pitch consistency and pitch control need help

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

What difficulty are you batting on? It's well established that AI approaches hitters, pitch counts, and situations dramatically different throughout the difficulty levels.

This is to say, I may be an average Legend hitter and draw walks at a below average rate with Pitch Control lowered, but then play at All Star and average 7 a game with Pitch Control raised.

I play on Legend, I recorded a 5 inning video of me batting for both teams (Cubs vs Ms - Zambrano vs Felix) where I drew 3 walks total, I should've had a 4th but I swing at a stupid 3-1 splitter from Zambrano. I'm on my way out to hang with friends so I couldn't finish the game.

Nice logically fallacy. If it is raining outside, it must be cloudy. It is not raining outside. Therefore, it is not cloudy.

...

I've been a slider nerd on this game for about 4 years now. I try to not speak in absolutes about the sliders.



For you and maybe others.

Not me and maybe others.

I will not be drawn into a debate about sliders with guys who state their beliefs as facts - it's a waste of time.

How is my logic bad? If my premise 1 and 2 are both true, the conclusion has to be valid. Premise 2 is true for sure, premise 1 can be up for debate.

---

In 08 you HAD to increase pitcher control to get walks. Here's the topic:
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ol-slider.html

[ParisB]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

Just because you are drawing walks does not mean it's because of the sliders. You can probably draw walks regardless.

And what does the sliders "not changing" have to do with anything? That's not how they worked in ANY year, so I don't understand how you're using that as your argument.

I challenge you to keep track of the pitching charts after each game with Consistency lowered to 0 for 10 games straight, and then Consistency raised to 10 for 10 games straight.

I can guarantee you which one will have a wider spread and variety of misses...

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

Just because you are drawing walks does not mean it's because of the sliders. You can probably draw walks regardless.

And what does the sliders "not changing" have to do with anything? That's not how they worked in ANY year, so I don't understand how you're using that as your argument.

I challenge you to keep track of the pitching charts after each game with Consistency lowered to 0 for 10 games straight, and then Consistency raised to 10 for 10 games straight.

I can guarantee you which one will have a wider spread and variety of misses...

Increasing the pitcher control slider lowered a pitcher's BB/9 rating in 08. That's what the in-game description said. Are you implying the developers were lying or made a mistake? Plus, here's the thread from 08 where it was basically unanimous among OS users that increasing control increased walks:
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ol-slider.html

When would you say the function of the pitcher control slider changed?

I'm not arguing that lowering consistency will not see a wider variation in the pitch chart. The very reason why I raise the consistency slider is the lower the amount of "big" misses that result in wild pitches. Then increasing control improves the pitch chart variety that raising consistency inherently lowers.

---

Here's the first part of a video of me batting for both the Cubs and Mariners with my slider settings. Feel free to critique the CPU pitching and tell me how it is not realistic.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/J_qBxi2T-0k" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="640"></iframe>


A few notes on the video:

- For me to record gameplay, I have to hook up my PS3 to my video card and play on my computer monitor, which is harder for me to see on (read pitches) than my TV that is not even HD. My computer is 10 years old, the video card is probably about 8 years old (ATI all-in-wonder 8500DV). Basically, playing on my computer monitor is not at all optimal playing conditions. This is the first time I faced Zambrano as I play with the Cubs, and he was hard to pick up with his slider, sinker, and splitter. I probably would've gotten a 2nd walk against Zambrano with Miguel Olivo (in Part 2 I believe) if I was playing on my TV like normal, I swung at a bad splitter.
- I understand it is only 10 innings total (once I upload the 2nd half) of me batting. However, as you can see the CPU missed the zone by decent amounts (not just on the edges) which allowed me to get into plenty of hitter's counts. I think there's quite a good variation of obvious balls, balls just off the zone, corner strikes, hittable strikes over the middle, etc. There was one pitch, which would probably be a wild pitch that bounced several feet in front of the catcher, but the pitcher was on 1st and I would've went to 2nd if any other player was on 1st.
- As you can probably tell by my hitting, I'm sitting on certain locations before 2 strikes (varies depending on the batter) so I'm taking several strikes just because I'm not prepared to hit those pitches so I don't swing at them. It's a poor strategy to go up to the plate trying to cover the whole plate at the start of the AB.

[TripleThreat1973]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

I am a opponent of the 'increase the control / consistency so that a CPU will try to paint the corners more / causing more balls' argument. I belive all this does is allow the pitcher a smaller margin of effected error on intended targets.

Same here. All it does is turn everyone into nibblers ... marksmen nibblers to be exact.

Look at real pitch charts. Even Cliff Lee (actually, especially Cliff Lee) challenges hitters IN the zone ... not nibbling.

There is a lot of stuff said here, that I either do not experience or do not agree with. Recalling from last year I think I pretty much agreed with everything ParisB and CHD said, or at least my recorded results seemed to match their results and/or ideas rather well.

I believe we had this same discussion last year, as well as, the "don't zero out solid hits" discussion.

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

Same here. All it does is turn everyone into nibblers ... marksmen nibblers to be exact.

Look at real pitch charts. Even Cliff Lee (actually, especially Cliff Lee) challenges hitters IN the zone ... not nibbling.

There is a lot of stuff said here, that I either do not experience or do not agree with. Recalling from last year I think I pretty much agreed with everything ParisB and CHD said, or at least my recorded results seemed to match their results and/or ideas rather well.

I believe we had this same discussion last year, as well as, the "don't zero out solid hits" discussion.

I invite you to watch the videos I posted and explain to me how the CPU is just nibbling the corners on every pitch. There's several balls that miss by a good amount plus plenty of pitches over the middle third of the plate.

I don't understand why you wouldn't zero out solid hits last year as the ball was just hit far too hard consistently at default. Even this year solid hits doesn't do much as nomo17k did a study on the slider (setting it at 0 and 10) and found batting averages are effected only very very slightly. I could only see not zeroing out solid hits last year if you were just using "swing only" hitting as then zeroing out solid hits could have a very noticeable drop in batting averages since you weren't moving the PCI.

---

Here's Part 2 of my video:

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1V8EoG1UKl8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[coreyhartsdaughter]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

@ JackBurton

Simulations versus playing the game are completely different in my opinion.

Moreover, was Nomo's simmulation run over every difficulty level with every possible permutation of pitching sliders, contact, and power?

It's well accepted that some sliders work in tangent of others.

[coreyhartsdaughter]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

@ JackBurton

You're video is with pitch confidence off, no?

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

@ JackBurton

Simulations versus playing the game are completely different in my opinion.

Moreover, was Nomo's simmulation run over every difficulty level with every possible permutation of pitching sliders, contact, and power?

It's well accepted that some sliders work in tangent of others.

Difficulty level is irrelevant with CPU games.

I'm also of the belief that the game is designed to allow the user to accomplish everything the CPU can.

Otherwise, I agree with you entirely on this subject. Just making these two things clear.

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

@ JackBurton

Simulations versus playing the game are completely different in my opinion.

Moreover, was Nomo's simmulation run over every difficulty level with every possible permutation of pitching sliders, contact, and power?

It's well accepted that some sliders work in tangent of others.

Nomo does CPU vs CPU tests so the difficulty level is not relevant. I'd be guessing the CPU is probably hitting on All-Star (like when user pitching is on All-Star) against itself just because the CPU swings at more balls in CPU vs CPU games compared to how the CPU hits against me with Legend pitching. Outside of that, I'm not exactly sure on the other details of his tests. I just know I've never seen anything about batting averages being affected in a significant way by changing the solid hits slider.

I realize that sliders aren't always independent entities as I feel the control and consistency sliders share some dependency among them.

@ JackBurton

You're video is with pitch confidence off, no?

Yeah, I have pitch confidence off. However, I remember from last year most people felt turning pitch confidence off only turns off the visual bars and pitch confidence is always on. I also feel pitch confidence is always on but obviously it would be pretty hard to prove either way. I had a game against Barry Zito where he threw pretty much all fastballs and changeups all game and he kept me off balance. I remember he only threw one curve all game. From that game alone, I feel pitch confidence is still on because Zito was doing great with his fastball/changeup combo so he would have high confidence in those pitches, and the CPU will throw pitches with high confidence much more often than pitches with low confidence.

---

I'll reiterate my reasons for increasing both consistency and control:

- I raise consistency because I was getting way too many wild pitches. With consistency at 8, I get solid wild pitch numbers. Although, they are probably a touch high because of those balls that bounce about 10 feet away from the catcher that allows runners to advance. That is mainly a physics issue as the ball should be bouncing that far away from the catcher that often. With consistency at default and below my 8 setting, I noticed way too many wild pitches, and it was a regularity to see more than 1 wild pitch an inning; for me, that is now a very rare occurrence.

- I then raise control to get the pitchers to pitch more to the corners thereby giving me more balls to counteract the increased strike frequency from raising consistency. I still firmly believe increasing control lowers a pitcher's BB/9 rating like it used to state in the in-game description.

---

Since you watched my videos, I hope you can see why I suggest to others to raise these sliders as I get very realistically pitched games from the CPU. I'm just not spouting a load of BS like I get accused of doing.

[nomo17k]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

I don't want to add to discussion that has already deviated too much from the OP's question, but just to clarify a few points.

In my testing, the solid hit most affected the line drive fraction among all batted balls. Some fly balls (+ pop flies) and ground balls (+ choppers) are converted into line drives by increasing that slider. That was really the most significant change I recorded. When line drives are increased, the number of singles increased (doubles, triples stayed the same, but HRs reduced). So it did have a significant effect on BA when the line drives were increased. But when that slider was decreased, the line drive fraction was reduced. There, the effect on BA was subtle; by increasing poor hits like choppers and popups don't necessarily increase/decrease the number of safe hits.

About not testing every permutation in the slider combinations, that's just unfair. Nobody has time to do it, nobody in this forum does it. So if we can discount anybody's claim based on that, then nobody is doing anything useful in this forum. I still think the best compromise it to test one slider at a time, everything else fixed.

I think Brian@SCEA said in the past anything that happens with CPU can happen with user, and vice versa. Obviously the difficulty level changes a lot of things in user vs CPU games so if you are playing at Rookie or Legend, the CPU vs CPU results probably don't mean much at all. But it's not like the game is using entirely different code for CPU and user though. So where difficulty levels don't matter much, the results are probably relevant.

But really the reason why people are not buying JackBurton's theory is that it appears very different from what the rest of the world experiences. Instead of hard to interpret movies, why don't you take snapshots of the pitcher analysis screen every 25 pitch for a few games? And also the number for strike %. You can do that easily on PS3. That would actually show clearly how pitchers are approaching hitters. It's actually not easy to interpret individual pitcher analysis screens (at least for me), but it's much better than just continuing just with words. Along the way creating another banned user (LOL). Whenever I see a username in red, I get chills in my spine you know... When would I be that guy...? Maybe it was a mistake that I joined this discussion, but let's do things constructively.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

Nomo, if you see anything offensive, don't hesitate to use the "report post" feature. That's why it's there.

I certainly don't. Fortunately, OS is pretty civil.

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

In my testing, the solid hit most affected the line drive fraction among all batted balls. Some fly balls (+ pop flies) and ground balls (+ choppers) are converted into line drives by increasing that slider. That was really the most significant change I recorded. When line drives are increased, the number of singles increased (doubles, triples stayed the same, but HRs reduced). So it did have a significant effect on BA when the line drives were increased. But when that slider was decreased, the line drive fraction was reduced. There, the effect on BA was subtle; by increasing poor hits like choppers and popups don't necessarily increase/decrease the number of safe hits.

But really the reason why people are not buying JackBurton's theory is that it appears very different from what the rest of the world experiences. Instead of hard to interpret movies, why don't you take snapshots of the pitcher analysis screen every 25 pitch for a few games? And also the number for strike %. You can do that easily on PS3. That would actually show clearly how pitchers are approaching hitters. It's actually not easy to interpret individual pitcher analysis screens (at least for me), but it's much better than just continuing just with words. Along the way creating another banned user (LOL). Whenever I see a username in red, I get chills in my spine you know... When would I be that guy...? Maybe it was a mistake that I joined this discussion, but let's do things constructively.

I apologize for the misinformation about the solid hits test as I was more interested in the solid hits at 0 results than the solid hits at 10 results so that's why I was right on one end but wrong on the other end so sorry about that.

How are my videos hard to interpret? I feel videos are more informative than pitch charts as you get to see the ABs unfold. You can have a good ball/strike ratio where the CPU constantly jumps ahead then starts throwing balls or vice verse so the pitch chart can look great but the game wasn't pitch in a realistic way by the CPU. My videos show the CPU both falling behind and jumping ahead of hitters over the game. It's actually pretty time intensive for me to record gameplay and upload it (40 KB/s upload rate on my Internet connection, it took about 25mins to upload each video) so it's not like I recorded a bunch of games and uploaded the "best" one. The videos depict a normal game for me, that's the kind CPU pitching I see all the time.

[coreyhartsdaughter]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

Difficulty level is irrelevant with CPU games.

I'm also of the belief that the game is designed to allow the user to accomplish everything the CPU can.

Otherwise, I agree with you entirely on this subject. Just making these two things clear.

I also agree difficulty is irrelevant in CPU v CPU games - which plays into my point perfectly.

Nomo has done some incredible sim work which has provided a better understaning of how many of the of the statistics are derived from slider manipulation. That said, non of the simulations take into consideration how humans interact with the CPU and AI.

For instance, its fair to assume that in simulations the CPU may be more apt to hit a high fastball or a low change up better than a HUM player.

It's impossible to determine how the PCI reacts in a simulated game (short of manipulating the contact slider), but it can be assumed during a given Human game the amount of times the Human player is able to hit a well struck ball is determined by a multitude (almost limitless) number of elements. (versus the few that can possibly derived from simulations)

My point is that although through simulations one could determine the variance of how a single slider effects results, (not to mention standard deviation) the swing in how a particular slider effects a game played by a human is enormous. If I were to max out or zero a particular slider during my games, the variance would be far greater than that of a simulated test.

The effect would be further exemplified by the difficulty at which a player elects to play.

[coreyhartsdaughter]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

I apologize for the misinformation about the solid hits test as I was more interested in the solid hits at 0 results than the solid hits at 10 results so that's why I was right on one end but wrong on the other end so sorry about that.

How are my videos hard to interpret? I feel videos are more informative than pitch charts as you get to see the ABs unfold. You can have a good ball/strike ratio where the CPU constantly jumps ahead then starts throwing balls or vice verse so the pitch chart can look great but the game wasn't pitch in a realistic way by the CPU. My videos show the CPU both falling behind and jumping ahead of hitters over the game. It's actually pretty time intensive for me to record gameplay and upload it (40 KB/s upload rate on my Internet connection, it took about 25mins to upload each video) so it's not like I recorded a bunch of games and uploaded the "best" one. The videos depict a normal game for me, that's the kind CPU pitching I see all the time.

His point, is that an image like this:

http://img852.imageshack.us/i/mlb11theshow.png/

or this:

http://img847.imageshack.us/i/mlb11theshow1z.png/

Serves to paint a much better picture than your videos.

[JackBurton]

Re: pitch consistency and pitch control need help

His point, is that an image like this:

http://img852.imageshack.us/i/mlb11theshow.png/

or this:

http://img847.imageshack.us/i/mlb11theshow1z.png/

Serves to paint a much better picture than your videos.

But the 1st picture is just 1 AB, any set of sliders can give you a good 1 AB pitch chart.

The 2nd picture doesn't tell you when in the count the balls and strikes come. Is the pitcher constantly falling behind or jumping ahead in an unrealistic fashion? I can't tell from pitch charts. I can take in much more information from a video of several ABs with different pitchers than seeing pitch charts from several games.

Do you see any kind of trends with my ABs against the CPU in which you would have any concerns? Most of you were saying the CPU would turn into in corner nibbling pitchers with my sliders with most balls being too hard to take and strikes being on the corners too much and being too hard to hit. Did any of those issues rear their heads in the videos I posted? I faced King Felix and I'm sure most up you would've assumed he'd be painting all game with my settings but he just wasn't doing that. Both pitchers were pretty high on confidence as well since I only scored 2 runs. So under the worst circumstances, my ball/strike ratio held very solid.