MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

[countryboy]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

Two things that I really like that are kind of under the radar things:


1) The new first baseman catch animation. Adds "life" to the game instead of just the couple we've had in years past. Different catch animations give a sense that the first baseman is an actual fielder receiving a throw versus just a catch machine

2) The look of games at similar start times over the course of a season. A 1pm game in St.Louis in July has a different look to it than a 1pm game in say April or even September.

[lvann4x]

MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

I bought The Show 21, saw what they did to RTTS, and went back the The Show 20 to continue my careers in MLB 20 (and played it on PS5).
This means my impressions wil be compared to MLB 20 The Show.
As an RTTS player, other than the elimination of many perks (such as ShowTime at bats and base stealing attempts, as far as I know) and the overhaul in how your player ratings work carried over from ‘21, there’s not much positive difference.
The graphics are marginally better, but I don’t see a next-gen type leap. The batter’s eyes are much better, which makes it easier to see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand, but there are still many shoddy textures, and your player sitting around the clubhouse with teammates between games is repetitive and boring, and doesn’t look great.

Gameplay-wise, I see several buggy AI defensive decisions:
Balls hit back to the pitcher with a runner on first and less than 2 outs, the pitcher rarely throws to second base for the double play.

Runners on first and third, 1 out, grounder to first baseman, he runs to TAG the batter-runner, giving up the chance of a double play that would’ve kept the run scoring from third.

I play as a shortstop. I have 89 fielding. I’ll dive for a grounder and it’ll bounce off my GLOVE more often than I’ll catch it, resulting in an infield hit.
I can understand if it’s a 60-rated fielder or a guy playing out of position not being able to make a high percentage of diving plays, but an 89-rated fielder playing his position should be able to make the play 90% of the time or more on a dive that’s well-timed enough to have the ball hit his glove.
In fact, as the fielding rating approaches or surpasses 90, a mediocre-timed dive should result in a cleanly fielded ball the majority of the time (make the player move his glove to the ball as he dives).

My player was promoted to the majors WAY to quickly. I was hitting around .200 at AAA at age 19 and was promoted. I’m hitting .140 and batting leadoff in the majors. That leads me to two legacy MLB The Show problems.
1) If a player is drafted at age 18, his first full year in the minors is the NEXT year (age 19). Especially considering that every RTTS player starts out in AA, that accuracy of age is important for realism. Some miniscule percentage of players get to the majors prior to age 22-23, so my light-hitting shortstop has no business playing in the majors at 19. Hell, I didn’t even perform that well at AA!
2) Dynamic difficulty is a great concept, but it’s not working properly and needs some added functionality. If my 70 contact/60 power shortstop hitting below the mendoza line with a sub- 650 OPS in AA ball, my difficulty shouldn’t continue to bump up to Legend. If my player only had 50 contact and 40 power and I was hitting .190/.290/.310, then my difficulty might be just right, but still shouldn’t be increased.
What would be great is to be able to go to settings at any time between games and see what my current dynamic difficulty currently is (All Star, All Star +, HOF, HOF+, Legend, etc) and then be able to select which one of those settings I want to be at.
Currently, a user can only choose, All Star, HOF, Legend, with no + or ++ options available. The only way to recreate those “in between” difficulties is by adjusting sliders, which punishes us with XP nerfing.
The XP nerfing isn’t smart enough. If I want to INCREASE fastball speed and offspeed pitch speed by the SAME amount (both 7, both 9, etc), I shouldn’t be penalized. If I’m giving myself less time to see the ball on the way to the plate, I’m making the game HARDER and shouldn’t be penalized for that. It even says in the slider description that pitch speed doesn’t alter physics, it just alters the amount of time the hitter has to make the swing decision.
In the unlikely case that XP is NOT nerfed when pitch speed is increased, the don’t show me that warning popup when I change it.

Finally, in 2023 I saw Justin Verlander as the long reliever for the Astros.
This leads me to believe that the game probably still has future hall of famers who’ve earned hundreds of millions of dollars playing their final few years in the minor leagues or riding the bench/pitching long relief in the big leagues in their final few years.
Very few future hall of famers finish their careers in backup roles in the big leagues, and virtually none finish their careers playing in AAA all star games. This needs to be eliminated from The Show.

I remember during the developer promotion videos of ‘22 The Show, they said to discourage offspeed pitches up in the zone, they’d lower pitching accuracy in that location.
A better fix would be to punish too many offspeed pitches up in the zone by getting those pitches hammered into the gap and over the fence.
I use directional hitting with no PCI, and I have a BUNCH of whiffs against offspeed pitches up in the zone with GOOD swing timing. Good timing against an offspeed pitch up in the zone should result in solid contact the VAST majority of the time.
That will teach users how to pitch and will be more realistic.

A few more things I’ve forgotten to suggest for several years:
1) User baserunning in RTTS on Fast Play needs a minor tweak: When a ball is hit down the line that goes just foul, if the user is making their runner advance, as soon as the ball is ruled foul, it jumps to the next pitch and makes your runner try an early steal, where he’ll inevitably be picked off. A simple “kill” of the input (for lack of a better term) that requires new input after jumping to the next pitch would fix this.
2) Also in Fast Play RTTS, the first pitch of the next at bat after the user reaches base requires the user to go through the leadoff animation and the pitcher will often start his delivery before the user is able to extend his lead. Either skip the initial leadoff animation or add an extra 2-3 second or delay in the first pitch of an at bat when the RTTS player is on base.
3) In MLB 20, there was an option to see the broadcast view for RTTS baserunners when a ball was put in play. This needs to return, as it was the best way I could track the ball as a baserunner. No, real-life players don’t have this view, but turning their head irl is much quicker and more intuitive than rotating the camera in The Show.
4) A button to focus on the base coach would be nice, too. Some smartening of the AI base coaches may be required before implementing this feature.
5) In RTTS as a defender, some icon to show the speed of the batter while he’s batting would be a great time-saver. Nice to be able to know this without having to pause.

To be fair, I’m only posting my complaints and suggestions here. The Show is the only console sports game I play anymore (not big on basketball and Madden is Madden).
If someone told me that over the next 3-4 years, The Show was going to continue to have minimal graphical improvements, but eliminate all or most of the unrealistic areas of the game, including the things I listed, I’d buy it every year.


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[Quentin32]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

Just had my most dominant pitching game ever. Man this ish was crazy. Should have let Gos for the perfect game but he was too tired.




A 25k no hitter on HOF difficulty

Much respect to my opponent for not quitting

[countryboy]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

Signed Luis Castillo in the offseason. Had a great year for the Reds and I'm excited about him in the rotation. He has a good spring for us.

First pitch he throws in his season debut to Ke'Bryan Hayes of the Pirates is a 485 FT homerun smashed to dead center.

Not so excited anymore

[BlueSkies77]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

I’m really enjoying dynamic difficulty for the pitching and hitting. I feel like the game is most fair in these modes to me personally. Only thing that is nit picky bugging me is that I think since 2021 the Dodger vision screen has cropped pictures of the players, it doesn’t a fill the whole screen which looks odd and inauthentic. Also, I gotta fire up The Show 2020 soon because I feel I remember Dodger stadium having way more life in that game compared 22, especially in the center field area. Unless the Dodgers changed it and Show followed suit.

[Artman22]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

The base running in this game is a complete joke. Sometimes when you try to steal and hit after you make contact with the ball the base runner will automatically run back to the base no matter what.


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[JoshC1977]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

I just ran through my first off-season for '22 this past weekend. Credit where credit is due; the off-season flow is MUCH better this year.

A few call-outs
- Nearly all the top free agents made it to free agency to "test the waters" vs a large portion being re-signed immediately by their teams. Vast improvement.
- One big domino (Judge) fell early. The other top FAs dragged-on through December. Some teams dropped-off and went down different paths (Detroit was hot and heavy on Nola and as time went by, they shifted gears and went for Gallo).
- The Rule 5 draft was a gaggle of nobodies - and I loved it. Virtually no one of interest was sitting there for me, which is a much improved aspect of the game vs past years where slews of top prospects would be in the Rule 5. I wasn't too surprised because of the number of call-ups during the season, but it was still quite refreshing.
- Trade frequencies looked good. None of that "sign FA and trade 2 days later" crap. A couple of surprise trades that seemed a bit weird contextually; but even then, I didn't question anything from a value perspective.
- FAs were still signing in February; which was awesome to see. A number of older veteran FAs were hanging around (like Justin Turner, McCutcheon, etc.) but actually wound-up signing. The top remaining FAs going into ST are all older (35+) and all under a 75 OVR.

I pounced on guys too early and I wound-up probably paying a bit too much overall. If I had hung-back more, I would have done better financially. I'm going to be up against my budget next year, which is going to be interesting. That was definitely a good lesson to learn though.

Really well-done...

[jcar0725]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

I just ran through my first off-season for '22 this past weekend. Credit where credit is due; the off-season flow is MUCH better this year.

A few call-outs
- Nearly all the top free agents made it to free agency to "test the waters" vs a large portion being re-signed immediately by their teams. Vast improvement.
- One big domino (Judge) fell early. The other top FAs dragged-on through December. Some teams dropped-off and went down different paths (Detroit was hot and heavy on Nola and as time went by, they shifted gears and went for Gallo).
- The Rule 5 draft was a gaggle of nobodies - and I loved it. Virtually no one of interest was sitting there for me, which is a much improved aspect of the game vs past years where slews of top prospects would be in the Rule 5. I wasn't too surprised because of the number of call-ups during the season, but it was still quite refreshing.
- Trade frequencies looked good. None of that "sign FA and trade 2 days later" crap. A couple of surprise trades that seemed a bit weird contextually; but even then, I didn't question anything from a value perspective.
- FAs were still signing in February; which was awesome to see. A number of older veteran FAs were hanging around (like Justin Turner, McCutcheon, etc.) but actually wound-up signing. The top remaining FAs going into ST are all older (35+) and all under a 75 OVR.

I pounced on guys too early and I wound-up probably paying a bit too much overall. If I had hung-back more, I would have done better financially. I'm going to be up against my budget next year, which is going to be interesting. That was definitely a good lesson to learn though.

Really well-done...

I concur, the off season is not bad at all. Had the same experience with the Rule 5. I was expecting to grab someone that was really going to help my roster and it turned out nobody was there of any significance. Which actually was nice.

[MattyIce]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

I cant recall ever having an issue with the colors in this game but when I started playing this year I noticed something seemed off, mainly with the dirt at my home field of Busch Stadium. I messed around with various settings and cannot seem to figure out why there are two drastically different looks. The top photo is taken from Youtube and shows bright colors and reddish orange dirt accurate with Busch Stadium. The 2nd photo shows another clip from Youtube with almost an enitrely different look. I understand most people have different TV's etc etc. But I have messed with my TV settings and cannot seem to replicate what I see in the first photo. I've tried HDR off TV and PS5. HDR On for both... no luck. Anybody have a similiar experience and can point me in the right direction?

[JoshC1977]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

MattyIce....

Have you messed around with the HDR optimization settings within the main PS5 menus....

[MattyIce]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

MattyIce....

Have you messed around with the HDR optimization settings within the main PS5 menus....

All I can remember there being was HDR On/Off toggle and Deep Color Output which I have tried both. I am going to mess around some more when I get home because I feel like I have to be missing something

[raneman85]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

All I can remember there being was HDR On/Off toggle and Deep Color Output which I have tried both. I am going to mess around some more when I get home because I feel like I have to be missing something

Try your TV's presets. I have mine set on Gamer and I made some slight adjustments with HDR on.

[BlueSkies77]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

The more I play 22 the more glitches I’m seeing. Mainly balls warping to fielders or fielders warping to the ball.

[HennyHefner]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

Has anyone else seen the DH completely disappear for the Angels lineup. It's not anywhere its making a starting pitcher hit constantly not just Ohtani. Every other team in my franchise is fine the DH is still there.

[Ragnar84]

Re: MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

The more I play 22 the more glitches I’m seeing. Mainly balls warping to fielders or fielders warping to the ball.

There’s definitely glitches with the catch animations in the outfield. I its own sloppy transition from a couch to the outfield or continuing to run afterwards. That seems to be something that’s been in the game forever including old Gen


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