MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

[PVarck31]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

Granted they only did it twice, but bunting still didn't look right.

I want to see the ball being able to be deadened. Also they bunted to the wrong side to advance the runner to third. But that's neither here nor there.

[Therebelyell626]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

That's fine, but the devil is in the details. What's the threshold for "spamming"? Do you get artificial penalties for using a lower tiered pitch like they mentioned?

I also think there's a very real apprehension about us offline players who strive to play "sim" continuing to get punished by countermeasures being deployed against online cheese-a-holics. Spamming the same exact pitch has never been an issue in games I've played. Yet, now there will be a potential modifier that could affect me in some nebulous way that none of us will really understand until patch #9 drops in mid May to fix some imbalance inevitably caused by this.


EDIT: We should also be clear about what they actually said, which was a stated intent to nerf all pitch types other than fastball and slider. They said on the stream that they are making offspeed pitches (1) move less and (2) be harder to control. They want to punish people more for high offspeed pitches and they want to make fastballs tougher to handle. So, it's not just about spamming the same pitch. There's a whole scheme going on here to pretty drastically overhaul the batter-pitcher dynamic.

All your points are so valid. That really has me worried to. I understand people spamming it online but I play strictly offline and have never had this problem. Are the developers going to force me to play an online style game against the CPU because that would be terrible.

There are instances in real baseball where using a 3rd 4th pitch might be the right call for that at bat. If your guy isn't trying to get a ground ball off of his sinker he may go to it 2-3 times in a row. I don't want to be penalized for this because it completely eliminates the strategy of situational pitching.

I have a sneaky suspicion this is going to be the year of the hitter again, and they will have to patch because there are too many runs being scored.

[JDL375]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

Bunts still looked like hard choppers. Players who have good bunting ratings need to be able to drop slow bunts....not one hoppers to the pitcher or 3b/ss.

[RogerDodger]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

As an offline gamer, I’d prefer the AI to be sophisticated and smart enough to deal with my excessive use of a single pitch, but this is being implemented exclusively to stop online players spamming. I’d prefer it if I could turn it off for my offline experience. If I’ve got a hitter at the plate who swings and misses at a slider down and away, of course I’m going to go back and throw it again. The commentary even references that sometimes you’ll throw a pitch until a hitter shows he can hit it. I’m not sure I like the idea that at some point the pitch will land over the heart of the plate because they decide I’ve overused it. Sounds a bit like the old fix for bunting where it adversely harmed the offline experience because online gamers couldn’t moderate themselves.

Will the AI play by the same rules too?

[DamnYanks2]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

So was anyone impressed with the hitting improvements? Missed that part. Watched the stream with the defensive improvements.

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[OneTonneBaby]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

Some slight worries. But one thing i will say is that some people want pitching to be harder and also for the game, overall, to be more realistic.

Making offspeed pitches harder to control covers both. Offspeed pitches are famous for pitchers being inconsistent with them, not having a 'feel' for a changeup, or not being able to find the strike zone with their slider, etc...of course this happens with the fastball, but less often.

Saying that, if you do get the 'feel' for the changeup, players will sometimes hammer that pitch in real life, but looks like we will be penalised for this in 19.

[Impetuous65]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

Hitting stream was an utter disappointment to me, such a missed opportunity to show hit types, batter types, bunt types, PCI types with their widgets. They could have set up a power hitter and went through same pitch versus PCI placement show the slow motion bat to ball to see barrel placement, speed of pitch vs exit velocity with the Physics programmer to show why this type of hit was determined by the systems. Showing online hitting was disjointed as if it was stop motion when it came to bat versus ball.

As good as the Defense stream was with a few missteps in programming i.e. Diamond players will be perfect and players always slipping and tripping to get back to base(which I find to be stupid for any game play designer). The hitting stream look like a how not to unveil your so-called new hitting system.

[JoshC1977]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I'm a big fan of the hitting/pitching improvements - and speaking as a guy who plays offline with directional/classic, respectively. My thoughts from this perspective on some selected items...

Contact Hitting
Offline on 18 may have indeed been better than online, but the "power meta" was still there. Even with decreased power and/or solid hit sliders, power hitters were more useful overall IMO. Re-balancing of contact vs power is going to be a good thing for all modes (especially once you couple that with the fielding improvements).

Decrease in effectiveness of pitches down in the zone
This is certainly more of an effort for online. But frankly, I could take advantage of the CPU hitters here too and if it makes their offense more potent, I am all for it.

Spamming of secondary pitches.
I'm happy with how they handled this. Mills confirmed for us on Twitter that the effectiveness of, for example, a number 5 will depreciate more quickly than the number 2. A number 5 pitch is a pitcher's 5th best pitch for a reason (it is a "show-me" pitch). Confidence will certainly factor-in on a game-by-game basis. But, pitchers DO have bread-and-butter pitches ...this is going to help them stand out. The other thing too, a "less effective" 3rd pitch from Kershaw is still going to be miles better than the "less effective" 3rd pitch from DeSclafani)

HR/9 rating now means something
Very happy that this finally means something in game now and not just for simmed stats.

[Armor and Sword]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I'm a big fan of the hitting/pitching improvements - and speaking as a guy who plays offline with directional/classic, respectively. My thoughts from this perspective on some selected items...

Contact Hitting
Offline on 18 may have indeed been better than online, but the "power meta" was still there. Even with decreased power and/or solid hit sliders, power hitters were more useful overall IMO. Re-balancing of contact vs power is going to be a good thing for all modes (especially once you couple that with the fielding improvements).

Decrease in effectiveness of pitches down in the zone
This is certainly more of an effort for online. But frankly, I could take advantage of the CPU hitters here too and if it makes their offense more potent, I am all for it.

Spamming of secondary pitches.
I'm happy with how they handled this. Mills confirmed for us on Twitter that the effectiveness of, for example, a number 5 will depreciate more quickly than the number 2. A number 5 pitch is a pitcher's 5th best pitch for a reason (it is a "show-me" pitch). Confidence will certainly factor-in on a game-by-game basis. But, pitchers DO have bread-and-butter pitches ...this is going to help them stand out. The other thing too, a "less effective" 3rd pitch from Kershaw is still going to be miles better than the "less effective" 3rd pitch from DeSclafani)

HR/9 rating now means something
Very happy that this finally means something in game now and not just for simmed stats.

Well said. I always wait to play the game myself before jumping to conclusions...however I fully appreciate the concern and apprehension of the community about online exploit fixes crossing over to the offline side and inadvertently “screwing” something up for us “vs the CPU” guys.

With that being said when it comes to gameplay the game has been on a northern track since 15 and I expect 19 to have the best gameplay yet vs the CPU.

Worst case scenario is I go right back to 18 (which I am going to still probably play as well due to classic roster files potentially not transferring to 19).....that game is simply marvelous. But I highly doubt that will be the case and after 19 drops I think we are going to have our best version of the game yet.

I thought the defensive stream was fantastic. And I have no doubt with some slider tweaking we will get the game balanced to my taste and those that have a similar playing style to mine.

[PPerfect_CJ]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I was kind of on the fence about '19. The defensive improvements stream took me off that fence and almost made the sale, but the hitting "improvement" stream put me right back on. I feel, like a lot of you, that stuff being done for online play is ruining the game/game(s) for us offline guys. It's definitely a wait and see for me, now.

[countryboy]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I'm a big fan of the hitting/pitching improvements - and speaking as a guy who plays offline with directional/classic, respectively. My thoughts from this perspective on some selected items...

Contact Hitting
Offline on 18 may have indeed been better than online, but the "power meta" was still there. Even with decreased power and/or solid hit sliders, power hitters were more useful overall IMO. Re-balancing of contact vs power is going to be a good thing for all modes (especially once you couple that with the fielding improvements).

Decrease in effectiveness of pitches down in the zone
This is certainly more of an effort for online. But frankly, I could take advantage of the CPU hitters here too and if it makes their offense more potent, I am all for it.

Spamming of secondary pitches.
I'm happy with how they handled this. Mills confirmed for us on Twitter that the effectiveness of, for example, a number 5 will depreciate more quickly than the number 2. A number 5 pitch is a pitcher's 5th best pitch for a reason (it is a "show-me" pitch). Confidence will certainly factor-in on a game-by-game basis. But, pitchers DO have bread-and-butter pitches ...this is going to help them stand out. The other thing too, a "less effective" 3rd pitch from Kershaw is still going to be miles better than the "less effective" 3rd pitch from DeSclafani)

HR/9 rating now means something
Very happy that this finally means something in game now and not just for simmed stats.

Well said. I always wait to play the game myself before jumping to conclusions...however I fully appreciate the concern and apprehension of the community about online exploit fixes crossing over to the offline side and inadvertently “screwing” something up for us “vs the CPU” guys.

With that being said when it comes to gameplay the game has been on a northern track since 15 and I expect 19 to have the best gameplay yet vs the CPU.

Worst case scenario is I go right back to 18 (which I am going to still probably play as well due to classic roster files potentially not transferring to 19).....that game is simply marvelous. But I highly doubt that will be the case and after 19 drops I think we are going to have our best version of the game yet.

I thought the defensive stream was fantastic. And I have no doubt with some slider tweaking we will get the game balanced to my taste and those that have a similar playing style to mine.

Well said Josh.

I like the changes that were mentioned in the stream in terms of both pitching and hitting.

As A&S stated, this is something that is going to be hard to really give a precise opinion on until we get it in our hands, play the way we play, and play out several games to see how it unfolds.

[El_MaYiMbE]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I'm a big fan of the hitting/pitching improvements - and speaking as a guy who plays offline with directional/classic, respectively. My thoughts from this perspective on some selected items...

Contact Hitting
Offline on 18 may have indeed been better than online, but the "power meta" was still there. Even with decreased power and/or solid hit sliders, power hitters were more useful overall IMO. Re-balancing of contact vs power is going to be a good thing for all modes (especially once you couple that with the fielding improvements).

Decrease in effectiveness of pitches down in the zone
This is certainly more of an effort for online. But frankly, I could take advantage of the CPU hitters here too and if it makes their offense more potent, I am all for it.

Spamming of secondary pitches.
I'm happy with how they handled this. Mills confirmed for us on Twitter that the effectiveness of, for example, a number 5 will depreciate more quickly than the number 2. A number 5 pitch is a pitcher's 5th best pitch for a reason (it is a "show-me" pitch). Confidence will certainly factor-in on a game-by-game basis. But, pitchers DO have bread-and-butter pitches ...this is going to help them stand out. The other thing too, a "less effective" 3rd pitch from Kershaw is still going to be miles better than the "less effective" 3rd pitch from DeSclafani)

HR/9 rating now means something
Very happy that this finally means something in game now and not just for simmed stats.

I think this is a good summary and in-line with my feelings as well. A lot of people are bashing SDS for lowering the effectiveness of off-speed and secondary pitches, but I do think that in previous years they were too potent...and I am an offline player.

I pitch on HoF pitch difficulty, with CPU Solid Contact at 6 or 7 and I still feel pitching is too easy. A lot of it has to do with my ability to paint the corners with any pitch even the 5th pitch.

What I think we are going to see is that these pitches are going to be less accurate, will be in the zone more often, and will "hang" more. On the stream they mentioned that even hanging changeups in previous years did not get hammered like they should....I think that lead to confidence boost and over use of the pitch....it should not be that way.

As someone mentioned....your 3rd, 4th, 5th pitches are your worse pitches and as a result a player will throw them less in a game. There is a direct correlation here. For those who say the pitch a pitcher throws less, does not mean its less effective....yes it does, that is why he does not throw it!

Not all secondary pitches are created equal, so ratings will still play a part on how effective a pitch is. But whether you are Kershaw or Hideki Irabu, you don't want to get beat on your 5th best pitch, so you throw it less, no matter how "good" it maybe, its still your 5th pitch for a reason.

Lets say you throw your 5th best pitch 10% of the time, realistic in baseball terms....that means you should throw it 10 times in an outing TOTAL, and thats if you threw 100 pitches.

I can think of scenarios where I had my 5th pitch working and I would throw it 3-4 in an AB because I was able to locate with it for whatever reason. This just should not be. Pitches 1-2 (maybe 3) should account for 65%+ of all your pitches and that should be what you work off of...thats realistic.

I can think of two pitchers from the Yankees where the Fastball is NOT their main pitch:

1. Tanka #1 Pitch = Slider
2. Betances #1 Pitch = Curve

These types of pitchers will be able to have nastier breaking pitches and won't be penalized for using them as their primary pitch, again thats how it should be. There are plenty of stats on how Tanaka gets hit around when he uses his fastball (2nd or 3rd pitch), it sounds like this will happen more often now, again super realistic...

Moving on to hitting....

I have ALWAYS said contact hitter's batted balls need to have more life off the bat. For those complaining about hit variety, I do not think that will be a concern. They picked specific scenarios where they hit a hard hit ball, with a contact guy to emphasize the new logic. This wasn't a gameplay stream where you saw 9 innings of baseball, so I would not worry too much about hit variety just yet. These were all perfect PCI, Good-Perfect timing, and showing you how much different it is.

This will change the game tremendously, I always had issues with Contact hitters not being able to hit doubles and consistently get on base. The game relied too much on the sluggers to produce extra base hits. This seems to fix that.

I was pretty happy with what I saw and think they made right decisions in making the game more realistic. I understand how some may feel they are "over correcting", but I think thats how bad things were slanted to the other side that it needed these big time adjustments.

Cannot wait to see more and get hands on it.

[Mercury112491]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

Finally caught up with the stream. I’m pretty excited about the changes. I don’t think anything they talked about should really worry offline players. Everything the mentioned was always prefaced with the phrase “spamming”. I don’t think that means secondary pitches are nerfed across the board. But using a pitchers 5th pitch over and over and over consecutively is. Pitchers will throw the same breaking pitch back to back sometimes in real life but 3 times in a row? That’s always a risk. Risk the batter will be sitting on it and risk that it won’t be executed as well as the first two. This seems like a pretty sim implementation to me.

Glad bunting is fixed. Obviously hope it isn’t fixed too well and bunting against the shift becomes over powered. But nice to it’s back and that strategic part of the game has returned.

Loved seeing all those line drives landing in front of the OF. And that one line drive up the middle that got by the pitcher even had a little tail to it. Looked great.

All in all I was extremely impressed with these two gameplay streams. Seems like they’ve taken some pretty serious strides to making the game play even more true to life and more fun all at the same time. As someone who was on the fence after last year I’m back to being really excited trying the game out this year.


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[TGov]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I feel silly asking this but, what does PCI stand for again?
I just can't remember...

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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: MLB The Show 19 Twitch Stream - Hitting Improvements

I feel silly asking this but, what does PCI stand for again?
I just can't remember...

Sent from my SM-G955U using Operation Sports mobile app

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