Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

[ninertravel]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Yeah, it would sell. Not sure if I missed this above, but you still have actual football/baseball being played in the UT type modes. The foundation has to be there to have the extra modes. That is why the gameplay advancements caused by a certain mode impact all modes. Franchise type modes, which is my most played mode, are the same thing as DD/UT. It is just an interface with different bells and whistles that sits on top of the gameplay coding.

Having babe Ruth playing with fictional teams is not basebm to me. That’s a fantasy type mode

[Comduklakis]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Yep DD players have brought a lot of attention to different areas of the game that were not working well. The ones you mentioned also SDS supposedly completely reworked the brand new hitting engine from last year because DD players found out that you made the best contact by being just late on nearly every pitch. Whether it be hitting the ball further or just hitting it harder. But if you are just late on a pitch it's a better hit ball in 17. And this problem in turn allowed SDS to do any sort of pre-release beta (used to test servers and for feedback on the hitting engine).

and this is something offline franchise players have to accept or stop playing video games. Let's face it, we talked about issues for awhile that never got dealt with by SDS. But if it affects their micro transactions, they are all over it to fix it.

Same thing with NBA2k. You can have year long glitches offline but someone finds an exploit on the Park/pro-am and they have a patch up yesterday. It's a struggle for developers. I'm sure plenty of them would love to focus on franchise or making the games as realistic as possible, but the money (particularly in nba2k) is so huge that you risk losing millions if you don't cater to the folks who want every open shot to go in or every green release. I don't think MLB the Show is any different at this point.

I've resigned myself to this fact. I simply have to decide each year if the version is worth buying (and in the grand scheme of things when you think of how much you spend on a tank of gas, meals at a restaurant, movies, etc. 60 bucks is a bargain for how many hours I play). If things get fixed thanks to DD, fantastic. I simply have tempered my expectations in the era of video games where micro transactions and DLC are king. Capitalism isn't going away and neither is the preponderance of focus on revenue producing modes.

[hyacinth1]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Any mode that is going to make the developer more money is going to stay in regardless of popularity. And nobody these days is going to buy a game just because of franchise mode. Those days are long gone.

I tried DD first time last year and only played vs cpu missions.

I did try online a few times and it really sucked because the opponents weren't playing baseball but were trying to win at all costs.

But that's all online games. Not just MLB. It's win , exploit the game, don't play to fair rules. It's all about winning online sports. It's the online gaming culture. These guys who exploit make money. There's tons of twitch and youtube channels where people donate money to them. It's not going to change.

I am glad I hear that 18 will have all DD with vs cpu options. I will believe it once I see it. I hope it's true.

[Dolenz]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

I am glad I hear that 18 will have all DD with vs cpu options. I will believe it once I see it. I hope it's true.

Well, that statement is a little misleading. Supposedly you can do any mission or program against the CPU but there will still be Battle Royale, Ranked Seasons and Events.

I am very happy as an offline DD player since last year I would look at the requirements for a mission and if it said Event or Ranked season then I just skipped over it.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

The fans love DD like modes. Not fans of baseball, probably. Just check the sub-reddit of The Show in the last two years, you will struggle to find a single thread in which players talk about baseball stuff. It's all about diamonds, cards and trash talk. These are the players which SDS try to make happy now. For me, it's a middle finger to the most loyal and dedicated fanbase. But you know, opinions.

First, I grew up playing baseball, and have been playing baseball games since cards and dice and have played most every baseball game that has come out. I'm in my 15th season of a 14 team fantasy league with other Cardinal fans that found each other via Usenet back in the day. I think I qualify as a baseball fan.

And I find DD to be more interesting and fun than franchise mode. I know it is easier to trash fans of modes you don't than to accept that, maybe, you are the one that is out of step with the mainstream.

Second, and this goes for every sport. Franchise fans might be the least loyal and dedicated fans in sports games. For one, they are the hardest to please because they have the highest expectations. Every year is another round of franchise players ripping the devs for not getting the game right, and insisting on "fixing" the game with slider tweaks within hours of getting the game. They are the most likely to sit out a year and continue their franchise on the old game, often wanting game devs to take two years to "get things right."

Franchise is the hardest mode to develop because AI is much, much harder than gamers want to believe. And over the course of a season the bad AI piles up making the rosters and line-ups worse and worse.

You can choose to be the guy who "holds devs accountable" for AI that no game ever gets right, or you can adapt to what console sports games actually do well. Seriously, I didn't quit playing franchise modes because I would not love to have a fantastic franchise mode, I quit because they mostly suck.

Now, many gamers love the idea of them enough to create "house rules" and control every team. They accept the flaws and enjoy the game as it is. That's great. But publishers would like to sell more copies of their games than to just this demographic. And it turns out, these new modes are not only generating more revenue, but they are increasing the the overall sales of the game.

I think the cash grab part of the mode is problematic, but the best versions of these modes don't actually require you to spend extra cash to enjoy them. Publishers have figured out that the best way to grow these modes his to support both those that want to buy packs and build collections and those that want to just use currency earned from playing to build their dream team. Both groups create a monetary ecosystem that benefits each other.

For me, these modes increased there amount of time I play sports games significantly. Of course, I was the guy playing Strat-O-Matic as 10 year-old by playing out mini seasons of four team leagues based on All-Star rosters of each division. With my friends, we would do these massive drafts by laying cards out on a ping pong table. Would each draft 50 players for a six team league so we had "minor leaguers" to fill in for injuries.

But mostly, it has just been nice to trade the old routine of getting the game and tweaking sliders and waiting for rosters and patches for playing and building our teams on day one. And DD is what got me to finally buy a PS4 for the The Show last year.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

so if DD is so great and this ultimate team stuff is so great.. and it's whats selling why don't these companies just say ' who cares about the actually baseball or football modes in a sports game' lets just do an entire game devoted to these modes.

Would the game sell. if SDS released a game called MLB DD 18 and that mode only was in and it was even more advanced with junk in it?

The game sells better with a variety of modes. While I have gone to mostly playing Play Now and Card modes, I will still mess with franchise a bit each season. But if they split the modes out, it would be the end of franchise modes.

Having babe Ruth playing with fictional teams is not basebm to me. That’s a fantasy type mode

So?

[Mercury112491]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

The fans love DD like modes. Not fans of baseball, probably. Just check the sub-reddit of The Show in the last two years, you will struggle to find a single thread in which players talk about baseball stuff. It's all about diamonds, cards and trash talk. These are the players which SDS try to make happy now. For me, it's a middle finger to the most loyal and dedicated fanbase. But you know, opinions.

Assuming that fans of DD are also not true baseball fans is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read on this entire website. Congrats.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[Comduklakis]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Any mode that is going to make the developer more money is going to stay in regardless of popularity. And nobody these days is going to buy a game just because of franchise mode. Those days are long gone.

I play nothing but franchise mode in every sports game.

[kaptainkarl76]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

I've never touched DD or Franchise, but I can see their purpose and why people would play it..I strictly stick with offline Season and RTTS and alternate back n forth depending how bored I am with my current mode..

[Armor and Sword]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

First, I grew up playing baseball, and have been playing baseball games since cards and dice and have played most every baseball game that has come out. I'm in my 15th season of a 14 team fantasy league with other Cardinal fans that found each other via Usenet back in the day. I think I qualify as a baseball fan.

And I find DD to be more interesting and fun than franchise mode. I know it is easier to trash fans of modes you don't than to accept that, maybe, you are the one that is out of step with the mainstream.

Second, and this goes for every sport. Franchise fans might be the least loyal and dedicated fans in sports games. For one, they are the hardest to please because they have the highest expectations. Every year is another round of franchise players ripping the devs for not getting the game right, and insisting on "fixing" the game with slider tweaks within hours of getting the game. They are the most likely to sit out a year and continue their franchise on the old game, often wanting game devs to take two years to "get things right."

Franchise is the hardest mode to develop because AI is much, much harder than gamers want to believe. And over the course of a season the bad AI piles up making the rosters and line-ups worse and worse.

You can choose to be the guy who "holds devs accountable" for AI that no game ever gets right, or you can adapt to what console sports games actually do well. Seriously, I didn't quit playing franchise modes because I would not love to have a fantastic franchise mode, I quit because they mostly suck.

Now, many gamers love the idea of them enough to create "house rules" and control every team. They accept the flaws and enjoy the game as it is. That's great. But publishers would like to sell more copies of their games than to just this demographic. And it turns out, these new modes are not only generating more revenue, but they are increasing the the overall sales of the game.

I think the cash grab part of the mode is problematic, but the best versions of these modes don't actually require you to spend extra cash to enjoy them. Publishers have figured out that the best way to grow these modes his to support both those that want to buy packs and build collections and those that want to just use currency earned from playing to build their dream team. Both groups create a monetary ecosystem that benefits each other.

For me, these modes increased there amount of time I play sports games significantly. Of course, I was the guy playing Strat-O-Matic as 10 year-old by playing out mini seasons of four team leagues based on All-Star rosters of each division. With my friends, we would do these massive drafts by laying cards out on a ping pong table. Would each draft 50 players for a six team league so we had "minor leaguers" to fill in for injuries.

But mostly, it has just been nice to trade the old routine of getting the game and tweaking sliders and waiting for rosters and patches for playing and building our teams on day one. And DD is what got me to finally buy a PS4 for the The Show last year.

Awesome post.

I am primarily a hardcore franchise player. But.....Diamond Dynasty is the only card mode I play.

I love it. I too played Strato-Matic and Statis Pro and we also drafted teams and had leagues etc. This is exactly like that.

I run a supporters league and we are having a card draft on April 30th. We did the league last year and the draft for the league may have been the most fun I had on The Show 17 (besides my franchises). The issues was the servers stunk to high heaven and the game did not play well online.

Our hope is that has changed so we can run the league for the entire cycle. We do a new card draft each season with some keeper rules.

It is so much fun building our squads (no duplicate players/cards) and snaking players from each other during the draft.

Anyway. I could not agree more. It’s a great mode.

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

We even ran drafts for our APFB 2K8 league, so we didn't have duplicate legends. In some ways, that was a precursor to what I find so fun about these card modes.

[wisdom less13]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

I'm mainly a fracnhise guy, but I dabble in the mode. Prefer the offline modes. Online, most teams are very similar and redundant. I love collecting the cards, personally. Just as long as they don't go cash whore (which it hasn't) like other card modes, we should be in good shape. What the hell do I know? I just wanted to throw my two pennies in...

[underdog13]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Awesome post.

I am primarily a hardcore franchise player. But.....Diamond Dynasty is the only card mode I play.

I love it. I too played Strato-Matic and Statis Pro and we also drafted teams and had leagues etc. This is exactly like that.

I run a supporters league and we are having a card draft on April 30th. We did the league last year and the draft for the league may have been the most fun I had on The Show 17 (besides my franchises). The issues was the servers stunk to high heaven and the game did not play well online.

Our hope is that has changed so we can run the league for the entire cycle. We do a new card draft each season with some keeper rules.

It is so much fun building our squads (no duplicate players/cards) and snaking players from each other during the draft.

Anyway. I could not agree more. It’s a great mode.

Is Strato-Matic really that good? I've been playing ABPA baseball my whole life. Have I been missing out?

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[WhiteBunny]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

First, I grew up playing baseball, and have been playing baseball games since cards and dice and have played most every baseball game that has come out. I'm in my 15th season of a 14 team fantasy league with other Cardinal fans that found each other via Usenet back in the day. I think I qualify as a baseball fan.

And I find DD to be more interesting and fun than franchise mode. I know it is easier to trash fans of modes you don't than to accept that, maybe, you are the one that is out of step with the mainstream.

Second, and this goes for every sport. Franchise fans might be the least loyal and dedicated fans in sports games. For one, they are the hardest to please because they have the highest expectations. Every year is another round of franchise players ripping the devs for not getting the game right, and insisting on "fixing" the game with slider tweaks within hours of getting the game. They are the most likely to sit out a year and continue their franchise on the old game, often wanting game devs to take two years to "get things right."

Franchise is the hardest mode to develop because AI is much, much harder than gamers want to believe. And over the course of a season the bad AI piles up making the rosters and line-ups worse and worse.

This is the point of view of a person which maybe doesn't realize what is happening with sport videogames. It's a great story, no sarcasm. And i love how some of you guys have a real passion for baseball. But you miss the point.
Calling the franchise players the least loyal fanbase it's a false statement, to begin with. They're simply upset because all the improvements, all the big bells are for cards mode. The first stream of MLB 18 The Show begins with devs talking about how much effort they put to balance competitive online games. The focus this year is for online. And it was the same last year. Not an opinion, but a fact. These players have expectations like every other player, bashing them is childish, especially when devs show little to no effort to improve a ( franchise ) mode which at this point is really stale while cutting off modes like franchise online and removing stuff from other offline modes like the option to watching a whole game of baseball in RTTS.
Developing a franchise mode is not necessarily harder than a DD one. It's probably quite the opposite. When you build an online mode in which players can invest real money you need to be perfect, you can't have bugs or flaws here and there. Have you seen what happened last year with a simple bug on The Show website ? Do you remember it ?
And i already stated that there are baseball fans which love DD mode but it's not common as you can think. At least i gave you some reference or data to check. Again, when The Show 18 is released give a shot to a comunity like Reddit. It's the most popular comunity in the world. And then tell me if this is the fanbase you want for a game like that, which was probably one of the last sport simulation in the market before SDS decide to go all-in with cards.
It's not like we're talking about nothing. You see what happened to games like Fifa, Madden, NHL, Pes or NBA2K since they introduce forms of gambling and microtransactions which have a huge impact on gameplay ? To me, being literally blind on the state of sports videogame nowdays is even scariest than seeing a game like The Show following the path of EA or Activision. Because ignorance is the most powerful money in the world.

[CaseIH]

Re: Are modes like Diamond Dynasty legitimately well received by fans?

Wall o’ Text: Inbound


I’ve been playing The Show for years. I’ve always loved it, I spend most of my time in Franchise mode while dabbling in RTTS every so often. I never even think about playing Diamond Dynasty for a second.

Now ever since games started having these game types like Diamond Dynasty (i.e. Ultimate Team) it’s never intrigued me. I tried it out at first, understood the concept, played it for a while, didn’t care for it so I left it alone. Never quite understood the popularity of it.

Now aside from these kind of game modes being such obvious cash grabs, are they really being so well received by fans of the game to let your main modes like RTTS and Franchise go by the waist side? Or even to the point now where the official way of playing tournament style is with teams formed in this game mode?

Now yes, this is sorta stemming from the announcement today of the “revamping” of Franchise mode, which turned out to be nothing more than simulating to certain points of the season and changing a couple of screens in the user interface.
Basically showing that they did absolutely nothing to the mode itself, while it being glaringly obvious they invested all their time to trying to beef up Diamond Dynasty.

It’s not just The Show either. Madden has even forgotten that Franchise and My Player are a thing and only focused on Ultimate Team and the horrendous Telltale-esque story mode. It just seems that developers that focus on these game types will let their quality of other modes suffer just for a few extra bucks, and I absolutely think it’s the worst business for game developers to practice.

I never though I would see the dev of this game, go the gimic fantasy mode route,, but they have. I guess thats what kids want, and obviously its the younger generation, who they cater to, as Im sure there is abigger % of youngins, compared to us older adults playing these days. So I get it, your going to do what makes you the most money. And thats fine, I just dont have to buy, as there is a much bette and more realistic baseball experience in OOTP anyway, so if SCEA doesnt want to stick with simulation experience, then OOTP baseball, may get alot more business moving forward. We will see, but so far, I have not underwhelmed with lack of Franchise improvement. Considering we aint got many days before release, Id say, that tells us probably all we need to know, about how much they worked on Franchise mode.I will definitely be disappointed, if franchise mode has had much done to it. Im sure it will play great, MLBTS always does great at that aspect, so that I will miss, if I got to OOTP this yr, but it is what it is, I guess.