MLB 14 The Show: Online Play a Swing and a Miss at Launch

[twinsfan34]

What's the wait time you guys have had after the Roster Upload to get started on the Franchise?

It said I had to upload a roster...it's been 3 hours...maybe slow servers(?) or is that typical - then you come back and have to start up the Franchise?

Any of you playing as the only Human in a 30 team league?

Even playing as multiple teams within that Online Franchise.

[HustlinOwl]

Lol why all the negativity I dont get it (sarcasm) lmao at the damage controllers

Sent from my LG-L40G using Tapatalk

[cardinalbird5]

Alot of people are just wrong in here lol.

Yeah the show doesn't have the greatest servers, but the last few years have worked pretty good for me.

You can't expect a perfect connection every time either, especially in MLB when a lot of guys out of PR love to play the game. There is going to be some lag sometimes. But overall my experience has been good the past few years.

I don't know about MLB 14 yet since I haven't played it, but give it time. Most people won't even play it much after the first week anyways and Sony does a good job of constantly listening to feedback and applying it.

MVP Baseball also worked pretty well online (for me) 2005-2006.

It is ashame with the late release that the game isn't ready for online play yet, but lets not exaggerate and say the past games didn't work online either.

[nomo17k]

I agree with cardinalbird7 in that online was actually fairly decent in MLB 13, in my opinion. (Did not play much in MLB 12.) To me MLB 13 was the first online version in which I thought the timing adjustment and the reduction of lags were good enough to actually feel close to playing offline games.

With MLB 14, things have changed so much online that I don't know what to expect at this point. There just are too many bugs, both related and unrelated to how the game was revamped, that I am not sure if I should keep filing bug reports or just wait till the game becomes stable enough .

The major change of how the game plays from previous years to MLB 14 is that now the online game appears to transfer control between gamers.

In MLB 13 and before, the game was synchronizing the games on both sides of gamers near real-time, meaning whatever is happening on one side is quickly communicated to the other side, so at any moment the games stay in sync on both sides. The good thing with this is that, the game is in sync most of the time. The bad thing is that this makes the game susceptible to network lags. What a lag happens on one side, it quickly propagates to the other side.

In MLB 14, it seems that both sides are not synchronized all the time. My observation is that now the games works like this:

(1) The primary control (i.e., the side of gamers who feels no lag) is on the pitching side, so it's lag free on that side. The pitching side selects pitch and location, delivers, and how the pitch was released gets determined. That info gets transmitted to the hitting side.

(2) The primary control is on the hitting side, which receives the information about how the pitch was released. Batter decides what to do with the pitch. It he takes and nothing happens, then go back to (1). If the ball is put in play, the info as to what kind of hit was generated gets transmitted to the fielding side.

(3) The primary control is on the fielding side. Fielding feels lag free, but the base running side appears to receive tons of visual anomalies like players and the ball warping and vanishing, because that side can only receive the info pertaining to the fielding actions after the fielding side does something. And when fielding, a lot of things happen in real time and must be communicated so that the other side can decide what to do next, so I feel transferring primary control this way has kind of backfired. Fielding may feel lag free, but controlling base runner is tough because the base running side does not get proper visual feedback on what the fielding side is doing.


The reason why the pitch speed appear very slow when you pitch is that between the pitch release and the batter hitting, (1) and (2), the pitching side has to wait wait a bit longer to receive the info as to what the hitting side did with the pitch.

I am actually very concerned about part (3), since that's where I see most of the glitch happening this year. And with the amount of weird things happening I am not sure how much of compromise we have to make on the visual synchronization issues to keep the feeling of lag free-ness on one side. (If all things fails, I think reverting to MLB 13 implementation at least for fielding is still reasonable.)

[cardinalbird5]

The hitting/pitching interface and transferring from one host to the other seems to not be a problem at all. I think that was a good idea on their part and it is also what Professional Baseball Spirits does as well.

The problem lies in the fielding/baserunning. I don't know if it is synchronized at the same time or what their goal was, but IMO it should revert back to how previous installments handled the fielding/baserunning. It should be real time. I never really had a problem with lag affecting my baserunning or fielding, unless there was just a huge hiccup in the network on a routine flyball or something. And in that case, most of the games would drop anyways since the connection wasn't great to begin with.

I really don't see any other work around since baserunning and fielding has to be in real time for pickles, stealing, tagging up, etc. The timing has to be precise and you have to have real time feedback from your opponent in order to retreat or advance on the base paths.

From the few videos I have seen, the fielding/baserunning is the main problem, so hopefully they can fix it.

[allgames]

Nomo17K thank you for your detailed breakdown, that's some really enlightening info, makes sense. The ball almost NEVER seems to actually go in a fielders glove when catching the ball. The hits in replay almost never actually come off the bat and it's just so frustrating when you are called safe/out and the opposite actually happens.

Cardinalbird, you have to realize you're commenting without playing and the difference between previous years and this one are dramatic. I really hope this is all sorted out soon. If it is sorted out I may be interested in getting a PS4 and MLB 14, if not I'll just stick with this...

Otherwise this is as usual a spectacular game.

[nomo17k]

Quote: Originally Posted by allgames

Nomo17K thank you for your detailed breakdown, that's some really enlightening info, makes sense. The ball almost NEVER seems to actually go in a fielders glove when catching the ball. The hits in replay almost never actually come off the bat and it's just so frustrating when you are called safe/out and the opposite actually happens. Cardinalbird, you have to realize you're commenting without playing and the difference between previous years and this one are dramatic. I really hope this is all sorted out soon. If it is sorted out I may be interested in getting a PS4 and MLB 14, if not I'll just stick with this... Otherwise this is as usual a spectacular game.

I actually think cardinalbird5 understands what's going on. He is often very observant that way. And I agree that the new implementation (in MLB 14), if all things are well sorted out, will provide much less frustrating gaming experiences online.

I am in general all for the change, but given the current state (which is very poor, I'm sorry to say), I don't know how much improvement we should expect this year.

I think it is a very good and reasonable thing that the game now tries to remove network induced lags from pitching and hitting, since timing in that part of game is so very critical for success. That way, we won't be hearing as much "lag-induced cheese" and also we don't have to worry as much about poor connections with guys playing from a far country for example. I've made a few friends playing out of Japan, and even though their home internet is usually much faster than what's available in the U.S., there has usually been some lag because of the distance. It's kind of similar when I play guys from the East Coast (I'm on the West Coast). This won't be as much as issue with the new implementation.

So, once the kinks get ironed out, I think it will be much better overall. Just hoping the devs have ample time to work on all the issues, since this might actually determine the way online runs for the next couple years.

[allgames]

The other thing I've noticed happening more this year than previous is check swings. I have often pressed hard for a full swing only to have the batter check giving me a strike. Of course it's worked out the other way where I mean to swing and it only checks saving me from a bad swing and miss at a pitch out of the zone. I would rather it be accurate though..