TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

One thing I am not understanding about pulse pitching. I thought the control of the picture to determine the size of the circle and the speed. Yet one of my pitcher has a control of 74 and has a much larger Circle then a pitcher that has a control of 65. What actually determines the size and speed of the pulse

BB/9 controls the size.

Control effects the pulse and the rate at which the ball lands within the circle. IE low control pitchers will land more often outside the circle.

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[Sairheart]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Just wanted to mention that I've played probably over 100 games with the sliders on Legend, they are excllent, the best gameplay of the show ever, for me.

What I will say is I play with max pitch speed and I also have my defense on auto. It's just too much of an ask to work through a lineup(at legend it does not matter the team you are playing if you are not deceptive with sequencing/smart at reading the bat when the batter swings and when they take, you will eventually either get rocked or give up some BS that makes you think the game is cheating) to then have a routine play kill you. Especially if you're super focused, you struck out the side and a few lazy flys, have been batting, then a long AB that ends in a walk, and suddenly the first ball in play you've seen in 15 minutes is some slightly tricky but routine play that turns into a circus.

I will also say, and I don't know how true this is for everyone else since I know not everyone loves playing on Legend or max pitch speed, but if you don't use the power swing you're dead. You might want to stick with it until two strikes, you can get a lot of success when you swing and miss with a power swing, and then adjust to a strong contact swing like fly ball direction/low inside etc, but the game is really designed on Legend for you to learn how to hit with power swing.

My point being is these sliders ensure when you are squaring balls up with a power swing, you're consistently hitting the ball very hard. Doesn't mean you won't make outs, that's baseball, but you will get a lot less results where you're like I squared that ball up and I keep fouling it off. Or that thing when you can only flare a fastball the other way for a hit etc. The game will punish you for not using the swing, and likewise if you take a good power swing and foul off, but then go to a contact swing and square it up, you;re much more likely to put that ball into play with authority. You'll see more four/five pitch walks, and when you line up with power swing it effects pitch confidence more which leads to more mistakes/pitches that are way out the zone.


Otherwise every number 5 starter will come out there giving you the business for 5 innings at least. Anyway, hopes it helps anyone lurking, excellent sliders, I'm glad you found love and I hope it works out for the best.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Ok so the were a few little issues that cropped up over a much larger sample size. Overall stats were very good, but the way those stats were occuring wasn't lining up quite right.

The biggest issues came with the extremes of the K/9 attribute and K/9-Vision interactions. On average, throughout the league, strikeout numbers were very good. However, facing a high K/9 pitcher just felt like a dice roll then actual skill, even when the batter's vision was higher then the pitchers K/9.

So I've tried raising timing and lowering foul frequency. The idea is that there are two aspects to the K/9-Vision relationship. There is the size of the timing window and the saving throw the vision attribute makes to dictate a foul. Raising timing nerfs K/9 on swings that you time well, while lowering foul frequency buffs K/9 on swings that you time poorly. The hope is by raising timing and lowering foul frequency that swings will feel like less of a dice roll for contact and more skill based while keeping overall K/9 effectiveness (and global strikeout rates) the same.

I'm also trying slowing the game down even more. Player differential on the field is not wide enough, and too many balls were being chased down by mediocre fielders, for both sides.

Errors also needed to go up. I'll post an update when I'm sure the settings are actually better than V3.

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[Sairheart]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

ha interesting that you're back, I just spent a month or so really working on the hitting and I just thought I need to raise the timing, let me see if there's an update on this lol

like it's hard to be sure, especially at max pitch speed, who to blame at first lol so I spent a lot of time making sure I wasn't just getting whooped on, which I was. I was basically practicing against the rays and orioles, so a bunch of the hardest throwing strikeout guys in the game, and a team with a bunch of average guys.

There's just too many foul balls all around. I'm playing with the yankees and because they have a bunch of the best power hitters in the game, when I get offensive games where I like get 5 walks 8 hits, 2 doubles a homer I'm like that's a really great result there. But that's against the orioles lol

Once it's a above average pitcher it's not a crap shoot, but early in the count it feels like you have to go power swing, plus guess right on direction, then line the pitch up and you get consistent results. So high fb, fly ball influence, ok.

Every other time it feels like you need to have two or three good swings just to result in balls in play lol like I get so many hits with contact swing after coming down from power swings, and yankees hitters can sill hit homers with that swing, but I imagine I would've thought to change the timing long ago if I wasn't playing with the yankees. With a guy like sanchez, you can have a well timed pitch right in the middle of your pci(but not perfect) with a power swing and he will swing right through it.

You can resolve this issue by going to contact swing a lot but all you're going to do is hit ground balls and flyouts and slap the occasionally FB the other way. Hard hit balls that result in outs is one thing, but 10 pitch AB's where you can't put anything in play with authority without a perfect(and that still can result in an out lol) it's just masochistic at that point. Anyway thanks again I'll check back after I get back around to playing a bunch again.

Edit: so what I'm doing is moving timing up one, foul down one, fielder speed down one, and errors up one, fielder reaction up one, otherwise everyone beats out ground balls. My defense is on auto and I feel like the most important thing is that the routine plays are made the vast majority of the time, but I have noticed when hitting that every fielder is capable of a spectacular play and that no mans land space between the infield and the outfield is often covered by an infielder when it really shouldn't be, at least not that easily. The most routine error I see is an outfielder misplaying a hit, allowing the runner to move up. Rarely do you see infielder throwing errors.

second edit: almost instant results lol for reference no matter the batter I start fly ball power swing, if I go ahead in the count, I go to pull power swing, up two balls I go to up and in power swing. If I miss with a power swing or don't like my swing I go line drive normal/line drive power swing depending. Behind in the count I only use linedrive contact/low in contact/flyball contact. With two strikes I basically stay only linedrive normal or flyball contact. This was me trying to maximize power and contact and see if it was me or the sliders.

I probably might not have to be as strict with these adjustments, I might be able to go normal swing more often, but I really recommend at least one power swing an AB, and in my experience all the other directional inputs only really work when the ball is in that spot, otherwise it tends to be foul ball at best.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

I wouldn't say I'm back. I never really left. I just slowed down my pace of play and the length of time between my last update and this reflects that fact.

I'll continue to try and be a resource to the community, I just won't have the same confidence in my sliders that I used to due to the fact that I'm not nearly pumping out results at the rate as I have in the past.

I've always binged and fasted on the show, and I still do, it's just that my binges are less frequent and less intense. I can't fully predict what the future holds, but I'd expect a slow wind-down between me and the show moving forward. I still got a few more years of being a superfan, but with each year that passes... Well, you know.

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[Sairheart]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

ok I got some run in lately after beating ghosts of tshushima and getting into death stranding lol

Such a small adjustment, I put timing up one again, and human contact up one. I usually don't touch the sliders unless I have a game where like I have a bunch of hard hit balls, never strike out, and I can't buy a hit still. I'm playing with the yankees against the orioles #2 guy, and I was being no hit through six with 3ks and 2 bbs lol I was also seeing too many times seeing perfect/perfect result in a routine out(should never happen, it shouldn't be a homer or even a hit but it has to be high exit velo) and many times getting good timing and on the fat of the bat and still a foul ball.

The thing that I felt needed to be accounted for was opposing pitch confidence, you're going to swing and miss, but just because a pitch confidence is maxed out doesn't make the pitch de facto unhittable lol and striving for reality, rarely do hitters always hit the sweet spot on the bat, it's about timing and balance. For me at least, I feel like you should be rewarded with high exit velo at least, when you have good timing, get the fat of the cursor on the ball, and have established "balance." Combined with pitch confidence, legend being generally brutal in terms of luck factor, and the umpire strikezone potential, it's really crucial that you are at least getting the ball in play when you earn it just from getting bat on ball. Then all the other dynamics of the hitter and the fielder come into play. Slowing everyone down one really helped here.

Edit: had to delete a bunch of stuff here and come back to make this point about legend, that may have always been true about the difficulty. You simply cannot get off power swing, even with two strikes. Without two strikes just go neutral power swing, fly ball/up and in if you get ahead, line drive if you swing and miss, don't input the same swing twice. only use contact swing down 0-2, otherwise keeping going line drive normal swing/fly ball normal in 1-2 counts.

When you even the count just alternate between power and normal swing but you want to get back to the power swing. With these sliders, if you line up on power swing you will get consistent results. There's really just nothing to do about the game not respecting normal/contact swing consistently on legend difficulty. Bumping the sliders won't fix the problem and will likely hurt hit variety. Figure out a strategy that doesn't have you breaking the plane with check swings with power all the time and you will have a fair and balanced experience at this difficulty, paired with these sliders imo.

If you're consistenly putting the ball in play with contact and regular swings you simply will not hit lol

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

I'm going to declare my sliders as final, not because I'm confident in them, but because I've just been completely absorbed by other games. Now that I've got my hands on Cyberpunk 2077... yeah I really like that game.

I haven't given up on the Show, but even if I were to quit everything else to only focus on video games, I still wouldn't have time for it right now. Like I said before, I'll keep trying to be a resource to the community, but between Overwatch, Cyberpunk, my recent increased interest in sim racing, and my desire to get back to single player story driven games (outside of Cyberpunk even), I'm afraid baseball will be limited to just a game or two a week.

[Sairheart]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Last thing I'm trying before I take another break from mlb is actually maxing out, or near maxing out human timing. It's like having computer contact at zero...does that stop the number nine hitter from launching a homer off your closer in a tie game nope lol like if I start getting a bunch of hits with very early/very late then I'll take it down. But I always notice if I give up some runs, suddenly those balls are falling in, I'm getting a homer. When I'm breezing through the first few innings, completely dominating, nothing but K's and weak outs, it's line drives everywhere getting caught. I once had an inning with Lemahieu homer barely foul, Judge homer barely foul, I traded for didi, ball caught right up against the wall lol fouling fastballs back over the plate with Judge using power swing, good timing, right in that PCI lol then later after I've blown the lead power swing but clearly off center is a dead center bomb. IMO fat part of the cursor, good/just late/just early timing should be a hard hit ball somewhere, even if it's foul. The hitter attributes and the fielder attributes should end up dictating what happens after, and whether or not you connected with a power swing.

You never wanna boost the sliders in your favor because you want the game to be hard and fair but it's like every game I play is 3-2, 2-0. This is more a reflection on my completely dominating the AI with pitching I feel, as opposed to anything wrong with the sliders which I think are very good. The batting average for balls in play with exit velo over like 95 MPH is like over .500 league wide, towards 100 MPH exit velo you're talking like .700/.800. You can't be hitting the ball hard and not getting results because I'm two hitting the computer with jordan montgomery lol this is why it's so important that your timing is rewarded, the margin for error is so small.

I've been getting great results with maxed on timing actually, and it's not a bunch of hits. It's mainly stopped the brutal check swing dynamic, which is central to hitting a max pitch speed/zone hitting/a camera angle that's far enough to see the batter etc and getting hard hit balls in play, even if their outs, keeps the pitch confidence from going through the roof the way swing and misses do. And putting the ball in play is more fair than asking a player to take three, four power great swings every AB just to have a chance to get the ball hit in play with reliable authority.

When you're putting the ball in play more, and getting more guys on base, I feel like you see less of the ridiculous stuff happening when you're pitching because the game isn't like "you haven't hit a ball hard at all in several AB's you don't deserve to win this game" lol likewise if you're constantly getting good timing and bat on ball, you'll notice you start to get rewarded more even when you aren't perfect. I feel like pitch confidence also ends up playing a role there. You can't get that dynamic if the game keeps registering you not making good contact lol and if you're doing zone hitting on legend regardless, the game isn't giving anything to you for free anyway. If anything, cruelty is the name of the game on legend. Everything leans against you when the computer realizes they can't figure out your sequencing and you aren't making mistakes with the pitch input. I've seen many late inning suicide squeeze attempts lol

Anyway I'll see what I find out I'm mainly just fine tuning my approach for 21

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Ok turns out I'm full of it and their was a V4 in the works. I've been playing on it for months and I just forgot about it thanks to the hubub of life.

I'm not sure how rigorous my testing has been, but the fog is lifting on some of it as I'm looking through all the changes I made.

I'll just post what I got sometime tomorrow.

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[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

V4 up in the OP. Will be posted in the vault in a few minutes.

[bibibanax]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Thanks for your good work. I play Spring Training with the 1993 Expos and your sliders are very good so far (only 9 games played).

What changes did you make in this version?

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Thanks for your good work. I play Spring Training with the 1993 Expos and your sliders are very good so far (only 9 games played).

What changes did you make in this version?

The biggest change is timing went up and foul frequency went down.

This happened for three reasons, one because overall strikeout numbers were good but it felt more random then earned. Raising timing and lowering foul frequency for both human and CPU will make a swing and miss a more earned by the pitcher for keeping the batter off balance thing while keeping overall swing and misses about the same.

The second reason is because K/9 was still too powerful of an attribute (and may still be) and league wide, pitcher's with high K/9 had too much and too consistent success, especially when compared to their counterparts with high H/9 or other desirable attributes. K/9 should be important, but it shouldn't be the be all and end all that it was.

The third is I wasn't fully satisfied with hit variety, and raising timing can be a good way to do that (as long as your other sliders aren't causing problems in that regard).

I also once again lowered CPU pitch control and raised CPU pitch consistency in my continuing effort to find CPU/Human parity. Pitching is one of the areas where my slider set differs from full simulation sets, so these settings would need to be changed if you want to go full sim. I could make some educated guesses on how they need to change but at least you know that you can make equal changes to both CPU and human as I (hope I) have found CPU/Human parity.

Fielding has been slowed down another notch in order to find more feilder differentiation, and errors knocked up another notch as well as error rates were far too low over time. Baserunning speed was also lowered for balance reasons. I'd say I'm still testing this balance, but honestly I've thrown in the towel when it comes to building a slider set I'm satisfied with this year. It wholly comes down to my reduced playtime: accurate sliders require large sample sizes, and I'm just not pumping out the results at a fast enough pace.

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[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

So there's something that's been bugging me for a while now that I finally sat down and tested.

My issue is that the ball is too slow off the bat. I'm not talking about the power or posted speed, but the appearance of a ball as it shoots into play. There were situations where shortstops would field a 90+ grounder deep in the hole and then shoot it across the diamond at the same or even faster speeds.

As a whole I was also finding hard hit balls were not generating enough offense.

So I decided to meticulously balance everything in the field not to real life baseball, but a relative facsimile of real life baseball adjusting all speeds relative to my perception of bat exit velocities. The results showed something unique: fielders were not slowing down, but the ball was speeding up. The game played faster, which has always been my goal.

Now this could be an optical illusion since I was mostly judging speed based on relative factors, but I've had the theory for a while that the game warps the perception of time based on a few settings. It's subtle with a small delta, so hard to pick up on, but hugely important when it comes to long term stats.

Long story short, my new settings look and feel much better, and the few games I've played have shown improvement in other areas that I had nagging issues with on V4 (like simmed/quick managed stats and the aforementioned solid contact success rate). I guess what I'm saying is I'm now committed to building a V5.

Starting to look like my joke about being done just in time for 21 may have been a bit prophetic.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

I'm going to be posting V5 in the OP just because I don't know when this show binge will end, and I don't want to leave the few people holding on hanging in case I go on another fast.

I'm not certain about these changes, I've noticed a few issues that could just be due to the small sample size and the nature of the errors engine. I wanted an opportunity to go through each of the changes and then talk about the results as a whole without crowding up the OP (even more). So here goes.

Fielding Errors Infield and Outfield moved to 10

The rate of "big" errors (like the ones that result in an error on the scoreboard) were close to being fine, however the rate of small errors (taking a bad first step in the field, bad pathing, missing the glove on tough plays) was far too small.

I've seen a few issues with this change thanks partly to the nature of the errors engine. It takes some time to normalize, so you'll see errors on plays where they shouldn't happen. In theory, if it works the same as in past games, this effect should go away in 10 to 15 games and errors will be determined more often based on the combination of fielding ability and difficulty of the play, but I don't have those 10 to 15 games under my belt yet so I have to mark this as a potential issue.

It also may be an issue over long term stats when combined with the fielding changes below.

Fielder Run Speed, Reaction, and Arm Infield strength reduced to 1, outfield to 2

If you guys have followed me over the years, you know how I hate a sluggish game out there. But something was really getting under my skin: The ball off the bat seemed way to sluggish, especially for the speeds being posted. So I instead balanced the speed of the fielders down to match my perception of bat exit velocities.

All of a sudden, the game appeared way faster. The ball was shooting off the bat, and much better matched the posted bat exit velocities. Fielders aren't slower, the game is faster. Fielding attributes have way more impact and fielder differentiation is the best it's ever been.

Even with baserunning still at 5, speedy baserunners are now flying down the line. It's exactly what I've been going for.

However this brings up a new problem: Bat exit velocity floors are not low enough, or at the very least not proccing enough. This could be an issue related not to the sliders but the inflated attributes of my 2014 carry over. However if it isn't, these changes solidly swing the game into a more batter favoured environment. Simmed games definitely like it, offense was too low there, but so far I'm not convinced it's the right choice for played games.

Unfortunately, bat exit velocity floors are attached to contact, and the CPU contact is already at 0. I could turn pitching down to HoF, but not only does that make the speed of the pulse way to easy IMO, but it also opens up an entire new can of worms in terms of refinding CPU/Human batting parity. That is not a journey I want to go on right now.

Another solution is to tune back up fielding speeds, keeping the ratio to baserunning speeds the same, and just ignore the posted bat exit velocity in favour of the visual effect. While it solves the "too many hard grounders" problem, it also devalues hard liners to the outfield (and also makes homeruns look slow).

The third solution is to nerf solid hits. I'm not a huge fan of this solution either, as it can ruin the feel of the game that I like to prioritize, and slowing the ball down by forcing it to pound into the dirt more often seems like an inelegant solution, but it probably is more simulation. As a side note, I have been considering going full simulation for the next Show I play. I have been trending in that direction with my personal playstyle. Either way, this seems the most likely solution I'll pursue if the trend of too many hard grounders continues.

Baserunner Steal Ability turned down to 3

Needed for balance reasons, but feels much better anyways. Runners were still getting too good of jumps too often. The balance now between stealers and fielders feels very good (so far). I've had a guy with 60 speed and 40 basestealing swipe a bag against a decent pitcher/catcher duo, which felt impossible before, but also had a 90 speed 88 basestealing guy get caught by a bad combo, which also felt impossible before. Overall your speedy high basestealing guys will still have the most success, but it's more of a gamble and less of a skill check now.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: TheWarmWind's Impact Sliders 2020

Had a few small problems pop up in long term results with my hitting settings.

Overall stats were about right, but the CPU was getting too good results too often on the "good" input compared to the player. Likewise the player was getting consistently better results on the "not good" inputs.

This resulted in a too extreme feast or famine CPU offense, while at the same time devaluing player controlled H/9.

The K/9 attribute is also still too powerful, both in played and simmed games. Nearly all the rotations in my carry over have been taken over by high K/9 pitchers, regardless of other ratings, due to performance based promotions and lineup/rotation construction. Vision seems almost meaningless in battling it.

I'm exploring a few options to try and solve the issues. I have to be careful though. K/9 should be very powerful, and I want to make sure that low K/9 pitchers don't get screwed by the changes, making the problem even worse.

I'm confident enough now in the fact that changes need to be made to say that you should expect a V6 eventually.

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