The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

[Heroesandvillains]

Hello all! Baseball is finally here and with that SCEA has given us a lot of new features this year! And with all new features, feedback is essential in getting these modes fleshed out and perfected over time. This is a place to discuss any and all things Dynamic Difficulty related.

As for me? I'm using it exclusively this year in conjunction with Quick Counts. 4 games down, so here are some early impressions on the Mode.

In years past, I've essentially been an All-Star Hall of Famer. Meaning, I'm ALWAYS slightly too good for AS and slightly too sucky for HOF. I was an in-betweener like a lot of you. Yet, here comes SCEA with a little gift for us. Ten Difficulty Levels essentially. And different grading for both hitting and pitching!

Initially, I'd assumed that after even just four games, the mode would have graduated me to All-Star already. Not the case!

Four games with LAD, and I'm still a Rookie+ hitter. So that means I must be raking right now. Right? No. That's wrong.

.260 team average. 6 dingers. Graduation day is going to take some time and this is what I love most about the mode so far. Baseball is a game of ups and downs and the system seems to be designed with that in mind. Don't expect to get to Legend after a couple killer games. That won't happen.

Another excellent touch seems to be how the demotion process works. Here's an example: Last night my pitching difficulty got boosted to "Veteran." Then, I promptly got slaughtered.

It appears in the early going that the system is smart enough to not demote you an entire Level. Meaning, it seems like no matter how bad I play from this point forward, the game knows I'm too good for Rookie (which) and will never make me go back there.

This is a brilliant idea. Baseball is a game of good days and bad days, and getting beat by a better team over the course of a series does not mean the game will not spoon feed you and soften the AI up too much. This keeps the Difficulty leveling realistically SIM and a good investment of your time.

Initially, it seems to me that OBP is king here (though I couldn't find that defined in the Digital Manual). Both for hitting and pitching. Your graduation depends on it. And you know what? I think that's the right way to go about it as OBP is an excellent representation of talented you are as a Show player. I know it's early, and I can't say for certain it doesn't work this way, but it would be nice to see some additional logic once the player's Difficulty Level flattens out to take into account specific strengths and weaknesses (such as BB/9, H/9, K/9, HR, AVG, SO, BB, etc) and adjust those individual sliders independent of one another accordingly

I have more ideas on that but I'll share them after I spend some more quality time with the Mode.

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts and progress on the Mode. I'm looking forward to how everyone else feels about it!

[A_Quiet_Pro]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

That's just pure awesome sauce.

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Copy/Pasting my previous posts on this subject from the Impression/Q@A threads....

My first impression of the Dynamic Difficulty feature is that it's something that will take a while to give you a true reading on, but once the game finds your sweet spot you might never have to mess with difficulty again.

The way it works is that it starts you on a level called Rookie+ for both hitting and pitching, then updates every half inning and gives you feedback in the form of + or -'s. For example if you have two big offensive innings in a row you'll likely have two plusses when the third starts. I would assume that when you have enough plusses or minuses either way, it will adjust the actual difficulty level. As I said, that's not particularly easy to do. I had a big 2nd and third inning at the plate, but by the 7th I've cooled off and back to no progress either way. It's going to probably take me a while to get off Rookie + with the way this is done, but I like that it won't just boomerang back and forth because of one huge inning.

Pitching and Hitting are adjusted separately, which means you could end up on Vet hitting and Legend pitching.

So mean..

It definitely didn't go like I expected, at least I won but it was close! CPU wasn't chasing much early on and mashing Shark's inaccurate pitches. CPU also threw plenty of balls too, even if it didn't walk me.

It's not going to be easy to get the OPS needed consistently to move up (or down) in difficulty (OPS is what it bases progress on, so says the in-game strategy guide). I like your idea of doing it in Spring Training - that seems like a good way of learning your team and your ideal difficulty at the same time.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how/if QC affects the difficulty changes. It's hard to explain, but when you have a pre-determined count you're likely to see much more realistic situations than if a user pitched/hit for every pitch. Someone who swings at everything could potentially end up at a higher difficulty than they otherwise would, since they wouldn't be swinging at early count balls.

As for me...I bumped up to Veteran hitting during my first QC game (on a different settings profile than the non-QC one, I want to keep those seperate). It was a 9-4 win where I got 10 hits, and the change actually happened mid-inning and not only between innings.

It might be a good idea to find a good QC difficulty setting, and then try to work your way up to that point without QC. I think I'm going to try that, for one thing it's a lot faster process with QC + Fast Play.

There's a couple of other constraints on the difficulty changes I didn't know about until reading the guide:

- Only one difficulty shift per game. Progress is halted for the rest of the game if it happens.

- Can't demote unless you're trailing by 3 or more runs, and can't promote unless you're up 3 runs or more. Not sure how/if this part applies to RTTS.

Updating my dynamic difficulty progress after about 15 quick count games played:

I've successfully made the jump up to All-Star on both hitting and pitching. I've actually been on AS Hitting for a few games while the pitching lagged behind on Vet+. Hitting appears to have stabilized for the most part, still a slight upward trend because I haven't seen a - in progress yet. I could realistically see myself getting to AS+ or even HOF given enough time, and I think I'd have a good experience on any of them. Jury's still out on pitching since I just made that jump I've been trying to make for several games. It really takes a great pitching performance to move up, but once you do it'll be extremely hard to demote (unless you get repeatedly shelled).

Walks have definitely started appearing on AS, so no worries there. QC helps some with that, of course.

Loving this feature so far, and, given enough time, it's giving me exactly what I expected to see in terms of judging my own skill level.

[the_future420]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Man I'm so looking forward to getting this game to see how this works. In the past I have been a slider junkie for all sports games and I like that this kinda takes a big chunk of that out. Anything that allows the user to just pick up and play is a plus. This should lead to more time to actually enjoy the game and spend less fiddling with sliders. Kudos for implementing this SDS

[ckarlic]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Dumb question..is dynamic difficulty an option you choose for difficulty setting? Where can I find that setting?

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Dumb question..is dynamic difficulty an option you choose for difficulty setting? Where can I find that setting?

It's just a "difficulty" that you select in the same place in user settings as Rookie, Pro, All-Star, etc. Just scroll until you see dynamic, and make sure whatever profile you changed it on is the one you're using when you start a game.

[ckarlic]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

It's just a "difficulty" that you select in the same place in user settings as Rookie, Pro, All-Star, etc. Just scroll until you see dynamic, and make sure whatever profile you changed it on is the one you're using when you start a game.

Thanks. I will look for it when I get home tonight. Like Heros mentioned, I too am normally a Allstar/HOF player (in betweener as he stated) and would like to give this a shot. Looking forward to trying it out.

[RogueHominid]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I'm so glad you started this thread. I have been wondering exactly how this works, but like you, I decided to just ride with dynamic difficulty so I could play the game without getting into slideritis.

This could be the biggest breakthrough of the year if it truly does adjust difficulty level and slider level on the fly.

OP, is it your sense that dynamic difficulty allows you to be "hands off" with sliders as well as difficulty levels, or are you looking at some slider adjustments too?

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I'm so glad you started this thread. I have been wondering exactly how this works, but like you, I decided to just ride with dynamic difficulty so I could play the game without getting into slideritis.

This could be the biggest breakthrough of the year if it truly does adjust difficulty level and slider level on the fly.

OP, is it your sense that dynamic difficulty allows you to be "hands off" with sliders as well as difficulty levels, or are you looking at some slider adjustments too?

Hard to say at the moment. I probably won't be able to determine that until my Difficulty Levels begin to plateau.

Right now, the game is plussing and minusing me. So it's doing the heavy-lifting at the moment slider-wise which is great.

But once I level out, I can't say one way or the other if I'll need to do some further tweaking. QC's produce quite a few more 3 ball counts than I normally get into, so I could see myself trying to lower BB's and increase K's a tad. But it's way too early to say.

That said, I'm pretty confident in saying even this early on that this mode will be PERFECT medicine to those sick with 'Slideritis.'

With SO MANY difficulty levels available now (ten), I can't see how anyone using it would need to commit to a slider overhaul. I just don't see it. So yes, I'll be using it all year, only fine tuning if necessary.

[RogueHominid]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Hard to say at the moment. I probably won't be able to determine that until my Difficulty Levels begin to plateau.

Right now, the game is plussing and minusing me. So it's doing the heavy-lifting at the moment slider-wise which is great.

But once I level out, I can't say one way or the other if I'll need to do some further tweaking. QC's produce quite a few more 3 ball counts than I normally get into, so I could see myself trying to lower BB's and increase K's a tad. But it's way too early to say.

That said, I'm pretty confident in saying even this early on that this mode will be PERFECT medicine to those sick with 'Slideritis.'

With SO MANY difficulty levels available now (ten), I can't see how anyone using it would need to commit to a slider overhaul. I just don't see it. So yes, I'll be using it all year, only fine tuning if necessary.

This seems particularly useful for those of us who want to jump right into QC, which is a total wildcard in terms of the slider set it requires, if it requires one. The CPU can figure it out while I play to my heart's content at a speed that's pleasantly brisk without feeling overly rushed.

Again, great thread! I'm curious to hear about your long-term findings here, as well as those of bcruise.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Bcruise, where did you read about the DD logic?

I spent 30 minutes trying to find it both in the Digital Manual and in the Main Menu on the game with no such luck!

Could've got a fifth game in! LOL!

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Bcruise, where did you read about the DD logic?

I spent 30 minutes trying to find it both in the Digital Manual and the in the Main Menu on the game and no such luck!

Could've got a fifth game in! LOL!

In the in-game strategy guide. While in-game, pause and scroll to Player Utilities.

It's in the first page of the "Other" section of the guide, right after a detailed description of Quick Counts.

[mooch49]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I am confused as to how Dynamic Difficulty works. First. Should you choose beginner or experienced level and how do these two levels differ from the skill levels. Let me lay out a scenario. Say you are an experienced Show player and don't want to start on the beginner level will DD still kick in despite not beginning as beginner? I only ask this because when I started on Beginner it was incredibly easy so much it was unplayable. The computer would swing at every pitch. Your pitcher would hardly throw balls. Just things like this I could no longer use the beginner level. So if I start as an experienced player, will dynamic difficulty still take effect even though the skills say all- star.

Update: Okay just saw there is an option for dynamic. I just assumed you picked a level then DD would take in effect. I wasn't aware there was an option dynamic like rookie, veteran, etc.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I am confused as to how Dynamic Difficulty works. First. Should you choose beginner or experienced level and how do these two levels differ from the skill levels. Let me lay out a scenario. Say you are an experienced Show player and don't want to start on the beginner level will DD still kick in despite not beginning as beginner? I only ask this because when I started on Beginner it was incredibly easy so much it was unplayable. The computer would swing at every pitch. Your pitcher would hardly throw balls. Just things like this I could no longer use the beginner level. So if I start as an experienced player, will dynamic difficulty still take effect even though the skills say all- star.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

When you say beginner and experienced, you're talking about the prompt it gives you the first time you started up the game, right? Those are just profile Templates and it doesn't really matter what you chose there, because once you change the difficulty to Dynamic (or make any other user settings change) you will have created a new profile. What I did was, after changing the difficulty to Dynamic, I went to Create and selected Create from Current. Then re-named the profile to something meaningful (I just called it Dynamic). That's all you have to do in user settings, and from now on you just make sure that newly created profile is selected on the team select screen (or when you start a franchise).

Although, I will say that if you felt so frustrated at the game being easy on Beginner, this whole process may not be for you. If you've been playing this game for a long time, you'll probably rake on Rookie and Vet and move up fairly quickly. But you have to give it time, you won't see perfect results in even a couple of games, they'll be unbalanced and probably blowouts in your favor until you start plateaing for your skill level. I'm up to almost 20 QC games now and I feel like I'm plateauing at All-Star for both hitting and pitching levels.

Patience.

[ckarlic]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Took my lunch break to try dynamic difficulty for hitting and pitching on my vita and im liking it so far. I tried a show live game (Yankees (me) vs Astros) and I did beat the Astros 9-2 . CC had 9 K's and Soriano belted 2 HRs. I scored 4 runs in the first and the Astros answered back with 2 run in the bottom of the inning. Even though the game started out on Rookie, it didn't feel like a breeze in the park. On Rookie, the CPU didnt just lay pitches down the middle as I was expecting. The Astros also threatened to score a few more runs a couple of times and took me deep into the count as well. I think through a few more games, the difficulty will adjust to me the way I like it.

As I mentioned, im not a newcomer to the show. Been playing since '06 and have been an All star/ Hall of fame difficulty player. Im going to stick with dynamic difficulty to see where it takes me.