Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

[SpikeSpiegel]

I haven't played The Show since the 12 Edition, which was a great game. I haven't really had the time to play over the past years, but my Cubbies are finally good so I figured I'd pick up the game this year.

I noticed almost immediately that I couldn't hit inside pitches properly. So I did some tests to confirm my suspicions. I played a bunch of batting practice to see if it was just because I was rusty. The first 3 clips (in the YouTube video embed below) are of high inside pitches hit foul with good timing. The other clips have the slow motion replay showing exactly where the bat was on contact. As you can see the ball comes off the bat at bad angles; the David Ross foul ball down the line should've ever-so-slightly went to the opposite field let alone pulled foul. I even threw a game on Legend difficulty ONLY throwing inside fastballs (to my best ability) and the CPU was able to do nothing with them. All the CPU was able to do was hit a couple HRs on pitches catching the middle of the plate. The pitching charts from said game are down below.

Obviously this has nothing to do with input lag since the PS4 recorded the videos internally and the CPU has the same issue as me. Lastly, input lag would be lag obviously and I'd be complaining about being late on pitches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KAyxXcEhOk

[KBLover]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I pull inside pitches often with Chris Carter, Miguel Sano, and Chris Davis, not to mention fictionals from my carryover.

Heck, I pull them with Ichiro, who's about as opposite field as it gets.

For pulling pitches foul with good timing, it might be because the hitter went "around" the ball just a bit. I saw the PCI was yellow so it wasn't a perfectly located swing (Good + perfect location = Green PCI). I see that on Directional, but I also take them out the pull field also. Depends on the PCI and just how good (Good doesn't mean perfect necessarily, might just mean "below the threshold for Just Late or Just Early") the timing was.

As far as just throwing inside to the CPU - maybe you can. I can't on Classic. Maybe you're a better pitcher than me (and if you're on Legend Classic, you're WAY better than me), but I can't just pound inside all day.

I'm not saying the physics are "perfect", but those looked like it made sense to me why they were foul/pulled.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I pull inside pitches often with Chris Carter, Miguel Sano, and Chris Davis, not to mention fictionals from my carryover.

Heck, I pull them with Ichiro, who's about as opposite field as it gets.

For pulling pitches foul with good timing, it might be because the hitter went "around" the ball just a bit. I saw the PCI was yellow so it wasn't a perfectly located swing (Good + perfect location = Green PCI). I see that on Directional, but I also take them out the pull field also. Depends on the PCI and just how good (Good doesn't mean perfect necessarily, might just mean "below the threshold for Just Late or Just Early") the timing was.

As far as just throwing inside to the CPU - maybe you can. I can't on Classic. Maybe you're a better pitcher than me (and if you're on Legend Classic, you're WAY better than me), but I can't just pound inside all day.

I'm not saying the physics are "perfect", but those looked like it made sense to me why they were foul/pulled.

I'm not saying you can't pull pitches. I'm saying you can't properly hit pitches on the very inside of the plate because the angle of the ball comes off the bat is wrong. Yeah, I was early on that last clip on the liner foul but just look at the angle the ball takes off the bat, it doesn't make sense. Look at the Joey Votto foul ball, the bat was just even with the plate yet it goes foul? You can't have better timing on those high inside fastballs in the first clips. Going inside is supposed to be dangerous as a pitcher. Not to mention the CPU can't hit inside pitches either. How is that right for me to throw nothing but fastballs and only give up 2 runs on any difficulty let alone Legend?

[Jr.]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I'm not saying you can't pull pitches. I'm saying you can't properly hit pitches on the very inside of the plate because the angle of the ball comes off the bat is wrong. Yeah, I was early on that last clip on the liner foul but just look at the angle the ball takes off the bat, it doesn't make sense. Look at the Joey Votto foul ball, the bat was just even with the plate yet it goes foul? You can't have better timing on those high inside fastballs in the first clips. Going inside is supposed to be dangerous as a pitcher. Not to mention the CPU can't hit inside pitches either. How is that right for me to throw nothing but fastballs and only give up 2 runs on any difficulty let alone Legend?

The visual of the ball off of the bat isn't designed to be a perfect physical representation of contact. It's just showing that there was contact made.

I've had swings where the ball went through the barrel. The type of contact is decided by timing and ratings of the hitter, the pitcher, and the pitch itself. Not by the physical contact made between the bat and ball (which is purely visual).

[KBLover]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I'm not saying you can't pull pitches. I'm saying you can't properly hit pitches on the very inside of the plate because the angle of the ball comes off the bat is wrong. Yeah, I was early on that last clip on the liner foul but just look at the angle the ball takes off the bat, it doesn't make sense. Look at the Joey Votto foul ball, the bat was just even with the plate yet it goes foul? You can't have better timing on those high inside fastballs in the first clips. Going inside is supposed to be dangerous as a pitcher. Not to mention the CPU can't hit inside pitches either. How is that right for me to throw nothing but fastballs and only give up 2 runs on any difficulty let alone Legend?

I don't know because I can't do it on All-Star Classic, let alone Legend.

I go inside to a power guy, it better be OFF the plate or I better have him thinking outside.

I tried Legend Classic a few times this year and I certainly did not get away with just putting pitches inside. Even 101-102 MPH, they turned on and crushed them.

That said, if you're in on the black, that's hard to keep fair, even in the real game.

The visual of the ball off of the bat isn't designed to be a perfect physical representation of contact. It's just showing that there was contact made.

Plus this. Devs have said on here before that replays aren't perfectly aligned when replaying swings - missing frames or something of that nature when generating the replay. People have asked "how did I miss that?" on balls like Jr. mention "going through the barrel", and that was the answer the devs gave.

[NEOPARADIGM]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

The visual of the ball off of the bat isn't designed to be a perfect physical representation of contact. It's just showing that there was contact made.

I've had swings where the ball went through the barrel. The type of contact is decided by timing and ratings of the hitter, the pitcher, and the pitch itself. Not by the physical contact made between the bat and ball (which is purely visual).

Yeah this is my take, pretty much. The physics come second to the dice roll of ratings + timing + pitch confidence, etc.

[nomo17k]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I think the issue OP is raising is basically on how accurate the game should reproduce the physics of bat contact *visually*, not that there is actually a huge issue (there would always be some issues) with how the contact affects resulting hit types...

As Jr. alludes to, this is just a limitation of animation system I think. The swing animation just cannot reproduce all the possibilities in how people can physically move body and what they use. In a sense, the animation system itself is trying to "simulate" how the physics works as best as it can... but of course there are limits.

The game is doing its physics simulation as well as it can in numbers, but it still needs to be visually rendered for us to be able to see. It's just the inevitable disconnect happening in that layer of translating numbers to visuals.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

I think the issue OP is raising is basically on how accurate the game should reproduce the physics of bat contact *visually*, not that there is actually a huge issue (there would always be some issues) with how the contact affects resulting hit types...

As Jr. alludes to, this is just a limitation of animation system I think. The swing animation just cannot reproduce all the possibilities in how people can physically move body and what they use. In a sense, the animation system itself is trying to "simulate" how the physics works as best as it can... but of course there are limits.

The game is doing its physics simulation as well as it can in numbers, but it still needs to be visually rendered for us to be able to see. It's just the inevitable disconnect happening in that layer of translating numbers to visuals.

On my swings on high inside pitches in the video (the 1st 2 clips), you cannot time that pitch any better yet I'm hitting the ball foul. Wait back any more and you're hitting it up the middle or the opposite way. Even the CPU can't hit inside pitches properly.

Here's a clip from MLB 11 The Show that I was able to dig up from my RTTS. Notice the night and day difference between 11 and 16? The hitting just felt "off" right away for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co9-8Ah-s6g

[Stolm]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

Pitch Speed and the visual of bat/ball contact has been wonky since MLB 13.

In 12 everything felt tight and 1:1. In 13 they "opened up the timing window" and in doing so introduced a weird floaty feel to pitches coming to the plate. Hitting has never felt right again honestly.

It feels like behind the scenes factors effect hitting as much as user input does now, whereas in 12, user input was the majority factor.

[BucksInSix]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

That video clip did make me appreciate how we no longer have to listen to Dave Cambell anymore..

[KBLover]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

Pitch Speed and the visual of bat/ball contact has been wonky since MLB 13.

In 12 everything felt tight and 1:1. In 13 they "opened up the timing window" and in doing so introduced a weird floaty feel to pitches coming to the plate. Hitting has never felt right again honestly.

It feels like behind the scenes factors effect hitting as much as user input does now, whereas in 12, user input was the majority factor.

I HATED the MLB13 timing window. None of the rest from then on felt that bad to me. (MLB14-16). If by "opened up" they meant "swing late to be on time" then, yeah, they succeeded.

Offspeed pitches still feel floaty, but not quite as much, imo.

I agree that I liked MLB12s window a lot, though I also enjoyed MLB14's quite a bit as well.

I pulled an inside pitch (it was within the inner third column on the strike zone grid) with Gary Sanchez. High change up, Good timing, green PCI. Out over the Monster 392 feet.

Adrian Gonzalez got me in the same game - fastball inner third grid, jacked out over the bullpens 420-ft vs Taijuan Walker and a 95 MPH 4SFB.

Maybe it's because I'm on All-Star...I don't know?

[nomo17k]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

On my swings on high inside pitches in the video (the 1st 2 clips), you cannot time that pitch any better yet I'm hitting the ball foul. Wait back any more and you're hitting it up the middle or the opposite way. Even the CPU can't hit inside pitches properly.

Here's a clip from MLB 11 The Show that I was able to dig up from my RTTS. Notice the night and day difference between 11 and 16? The hitting just felt "off" right away for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co9-8Ah-s6g

I think there has always been this "what's the right balance" element to how the game should reproduce the timing difference and resulting hit types. I've been playing every iteration since MLB 10, and I remember that MLB 11 still had the quite annoying unrealistically high "opposite-field power" issue, in which we could hit an inside pitch to the opposite field with authority. I think that was very annoying which go toned down very significantly since MLB 12. So MLB 11 did have its own issues, so it's not like MLB 16 has it worse now. It's actually much better overall, in my opinion.

The major point in my previous post was that you shouldn't take the in-game animation to be the faithful representation of how ball/contact physics works in the game, because any system like this simply has to deal with limitations.

But if the issue is about pitch location and swing timing as related to the hit type, then we can go on and on about what truly is that right balance is, given this is a game and our input are only limited to what we can do with DS4... and I feel like the developers are always looking for improvements.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

Pitch Speed and the visual of bat/ball contact has been wonky since MLB 13.

In 12 everything felt tight and 1:1. In 13 they "opened up the timing window" and in doing so introduced a weird floaty feel to pitches coming to the plate. Hitting has never felt right again honestly.

It feels like behind the scenes factors effect hitting as much as user input does now, whereas in 12, user input was the majority factor.

12 was the last of the series I played and it was awesome, perhaps the best baseball game (that or a High Heat). I remember reading about 13 and opening up the timing window but that made no sense to me as I had to lower my own hitting sliders already on Legend. The timing window to make contact was already huge plus the PCI on just default All-Star has always been way too big, what's the point of Zone hitting when you can just center swing?

I think there has always been this "what's the right balance" element to how the game should reproduce the timing difference and resulting hit types. I've been playing every iteration since MLB 10, and I remember that MLB 11 still had the quite annoying unrealistically high "opposite-field power" issue, in which we could hit an inside pitch to the opposite field with authority. I think that was very annoying which go toned down very significantly since MLB 12. So MLB 11 did have its own issues, so it's not like MLB 16 has it worse now. It's actually much better overall, in my opinion.

The major point in my previous post was that you shouldn't take the in-game animation to be the faithful representation of how ball/contact physics works in the game, because any system like this simply has to deal with limitations.

But if the issue is about pitch location and swing timing as related to the hit type, then we can go on and on about what truly is that right balance is, given this is a game and our input are only limited to what we can do with DS4... and I feel like the developers are always looking for improvements.

The thing is the in-game animation mirrors exactly what I see happening, hitters (the CPU or I) timing inside pitches properly and hitting foul balls. And, you can go back to MLB 12 and do the same thing in instant replay and the ball properly hits off the bat at the right angles. Heck, I remember that 08 had the exact opposite issue where you couldn't pull inside pitches at all because the bat-ball physics were off.

There really is no such thing as the "right" balance for where the ball goes based on swing timing. The ball should go exactly where it's supposed to based on the timing, basic physics; baseball is all about physics after-all. Now, I understand hit type (grounder, fly ball, liner, blooper, etc.) is based off lots of things like user input, pitcher and batter attributes, etc. but the direction the ball actually goes should be a constant based on swing timing. Hitting just doesn't feel right at all from hitting inside pitches or off-speed pitches that take forever to get to the plate for some reason. I even waited back as much as possible on a slider in one of the clips and still pulled it foul. There's just a disconnected where I have no clue where the ball is going to go when I swing the bat.

[Jr.]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

There really is no such thing as the "right" balance for where the ball goes based on swing timing. The ball should go exactly where it's supposed to based on the timing, basic physics; baseball is all about physics after-all. Now, I understand hit type (grounder, fly ball, liner, blooper, etc.) is based off lots of things like user input, pitcher and batter attributes, etc. but the direction the ball actually goes should be a constant based on swing timing. Hitting just doesn't feel right at all from hitting inside pitches or off-speed pitches that take forever to get to the plate for some reason. I even waited back as much as possible on a slider in one of the clips and still pulled it foul. There's just a disconnected where I have no clue where the ball is going to go when I swing the bat.

This is tough because the game only describes 5 types of timing: Too Early, Early, Good, Late, Too Late. This means that each "level" of timing has a window within itself. You can time up an inside pitch "good" and it still be a foul ball, just like "late" can be fair or foul depending on how late you are.

I do agree that the window seems to be a bit off this year. It's definitely later than last year's game. I'm early on a lot of pitches, but I don't pay attention to where the bat is in the zone at contact. Again, I just don't equate the visual act of the bat hitting the ball in the game to anything other than a representation of contact being made.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Re: Poor bat-ball physics have a major affect on hitting & pitching

This is tough because the game only describes 5 types of timing: Too Early, Early, Good, Late, Too Late. This means that each "level" of timing has a window within itself. You can time up an inside pitch "good" and it still be a foul ball, just like "late" can be fair or foul depending on how late you are.

I do agree that the window seems to be a bit off this year. It's definitely later than last year's game. I'm early on a lot of pitches, but I don't pay attention to where the bat is in the zone at contact. Again, I just don't equate the visual act of the bat hitting the ball in the game to anything other than a representation of contact being made.

To me, "Good" timing means your hitting it to the field you're supposed to; good on an inside pitch is straight away to your pull field, good on a pitch down the middle is straight away center, and good on an outside pitch is straight away to the opposite field. That's been the case in previous Show games and it also makes the most sense from a baseball perspective. You shouldn't get good timing on a foul ball unless the pitch is at least 6 inches off the plate or something. Real players can hit inside pitches even off the plate a bit with great authority to straight away left. You're definitely early on a pitch (anywhere near the strikezone) if you are pulling it foul.

Just take a game pitching and throw nothing but high inside fastballs, the CPU can't do anything with them, that proves it right there.