The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

[jmik58]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

Timing sounds so boring IMO...

It all depends on what you're looking for in the hitting experience.

If you want sim results, timing is the best way to go. For many, sim-like results is "fun".

Using analog is challenging, and many find that fun.

Basically, what it boils down to is whether you care more about the interaction of the hitting mechanism or about the results.

There is no right or wrong answer. From your response I get the impression that you're interested in the actual enjoyment and challenge of the mechanics of hitting with the analog stick. You're 100% correct in your response, for you the timing mechanism would be boring because pushing a button isn't that exciting.

But for those that want sim like results, their "fun" comes in the results.

Bottom line, we all win.

[Jukeman]

Re: Hitting Styles - Three Options Explained

I see several threads floating around about all of the different options for hitting in MLB 11 The Show and it's starting to scramble my brain.

In the hopes of condensing and simplifying the three main options I've broken it down in my own view in the following way and hopefully this helps a lot of you decide what is best for you:

1. Analog hitting

Use the right stick to pull back to load the swing (do this just prior to the pitcher releasing the ball) and then move the right stick upwards and in the general direction of the horizontal location of the pitch location. Preload the type of swing you want by pushing "O" for contact, "X" for normal, or "[]" for power.

This requires a lot of movement and precision from your thumb in a short amount of time. It's difficult to move the stick up and towards the inside or outside corner.

This method of hitting places the batter's eye (PCI) on the ball based on your stick skills and on the attributes of the batter.

I would sum this option up as a "fun" way of playing baseball. It's something I will use in exhibition or online. I'll definitely use this in homerun derby.

2. Zone hitting

This requires you to move the left analog stick so that the batter's eye (PCI) is covering the location where the ball will cross the hitting zone. You also then must push a button "O" for contact, "X" for normal, "[]" for Power to execute the swing.

This is a challenging method of hitting in the game because of the number of actions required to hit the ball solidly. This factors in the attributes of the player, but this method can actually use your stick skills (placing the PCI) to improve/override the attributes of the batter.

For example, if you have a below-average hitter, his attributes may not allow him to make solid contact on a given pitch. However, if you are crafty enough with the left stick, you can place the PCI on the pitch location and improve the chance of solid contact.

This is something I would use if I'm playing with a team or players that aren't that great and I need results that are above what their attributes allow. For sim results, this isn't the way to go. Keep in mind this requires you to be very good at zone hitting. If you can't get the left stick in the right place, you're potentially hurting the batter as well. But the potential is there to inflate the results.

Perhaps this is an option for RTTS players. If your player isn't that great yet, control his PCI and get better contact more often. But, I don't want results beyond sim in my franchise so this batting option is out.

3. Timing hitting

The third and final option is the most simple of the three. Push "O", "X", or "[]" for the desired swing type. All you are required to do as a gamer is get the timing right. If the timing is right, then the batter's attributes kick in.

This is the best way to get sim results. The PCI is placed automatically based on your timing and the players skill. You can't move the batter's eye (PCI) artificially. This lets the players be who they are and you're only able to max their potential, not make them better than reality.

This method may not be as "fun" as analog, or as "challenging" as zone, but for effectiveness and sim-like results, this is the way to go.

Timing hitting is what I will use, and recommend, for my franchise for the sake of realism and consistency. I can't make the players any better than they really are, yet pushing a button at the right time is simple enough that I shouldn't screw up their production too much either.

Thanks for this, I was wondering what setting I should go with.

What about feilding and pitching, whats the best settings for straight attributes to matter instead of stick skills?

[Armor and Sword]

Re: Hitting Styles - Three Options Explained

Thanks for this, I was wondering what setting I should go with.

What about feilding and pitching, whats the best settings for straight attributes to matter instead of stick skills?

Jukeman,

I used to field in The Show 2009 without assist, then moved to with assist, then went to auto fielding with manuel throw, then assist throw. I gotta tell ya, the most sim style feeling I get is pitching and hitting, and letting the CPU field. Not only is it only based on ratings and attributes but you see the smoothest animations and just the sickest double plays, put outs from the outfield, I mean it is really a joy to watch. I just approach the game as I am the pitcher and my defense is backing me up and it is truly in their hands. Now I will adjust them when i see fit (play a bunt, do a left foot shift etc etc) but ever since I started playing this way I have never had this much fun.

I also use cpu base running as well. After playing well over 200 games this way I was very satisfied the cpu, make sound decisions on the base paths, in the field and it really feels like a simulation game.

Hit and pitch....that is the strongest and best feature of this game and it is draining in all by itself.

And as far as pitching I use Classic pitching and use the broadcast view for both pitching and fielding. It is just jaw dropping and beautiful to watch play out.

Give it a try...you never know..you may love it.

[Jukeman]

Re: Hitting Styles - Three Options Explained

Jukeman,

I used to field in The Show 2009 without assist, then moved to with assist, then went to auto fielding with manuel throw, then assist throw. I gotta tell ya, the most sim style feeling I get is pitching and hitting, and letting the CPU field. Not only is it only based on ratings and attributes but you see the smoothest animations and just the sickest double plays, put outs from the outfield, I mean it is really a joy to watch. I just approach the game as I am the pitcher and my defense is backing me up and it is truly in their hands. Now I will adjust them when i see fit (play a bunt, do a left foot shift etc etc) but ever since I started playing this way I have never had this much fun.

I also use cpu base running as well. After playing well over 200 games this way I was very satisfied the cpu, make sound decisions on the base paths, in the field and it really feels like a simulation game.

Hit and pitch....that is the strongest and best feature of this game and it is draining in all by itself.

And as far as pitching I use Classic pitching and use the broadcast view for both pitching and fielding. It is just jaw dropping and beautiful to watch play out.

Give it a try...you never know..you may love it.

Thanks, Im going to try right now...This will be my first official game with The Show!

PS3 and The Show arrived yesterday but I havent gotten in a game

[jim48888888]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

no. it's R2 + LS up (flyball) down (grounder) left (3rd) and right (1st) according to on-screen controls... problem is... who has time to do all that and load your swing as the pitcher winds and then releases the ball? i always attempt swing influence too soon (the rare time that i DO use it) and it changes my pitch location guess. since the left analog stick is not used for PCI or anything else in analog swinging, i don't see the need to combine it with R2 and confuse it with pitch-location guessing.

[bkrich83]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

Timing sounds so boring IMO...

Then simply don't play it that way. Problem solved.

[DrUrsus]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

Funny, I have been playing the Show since the PS2 days and did not know that timing was an option until this year. Was it added last year? When?

Anyway, I am on the fence about switching over to timing. Now that I don't play as much as I used to, it might be a good idea for me to get a sim experience, but I really enjoy the satisfaction of lining up that PCI perfectly and ripping one (especially out of the park)!

Nice post. I wasn't sure how analog worked this year since I haven't been on the forum much. I was not aware you had to move the right stick toward the ball. No wonder I sucked so bad at it, lol.

Side note: I am digging the analog pitching so far.

[EnigmaNemesis]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

Timing was only an option to Rookie and Veteran levels of hitting. All-Star and up went to "Zone". But now it is opened up to all levels as an option, and Zone has been tuned to be "true", like a cursor style of hitting.

[HustlinOwl]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

bump for those trouble with hitting

[bcruise]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

I thought about starting my own thread for this, but decided to throw it in here since the discussion is already there (and because my results back up what's been said):

I wanted to have tangible evidence of what the difference in the three hitting modes is. So I set up a little test involving the "Contact" batting practice. For those unaware, this one throws you nothing but strikes (although it does use different pitches) and your goal is simply to make solid or better contact on every pitch, and keep the ball fair. Every success or failure is a chance, and you get 20 chances per game. The only way you end up getting more than 20 swings is by hitting a foul ball with good contact, which gives you a retry and does not cost you a chance.

My goal for this test was simply to see how many successes I could get with each batting mode. I used Albert Pujols for the test (with Carpenter as the pitcher - figured since it was BP I might as well have a Cardinal pitching to another Cardinal ). I took a sample size of 10 rounds on each mode, or over 200 swings (depending on retries) on All-Star difficulty with default sliders. And I used AP's normal swing for every swing in this test.

So, without further ado:

ZONE:

11 6 11 8 12 8 5 16 14 10

Range: 5 - 16
Median: 10.5
Mean 10.1

Good old zone, the mode we've all played on for years. As you know, this mode grants you full control of where and when you swing, requiring you to place the PCI to make solid contact. The range is pretty telling here, as it was all over the map - as low as 5 successes and as high as 16. That will be more important when you see the later results.

Note: One thing I wanted to make sure of to keep this test valid was the median being at least relatively close to the average - it means that the numbers didn't get too skewed in one direction. This held true for each batting mode, thankfully.

ANALOG:

12 11 10 10 8 6 10 9 10 7

Range: 6 - 12
Median: 10
Mean: 9.3

Ok, at this point we have some degree of control removed, that being the ability to aim up and down. And the average went down as a result - I had quite a few swings with analog that would have been solid hits on Zone that turned into fouls. Yet, we still have some right and left control to add user input, which is where we come to...

TIMING:

10 5 9 7 9 6 10 6 9 6

Range: 5 - 10
Median: 8
Mean 7.7

Okay, that's a pretty big average drop. When you lose complete control of where you swing and the computer is using ratings to calculate it, stuff happens. Namely, you'll swing and miss on perfectly timed pitches on occasion, which happened to me often. I've got a bit more to say about timing mode, but I'll save it for last.


So, all in all, this perfectly backs up what each mode claims to do, and what people have mentioned earlier in this thread. Not only does the average go down when I lose control of the swing, the consistency goes up (the range in my test).

This is not meant to be taken as gospel - you could certainly argue even 200 swings per mode isn't enough for a totally accurate sample size. And since user timing is always a factor, there's definitely an error margin for how often you completely mistime a good contact swing (it certainly happened to me in this test). But I feel like this is about as close to a controlled experiment as you can get in a game like baseball, so I was willing to roll with it. Finally, there's a big 'ol "YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY" on this test because it ultimately comes down to how well I did. Someone more skilled than me (of whom there are many) would probably see even higher numbers in the analog and zone, though timing may show a small increase if any - it's something of a control group for the experiment.

Alright, last but not least....so Timing is heavily ratings-based and this test seems to back that up...well, what does that mean for the fact that both of my other performances were significantly stronger? This is where I believe I have a tangible sign that either a difficulty increase or slider change is needed for me, personally. If players perform more to their actual hitting skill on Timing, it seems kinda cheap if I play on the same settings, knowing that I'll do better than the AI in the long run. This was actually my entire point in doing this test, before I ever thought about the relationship between the 3 modes - "Is it unfair for me to be hitting this well?" I think I've found that answer.

Thoughts?

[shifty_b]

I have enjoyed timing hitting so far,I never got sim/realistic stats with zone hitting.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

[gopadres]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

After playing the last couple years with zone, I'm thinking about switching to timing. I've been striking out a lot and my team ave is only around .240 after a 20 or so games. Course I'm using the Padres so that might not be that far off. Ha!

[merchant1874]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

This is a fascinating thread for a few reasons. Especially after Bcruise's post

It is interesting to see the different results from the hitting modes. I play with everything analogue but what I would like to know is how 'unsim' is this compared to timing?

While i do want realistic stats (which I do get although only played about 30 games in my franchise) does analogue hitting get vastly different results ie: Am I more likely to hit a homer with a poor hitter because i have timed my swing correctly in analogue than i would if it was timing?

As I said i get pretty good stats so far, so I think I will keep playing with analogue for the fun factor.

In the quest for getting real sim stats you probably really need to remove human interaction altogether. (or just watch real baseball)

[Infinite202]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

This is a fascinating thread for a few reasons. Especially after Bcruise's post

It is interesting to see the different results from the hitting modes. I play with everything analogue but what I would like to know is how 'unsim' is this compared to timing?

While i do want realistic stats (which I do get although only played about 30 games in my franchise) does analogue hitting get vastly different results ie: Am I more likely to hit a homer with a poor hitter because i have timed my swing correctly in analogue than i would if it was timing?

As I said i get pretty good stats so far, so I think I will keep playing with analogue for the fun factor.

In the quest for getting real sim stats you probably really need to remove human interaction altogether. (or just watch real baseball)

While I'm not an expert I would say, especially after reading this thread, that analog doesn't give you a vastly superior advantage in terms of hitting homers when compared to timing hitting, BUT, using the poor hitter example you mentioned, it is more likely for you to hit a home run with that hitter using analog.

Analog is about timing and skill with some ratings on the side (imo), while with timing a moderate amount is about the timing itself with a good chunk being ratings. Just look at others' observations, including bcruise's, that show you that even if you get perfect timing it's only a piece of what's going to make that a successful hit.

However, I think you can still get sim-like results with analog, there's just more of a chance that if you are on a really good hot streak or huge slump (skill-wise) the results can be a lot more skewed, whereas timing has a much larger safety net in this regard. I would argue the same goes for classic vs. analog pitching.

[merchant1874]

Re: The Holy Trinity of Hitting Options

While I'm not an expert I would say, especially after reading this thread, that analog doesn't give you a vastly superior advantage in terms of hitting homers when compared to timing hitting, BUT, using the poor hitter example you mentioned, it is more likely for you to hit a home run with that hitter using analog.

Analog is about timing and skill with some ratings on the side (imo), while with timing a moderate amount is about the timing itself with a good chunk being ratings. Just look at others' observations, including bcruise's, that show you that even if you get perfect timing it's only a piece of what's going to make that a successful hit.

However, I think you can still get sim-like results with analog, there's just more of a chance that if you are on a really good hot streak or huge slump (skill-wise) the results can be a lot more skewed, whereas timing has a much larger safety net in this regard. I would argue the same goes for classic vs. analog pitching.

so do you get more variation oh hits with timing in your opinion?