first pitch meatballs....bug?

[assclown25]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Sorry if this has already been said, but im sure most of you have either played or watched baseball games? But whats the 1st pitch 95% of the time to start a game? A get it over fastball!!!! grant it it aint always down the middle of the plate but it is a Heater! And i played with default settings and Edwin Jackson threw 87 pitches in 7 innings and 32 were balls!

[merchant1874]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

I meant to say, my pictures above were from HoF difficulty, so it's weird that you don't see it and I did.

As for the analysis screen adding pitches, I think it's something to do with the simulation engine. I didn't spend too much time investigating since that's not what this thread is about, but it seems like the Fast Forward thing adds another first pitch in there, if that pitch ends up being the final pitch of the at-bat, or something like that. I just know that after swinging, I'd pause, check the analysis screen, and it'd say like, 8 pitches. Then I fast forwarded and checked again (before swinging), and it'd say 9.

Obviously it's just a tiny sample size. Ill do more testing tomorrow.

I definately see the problem when playing RTTS on All Star. I might do 10 tests tomorrow all using the same pitcher to see what happens.

[bcruise]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

May have figured something out as far as RTTS goes guys. I'm still waiting for a reply from Nomo on the difficulty shift thing but I may have figured it out on my own. There's a clear sign of the difference in a hitter's PCI when you compare a hitter of the same ratings in exhibition and in RTTS. I'm working on screenshot proof right now.

Hang tight, I promise this will be interesting. It relates to this thread because you're indeed playing on a lower difficulty than you think you are in RTTS AA (and we know the CPU throws more fat pitches at lower difficulties).

[dalger21]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Sorry if this has already been said, but im sure most of you have either played or watched baseball games? But whats the 1st pitch 95% of the time to start a game? A get it over fastball!!!! grant it it aint always down the middle of the plate but it is a Heater! And i played with default settings and Edwin Jackson threw 87 pitches in 7 innings and 32 were balls!

You should go back and actually read some of the posts here before jumping to conclusions.

[dkrause1971]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Obviously it's just a tiny sample size. Ill do more testing tomorrow.

I definately see the problem when playing RTTS on All Star. I might do 10 tests tomorrow all using the same pitcher to see what happens.

Were all the pitches the pitcher #1 pitch? When i jumped from all-star to legend to see if it change. The few legend games i tested did have a lower meatball rate. Now they were still almost all strikes and all the pitches thrown in those games were the pitchers #1 pitch but it did have more variety of where in the strike zone it was. Much like yours, with a small sample size i couldn't say it definitely was better or not.

[bobtrain]

My most damning evidence yet i would suggest.



9 out of 13 first pitches absolute meatballs right down the pipe (looks like 8 but there are two red dots on top of each other on the right hand side).

Proof, clearly, that not EVERY first pitch of an inning is a meatball, as 4 of them were not, but 9 out of 13?

Thats an extraordinarily high percentage, and completely unrealistic.

I was on default All-Star, as per the test conditions discussed above, literally swung at every first pitch of an inning then fast forwarded to the next one.

Not sure why 13 are shown but the important data is quite clearly obvious.

Thoughts?

Did you see my photos from my 10 games in RTTS? I swung at every first pitch.

[BlueSkies7776]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Alright, I've noticed the first pitch is usually always a strike but NOT always a meatball. The fact that if you don't swing you're always going to be down in the count has been brought to light as far as I'm concerned.

[bobtrain]

The bigger problem I am seeing is that the pitchers are serving them up because they are getting outs. I am seeing that a lot too. Balls that should be getting killed are routine outs. If I were to throw my pitches in the same tight grouping to the CPU there would be a lot more green and very little red. Seems like the CPU is getting away with being in the heart of the plate.

In my case (posted 10 photos), CPU still pitched down middle even though I swung at every first pitch and hit ~.350 over the course of those 10 games. You'd think the CPU would adapt like in real life. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing expecting a different result. And this is clearly insane. lol

[mooch49]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

I'm playing on legend with cpu strike frequency at 3 and am getting no meatballs whatsoever. Sure the ai throws strikes but that is most often the case in real baseball. Try that slider setting, as well as cpu pitcher control and consistency at 4.

[kehlis]

Sorry if this has already been said, but im sure most of you have either played or watched baseball games? But whats the 1st pitch 95% of the time to start a game? A get it over fastball!!!! grant it it aint always down the middle of the plate but it is a Heater! And i played with default settings and Edwin Jackson threw 87 pitches in 7 innings and 32 were balls!

Have you ever watched past the first inning?

[js3512]

I'm playing on hall of fame with cpu control at 4, consistency at 3 and strike frequency at 0 and I'm getting very realistic results at this setting. Haven't checked the numbers but I'd say around 60% first pitch strikes. A few meatballs but most on or around the corners in AAA.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[opd897]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Just played a game on all star with CPU pitcher control set at 3, CPU strike frequency at 2, everything else at default. Results at the end of the game was that the CPU pitchers threw 65 % first pitch strikes. I drew only 2 walks and was pretty patient at the plate. Only one game that I've kept track but plan on doing so in the future.

[MLB Bob]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

I think there might be something to this happening more in AA than, AAA and even less in MLB and higher difficulties. I dont think they just adjust the PCI (Ive always noticed this in previous years and thought it was confirmed at least once) and they just make AA 3 steps down for starting level, 2 for AAA and a big jump to the selected difficulty to simulate the big jump from minors to majors, and could explain that anything lower than all-star means youre starting on beginner mode, HOF you start on Rookie which is easier this year, and legend you start on veteran. Seems like thats whats happening. And with it being much easier this year its just happening a lot more through out.

[bcruise]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Alright, here goes.

To begin with, I created a test player on RTTS with the following ratings (and didn't mess with any training):

CON L 41
CON R 39
POW L 25
POW R 25
CLT 35
VIS 40
DISC 40
BUNT 20
DBUNT 10
SPD 55
DUR 55
REAC 40
BR ABL 25
BR AGG 20
ARM 40
ACC 40
FLD 40

Not that any of the fielding stuff matters for this, but I just wanted to ensure everything was the same. I went into his first appearance, noted the AA pitcher he was facing, and took screenshots of the PCI at every difficulty (using the classic zone interface we're all familiar with).

Then I exited out of RTTS and created a player with the exact same attributes as the RTTS guy. I imported him onto the same AA team he was on, and started an exhibition game vs. the same pitcher as in RTTS. It's important to do that because a pitcher's attributes influence the size of a hitter's PCI.

This was the result:

Legend RTTS:

Spoiler

Legend Exhibition:

Spoiler

HOF RTTS:

Spoiler

HOF Exhibition:

Spoiler

AllStar RTTS:

Spoiler

AllStar Exhibition:

Spoiler

I did the other two as well, but they start getting pretty close together beyond this point as it's monstrous on both modes.

What does it mean? Well, if you see what I see, Legend RTTS and HOF Exhibition look pretty much identical to one another. As do HOF RTTS and AllStar Exhibition. I did those spoiler tags for more reason than just not cluttering the thread - it makes for much easier side-by-side comparisons.

PCI coverage is an average of a hitter's contact and vision, modified by the pitcher's attributes (strategy guide quote). But as you can see, it's also modified by difficulty level. And I think this shows that with everything else equal, a difficulty shift is causing that PCI change. And if it goes down a level for AA, it's not a reach to think it goes up 1 for the other extreme - MLB.

As you guys know, lower difficulties = more fat pitches, so if you were testing on all-star in AA RTTS, the reality is that you were testing on Veteran if all this is correct. Veteran is a hit parade this year because of the opened-up timing window and the CPU throwing more strikes, so it's no surprise that people would be seeing more meatballs.

TL : DR - I believe RTTS counts AAA as the "base level", lowering the selected difficulty by 1 in AA, playing it straight on AAA, and raising it by 1 in MLB. The latter two parts of that are merely a theory on my part, that can only be proven by someone who's made it to the upper levels.

How about it Nomo? Did I nail it?

[MLB Bob]

Re: first pitch meatballs....bug?

Just played a game on all star with CPU pitcher control set at 3, CPU strike frequency at 2, everything else at default. Results at the end of the game was that the CPU pitchers threw 65 % first pitch strikes. I drew only 2 walks and was pretty patient at the plate. Only one game that I've kept track but plan on doing so in the future.

Its not first pitch strike percentage, its first pitch of inning, and gets compounded in RTTS because every other Ab is generally simmed.