Community Forum

It has to be right? Literally nothing works consistently or make sense

Hitting: Hitting is a complete mess. The hitting outcomes are as random and arbitrary as ever. And to add to that, people are hitting HRs (at least against me) at an insane rate. I feel like I'm back in '17 or '18 (don't remember which one) where literally anybody could hit a HR on any pitch. Perfect flyballs are low exit velos and then early/ok swings are HRs. And obviously everybody knows the problem with PCI placement. Balls in the middle are "ok" contact but balls completely outside the PCI are "good" contact. The other day I had a swing where the ball was COMPLETELY outside the inner PCI and it was a "good" contact HR.

Pitching: Pitching is a nightmare. Nobody has any control over their pitches. Fastballs are now at warp-speed and the high sinker is making a comeback. You see the same 3 pitchers in every game.

Fielding: Outsiders don't lock on and infielders make way too many errors

Seriously....what is good about this game? The content. Maybe, but who cares when every aspect of the game is atrocious. Follow CardinalBird on Twitter. The dude is an MLBTheShow OG and basically does nothing but complain about the horrible gameplay

• A strike zone that blatantly doesn't match the rule book
• Baserunners that go back to 2nd to tag up on balls off the wall and in the gap
• Wild pitches that hit the back stop and bounce straight back to home plate 95% of the time
• Check swings not being strikes 90% of the time
• 2 strike check swing appeals not being strikes 99.9% of the time
• Outfielders that don't care about getting the ball in quickly to get baserunners out or keep them from advancing
• Elite power hitters putting perfect swings on balls but not having the strength to hit HRs
• Base stealers waiting for a RHP to basically throw the ball before starting their steal attempt even though he's using a huge leg kick
• Not being able to score from 2nd base on a base hit to a corner outfielder
• Every throw from the outfield to a base being perfectly accurate
• Pitchers throwing 102MPH in the 9th inning 100 pitches into their outing
• High sinkers being one of the most effective out pitches
• Every pitcher having 15+ MPH difference between their fastball and changeup
• 90% of runs being scored via HRs
• Pitchers with elite control not being able to consistently hit their spots

But besides those things the game plays super realistically! Just like real baseball!

Earlier today I played a game and within the first 3+ innings, my opponent had SIX "ok" contact base hits (including 4 ground balls). During that span, I had a good/squared up swing with FotF Torres against a LHP that was a lineout. Jump ahead to the 8th and I'm losing 9-8 (it was All-Star so it was a low-scoring game). My first hitter is FotF Soto who hits a perfect line drive and lines out to the CF. Going into the 9th I'm still down one and get a lead-off single. On a 3-2 count, I send the runner and have a good/squared up swing with FotF Devers against a RHP and line out to the RF who then doubles off my runner from first. So over the course of the game, I have 3 high-power guys have good/squared up or perfect swings for outs. Meanwhile, my opponent does not have a single good/squared up or perfect swing out the entire game and I end up losing by one.

Now, I'm NOT arguing that there shouldn't be hard hit outs or that there shouldn't be weak contact hits. Those are part of baseball and should be somewhat represented in the game (although you can argue to what extent). And then by that logic, I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be RNG to a certain extent. However, it seems to me that what you can't argue is that there is RNG at play in these games, and sometimes it can be the deciding factor. And for people who play this game competitively, it can be incredibly frustrating to do everything perfectly on your end and not get rewarded while your opponent does everything wrong and DOES get rewarded. And yes it goes both ways, but whether it helps you or hurts you doesn't change whether or not it is too prevalent in the game.

So the question becomes "how much RNG is acceptable in a video game based on a sport that does have an essence of randomness to it"? Should it be so prevalent that we all (and I'm sure we all can) can look back at games that we've won AND lost and say "I won/lost that game,not because of my input or skill, but because something out of my control went against me/went my way"? Should the "that's baseball" excuse really transfer over to a video game? Or should a video game focus more on cause & effect (or input/reward) than trying to replicate randomness which, by the very nature of randomness, is impossible to replicate.

I'm going to put up another post now as well that takes this question and applies it to another popular style of game that might help us come to an answer. I'd love to get an actual discussion going that SDS can actually look at instead of people just trolling each other.

Honestly what percentage of runs are via the HR? 90%? It's gotta be close.

At this point everyone has already stacked their lineup with all power hitters. Combine that with the fact we have no control over pitches and that it seems swinging early or only making "ok" contact isn't deterring the HRs and basically you've got a game where anybody can hit a HR on any pitch with any decent swing.

People are saying there's a skill gap? I don't see it as much. As long as you've got a good enough internet connection or are playing on a screen with a good enough response time that you can catch up to fastballs, the game just becomes who gets the RNG to give them the most solo HRs

Doesn't every major league stadium in the game have some placard or something that says "the chase for 56". I'm assuming that alludes to the 56 game hitting streak. And since I'm sure SDS didn't say "let the chase begin" for no reason, maybe it IS Joe DiMaggio!!!

They don't communicate because they don't care. That became obvious last year when they were caught on camera making fun of the community and never addressed it. Ramon is great at his job because he has magnetic personality and is well spoken with a good sense of humor. But think for a second he cares one bit about this community or the actual state of the game

When they threw fastballs 95% of the time because SDS knew people were playing that level to grind and not for any sort of challenge. Now I swear rookie level pitchers are the exact same as HoF level...the only difference is pitch speeds and the size of your PCI. I seriously get pitchers in rookie who throw their secondary breaking balls more often than fastballs. And coming from HoF hitting there ain't no way I'm sitting back long enough to hit those haha

I totally get it! I've always been in the camp that says "make the input harder and then reward me for it." Yes, if every squared up ball was a HR (or even a double) then there would be too many HRs. Ok...I agree. But rather than that being an argument for RNG, I'd say that's an argument to make the input more difficult. Make it HARDER to square a ball up (or get a perfect pitching input) and then reward me for it when I do it.

Using your pitching input example, make it incredibly hard for a pitcher with bad control to get a perfect release, but when I get it, then pinpoint that badboy. And scale how far I miss the "perfect" input with how bad I miss my spot. If I barely miss perfect, then I barely miss my spot rather than having a barely missed input mean the ball can literally go anywhere the RNG happens to decide on that particular pitch

So I'm stuck in the AS level hell that we all love so much. I'm 1-3 in games tonight where my opponent didn't quit before a pitch was thrown and in those 4 games I have 38 hits compared to my opponent's 41. So things are pretty even.

However, I've noticed that games in AS difficulty are basically decided by who the RNGods just decide to give HRs to and in those 4 games my opponent's have HRs on 17/41 hits compared to me having a HR on 5/38. In one game, at one point, I was losing to a guy because I had 14 hits and ZERO HRs compared to him having a HR on 6/10 hits. And it wasn't that he was putting better swings on the ball. I had three perfect swings for 3 singles while he had HRs on a "just early" swing and an "early" swing.

I understand that baseball involves some "luck" or "chance" or whatever you want to call it. But it just seems weird that year after year we accept a game where that luck is the major deciding factor in everything but the highest difficulties (and even in those a lot of times too).

Because this strike zone sucks and is just begging me to argue and get ejected

That's right, kiddies. Buckle up! It's time to enter Brian Kenney's wet dream and talk numbers.

I felt like I was giving up a TON of HRs, so I went and looked at my 5 most used starters, as well as my 5 most used bullpen pitchers to see just how many HRs I was giving up and how that compared to my WHIP and ERA. Before entering the thunderdome of statistics, I would like to state, for the sake of fairness, that since the patches the number of HRs has gone down. That being said, here is what I found.

My 5 most used starters are: Oswalt, FoF Snell, Clevinger, Corbin, and Morton. And my 5 most used relief pitchers are: Osuna, Miller, Nick Anderson, Khanle, & Kerry Wood. Combined they have a BAA of only .219 and a WHIP of 0.91. The MLB averages in these categories last year were .250 and 1.19 respectively . So it would be safe to assume that my ERA should be significantly lower than the National League average (because we don't use a DH) of 4.38. However, the ERA of those 10 pitchers is 3.98, which is definitely lower, but not as much as you'd think given that the BAA is 31 points lower and the WHIP is almost 3 tenths lower. So why is that? Well, last year the average National League pitching staff gave up 173 HRs and 1087 total hits. That is a HR% of 15.9%. However, when I looked at the percentage of base hits those 10 pitchers had given up, it came to 49/149...or a staggering 33% of hits given up. If I was just a terrible pitcher, it would make more sense. But a BAA and WHIP significantly lower than MLB averages would seem to suggest otherwise. For a group of developers that talk so much about using data to drive outcomes, this seemed strange to me.

If they just changed it to "innings played" instead of "full innings pitched by pitcher" it would be a lot better.

I'm gonna [censored] and moan, but I can't take the arbitrary nature of this hitting engine any more. I know the content is lame and boring, but we HAVE to get back to user input meaning SOMETHING. I cannot for the life of me figure out what determines how the ball comes off the bat at this point. Early swing and under the ball? 400 foot no-doubt HR. Good swing timing with the ball fully in the PCI? 88mph flyout.

Just lost a DD game 5-3. Here's some notes:

1. He had 5 hard hit balls the ENTIRE game...magically 4 of them were HRs with one of them coming after a rolled over ground ball through the hole. So he had 5 runs off the back of a total of 5 hard hit balls

2. He struck out EIGHTEEN TIMES to my 8 times

3. I had about as many hard hit balls for outs as he had hard hit balls total

This game is literally determined by who can arbitrarily get the most of their hard hit balls to be HRs and who can arbitrarily get the most of their terrible swings to be foul balls instead of weak outs. If someone can come on here and tell me how skill determines why one person's 100mph line drive is an out and why one person's is a HR or can tell me what determines if a "very late" swing on an inside fastball is a foul ball or a popup, I'm all ears. But it seems to me that arbitrary outcomes have more of factor in determining who wins games than actual input. And that is asinine for online competitive gameplay.

Just save us all the trouble and turn every at bat into a coin flip simulator and decide the winner that way. It'll take less time and save us all the trouble of pretending like skill is at all the largest determining factor in who wins, because it's becoming more and more obvious that it's not.

Just lost to a guy 5-4. The dude struck out 16 times in 8 innings (didn't hit in the 9th because he was the home team) and hit 4 balls hard the entire game. But 3 of those were HR and he ended up with 5 runs on 7 hits.

He had one stretch where he had a "weak" contact hit with his pitcher, then a late/ok double with two outs to extend the inning, and then hit a 3-run HR with Alonso.

But after all that I had a chance to tie with 95 speed Xavier Edwards on third. He throws a slider to the backstop and this is called out:
https://youtu.be/ZlAd5M63qKs

So a baseball with slider spin hits the dirt, bounces STRAIGHT BACK, hits the backstop, and then bounces STRAIGHT BACK towards home plate.

SDS can suck a fat one at this point. This game is nothing but crossing your fingers and hoping the RNG goes in your favor.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at things I guess. Never done that before

Honestly, if a guy says he watching Tik Toks then you're dealing with one of two options:

1. he's a stupid high school kid, in which case you just shake your head and move on.

2. He's a grown man who watches Tik Toks, in which case you just shake your head and move on

I seriously thought we fixed this problem and now it's back. I thought once I hit 700 and started playing in HoF that it would stop. Then I thought once I hit 800 and started playing other CS players that it would stop. But it doesn't. Every time I face Kluber or Oswalt (which is about 90% of games) I'm stuck trying to hit a guy pinpointing a high sinker on the corners. And it's literally EVERY person doing it. I refuse to do it and I feel like I'm being put at a huge disadvantage simply because I refuse to be cheesy and unrealistic. A guy actually messaged me and said "maybe you'll make WS once you learn to hit the high sinker." How TF is that a message that can be sent in a "realistic" baseball game?

And beat him 7-3! The dude actually quit after the 5th so I'm wondering if it was even him lol

@BillsMafia863 said in Just played Pitching_Rebel in an events game:

Not to be that guy but it was an event. I’m sure he wasn’t on the edge of his seat. Plus with 4 innings left (if it was a RS) especially on HOF, he could of made a comeback. But the same excuse could be made for you, you could of mercied him (doubtful). So congrats on the win for events bud!

Ya you're probably right. It's no big deal. Hope you feel better about yourself now.

It's amazing to me how the "not to be that guy" guy is ALWAYS "that guy"