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I've had maybe more fun than I've ever had playing offline this year, but online is nearly unplayable. The whole thing is just an RNG-fueled nightmare determined completely by who happens to get rewarded with the most solo HRs.

I just got done with a weekend classic game and ohhhhhh boy was it a doozy. I can't even be mad because it's such a good example of what I've been frustrated with for months.

I had 10 hard hit balls (95+ exit velo) which resulted in 6 singles, 2 doubles, a 101mph double play ball, and a flyball to dead center that died on the track

My opponent had 11 hard hit balls which resulted in 7 solo HRs, 3 doubles, and a single.

I had 1 or 2 "perfect/perfects" and my opponent had maybe 3 so that's not the explanation for the difference.

To add insult to injury, my opponent also struck out 10 times to my 7, meaning I had only one fewer hard hit ball but three fewer strikeouts, but I lost 8-1

At first I thought it was just the normal ebb and flow of RNG, but it's been almost 2 months now of me trying to win while getting HRs on a SIGNIFICANTLY lower percentage of my hits. It's gotten to the point where I'm genuinely wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Was there a shift in the meta at some point I didn't pick up on? Is everyone using power swing now? Is there something I'm doing wrong as a pitcher that the hard hit balls I give up are HRs a staggering percentage of the time instead of even hard hit singles and doubles?

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. I play this game to compete online, but it's getting so frustrating at this point it's barely worth playing....

I've had maybe more fun than I've ever had playing offline this year, but online is nearly unplayable. The whole thing is just an RNG-fueled nightmare determined completely by who happens to get rewarded with the most solo HRs.

I just got done with a weekend classic game and ohhhhhh boy was it a doozy. I can't even be mad because it's such a good example of what I've been frustrated with for months.

I had 10 hard hit balls (95+ exit velo) which resulted in 6 singles, 2 doubles, a 101mph double play ball, and a flyball to dead center that died on the track

My opponent had 11 hard hit balls which resulted in 7 solo HRs, 3 doubles, and a single.

I had 1 or 2 "perfect/perfects" and my opponent had maybe 3 so that's not the explanation for the difference.

To add insult to injury, my opponent also struck out 10 times to my 7, meaning I had only one fewer hard hit ball but three fewer strikeouts, but I lost 8-1

At first I thought it was just the normal ebb and flow of RNG, but it's been almost 2 months now of me trying to win while getting HRs on a SIGNIFICANTLY lower percentage of my hits. It's gotten to the point where I'm genuinely wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Was there a shift in the meta at some point I didn't pick up on? Is everyone using power swing now? Is there something I'm doing wrong as a pitcher that the hard hit balls I give up are HRs a staggering percentage of the time instead of even hard hit singles and doubles?

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. I play this game to compete online, but it's getting so frustrating at this point it's barely worth playing....

@trfatboy22_PSN I rarely comment on here and it's always nice to be reminded why. Instead of being able to have a conversation that I foolishly think SDS might see and actually take into consideration, posts are consistently hijacked by low IQ trolls who would rather hear the sound of their own fingers typing something pointless than actual contribute anything worthwhile

@trfatboy22_PSN Cool thanks for your input fat boy

I finished off my weekend classic games and decided to play a little BR. Holy moly is that mode a [censored] show. How does anybody play that? Almost every single game, and I'm talking games that I both win and lose, is decided by RNG. What an absolute dog water game mode.

On a side note, how, as a community, did we let the game get to a point where the RNG is this rampant? Yikes

@ckernan78_XBL Gold II is literally the division for people who finished between 800 and 899? What are you talking about? If you make WS division and don't keep winning and reach 900, then Gold II is the division you play in...

Just finished my 6 weekend classic games in Gold II, a division you have to make the HIGHEST level of ranked seasons to be in, and managed to go 6-0. My reward for being PERFECT??? A chase pack with a LS Yordan Alvarez and 4 "LS 85+" packs with Hunter Brown, Hunter Greene, Yamamoto, and Steven Kwan.

So for going 6-0 in one of the highest weekend classic divisions, I got 5 Live Series cards all rated 86 OVR or lower.

I'd literally rather get ONE 88+ pack for going 6-0 than get 4 85+ packs that only had a 1:16 chance of being 88 or higher.

What an absolute joke SDS

It's not a huge deal on All-Star with the reduced pitch speeds, but now that we've got a bunch of guys with outlier in the game, the ability to locate any pitch anywhere you want on Hall of Fame and Legend is making the game significantly less fun to play. I shouldn't be facing power pitchers with Greg Maddox levels of control every game pinpointing 100mph fastballs anywhere they want and then throwing multiple breaking balls half an inch off the low inside corner every time.

I just faced a guy using Bob Gibson who spent half the game dotting a front door sinker. Why is it even possible to consistently pinpoint your R1 pitch with a power pitcher who isn't supposed to have great control?

I'm NOT saying pitches should just be going down the middle. But man is it frustrating to try and hit 103 on both corners and then recognize multiple breaking balls that are consistently thrown barely off the plate.

People try and excuse all the hard line outs, bad exit velos, and crappy swings for base hits by saying "its baseball" but will then watch as a guy throws a high inside front door sinker on the black. Or a low inside front door circle change that takes 35 seconds to get to the plate. Or god forbid a belt-high slider that just turns into a super cutter because high sliders don't hang at all.

If you do all of the other missions, you can get away with not doing one of the moments. I did that just so I wouldn't have to do this Adell moment LOL

In the past, I've always struggled more with hitting and pitching has been my strength. This year, with how easy they've made hitting, things are switched for me. I think this RS I'm hitting around .330 with my team with an OPS right around 1.000. But my ERA, which is usually around the 3.00 mark, is significantly higher than that

It blows my mind how we're not talking more about gameplay this year and how hitting online is an RNG-fueled nightmare, but recently it's felt like something was even more off. I made WS last ranked season and got to 700 pretty quickly this season. Then apparently I woke up one morning and just forgot how to play because I've now lost 5 RS games in a row. But something felt off so I went and looked at the box scores and in those last 5 games that I've lost:

• I've outhit my opponent 59-52
• I've struck out almost half as much (23 Ks compared to their 40)
• However...out of my 59 hits, 20 were XBH and 8 were HRs
• Out of my opponents 52 hits, 32 were XBH and 19 were HRs

So, 34% of my hits went for extra bases and 13.5% went for HRs. But 61.5% of my opponents hits went for extra bases and 36.5% went for HRs.

I understand there will always be a sense of "randomness" to the game because it's baseball and that's how it works. But 5 games in a row of this is insane. And it makes it super hard to compete when you're trying to string together a bunch of singles to score runs and your opponent can just come up, strike out twice as often, and then just hit a bunch of random HRs and win.

@Blind_Bleeder_PSN I was wireless but after it happened I plugged it in and still nothing. I eventually fixed it by holding down the PS button until it turned off and then I turned it back on and it was fine. But it was super weird!

@dsparks_PSN I stopped playing 24 around the All-star break but picked it back up a few weeks before the release of 25 just to get back into it. Started a new ranked season and went like 12-0 before 25 came out. Went right into the new game and just nothing.

I'm the same way with timing. I find myself consistently behind on off-speed pitches. It's the weirdest thing...almost like the timing window changed this year and I still haven't adjusted to it.

I was playing a game today and right in the middle of the game, my controller stopped responding. The game was active, and my controller was on, but all of a sudden it just wasn't responding to anything. I couldn't choose my pitch so my pitcher was just throwing it right down the middle and I couldn't move my fielders to field the ball. It was like the controller was turned off even though it wasn't.

In years past, I've always been able to get into the 800s pretty consistently (and hit WS at 900 occasionally). And every year when I'd start at 0 at the beginning of the game, I'd always win a ton of games in a row and start like 15-1.

This year is way different. I'm like 7-5 to start and haven't even cracked 500. Feels like it's a coin flip how the ball's coming off the bat, there's tons of weak base hits, and most outfielders have no urgency getting to the ball.

Anybody else feeling like ranked this year is playing way different? Or did I just forget how to play since last year?

Is there a way to tell that on some of them? Like one of the cards that works is the team captain Adalberto Mondesi and there's no year.

Like, does the subway series 90OVR Jeter represent a specific year? Because the card doesn't say.

Just seems really weird

I grabbed the Stanton card as my cornerstone captain for S2 thinking I'd have a number of players that worked with that boost. However, guys like Sal Perez, Jeter, Adam Dunn, and Griffey aren't being recognized as part of the captain boost. They all played during the 2010s. Am I missing something about what qualifies players for this?

@Simple-Jack3998_XBL I get the "hitting in real life" thing, but I don't think that should apply here. There are SO MANY little aspects that go into hitting a baseball in real life. Yes, you can be out in front of a pitch and still hit it hard or hit a HR, but that's because there are a whole slew of things you did right (kept your hands back, kept your weight back, still transferred your weight through the ball well, etc). You can also do almost everything right, but if you have the tiniest hitch or something wrong with your swing, then you're not hitting ANYTHING. SDS is taking ALL of that and boiling it down into just two things (swing timing and PCI placement). And that's TOTALLY fine, because obviously nobody wants to do 35 different things on a controller to hit a ball, but it makes it much different than real life and, essentially, non-comparable.

We HAVE to get away from this idea that "because it can happen in real life that makes it acceptable in the game" idea. Hitting in real life and hitting in a video game are not even remotely close things and shouldn't be compared.

In addition to that, why is it that being "early" on a pitch means you're simply out in front and can still hit the ball 400 ft, but being "late" MUCH more consistently means you're jammed and not hitting the ball hard. Why is a "late" swing a jam shot but an "early" swing not hitting it off the end of the bat?

If you're going to take the hardest thing to do in sports and boil it down to two things on a controller, then at least eliminate some of the RNG and make input much more meaningful than it already is. Otherwise you're just relying on luck or a favorable random outcome. And although there is some of that in baseball, to look at a player who was "out in front" of a pitch and still hit a HR and saying that's the same as RNG randomly deciding a poorly timed swing is a HR is just not true.

@Simple-Jack3998_XBL I would argue it shouldn't matter where his PCI was though. They are boiling hitting down to only 2 different things (the timing at which you hit a button and the accuracy at which you move the joystick). If you do one thing wrong, which is literally HALF of what goes into hitting, then you shouldn't ever be rewarded with the BEST possible outcome (which is a HR).

I'm not saying you shouldn't ever get a hit, but if you're going to be significantly off on half of what goes into making contact, you shouldn't ever be rewarded with the best possible outcome

Just got done with an online game in DD. We were playing on Legend difficulty and were pretty evenly matched. I'd say both of our strengths were pitching, but we were hitting decently and overall our hard hit balls were mostly rewarded and there weren't any bloops. It was a really good game!

Then the RNG decided to step in. I was up 1 run in the 6th. He lead off the inning with an "early" swing groundball that 16-hopped through the infield and then the very next batter hit an "early" swing HR to go up 1 and that was the difference.

And as if to just rub it in, the next inning my first out was "good" swing timing with the ball inside the inner PCI for a "weak" contact fly out LOL

I understand I'm essentially an old man yelling at the clouds because SDS obviously wants the game to play this way, but it's frustrating to play such a close, well-contested game on the HIGHEST difficulty and still have it decided by something like that.

I just wish there was at least an option or a specific game mode you could play that was REALLY input-determined instead of just hoping the right things land your way.