Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

Collapse

Recommended Videos

Collapse
X
 
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • NolanRyansSnowmonkey
    MVP
    • Jun 2016
    • 1354

    #106
    Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

    Looking at the 4/26 set, compared to the 4/25 set, with Soliid Hits increased by one, I can see a similar effect to what we've been discussing.

    We've discussed it with the Contact slider, but like you pointed out, they can behave similarly in some areas. When I raised Contact, my Home Run numbers fell, while leaving Solid Hits, Power, etc. the same. Likewise, when you raised Solid Hits, and left Contact, Power, etc the same, Home run numbers dropped. No surprise there, of course, but it just fits the discussion.

    The other similar thing I noticed is that Line Drive% increased 5.5% with Solid Hits raised one notch. Again, that's what you would expect. The interesting thing to me is that the ground ball% also decreased by 5.4%, leaving fly ball% virtually untouched.

    I pointed out in a recent post that my Home Run numbers fell when I raised Contact, despite my Fly Ball numbers remaining nearly the same as before, and that ground balls seemed to turn into Line Drives more than fly balls did.

    This may just be a coincidence, and both are relatively small sample sizes, but interesting nonetheless.

    I would expect given the same Power, and the same amount of fly balls, that a very similar percentage of those fly balls would carry over the wall.

    I immediately thought that fly ball trajectories have just lowered, causing more to fall into play. But that would seem to cause lower fly ball trajectories to turn into high line drives, thus lowering fly ball% which hasn't happened in our given sample sizes, at least.

    Maybe with higher sample sizes i would see a more even morph into line drives, but I just see things like this and ask "why"... a lot lol.

    I know I think about these things more than 98% of people who play the Show, but at least it keeps me entertained.

    I'm not really posing any questions here, just sharing my observations.

    Comment

    • KBLover
      Hall Of Fame
      • Aug 2009
      • 12172

      #107
      Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

      Originally posted by NolanRyansSnowmonkey
      I immediately thought that fly ball trajectories have just lowered, causing more to fall into play. But that would seem to cause lower fly ball trajectories to turn into high line drives, thus lowering fly ball% which hasn't happened in our given sample sizes, at least.
      I haven't had any success lowering FB rate by increasing Solid Hits.

      Lower fly balls? Yes that sometimes happens.

      Though, I play Directional, so other factors are in play. So, I'm starting to really wonder what Solid Hits is doing for Directional play. Given that I have no control over the PCI, but yet Solid Hits is doing something but that something is more flyballs instead of more line drives. That goes against the graphic Nomo shared and what I also thought was the case.

      Perhaps what Solid Hits is doing is increasing the velocity of the batted ball type at least as much as impacting the batted ball type itself, especially with the new hitting engine in this year's game. So if my player hits a FB because of where he put his PCI, Solid Hits makes that less likely to be lazy fly of whatever trajectory.

      Something like Power = Max possible velocity. Solid Hits = How likely to get at or near that max velocity on the contact the player made.

      Idk, but line drive rate is not consistently impacted by Solid Hits at least from what I can tell.
      "Some people call it butterflies, but to him, it probably feels like pterodactyls in his stomach." --Plesac in MLB18

      Comment

      • nomo17k
        Permanently Banned
        • Feb 2011
        • 5735

        #108
        Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

        Originally posted by NolanRyansSnowmonkey
        ...

        The other similar thing I noticed is that Line Drive% increased 5.5% with Solid Hits raised one notch. Again, that's what you would expect. The interesting thing to me is that the ground ball% also decreased by 5.4%, leaving fly ball% virtually untouched.

        ...
        Originally posted by KBLover
        I haven't had any success lowering FB rate by increasing Solid Hits.

        Lower fly balls? Yes that sometimes happens.

        Though, I play Directional, so other factors are in play. So, I'm starting to really wonder what Solid Hits is doing for Directional play. Given that I have no control over the PCI, but yet Solid Hits is doing something but that something is more flyballs instead of more line drives. That goes against the graphic Nomo shared and what I also thought was the case.

        ..

        One thing about computing FB/LD/GB% from the batter/pitcher analysis is that they are "measured" slightly differently from the similar stats that we are familiar with in real baseball stats site like FanGraphs.

        This is "confirmed" since it is from a conversation I had with a programmer at SDS (that basically means B. Ma). It wasn't a very through discussion so I couldn't ask things in detail, but basically in-game batted ball types are computed from the actual "vectors" of the ball physics which I believe is quite different from how they are measured in real life.

        In a sense, in-game measurement could be considered more accurate in that it's directly tied to the actual physics, but in real life quite often the distinctions among different hit types aren't exactly clear cut.

        For example, a hard hit ball with a very low launch angle would be a line drive if caught by an infielder in the air but is a grounder if it bounces even just once before it's caught due to the fielder placement. In this case, even thought the physics of the batted ball is exactly the same, the hit type varies due to how it was handled by the fielder.

        Similar factors play a role in the difficulty of what is to call fly ball as oppose to line drives, and vice versa.

        In short, the caveat is that compareing the MLB and in-game FB/LD/GB% can be a tricky business, and in my experience doing so is not exactly meaningful. What's more meaningful is how the in-game numbers change when sliders are adjusted.

        It's also notable that the game has always under-produced ground balls if I look at GB%, consistently so for all those years I've been doing this. I'm not sure why this has not been revisited, but there are some who think the game produces too many pop-ups (but relatively few weak grounders... especially in the past). I think this is a piece of evidence in support of that complaint.
        The Show CPU vs. CPU game stats: 2018,17,16,15,14,13,12,11

        Comment

        • nomo17k
          Permanently Banned
          • Feb 2011
          • 5735

          #109
          Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

          Originally posted by KBLover
          I haven't had any success lowering FB rate by increasing Solid Hits.

          Lower fly balls? Yes that sometimes happens.

          Though, I play Directional, so other factors are in play. So, I'm starting to really wonder what Solid Hits is doing for Directional play. Given that I have no control over the PCI, but yet Solid Hits is doing something but that something is more flyballs instead of more line drives. That goes against the graphic Nomo shared and what I also thought was the case.

          Perhaps what Solid Hits is doing is increasing the velocity of the batted ball type at least as much as impacting the batted ball type itself, especially with the new hitting engine in this year's game. So if my player hits a FB because of where he put his PCI, Solid Hits makes that less likely to be lazy fly of whatever trajectory.

          Something like Power = Max possible velocity. Solid Hits = How likely to get at or near that max velocity on the contact the player made.

          Idk, but line drive rate is not consistently impacted by Solid Hits at least from what I can tell.
          How is your timing and pitch location in general? If you tend to commit to pitches in the upper part of the strike zone and/or tend to swing late, your are more likely to hit fly balls regardless.
          The Show CPU vs. CPU game stats: 2018,17,16,15,14,13,12,11

          Comment

          • KBLover
            Hall Of Fame
            • Aug 2009
            • 12172

            #110
            Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

            Originally posted by nomo17k
            How is your timing and pitch location in general? If you tend to commit to pitches in the upper part of the strike zone and/or tend to swing late, your are more likely to hit fly balls regardless.
            In general, I swing at middle on down. With power guys, I'll swing at higher pitches occasionally, especially 3-1, 2-0 when I'm guessing strike. So I might power swing and if it's middle-up, swing, if it's low, take even for a strike.

            But I'm pretty much swearing off high pitches unless the pitcher is showing they are just attacking there, maybe because I'm not swinging at them.

            I tend to have a lot of linedrive/gap power hitters on my teams. So I'm usually influencing down and swinging around middle to lower in the zone if at all possible.

            What's funny, though, is even on low pitches, I'll get pop ups or fly balls even when the feed back says "Good" timing, or Just Early/Just Late. Any earlier or later is usually fouled away and I track both with and without fouls in the calculation (I *think* IRL only does fair balls but I track both ways since I'm not sure). The contact quality will be "Okay" or "Weak" and it's a lazy fly or something.
            Last edited by KBLover; 04-27-2018, 04:58 AM.
            "Some people call it butterflies, but to him, it probably feels like pterodactyls in his stomach." --Plesac in MLB18

            Comment

            • nomo17k
              Permanently Banned
              • Feb 2011
              • 5735

              #111
              Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

              Originally posted by NolanRyansSnowmonkey
              Looking at the 4/26 set, compared to the 4/25 set, with Soliid Hits increased by one, I can see a similar effect to what we've been discussing.

              ...

              The big difference in the offense between the 4/25 and 4/26 sets is actually bothering me right now, haha...

              I stopped going with the 4/25 set after just 15 games since the offense had been too consistently anemic (both batting average and BABIP being low) to think it was due to pure luck, but then what should be a relatively minor change of increasing Solid Hits by one has boosted the offense to the "too much" category (HRs appeared not to come initially, but I think part of that was an unlucky stretch... I was expecting/hoping that HRs would increase a bit at least).

              This is the kind moment I wonder if the slider is working as intended. The change seems a bit too drastic for such a minor adjustment to cause.

              Effectively the only change between the 4/23 and 4/25 set was one click of Power. Seeing how I have been adjusting HRs to the most HR-happy year of the MLB history (which is probably not a good idea... 2018 is not likely to repeat 2017), I was hoping that lowering Power would reduce HRs but also the overall offense a bit (which was quite a bit inflated in the 4/23 set). But the offense literally tanked in the 4/25 set.


              I've seen this kind of quirkiness before, but it feels to me that it's happening in ways that my intuition from prior years is not as useful. Not very surprising given how ball physics and hitting mechanism has changed so much this year, but still kinda frustrating that it looks this quirky.
              The Show CPU vs. CPU game stats: 2018,17,16,15,14,13,12,11

              Comment

              • trublud0dger
                Rookie
                • Mar 2003
                • 67

                #112
                Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                Had anyone tried these sliders with directional hitting and classic pitching?

                Sent from my LGLS676 using Operation Sports mobile app

                Comment

                • KBLover
                  Hall Of Fame
                  • Aug 2009
                  • 12172

                  #113
                  Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                  Originally posted by trublud0dger
                  Had anyone tried these sliders with directional hitting and classic pitching?

                  Sent from my LGLS676 using Operation Sports mobile app
                  I haven't tried it yet this year, but I know one year, I think MLB16 it was, I put in nomo's pitching for the user and used his CPU hitting and it played quite well.

                  I think the classic pitching would work well. Hitting would determine more your own ability. Could make for a good base, especially if you leave Contact and Solid Hits alone as much as possible. (less likely to mess with the batted ball type ratios)
                  "Some people call it butterflies, but to him, it probably feels like pterodactyls in his stomach." --Plesac in MLB18

                  Comment

                  • NolanRyansSnowmonkey
                    MVP
                    • Jun 2016
                    • 1354

                    #114
                    Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                    Originally posted by nomo17k
                    The big difference in the offense between the 4/25 and 4/26 sets is actually bothering me right now, haha...

                    I stopped going with the 4/25 set after just 15 games since the offense had been too consistently anemic (both batting average and BABIP being low) to think it was due to pure luck, but then what should be a relatively minor change of increasing Solid Hits by one has boosted the offense to the "too much" category (HRs appeared not to come initially, but I think part of that was an unlucky stretch... I was expecting/hoping that HRs would increase a bit at least).

                    This is the kind moment I wonder if the slider is working as intended. The change seems a bit too drastic for such a minor adjustment to cause.

                    Effectively the only change between the 4/23 and 4/25 set was one click of Power. Seeing how I have been adjusting HRs to the most HR-happy year of the MLB history (which is probably not a good idea... 2018 is not likely to repeat 2017), I was hoping that lowering Power would reduce HRs but also the overall offense a bit (which was quite a bit inflated in the 4/23 set). But the offense literally tanked in the 4/25 set.


                    I've seen this kind of quirkiness before, but it feels to me that it's happening in ways that my intuition from prior years is not as useful. Not very surprising given how ball physics and hitting mechanism has changed so much this year, but still kinda frustrating that it looks this quirky.
                    Yeah that is odd to say the least. 4/25 was awfully anemic to be just luck it would seem. But i guess there is the outside chance that numbers actually were just running low. They would have to turn around pretty quickly to even out though through a 25 game set. We all know how funny baseball numbers can run however.

                    What gives a little hope is the fact that you changed only the solid hits slider from 5 to 4 between 4/15 and 4/17 and saw very little change in batting average and babip numbers, even less than I would expect.

                    So unless that quirkiness is that the solid hits slider itself is inconsistent, it seems to me that either the numbers were indeed going through a lull, or some other slider like Power has a huge effect on the actual solid hits slider, which I kind of doubt.

                    I plan on running those 4/25 sliders a bit and see what I get. Might take me a few days but I'm curious.
                    Last edited by NolanRyansSnowmonkey; 04-27-2018, 08:22 PM.

                    Comment

                    • doctemple
                      Rookie
                      • Sep 2012
                      • 159

                      #115
                      Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                      Originally posted by nomo17k
                      If I end up posting to the slider vault, it would probably be named similarly to this thread title (i.e., "Stats-Based ..."). I don't have a recommended set quite yet, so it's not there. And I'm not sure if I'll post there at all.
                      Hey Nomo, I want to add my thanks for all your hard work and dedication! If you don’t end up posting your slider set to the vault, what slider set would you recommend for someone like me who plays franchise manager only mode?

                      Comment

                      • KBLover
                        Hall Of Fame
                        • Aug 2009
                        • 12172

                        #116
                        Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                        Originally posted by nomo17k
                        Effectively the only change between the 4/23 and 4/25 set was one click of Power. Seeing how I have been adjusting HRs to the most HR-happy year of the MLB history (which is probably not a good idea... 2018 is not likely to repeat 2017), I was hoping that lowering Power would reduce HRs but also the overall offense a bit (which was quite a bit inflated in the 4/23 set). But the offense literally tanked in the 4/25 set.

                        That was weird. I know if I put 6 Power for the CPU, I'd likely be getting bombed out of the park on HoF. So that's, what, like 7 or 8 on All-Star? I know above All-Star gives a bonus to the listed sliders (or at least it used to).

                        I've also seen that offense droop. It's almost like a wider PCI + lower power = more any contact but that contact is likely weaker because it could catch the edges of the PCI and lower power will make those a lower batted ball velocity. So, unless the higher Contact makes a better aligned PCI, the lower Power will neuter any of those "glancing hits", lowering BABIP and all contact "oomph", so to speak.

                        Do you think that's what you were seeing, Nomo?

                        As for Solid Hits - I have no idea. Sometimes it seems like that slider does nothing when I adjust it in vsCPU. I can only describe it to myself as the "carry" slider (how much carry do the hits have). That's about all I see it do.
                        "Some people call it butterflies, but to him, it probably feels like pterodactyls in his stomach." --Plesac in MLB18

                        Comment

                        • nomo17k
                          Permanently Banned
                          • Feb 2011
                          • 5735

                          #117
                          Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                          Originally posted by trublud0dger
                          Had anyone tried these sliders with directional hitting and classic pitching?
                          Originally posted by KBLover
                          I haven't tried it yet this year, but I know one year, I think MLB16 it was, I put in nomo's pitching for the user and used his CPU hitting and it played quite well.

                          I think the classic pitching would work well. Hitting would determine more your own ability. Could make for a good base, especially if you leave Contact and Solid Hits alone as much as possible. (less likely to mess with the batted ball type ratios)
                          Using as the base is a good suggestion if this slider set is adapted for HUM use.

                          I would also make sure that you play on All-star difficulty.

                          I'm not entirely sure if the latter claim still holds, given how the devs have been making the game easier and easier for the past few years, but it's usually been said as the "reference" difficulty level where the game plays most realistically, if the user is at the same skill level as CPU.
                          The Show CPU vs. CPU game stats: 2018,17,16,15,14,13,12,11

                          Comment

                          • nomo17k
                            Permanently Banned
                            • Feb 2011
                            • 5735

                            #118
                            Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                            Originally posted by doctemple
                            Hey Nomo, I want to add my thanks for all your hard work and dedication! If you don’t end up posting your slider set to the vault, what slider set would you recommend for someone like me who plays franchise manager only mode?
                            It's a kind of difficult question since the reason why I haven't declared any set to be recommended is that none has quite satisfied me in the areas that I think are essential, but if this were the last day before I would get abducted by aliens to some distant planet, I'd say the 4/21 or 4/22 set would be the closest to the target stats.

                            As I look at then again, they are both pretty good to the extent that I wonder why I didn't make one of them recommended, but I think I wasn't satisfied by the BB% (a bit low) and HR% (a bit high), and also I wanted to explore slowing down Fielder Run Speed for visual aesthetics.

                            But I think either slider set plays reasonably well.
                            The Show CPU vs. CPU game stats: 2018,17,16,15,14,13,12,11

                            Comment

                            • NolanRyansSnowmonkey
                              MVP
                              • Jun 2016
                              • 1354

                              #119
                              Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                              Originally posted by nomo17k
                              It's a kind of difficult question since the reason why I haven't declared any set to be recommended is that none has quite satisfied me in the areas that I think are essential, but if this were the last day before I would get abducted by aliens to some distant planet, I'd say the 4/21 or 4/22 set would be the closest to the target stats.

                              As I look at then again, they are both pretty good to the extent that I wonder why I didn't make one of them recommended, but I think I wasn't satisfied by the BB% (a bit low) and HR% (a bit high), and also I wanted to explore slowing down Fielder Run Speed for visual aesthetics.

                              But I think either slider set plays reasonably well.
                              If you get abducted by aliens, they will probably take you to some dark room deep in their abode, turn on a strange looking display screen, at which point you're suprised to see the splash screen of The Show...as they point their knobby fingers at it and say in their best Earth language, "Fix our freakin' sliders."

                              Comment

                              • doctemple
                                Rookie
                                • Sep 2012
                                • 159

                                #120
                                Re: Stats-Based CPU Sliders [MLB 18 Version Season-Mode Memorial Edition]

                                Originally posted by nomo17k
                                It's a kind of difficult question since the reason why I haven't declared any set to be recommended is that none has quite satisfied me in the areas that I think are essential, but if this were the last day before I would get abducted by aliens to some distant planet, I'd say the 4/21 or 4/22 set would be the closest to the target stats.

                                As I look at then again, they are both pretty good to the extent that I wonder why I didn't make one of them recommended, but I think I wasn't satisfied by the BB% (a bit low) and HR% (a bit high), and also I wanted to explore slowing down Fielder Run Speed for visual aesthetics.

                                But I think either slider set plays reasonably well.
                                Thanks so much!! I will now go see if I can find them in the vault. If you are abducted by aliens, then ask them to swing by and get me (I will have my PS4 packed up and ready to go)!

                                Comment

                                Working...