Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

@Nomo - have you been tracking which pitchers are the ones committing the wild pitches? I ask because I've seen a few games now (on default sliders) where there were massive outbursts of WP (at least 4) all from relievers, and all within an inning or 2. One in particular was Tony Cingrani throwing 3 in a 7th inning disaster where he gave up 6 runs. That just sounds like the confidence spiral that you can't get out of unless you bring in a new pitcher, but for some reason the AI wouldn't hook.

Was wondering you've seen anything similar with your sliders or if yours are spread out among the pitchers more.

I actually don't doubt certain pitches are more likely to cause wild pitches/hit-by-pitches. The pitches that are harder to command in the game and with a big break which pitchers tend to like to locate down or miss in the zone... those are definitely more likely to become wild pitches. Or sliders and such which can also break away from catchers.

And given the difficulty of commanding pitches, they are also prone to confidence/command meltdown as you mentioned.

I haven't kept track of it but perhaps I should try for a while... but I don't know if such information actually would help the developers tune the game properly. Assume that it's just big curve balls, should they just tweak those pitches somehow?

I think they should just make catchers keep the dropped balls very close in front of him, like professional catchers do. They are definitely occasionally capable of it in the game, so I think the game should make that happen much more than it does right now (based on the Block attribute as well of course).

[doctorhay53]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

IMO the problem with wild pitches is really that catchers don't throw enough guys out and runners attempt to advance on balls that end up far too close to the catcher. Most of the WP's I've seen have been on balls that most catchers would throw the guy out, but currently if the catcher barely drops the ball the runners take off. That's what's out of whack IMO.

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

IMO the problem with wild pitches is really that catchers don't throw enough guys out and runners attempt to advance on balls that end up far too close to the catcher. Most of the WP's I've seen have been on balls that most catchers would throw the guy out, but currently if the catcher barely drops the ball the runners take off. That's what's out of whack IMO.

Ideally, base runners are more tentative in deciding to take off or not when the pitch goes in the dirt, and also there should be some random factor in that decision (i.e., they don't take off when they are likely to be safe, or they take off when they shouldn't).

But I don't think that kind of substantial logic change would make it into a patch... at least I don't think I've seen it happen before. That's why my suggestion tends to be something simple, even if it doesn't solve the root of the issue... (I'm of the kind who wants to see a solution than not seeing one at all, even if the solution is kinda ugly... especially when it's a year of wait we are talking about...)

I think in MLB 16, the catchers were much quicker handling pitches in the dirt, so I remember seeing a lot of base runners gunned down taking off when they really shouldn't. That wasn't pretty to see either... so making catchers quicker isn't really an ideal solution for a patch either.

That's why I think the best "compromise" is to make the "pitch in the dirt" situation happen much less to begin with, so that we don't have to see plays that are not quite well balanced as unrealistically frequently as they happen right now. That was basically what was happening in MLB 16... catchers caught pitches in the dirt cleanly much more often than they do now in MLB 17.

Who knows the devs might actually come thru big time...

[Ranger Fan]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Batting Average down 15 points with the last set. May want to bring solid hits back up to 7. That 5/9 set seemed to test allot better. I was looking at the spread sheet and MB averge is 255 and the set is testing at 240. Thats seems to be a result of sloid hits being dropped to 6

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Batting Average down 15 points with the last set. May want to bring solid hits back up to 7. That 5/9 set seemed to test allot better. I was looking at the spread sheet and MB averge is 255 and the set is testing at 240. Thats seems to be a result of sloid hits being dropped to 6

What I didn't like about the 5/9 set is HR frequency... I'm not sure the most recent patch changed anything, but had that stayed at the level of 5/8 set (that one is with Solid Hit 7 as well), I've had no issues with it, but somehow HR was a little easy to come by. Part of that should be from having more days with wind blowing out, but I felt like I might have made the HR sweet spot a little bigger than desirable...

But of course you are free to tweak own your set with any of those base sets tested here. Numbers can be difficult to properly interpret with small samples and also with various biases though.

I am not (yet) concerned about the low batting average of 5/11 set... at this point I'm more interested in keeping BABIP high, closer to .300, which is so far okay. So long as that happens, the batting average will eventually stabilize closer to what I want to see (.255). I think it's mostly the hit types that have tended The Show at default to produce anemic offence... the game is a little too fly ball happy, and fly balls tend to lower BABIP and therefore batting average.

Unlike BABIP, batting average is also affected by things like Ks. and I think there were a few more high-Ks games that led K% to be a little higher than expected in the small sample of 5/11... but it will eventually come down lower and in turn that should bring the batting average up. BB% and K% (or swing & miss %, foul/swing, O-Swing % and such which are likely more reliable) have been pretty stable with all the sets by now, so that's my expectation.

[My993C2]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Question: I am a tad surprised to see that you have the "BR Steal Ability" set to the max at a 10. Are you still seeing base stealers being thrown out? I am not sure what the league average is, but I have watched a lot of live games this year where the announcers are talking about a 75% threshold. In otherwords what they appear to be saying is that if the base stealer does not have at least a 75% success rate, they should not be attempting to steal.

I've pretty much adopted your slider settings now for the last 2 weeks as I believe I had a fault in my own sliders settings that I was using for the first month of my season. With my own slider settings I had the "Pitcher Control" setting much higher in an attempt to control the Wild Pitch and Passed Ball problems in the game this year. But over time I believe this was having a negative effect on the batting averages across the league (every game in my season to date that my MoM team is not involved in has been a CPU vs CPU QC Fast Play game). So I scrapped my sliders and began using your slider recommendations about 2 weeks ago and batting averages across the league are slowly rising. But I am just wondering about the "BR Steal Ability" being as high as it is.

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Question: I am a tad surprised to see that you have the "BR Steal Ability" set to the max at a 10. Are you still seeing base stealers being thrown out? I am not sure what the league average is, but I have watched a lot of live games this year where the announcers are talking about a 75% threshold. In otherwords what they appear to be saying is that if the base stealer does not have at least a 75% success rate, they should not be attempting to steal.

I've pretty much adopted your slider settings now for the last 2 weeks as I believe I had a fault in my own sliders settings that I was using for the first month of my season. With my own slider settings I had the "Pitcher Control" setting much higher in an attempt to control the Wild Pitch and Passed Ball problems in the game this year. But over time I believe this was having a negative effect on the batting averages across the league (every game in my season to date that my MoM team is not involved in has been a CPU vs CPU QC Fast Play game). So I scrapped my sliders and began using your slider recommendations about 2 weeks ago and batting averages across the league are slowly rising. But I am just wondering about the "BR Steal Ability" being as high as it is.

This is purely a speculation from my past experiences... but I think the developers means the BR Steal Ability slider to be able to correct the steal success rate when we vary Pitch Speed sliders.

(Except those years when the game balance around base steal was off and could not be corrected by sliders at all,) I tend to find the steal success rate becomes right around the MLB average when I set BR Steal Ability slider to the same value as Pitch Speed slider.

Pitch Speed sliders should not affect in-game physics and most of the game balance at all, but one thing it does change is the basesteal success rate. I believe this is because the game isn't manually giving bonus/penalty when the user changes Pitch Speed sliders, but they do change the actual timing of things, so if the in-game pitch speed is increased, base stealers aren't as successful stealing if the "jump" they get remains the same... so I think BR Steal Ability probably adjusts that jump (or how fast they run on just steals), in order for us to keep the success rate in tact.

So when you increase/decrease Pitch Speed sliders, you should increase/decrease BR Steal Ability accordingly.


And yes Pitcher Control does have a very significant effect on CPU's ability to hit... I think The Show's hitting engine is substantially dependent on pitch location, so making pitchers more accurate would help them execute their pitches and retire batters, and making them less accurate would help hitters by seeing poorly executed, more hittable pitches.

[ParisB]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

This is purely a speculation from my past experiences... but I think the developers means the BR Steal Ability slider to be able to correct the steal success rate when we vary Pitch Speed sliders.

(Except those years when the game balance around base steal was off and could not be corrected by sliders at all,) I tend to find the steal success rate becomes right around the MLB average when I set BR Steal Ability slider to the same value as Pitch Speed slider.

Pitch Speed sliders should not affect in-game physics and most of the game balance at all, but one thing it does change is the basesteal success rate. I believe this is because the game isn't manually giving bonus/penalty when the user changes Pitch Speed sliders, but they do change the actual timing of things, so if the in-game pitch speed is increased, base stealers aren't as successful stealing if the "jump" they get remains the same... so I think BR Steal Ability probably adjusts that jump (or how fast they run on just steals), in order for us to keep the success rate in tact.

So when you increase/decrease Pitch Speed sliders, you should increase/decrease BR Steal Ability accordingly.


And yes Pitcher Control does have a very significant effect on CPU's ability to hit... I think The Show's hitting engine is substantially dependent on pitch location, so making pitchers more accurate would help them execute their pitches and retire batters, and making them less accurate would help hitters by seeing poorly executed, more hittable pitches.

Also I'm pretty sure that Control has a dice roll relationship with Contact, which is also vaguely alluded to in the sliders description.

I've noticed that when Control is max, even a pitch down the middle (intentionally) is less likely to get pounded and still overpowers pitchers over the hitter. Control at minimum results in opposite effect.

When pitches are thrown down the middle as a dice roll "mistake" it is more likely to get blasted when Control is low.

I don't keep track like you do though but wondering if you get the same sense since you are the king of stats.

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[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Also I'm pretty sure that Control has a dice roll relationship with Contact, which is also vaguely alluded to in the sliders description.

I've noticed that when Control is max, even a pitch down the middle (intentionally) is less likely to get pounded and still overpowers pitchers over the hitter. Control at minimum results in opposite effect.

When pitches are thrown down the middle as a dice roll "mistake" it is more likely to get blasted when Control is low.

I don't keep track like you do though but wondering if you get the same sense since you are the king of stats

I am actually not sure if any dice roll element exists, at least in ways that the Control slider affects things.

It could of course be wrong, but if I were to make a wild guess, I'm more inclined to vote for an assumption that Control only affects the pitcher's ability to command pitches and not any aspect of hitter's Contact/Vision/Power (and/or pitchers' H/9/K/9 for that matter).

There are a few reasons for this, which I'd personally enjoy to elaborate on but could just be tiring for people to hear, but one major reason is the recent introduction of "precision input." That would make an interesting discussion about the game itself so I may come back to it later, but basically what the developers wanted to do was to remove as much dice roll element as reasonable from the hitting engine... because there were/used to be a lot more complaint about how random hitting results seem. So I'm very doubtful that the current hitting engine has a whole a lot of random dice roll element to it right now... at least not as much as it used to exist.

One quick experiment to see if Control actually affects the hitter's ability as you describe is to set up a HUM vs. HUM game in which a pitcher (with average attributes) keeps throwing fastballs down the middle, and Zone hitter (with average attributes) tries to square them up without moving PCI at all. Repeat this for low and high Control setting.

If what you are saying is true, I'd expect hitters to produce more line drives when Control is low, and produce more fly/ground balls when Control is high.

I haven't tried this yet (I might when I get home), but I actually think the results would be the opposite... the reason being with the Contorl slider low, the pitcher would have a more difficult time keeping the pitch close to the center of the PCI, so more pitches would be scattered near the edge of PCI where poorer hits are more likely to be produced.

Basically, I think this would be seeing how a pitcher can be effectively wild, so to speak.


Who knows you might prove me wrong... I gotta tries this when I get home, when my mom's away...

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

...

One quick experiment to see if Control actually affects the hitter's ability as you describe is to set up a HUM vs. HUM game in which a pitcher (with average attributes) keeps throwing fastballs down the middle, and Zone hitter (with average attributes) tries to square them up without moving PCI at all. Repeat this for low and high Control setting.

If what you are saying is true, I'd expect hitters to produce more line drives when Control is low, and produce more fly/ground balls when Control is high.

I haven't tried this yet (I might when I get home), but I actually think the results would be the opposite... the reason being with the Contorl slider low, the pitcher would have a more difficult time keeping the pitch close to the center of the PCI, so more pitches would be scattered near the edge of PCI where poorer hits are more likely to be produced.

...

I actually just tried this... A's lineup with Zone interface always centered hitting against Matt Moore throwing fastballs down the middle with a tap with Classic pitching. Kept all the sliders constant, Pitcher Consistency 10 (to eliminate wildness due to this slider), and tried Pitcher Control 0 and 10.

I think I definitely find it easier to hit against when Pitcher Control is 10, exactly for the reason I mentioned... the pitcher is better at throwing to the intended location, i.e., down the middle.

If lowering Control slider somehow artificially boost the batter's ability, I'd think it would feel easier to hit against when Control slider is set low, but I don't think it feels that way at all.

[sonsart2]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Nomo,

Wanted to get your thoughts on this. It seems to me that due there are an exaggerated number of HBP, which despite your efforts can't seem to get under control much like the WP issue. Are you consciously trying to deflate walks a little so that the net effect of both it about the same as they are IRL?

[doctorhay53]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

I just saw the AI leave Jon Lester in for 140 pitches vying for a shutout. He gave up a hit with 2 outs in the ninth and he finally took him out, but that seemed a little excessive.

Using the 5/12 settings FWIW. Not a complaint, just some information.

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

I just saw the AI leave Jon Lester in for 140 pitches vying for a shutout. He gave up a hit with 2 outs in the ninth and he finally took him out, but that seemed a little excessive.

Using the 5/12 settings FWIW. Not a complaint, just some information.

Yeah, I think going for CG/SHO is probably the only time the AI lets the starter in (mostly) regardless of pitch count.

It used to be much worse in that the AI left starters in if the difference in runs is above some threshold (something like 5 runs)... so the AI would leave a starter not particularly pitching well, but if the team is leading with a plenty of run support, he would try to go for CG regardless of pitch count. Now at least it happens only when the CPU pitcher is shutting the opponent out, I think.

[nomo17k]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Nomo,

Wanted to get your thoughts on this. It seems to me that due there are an exaggerated number of HBP, which despite your efforts can't seem to get under control much like the WP issue. Are you consciously trying to deflate walks a little so that the net effect of both it about the same as they are IRL?

That's actually a good thinking and I would try doing something like that, if the amount of inflation of HBP is above the "annoyance" threshold, i.e., feels unbearable because it feels like it happens unrealistically often.

To me, the HBP inflation, unlike that of WP, isn't quite above that threshold right now (though it's close). At least I haven't seen people complain about it happening too often, like they have with WPs which is definitely above the annoyance threshold.

And to adjust the amount of HBPs, we only have Pitcher Consistency (big effect) and Pitcher Control (smaller effect), and these have substantial effects on other parts of the game that (I think) are more important, like batting average, K%, BB%, etc., so I'm not inclined to sacrifice the accuracy of those over adjusting HBPs.

Some people have reported feeling that it's easier to walk this year. Some also reported seeing more meatballs thrown deep in the strike zone... though I'm not totally sure there's actual truth to these observations, the inflation of HBPs seems consistent with pitchers being less accurate this year. At least they seem "capable" of missing spots laterally more than they were. In MLB 16, HBPs were pretty much right on with default sliders and even with Pitcher Consistency lowered. This year they are a bit inflated at default and me lowering the sliders making it a little bit worse.

[ParisB]

Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 17 Version]

Right now I switched to dynamic difficulty (with these sliders) and playing many games to try and level it out...

Which of the current slider settings are you still tuning or looking at? It seems like they are settling in where some of them have remained the same for some iterations. I did notice Wind is back up to 4 and Control is down to 1.

Cliff notes: should I start running new season with these?

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