Dynamic Difficulty?

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Coming from the MLB2K lineage of baseball games on XBox and this being my first Show rodeo, I found DD to be pretty helpful to establish a baseline skill level. That said, I'm not going to stick with it long term for a few reasons....

1. The constant notifications had me playing a game within a game. Rather than trying to win per se, I noticed that sometimes I'd press when I was on All Star Progress:++++ to level up. So, it became a bit of a distraction. Maybe notifications once or twice per game would be better instead of every half-inning?

2. I believe the devs stated that OBP is king and while that's nice and useful if we have to reduce skill level down to a single stat, I feel that just using OBP doesn't really capture the essence of how good you are. I could get a bunch of hits and just score 1 run, or I could take a bunch of pitches and still only walk once because the cpu strike frequency is on steroids (even with that slider down to 2 or 3 the 1st strike % is north of 65%).

3. Too much emphasis is placed on small samples. For instance, if you have a nice 6-0 lead and then you give up a 3-spot late just because whatever (bunt single, error, hit), that type of situation shouldn't really affect your status too much, but it will reset your +++ to no plusses at times even when it had no impact on the result of the game.

In short, DD can be really useful for noobs to The Show, but I see it more to help establish a baseline, and then it's best to pick the difficulty you seem to be hovering at or the next level up if you feel like you can handle it despite what DD is saying.

[Seancefc]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Coming from the MLB2K lineage of baseball games on XBox and this being my first Show rodeo, I found DD to be pretty helpful to establish a baseline skill level. That said, I'm not going to stick with it long term for a few reasons....

1. The constant notifications had me playing a game within a game. Rather than trying to win per se, I noticed that sometimes I'd press when I was on All Star Progress:++++ to level up. So, it became a bit of a distraction. Maybe notifications once or twice per game would be better instead of every half-inning?

2. I believe the devs stated that OBP is king and while that's nice and useful if we have to reduce skill level down to a single stat, I feel that just using OBP doesn't really capture the essence of how good you are. I could get a bunch of hits and just score 1 run, or I could take a bunch of pitches and still only walk once because the cpu strike frequency is on steroids (even with that slider down to 2 or 3 the 1st strike % is north of 65%).

3. Too much emphasis is placed on small samples. For instance, if you have a nice 6-0 lead and then you give up a 3-spot late just because whatever (bunt single, error, hit), that type of situation shouldn't really affect your status too much, but it will reset your +++ to no plusses at times even when it had no impact on the result of the game.

In short, DD can be really useful for noobs to The Show, but I see it more to help establish a baseline, and then it's best to pick the difficulty you seem to be hovering at or the next level up if you feel like you can handle it despite what DD is saying.

You've summed it up for me. I've pretty much established my level through DD. I'm on HOF pitching which feels about right...I would've never have set myself on that manually. I don't want the CPU knocking me back to AS if I lose a couple of games.

It's a good way of establishing where you're at as opposed to being permanent.

[ShaBoomer]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Coming from the MLB2K lineage of baseball games on XBox and this being my first Show rodeo, I found DD to be pretty helpful to establish a baseline skill level. That said, I'm not going to stick with it long term for a few reasons....

1. The constant notifications had me playing a game within a game. Rather than trying to win per se, I noticed that sometimes I'd press when I was on All Star Progress:++++ to level up. So, it became a bit of a distraction. Maybe notifications once or twice per game would be better instead of every half-inning?

2. I believe the devs stated that OBP is king and while that's nice and useful if we have to reduce skill level down to a single stat, I feel that just using OBP doesn't really capture the essence of how good you are. I could get a bunch of hits and just score 1 run, or I could take a bunch of pitches and still only walk once because the cpu strike frequency is on steroids (even with that slider down to 2 or 3 the 1st strike % is north of 65%).

3. Too much emphasis is placed on small samples. For instance, if you have a nice 6-0 lead and then you give up a 3-spot late just because whatever (bunt single, error, hit), that type of situation shouldn't really affect your status too much, but it will reset your +++ to no plusses at times even when it had no impact on the result of the game.

In short, DD can be really useful for noobs to The Show, but I see it more to help establish a baseline, and then it's best to pick the difficulty you seem to be hovering at or the next level up if you feel like you can handle it despite what DD is saying.

This might help you out a bit... the AI is dynamic, so if you constantly just take the first pitch, the AI will start to throw nothing but 1st pitch strikes. If you swing at the low curve all the time, you'll see the low curve a lot. Etc, etc, etc...

Also, the extra "+'s" don't actually mean anything. It's just a visual representation of your progress towards the next level.

To avoid the distraction of the pop-up, I just don't look at it. But I agree, I wish it would only pop up once at the start of the game, and then again when your level changes.

I also agree with your sentiment about switching off DD once you've stabilized your play style. I played on DD in Franchise mode until it stabilized at HOF+. Then I switched it to straight HOF.



Just for those interested...

"The difficulty levels are: Rookie, Rookie+, Veteran, Veteran+, All-Star, All-Star+, Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame+, and Legend. The default starting difficulty is 'Rookie+', which is halfway in-between Rookie and Veteran. In addition to listing difficulty, a 'progress' field may appear to show whether you are about to promote or demote. For example, a '++' denotes that you are almost halfway to a promotion, while a '----' denotes that you are near demotion. Your Dynamic Difficulty progress is tied to your game settings
profile, and discarding your game settings profile will also will reset your Dynamic Difficulty progress.

The difficulty adjustments are 1/2 difficulty steps. The primary criteria for difficulty promotions/demotions under Dynamic Difficulty is your team OPS (in the case of RTTS, your individual OPS). A promotion may only happen if your team is winning by 3 or more runs, and a demotion can only happen if your team is losing by 3 or more runs. This rule is waived for relief pitchers starting mid-game. Promotions/demotions are checked after each at-bat, and after a promotion or demotion no further changes or progress may happen until the next game."

[Seancefc]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Ok so I was upto HOF pitching through DD...switched to standard HOF difficulty as it was a good level for me and the CPU were scoring realistically on DD under HOF.

First game on HOF I'm 11-0 down by the 2nd inning. Second game I'm 9-0 down in the first inning!

My fielders were falling all over the place & I gave up an in the park HR.

What's that about? Is setting the difficulty any different than a DD setting it for you?

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

...

The difficulty adjustments are 1/2 difficulty steps. The primary criteria for difficulty promotions/demotions under Dynamic Difficulty is your team OPS (in the case of RTTS, your individual OPS). A promotion may only happen if your team is winning by 3 or more runs, and a demotion can only happen if your team is losing by 3 or more runs. This rule is waived for relief pitchers starting mid-game. Promotions/demotions are checked after each at-bat, and after a promotion or demotion no further changes or progress may happen until the next game."

Are you sure it's OPS and not OBP? I thought that a The Show programmer mentioned OBP being the stat everything is based on.

Ok so I was upto HOF pitching through DD...switched to standard HOF difficulty as it was a good level for me and the CPU were scoring realistically on DD under HOF.

First game on HOF I'm 11-0 down by the 2nd inning. Second game I'm 9-0 down in the first inning!

My fielders were falling all over the place & I gave up an in the park HR.

What's that about? Is setting the difficulty any different than a DD setting it for you?

I switched off DD a few games back and have not noticed anything out of the ordinary with difficulty levels feeling easier/tougher than they used to, fwiw.

[bcruise]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Are you sure it's OPS and not OBP? I thought that a The Show programmer mentioned OBP being the stat everything is based on.

He quoted that developer (Brian_SCEA) directly in that post. It's OPS.

On-Base % certainly factors into OPS, but so does Slugging % - extra base hits. So if you start knocking a bunch of doubles, triples, and homers, you're going to promote to the next level pretty fast.

[ShaBoomer]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Are you sure it's OPS and not OBP? I thought that a The Show programmer mentioned OBP being the stat everything is based on.

What I quoted was directly out of the Strategy Guide. So that's official info.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

I just wanted to update you guys on my attempt to stabilize my DD.

A little while back, I raised CPU Solid Hits just one click in an effort to prolong my levels (I was switching between AS, AS+ and HOF frequently).

This seems to have done the trick! My games have been varied and awesome and very very stable. However, here's a word of caution:

You know those games where you're getting killed and rather than burning up the whole pen, you just let your pitcher try to clean up his own mess and get you to the next game? Yeah, I did that not thinking.

BAM! Demoted to Veteran+. LOL!

So yeah, don't do that.

[Willis135]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

I think Heroes posted this idea, but I have been using his idea a little differently. I am one of those in between levels guy. I think I'm best suited for hall of fame+ pitching and all star to all star+ hitting. Game plays perfect for me at those levels. But occasionally my pitching gets shelled or my hitting goes into a slump and DD drops me to a lower level.

When this happens, I play an exhibition game, all star team vs single A team to get my DD level back to where I think it should be and then go back into my franchise. Usually only takes a few innings to do this and I don't have to play a game in my franchise where the game is way too easy. Thanks to Heroes, I can consistently play franchise at the in between levels without the game getting to easy.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

I don't think it was actually my idea but I am its resident spokesman and lobbyist.

[COMMISSIONERHBK9]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

I just wanted to update you guys on my attempt to stabilize my DD.

A little while back, I raised CPU Solid Hits just one click in an effort to prolong my levels (I was switching between AS, AS+ and HOF frequently).

This seems to have done the trick! My games have been varied and awesome and very very stable. However, here's a word of caution:

You know those games where you're getting killed and rather than burning up the whole pen, you just let your pitcher try to clean up his own mess and get you to the next game? Yeah, I did that not thinking.

BAM! Demoted to Veteran+. LOL!

So yeah, don't do that.

so would you recommend for everyone that use dd to turn up the solids hits for cpu by one?

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

so would you recommend for everyone that use dd to turn up the solids hits for cpu by one?

No!

I don't ever recommend anyone do anything unless they're having identical issues. And even then, I give my opinion. I never recommend any one thing as we all have different abilities and such.

I was personally analyzing the possible reason I was constantly getting promoted and demoted when pitching. It seemed to me that the reason was primarily BABIP for the CPU being lower than I'd like, so without wanting to impact my K numbers, I decided to try Solid Hits first. For you (if you're seeing this), it may be something else like not enough BB's allowed or too many doubles (for example).

This was solely based on my observations of my own Franchise. I easily could have just kept playing without changing anything, or even trying the Timing slider instead. Solid Hits is just the least invasive option so I started there hoping to slow down or stop the constant level changes.

I actually don't mind the back-and-forth difficulties that much anyway. I'm basically just playing and looking at the stats and trying to solidify things.

This game doesn't need much! That's for sure.

[COMMISSIONERHBK9]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

No!

I don't ever recommend anyone do anything unless they're having identical issues. And even then, I give my opinion. I never recommend any one thing as we all have different abilities and such.

I was personally analyzing the possible reason I was constantly getting promoted and demoted when pitching. It seemed to me that the reason was primarily BABIP for the CPU being lower than I'd like, so without wanting to impact my K numbers, I decided to try Solid Hits first. For you (if you're seeing this), it may be something else like not enough BB's allowed or too many doubles (for example).

This was solely based on my observations of my own Franchise. I easily could have just kept playing without changing anything, or even trying the Timing slider instead. Solid Hits is just the least invasive option so I started there hoping to slow down or stop the constant level changes.

I actually don't mind the back-and-forth difficulties that much anyway. I'm basically just playing and looking at the stats and trying to solidify things.

This game doesn't need much! That's for sure.

im not good at seeing things to be honest. i guess my only complaint is i dont see enough steals by the computer. but that could just be me not playing against teams that have fast players

[Greencollarbaseball]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

So I just switched to DD and after losing the first 2 I've reeled off 13 wins in a row with Oakland. I'm currently sitting at vet+ for both. I'm not quite sure what to think yet, as my starting pitching has been lights out and my offense has started to heat up.
During my time with DD my scores are as follows:
@Tex
L 0-1

@Bos
L 3-4
W 5-2
W 4-0

Sea
W 10-2
W 5-1
W 6-1

Wsh
W 8-5
W 6-1
W 7-4

Cws
W 3-2
W 9-2
W 3-2

@Cle
W 6-2
W 6-2

I think I am going to play put the rest of the month (13 games) before I decide on what changes I should make.



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[SwedishTouch76]

Re: Dynamic Difficulty?

Very helpfull thread. Have a few questions and apologize in advance if its been covered and I missed it.
Im currently hitting on rookie+ which Im sure contributes to the insane hr totals I have. 52 in 31 games. If I progress to Veteran and hopefully AllStar at some point does it get noticably tougher to hit hrs? I know some will suggest lowering human power but I really hate messing with sliders too much unless I have to.

Regarding levelling up. If you strike out alot does this penalize you more? Ive had innings where I dont get any hits but worked the count and made good contact. Seems to penalize me less than quick innings where I struck out. Perhaps Im just imagining it.

Lastly if I decide to not use DD anymore and switch to say All Star difficulty then DD is reset back to Rookie if I re visit it?