Re: Community Preview Answer Discussion Thread.
The game jumps out at you. The lighting especially. We have been able to take screen shots and should be able to post these soon enough. Textures of the players uniforms, the player models themselves, the transitional lighting (it will knock your socks off at how well they pulled this off), and the scores of added animations, cut scenes, etc. just had us drooling.
Pared made a chant jeering Jose Reyes and the audio make it sound like the entire crowd was chanting and not just one person, it was hilarious to hear. This addition is going to be ton of fun for people. Where to begin? There's so much. So I'll just start with some observations and answer some of the questions.
1. The double play problems are g-o-n-e. The force outs at second, the first to SS to pitcher double plays, smooth as silk. Something new added this year.The computer hit a ground ball to first and the pitcher started running towards first. Well, I was going to throw to the pitcher, but he was going to be late covering. Last year we would have seen that big,high underhanded lob, runner safe. This year the AI is such that if the pitcher isn't going to get there on time, the throw button "0" will cause the first baseman to take it himself to the bag. Works like a charm.
2. I had another ball hit to my first baseman who had to charge in and towards the mound, he made one quick turn and side arm throw off his left foot to get the ball to the pitcher who ran over to cover first base.
3. Had two line shots down the left field corner, both doubles. Playing one of the devs he had a runner on 1st and started his runner. His batter hit a shot down the left field line, the runner heading for second scored and the batter had himself a double.
4. A nice touch is some of the replays on hits go to the press box view and you get a really good shot of the entire field.
5. A nice new edition is you don't have to hit the START button this year to pause the game, go to the bullpen, etc. You simply hit UP on the D-Pad and it opens a window and you scroll through the options you want, bullpen/pinch hitter/pinch runner, etc. This is a really nice touch and speeds things up a bit.
6. Lint, this one is for you. Your last name is in the name data base. As a matter of fact they have first name/last names in the data base.
7. A pinch hitter came up out of the dugout carrying his bat and putting his batting helmet on, nice touch. There are tons of new scenes like this, for example, guys coming in from the bullpen, etc.
8. For the Bluejays fan, the strip of wall that was too light and interfered with the pitch ball has been darkened (dark gray now) and I had no problems picking up pitched balls.
9. Eight styles of sun glasses.
10. Stirrups.
11. Ryan Dempster does that little flicking motion with his glove when pitching.
12. There is a great highlight reel at the end of each game that automatically plays all the game highlights/recap.
13. When playing Franchise mode the game automatically generates overcast skies, cloudy skies, etc. They really pulled off the effect of a game being played on an overcast day.
14. Knight was playing and was screaming that he had a couple balls hit over his outfielders heads.
15. Warm up jackets on players.
16. The Free Agent list has a bunch of legend players (I think 80???) that can be assigned to your team before you start your franchise. I put Al Kaline on my Nats before I started my franchise.
17. I didn't see a single beachball and understand they are still there, but perhaps more stadium specific.
18. The crowd. This is a big leap. It was really difficult to try to pick out duplicate people in the crowd. They're there, but the way they pulled it off it's hard to pick them out. Also the graphics/animations of the crowd is greatly improved.
19. The roster control is different this year. Instead of having three screens, ML/AAA/AA a teams roster is on ONE screen and you scroll down, then look to the right to see if they are ML/AAA/AA. Here is where you also have it noted if they are on the 40 man roster, or not.
It was a bit cumbersome for me at first because I wasn't used to it, but I can see where it's going to be better because you only have to look at one screen now, not flip the pages to see the AAA/AA. The lineups, pitching rotations are still set up the same.
20. There don't appear to be as many devs in the game. They are still uneditable, however their player ratings are not high, their attributes are not high, mostly look like AA type players rather than ML types.
Okay, just a break here.
PLEASE NO QUESTIONS AS THE OTHER GUYS STILL HAVE TO CHIME IN. I can tell you that today was mostly playing the game and being in shock at how far the presentation/gameplay/graphics/animations have come from last years game.
The game jumps out at you. The lighting especially. We have been able to take screen shots and should be able to post these soon enough. Textures of the players uniforms, the player models themselves, the transitional lighting (it will knock your socks off at how well they pulled this off), and the scores of added animations, cut scenes, etc. just had us drooling.
Pared made a chant jeering Jose Reyes and the audio make it sound like the entire crowd was chanting and not just one person, it was hilarious to hear. This addition is going to be ton of fun for people. Where to begin? There's so much. So I'll just start with some observations and answer some of the questions.
1. The double play problems are g-o-n-e. The force outs at second, the first to SS to pitcher double plays, smooth as silk. Something new added this year.The computer hit a ground ball to first and the pitcher started running towards first. Well, I was going to throw to the pitcher, but he was going to be late covering. Last year we would have seen that big,high underhanded lob, runner safe. This year the AI is such that if the pitcher isn't going to get there on time, the throw button "0" will cause the first baseman to take it himself to the bag. Works like a charm.
2. I had another ball hit to my first baseman who had to charge in and towards the mound, he made one quick turn and side arm throw off his left foot to get the ball to the pitcher who ran over to cover first base.
3. Had two line shots down the left field corner, both doubles. Playing one of the devs he had a runner on 1st and started his runner. His batter hit a shot down the left field line, the runner heading for second scored and the batter had himself a double.
4. A nice touch is some of the replays on hits go to the press box view and you get a really good shot of the entire field.
5. A nice new edition is you don't have to hit the START button this year to pause the game, go to the bullpen, etc. You simply hit UP on the D-Pad and it opens a window and you scroll through the options you want, bullpen/pinch hitter/pinch runner, etc. This is a really nice touch and speeds things up a bit.
6. Lint, this one is for you. Your last name is in the name data base. As a matter of fact they have first name/last names in the data base.
7. A pinch hitter came up out of the dugout carrying his bat and putting his batting helmet on, nice touch. There are tons of new scenes like this, for example, guys coming in from the bullpen, etc.
8. For the Bluejays fan, the strip of wall that was too light and interfered with the pitch ball has been darkened (dark gray now) and I had no problems picking up pitched balls.
9. Eight styles of sun glasses.
10. Stirrups.
11. Ryan Dempster does that little flicking motion with his glove when pitching.
12. There is a great highlight reel at the end of each game that automatically plays all the game highlights/recap.
13. When playing Franchise mode the game automatically generates overcast skies, cloudy skies, etc. They really pulled off the effect of a game being played on an overcast day.
14. Knight was playing and was screaming that he had a couple balls hit over his outfielders heads.
15. Warm up jackets on players.
16. The Free Agent list has a bunch of legend players (I think 80???) that can be assigned to your team before you start your franchise. I put Al Kaline on my Nats before I started my franchise.
17. I didn't see a single beachball and understand they are still there, but perhaps more stadium specific.
18. The crowd. This is a big leap. It was really difficult to try to pick out duplicate people in the crowd. They're there, but the way they pulled it off it's hard to pick them out. Also the graphics/animations of the crowd is greatly improved.
19. The roster control is different this year. Instead of having three screens, ML/AAA/AA a teams roster is on ONE screen and you scroll down, then look to the right to see if they are ML/AAA/AA. Here is where you also have it noted if they are on the 40 man roster, or not.
It was a bit cumbersome for me at first because I wasn't used to it, but I can see where it's going to be better because you only have to look at one screen now, not flip the pages to see the AAA/AA. The lineups, pitching rotations are still set up the same.
20. There don't appear to be as many devs in the game. They are still uneditable, however their player ratings are not high, their attributes are not high, mostly look like AA type players rather than ML types.
Okay, just a break here.
PLEASE NO QUESTIONS AS THE OTHER GUYS STILL HAVE TO CHIME IN. I can tell you that today was mostly playing the game and being in shock at how far the presentation/gameplay/graphics/animations have come from last years game.
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