square up the ball with your PCI, you can still make good contact even if you are early or late.
To say that zome is more lenient than timing or directional is misleading though, because they only have one aspect of user input - timing. If you aren't perfect with your timing on those settings, then you didn't do the one thing you are required to do correctly, and therefore should not be rewarded. With zone, if you at least place the PCI correctly, you did one of the two inputs correctly, and should then have a better result than someone who had the same timing input with directional.
On the flip side, with zone, you can have perfect timing, but if your PCI is way off, you can completely whiff. Yes, you can hit pitches out of the zone, but that is a result of getting the PCI to the ball. In my experience, it is very rare that someone actually makes good contact on pitches way out of the zone. It's more of an issue with fouling off those pitches.
Regardless of whether or not you think zone is realistic or not, the fact is that zone is more difficult. When it comes to h2h online play, you have to reward skill, and zone is higher skill, higher reward. If you gave timing and directional the same "leniency" that you say zone has in regards to timing, and all you had to do was have good timing and you could hit any pitch, pitching would be impossible. Offline, who cares, use whatever you want, but online h2h, zone is the only setting that should be competitive at high levels, as it should be.
