MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

[nemesis04]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Chased pitches - how many outs per game relative to hits per game on chased pitches?

My traveling statistician could not make the trip to CD with me so I don't have an accurate answer for you.

I can say there where chased pitches by the CPU.

Is there more offense this year on default sliders than in mlbts 14?

Thank you.

I think offense opened up a little by the slowed down fielders. I am sure a few will think some of the fielders are still too fast but there are dedicated sliders to tune to your liking.

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

How did the computer handle its bullpen? More lefty/lefty matchups? Utilizing pen better?

In gameplay, I did not specifically look for shortcomings in manager decisions (it's difficult to trigger specific situations in the game unless you are fully versed in testing tools), but if simmed games provide any indications, I didn't feel that aspect of the game has been much different.

Comparing sim stats to the recent MLB averages, CPU managers still tend to hold onto the starters too long (i.e., inflaced CGs) and many relievers are used 1+ IPs (which causes many pitchers to have innings pitched quite a bit greater than their games pitched, which is increasingly harder to see these days). Closers still seem to be used primarily in save situations, etc.

And in a few instances I noticed pitching changes in the gameplay, I didn't feel much have changed as far as CPU managers are concerned.

But please note that things I can see during such a short stay is very limited, so it is possible that there are upgrades that I just could not notice because of how I was testing things. In general I avoided testing things that would take too much out of the short stay.


I have left notes pointing these things out.

In general I still feel "outside-the-lines" AI can get significant boosts in many areas. We already can play decent baseball gameplay against AI on the field, but it would be great if we could play against smarter manager AIs. I feel that is still a dimension that The Show hasn't explored as much and can significantly grow further in future.

[nemesis04]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Just read through this whole thread. I wish I saw it earlier! I'll just post all my questions at once, assuming I haven't missed the bus.

1) Nemesis/SLAB, you guys touched on someone's post about baserunning OSD, but you didn't actually answer whether there will be any indication if a baserunner is stealing a base? Will we get some sort of indicator or warning for it? Or is it still a complete guessing game like in past years? This is something I consider very important, as it's been miserable trying to control the running game the last few years.

Everything is the same as far as I saw in regards to indicators of a runner stealing.

2) My second question... does the CPU still perform diving catches with a super-human level of proficiency?

Still a little too strong for my taste. Their success rate is too high imo.

3) How did you feel about foul balls, and about pop-ups? With foul balls, were they still all hanging around in-play (catchable, near the batter)? Were there still too many fair pop-ups and pop-ups in general?

Still a little heavy in this area, I saw improvement but I still think it could come down a notch In frequency and location.



Just so we are on the same page here, you can't give specifics because of an NDA on ball physics? Or are you just saying that it's not something you are comfortable talking about? IE can we expect specifics at a future time?

I worded it poorly, sorry. Meaning that there was not one huge thing that stood out but as a whole I felt there was some refinement in ball off bat interaction with hit types and how the ball behaved on the ground.

Answers are in bold.

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Definitely not playing on legend with max speed...
While in theory I agree that increasing pitch speed should help, the reality is it leads to other problems for me anyway instead.
What I mean by this is that I am happy with my variety of hits,doubles,runs etc but lacking on the so's.
By increasing pitch speed while perhaps helping so's also for me leads to me being late on everything and having far too many balls put into opposite field which is leading to less overall hits,runs, hr's.
As it stands now it is like a pick your poison type thing.
I was just hoping that this year they had shrunk the PCI a bit back to how it was a couple of years ago..

If the PCI size you feel is the only issue, then you should just be able to solve that by reducing Contact slider once you (roughly) land on a difficulty level that you are comfortable with.

The game may have gotten easier overall since the couple iterations ago, but I think it's in ways that have made it easier for casual gamers and/or beginners to jump right in (which is good as more users are likely to try the game), but it is not to a point where veterans can no longer find their right level. I think it used to be the opposite, and putting the burden of finding the right play level on veterans as opposed to on casuals/beginners is a good/necessary decision overall, simply because we know the game much better.

As for MLB 15, I felt there was no major changes in how difficulty levels are tuned (aside from Dynamic Difficulty).

[seanjeezy]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Nomo - with B Ma mentioning that 4 seam fastballs have some natural movement, are the pitch selections still the same or have they been condensed? Also, what are your thoughts on the dynamic movement from an editing standpoint? Does the movement rating have any effect on the sharpness/late movement of a pitch or is it still strictly horizontal/vertical movement?

[Bobhead]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Answers are in bold.

Thanks man. I appreciate you guys taking the time to answer all the questions in this thread.

[nemesis04]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Thanks man. I appreciate you guys taking the time to answer all the questions in this thread.

No problem, I am sure those were not some of the answers you wanted but that is how I saw it when I was there.

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Nomo - with B Ma mentioning that 4 seam fastballs have some natural movement, are the pitch selections still the same or have they been condensed? Also, what are your thoughts on the dynamic movement from an editing standpoint? Does the movement rating have any effect on the sharpness/late movement of a pitch or is it still strictly horizontal/vertical movement?

From what I understand, basically the Pitch Break attribute is directly tied to the amount of spin of the ball (which through varying the Magnus effect causes the pitch to break more if you give it a higher value). I heard it's always been that way internally, but the pitch trajectories have been updated through more data that SCEA can obtain and analyze now. Things look a lot less video gamey now.

So, for 4SFB movement, it's not like you will have "Fifty Shades of 4SFBs" to choose from for a pitch type, or you are simply given an option to choose spin axis, velocity, and rotations per min, etc., for each pitch slot. As far as I remember, the interface for pitch editing is the same. The difference is that the attributes have a lot more realistic effects that are data/physics based for each available pitch type (named subjectively by SCEA).

In terms of horizontal/vertical movement for the kind of pitch editing you've been doing... I don't think you have direct control on the spin axis itself for each pitch, so if you feel the movement and how that pitch is named/labeled in the game is "off," then you would still have to do your own research and find the in-game pitch that resembles most the movement close to whatever MLB data source you like gives you and go by the actual movement instead of how the game calls a pitch.

[seanjeezy]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

From what I understand, basically the Pitch Break attribute is directly tied to the amount of spin of the ball (which through varying the Magnus effect causes the pitch to break more if you give it a higher value). I heard it's always been that way internally, but the pitch trajectories have been updated through more data that SCEA can obtain and analyze now. Things look a lot less video gamey now.

More spin equals more movement so that makes sense

So, for 4SFB movement, it's not like you will have "Fifty Shades of 4SFBs" to choose from for a pitch type, or you are simply given an option to choose spin axis, velocity, and rotations per min, etc., for each pitch slot. As far as I remember, the interface for pitch editing is the same. The difference is that the attributes have a lot more realistic effects that are data/physics based for each available pitch type (named subjectively by SCEA).

So say I assigned a 12-6 curve to a 3/4 or side-arm pitcher... would the movement be closer to the regular curve or even a sweeping curve? Or is this another case of break vs movement?

In terms of horizontal/vertical movement for the kind of pitch editing you've been doing... I don't think you have direct control on the spin axis itself for each pitch, so if you feel the movement and how that pitch is named/labeled in the game is "off," then you would still have to do your own research and find the in-game pitch that resembles most the movement close to whatever MLB data source you like gives you and go by the actual movement instead of how the game calls a pitch.

Is the source of the data still the same? MLB needs to partner with Brooks asap

[Shakedowncapo]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Are you answering questions about ballparks at night? Specifically the lighting and backdrops.

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

...

So say I assigned a 12-6 curve to a 3/4 or side-arm pitcher... would the movement be closer to the regular curve or even a sweeping curve? Or is this another case of break vs movement?

...

Is the source of the data still the same? MLB needs to partner with Brooks asap

A short, unqualified answer for the first question is yes...

As far as I know, *in which direction a pitch breaks* (i.e., which roughly is controlled by pitch spin axis... I use this phrase rather interchangeably with the term "movement," so if that has caused confusion then it's just that...) has been tied to the pitching delivery for a long time. I am not exactly sure the level of granularity that the game actually has in terms of arm angles, but it should at least replicate something as widely different as 3/4 and side-arm deliveries. Therefore, breaking pitches have had different movement (i.e., spin axis) depending on pitcher's arm angle (i.e., delivery), even in MLB 14 right now.

From what I gather, what sometimes is unclear is that in order to assign pitch spin axis, the game gets the info from the pitch delivery being used, and each delivery needs to be tagged (sort of) by the arm angle. As with anything manually done, sometimes deliveries are tagged incorrectly, so some side-arm deliveries might not be tagged correctly as such. In that sort of case, pitches might move as if it was delivered from a 3/4 arm slot, even though the delivery is that of a side-arm pitcher.

(So if you find such a delivery, it might be worth filing a bug report.)


As far as the data source, when I had a chance to ask a dev (his initial is BM obviously) I don't think Brooks was mentioned, but it is a new source (no longer Baseball Info Solutions).

For your latter point I doubt will ever be solved in ways that satisfies everyone. How we call a pitch is very subjective and the value of the kind of work Brooks is doing is to "standardize" how we call a certain pitch. So unless the whole baseball world agrees on the precise (physics-based) definition of how to call different pitch types, there will always be some amount of disconnect in how pitches are labeled for certain pitchers.


But a takeaway is that the game does have mechanisms to implement realistic physics, and the developers do seem to have access to necessary data, so I only expect things to keep improving from here on.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

I am gonna re-post my questions (condensed and consolidated) from last night because they've since been buried under new questions. I appreciate any insights you guys might (or might not) have and I also realize you didn't have time to play gobs and gobs of ball games.

1) Any noticeable differences in variety of ball physics and distances on home runs? In past iterations, HRs tend to adopt a narrow range of trajectories and not to go any farther than 440 feet in games. Did you see a true moonshot? Did you see a screamer line drive that barely scraped over the wall?

2) Did the double plays seem overpowered? Were you grounding into 1-2+ GIDP per game? Or has the new fielder speeds fixed that?

3) Did you notice any affect of wind? Did you play with the wind blowing out vs blowing in and notice any differences?

[UNIT-352]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

How have the crowds been updated (audio/movement/cut scenes/ more responsive to in game situations)? Do the fans catch foul balls and homeruns?

[ShowTyme15]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

How have the crowds been updated (audio/movement/cut scenes/ more responsive to in game situations)? Do the fans catch foul balls and homeruns?

Yes. Also crowd placement is dynamic when the game isn't a sellout.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: MLB 15 The Show (Community Day Gameplay Q&A Thread)

Are you answering questions about ballparks at night? Specifically the lighting and backdrops.

That sounds more like a presentation element rather than gameplay--although the backdrops do influence gameplay by how well you can see a pitch--, but with how bad the night lighting was at PNC and Petco in '14 (and with the Padres sure to be a popular choice to use this year), I really hope that's been addressed.