The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

[KingV2k3]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

VERY "dynamic" thread, indeed!



I've been playing this title since it came out, but have skipped a couple of the last few iterations because:

1) The older I get the worse I hit, which has become the "fun free" kind of frustrating on ocassion

2) I don't have the time or patience for 300+ pitch games (see above)

Yet?

I LOVE this title and this sport, so leave it to our friends at SCEA to actually come up with solutions to those issues that, from these impressions, seem to actually work "as intended"...

VERY excited by "this year's model" and hope that the interest in these modes / play styles continue to warrant further inclusion and development...

Thanks for the info, gents!

Play Ball!

EDIT:

I have a question for you guys playing this mode:

The CPU tends to pound the zone on the lower levels (rookie / veteran) leading to VERY high first strike and overall strike percentages...

This impacts the strategy of the at bat...

Are you seeing realistic strike percentages using this mode?

Does quick counts help with that as well?

That's usually my only nagging slider issue, so if that's sorted, all the mo better!

[Mike Lowe]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Check my stats posts out. Much more common for me are games like this: on the low end, 2 BB and 6 K; on the high end, 5-6 BB and 9 K. I'm still getting all the whiffs one could desire, and I'm not walking 6 times a game. I've had 3 games with 6 BB I think, in 20 tests, but the average is about 4 and I'd say the average Ks are between 6-8.

Scores-wise, over 20 games, I've had 3-4 high-scoring offensive games but most have been between 0-5 runs.

That's just my experience, but you may be lots better than me.

My most recent game was better, but we still won 6-3 (hell, it was the Cubs though). I did get 6 walks this game, and finally started striking out a bit. I guess I just wish, like many others, that we could set the starting point for this. Seems like an easy adjustment SCEA could make.

Pitching is SOOOOOO easy though ugh even approaching All-Star.

I am pretty good at the game, just means I've played it way too much over the years, but am glad this mode exists. It's a great concept.

[Mike Lowe]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

It's like that every year no matter what level or slider u use. Walks have always been an use.

I don't think so, not with the right sliders at least. I was always a top 10 team in BB.

[RogueHominid]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

VERY "dynamic" thread, indeed!



I've been playing this title since it came out, but have skipped a couple of the last few iterations because:

1) The older I get the worse I hit, which has become the "fun free" kind of frustrating on ocassion

2) I don't have the time or patience for 300+ pitch games (see above)

Yet?

I LOVE this title and this sport, so leave it to our friends at SCEA to actually come up with solutions to those issues that, from these impressions, seem to actually work "as intended"...

VERY excited by "this year's model" and hope that the interest in these modes / play styles continue to warrant further inclusion and development...

Thanks for the info, gents!

Play Ball!

EDIT:

I have a question for you guys playing this mode:

The CPU tends to pound the zone on the lower levels (rookie / veteran) leading to VERY high first strike and overall strike percentages...

This impacts the strategy of the at bat...

Are you seeing realistic strike percentages using this mode?

Does quick counts help with that as well?

That's usually my only nagging slider issue, so if that's sorted, all the mo better!

I use QC along with DD and QC gives you the walks you need even at lower levels. I'm hitting at Rookie + and my walk totals are better than they've ever been.

QC will give you unrealistic pitch counts and strike:ball ratios when you look at the recorded pitches, but I would argue that those numbers should be ignored, as you actually get the right number of hits, walks, strikeouts, batting average and OBP stats with the mode on. What I have done is upped starter stamina for HUM and CPU to 6 as my only slider adjustment, aside from the 0 pitch speed that you and I both like.

I'm 10-11 in Spring Training and will post 20-game stats after I grade some essays. King, if you have particular stats or gameplay questions, post them up. I've purposely played out all of Spring Training with DD and QC so I could answer such questions with some good data inside of franchise mode.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

How's everyone strikeout and BB numbers looking so far? Specifically with your starters.

I played another 7 games last night, meaning I've played close to 30 games. My highest single game performance has been 8 K's (Kershaw and King Felix), but otherwise it's usually 3-4 K's with my starter.

And man, the walks! Holy smokes. LOL! Averaging around 5 per game.

Loving how erratic Pulse is this year, but combine that with the 3 ball counts and I'm still struggling to find a balance with my K to BB ratios.

Since I'm using DD, and almost all of us are using QC's, I figured I'd post my question quoted above here too.

How is everyone's BB to K ratios looking when pitching?

Been going between AS and AS+ pitching like ping-pong. LOL! Think I'm finally stablizing on the pitching side, but almost at HOF in the hitting department. I fully expect to get the bump officially tonight.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

So, after starting fresh on DD (and playing a Spring this time), I just promoted up from Rookie+ to AllStar in...well, it's officially 2 games because the Royals haven't recorded an out in the third one. Here's the third game (on Veteran+) so far:

Castro: BB
Valbuena: 2 Run HR
Rizzo: 2B
Schierholtz: 2 Run HR
Lake: HR

Following that I got the AllStar promotion notice.

I had to double check and make sure the sliders were on default. And pick my jaw up off the floor. I expected blowouts at least until AllStar, but not 3 straight games of promoting before the 5th inning.

This is going to be interesting in the 4th game. AllStar+ and HOF may be waiting for me.

Let's just sit back and enjoy the greatest 3 game stretch in Cubs history.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

My most recent game was better, but we still won 6-3 (hell, it was the Cubs though). I did get 6 walks this game, and finally started striking out a bit. I guess I just wish, like many others, that we could set the starting point for this. Seems like an easy adjustment SCEA could make.

Pitching is SOOOOOO easy though ugh even approaching All-Star.

I am pretty good at the game, just means I've played it way too much over the years, but am glad this mode exists. It's a great concept.

Not having a starting point is by far my biggest criticism of the mode.

If we choose "wrong," the game would still promote us or demote us. In a perfect world, this gets patched in but more than likely (no inside info this year, guys), it'll probably have to be 15.

[Jgainsey]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

What game modes are you guys primarily using? I've played a few games now on DD using the show live, and each time the difficulty reverts back to rookie...

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

What game modes are you guys primarily using? I've played a few games now on DD using the show live, and each time the difficulty reverts back to rookie...

I've seen a few people have this problem, but I still don't believe it's anything more than user error. The settings profile you're using needs to be the same or else DD won't carry over.

Try this: Set whichever settings profile you used in TSL as the default in the user settings part of the main menu. Then start TSL again and go to the team select menu, and make sure that it's the right profile selected (right stick through the list of profiles until you find it if it's not). If that still doesn't work then something's funky with TSL and DD, but I've played a few games in that mode myself and still had the difficulty carry over fine.

This isn't any different from making sure a custom slider set is loaded each time you play. Think of it like that.

[Jgainsey]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I've seen a few people have this problem, but I still don't believe it's anything more than user error. The settings profile you're using needs to be the same or else DD won't carry over.

Try this: Set whichever settings profile you used in TSL as the default in the user settings part of the main menu. Then start TSL again and go to the team select menu, and make sure that it's the right profile selected (right stick through the list of profiles until you find it if it's not). If that still doesn't work then something's funky with TSL and DD, but I've played a few games in that mode myself and still had the difficulty carry over fine.

This isn't any different from making sure a custom slider set is loaded each time you play. Think of it like that.

I've used my default profile for TSL every time so far. The first thing I did when I put the game in was set up my options, rename the profile, and save it as default.

My profile 'John' is there by default when I go into team select for TSL, so I doubt I've used a profile other than default.

[KingV2k3]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I use QC along with DD and QC gives you the walks you need even at lower levels. I'm hitting at Rookie + and my walk totals are better than they've ever been.

QC will give you unrealistic pitch counts and strike:ball ratios when you look at the recorded pitches, but I would argue that those numbers should be ignored, as you actually get the right number of hits, walks, strikeouts, batting average and OBP stats with the mode on. What I have done is upped starter stamina for HUM and CPU to 6 as my only slider adjustment, aside from the 0 pitch speed that you and I both like.

I'm 10-11 in Spring Training and will post 20-game stats after I grade some essays. King, if you have particular stats or gameplay questions, post them up. I've purposely played out all of Spring Training with DD and QC so I could answer such questions with some good data inside of franchise mode.

Yeah, I've been following your posts as so far, your A's stats look pretty realistic to me!



The fun thing about baseball is that a team like OAK has a relatively wide variance of statistical probability / believe-ability because their roster is primarily made up of somewhat unproven commodities...

Guys like Sogard or Donaldson (for instance) could easily hit anywhere from .210 to .290 (ish) over the course of a season...

Baseball stats, in general, vary greatly over the course of the long sample size of a season...

So, stats overall are a good indicator of how realistically the game is playing, but the "eye test" is also a more indicative barometer over any smaller sample...

That being said:

My obsession has always been with strike percentages (both first pitch and overall) and how the game implements that on the lower levels...

Here's some interesting data:

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pit...g-z-swing-etc/

As you can see, first pitch is about 60%, while the overall is around 45%...

I'm also VERY likely to play Dynamic / Quick Count, so this may be worthless to even try and get number on, but it's something (IMHO) worth TRYING to observe / quantify...

Why?

Here's a decent read on how those numbers actually impact the sport:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-pitch_strike

Anywho:

I'll be looking forward to your numbers as they develop and if you get any sense of the rhythm of aforementioned..well, that be cool too!

Have fun!

[bcruise]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

I've used my default profile for TSL every time so far. The first thing I did when I put the game in was set up my options, rename the profile, and save it as default.

My profile 'John' is there by default when I go into team select for TSL, so I doubt I've used a profile other than default.

Okay, I can't dispute anything there. Maybe it is some kind of weird bug then.

Have you tried going to other modes like season, franchise or RTTS? Does it carry over there?

[Jgainsey]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Okay, I can't dispute anything there. Maybe it is some kind of weird bug then.

Have you tried going to other modes like season, franchise or RTTS? Does it carry over there?

So far I've only played TSL. I played 2 or 3 games and was up to Vet on both difficulties. Started a new TSL game this morning and everything was back to the base level of rookie or rookie +. Exited and restarted a few times, double checked my profile, tried again, but still no luck.

It wouldn't surprise me if TSL is causing the issue. I had what I think was a glitch earlier today when TSL suddenly switched into QC with out me changing anything, and I then I wasn't able get back to default. There have been a few other minor glitches with the mode as well, so maybe I'll just stick with exhibition or a test franchise if I continue using DD.

[fearwhatnow]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

So far I've only played TSL. I played 2 or 3 games and was up to Vet on both difficulties. Started a new TSL game this morning and everything was back to the base level of rookie or rookie +. Exited and restarted a few times, double checked my profile, tried again, but still no luck.

It wouldn't surprise me if TSL is causing the issue. I had what I think was a glitch earlier today when TSL suddenly switched into QC with out me changing anything, and I then I wasn't able get back to default. There have been a few other minor glitches with the mode as well, so maybe I'll just stick with exhibition or a test franchise if I continue using DD.

I used TSL yesterday, no QC (it seems there is a server problem with this - check Q&A), DD enabled and then played against Orioles in Spring Training. The DD progression was there. I have a custom profile if this helps.
Also: DD in the game against Orioles revealed something that I always knew: How much I suck at pitching! All these years I set the pitching difficluty at Veteran. I was up 5-1 against the Orioles and I progressed to Veteran+. Final score? 5-10 defeat... DD is a superb feature and and the above "incident" proved that it's working great. Absolutely ingenious code programming there by The Show devs.

[Jgainsey]

Re: The Dynamic Difficulty Discussion Thread

Ugh.. I'm almost positive I'm not doing anything wrong, but I just gave TSL one more try and it reset on me again. Same profile and everything..

Played game one and made it back up to Vet for hitting. Finished up that game and went straight into another TSL game... Right back to Rookie.

I'm wishing now that I had just started a test franchise or something, because I only have so much Rookie ball in me. It was fine for a few games when I thought I was building towards something, but now I feel like I've wasted 7 or 8 games already, and with nothing to show for it.