I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

[NoSkillz50]

I haven't played it, but I like the idea and the philosophy behind it. Some people are mad because you can't aim where you are hitting the ball, like you can in MVP. People confuse where a player hits the ball with where they want to hit the ball. In real life no team averages 2 productive outs a game. Its actually closer to about 1 a game. These productive outs will occur whether you want them to or not. People also think because there are 9 zones in The Show that you can influence where the ball goes like you could in MVP, and thus it will be the superior system to 2K8's. In MVP where you aimed influenced where the ball went and how hard you hit it. It kind of worked against itself in that way, and thats why I think The Show's system is better in theory. I think aiming where the ball goes actually takes away from the realism. People that think otherwise and think that you can do this in The Show just have it all wrong. Aiming in The Show only affects how hard you hit the ball. The Show does have some cheesey button press to influence a fly ball before the pitch, but like I said I really don't see the reason. You will advance a runner if you mean to or not, and probably do it a realistic amount of times if you try or not. Its not as if you can't wait for a low pitch and swing early in attempts to pull a ground ball. I think people read into how much a player meant to sacrifice fly like they can just swing at any pitch and just swing differently so they hit a long fly ball.

There are instances where a player may take something off their swing, just a little bit, in order to make contact and advance a runner, I'll concede that, but that is such a minor nuance that until the system is at least perfected in the most basic of senses that we shouldn't even be concerned over such things.

The bottom line is, as long as the difficulty is good, its fun, it looks realistic and produces realistic results it will be a good hitting engine. I think this is the best possible way to go about making a non-cursor hitting engine. Take some of the focus off all the pre-swing requirements, make it about focusing on timing and what pitch to hit. Its tough enough for an engine to produce realistic pitch counts, walk and strikeout rates when you have the user not only worrying about if the pitch is a strike or not, but which of 9 zones is it going to land in and then on top of all of that getting the timing right. Instead, pull out all that junk, make the timing the most important thing (up the difficulty if necessary), fully analog and make the only other thing the user has to worry about is if it is a strike or not. Let the power be based solely on pitch location and attributes.

[baa7]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

People confuse where a player hits the ball with where they want to hit the ball.

People also think because there are 9 zones in The Show that you can influence where the ball goes like you could in MVP, and thus it will be the superior system to 2K8's.

I think aiming where the ball goes actually takes away from the realism. People that think otherwise and think that you can do this in The Show just have it all wrong. Aiming in The Show only affects how hard you hit the ball.

Some of your facts are incorrect. Aiming in The Show affects WHETHER YOU EVEN HIT THE BALL OR NOT. Play on MVP difficulty, don't touch the L stick to aim at the pitch, and watch yourself whiff a minimum 15-20 times each game. And if you're suggesting that aiming the bat in the various zones doesn't influence where the ball ends up, then you would be wrong there as well.

Granted it's entirely your opinion that aiming takes away from the realism. But I'd like to ask an MLB player if all he does is swing the bat through the middle of the strikezone each time, hoping to make contact. Or does he in fact look at the pitch location and actually aim, and try and place the bat in the general (or even precise) vicinity of where the ball is crossing the plate.

And you go out of the way to talk about how cheesy that other game's hit influence hit is. Well what do you think 2K's system is? It's a hit influence system as well. In fact, that's all it is. It's the exact same concept, except you use a stick to activate the hit influence programming rather than buttons.

[maverick3176]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

All I am saying is WOW...dude. the problems in last years game were too many homers, not enough hit variety and no foul balls. This is all cuz youcouldnt control where your swing went...remember its a game of inches. If your swing is off my a hair its the difference between a foul ball and a homer. Remember hitting is hand eye coordination. You cant just time the pitch then close your eyes and hope for the best.

the current system is too simple...and is only timing. Mariano Riveras cutter works because people cant center the bat to the ball and it yeilds broken bats....he is alway throwing between 93-95. there is no speed variation...hell is always throwing to the same place...the difficulty in hitting him is that you cant get good wood on the ball.....if its just about timing...then why would it matter what kinda momvement is on a fastball...guys with straight fastball suck. Maddux has made a career out of having great movement on ball. I aiming didnt matter why throw sinkers. Wake up and smell the BS my man.

This hitting system is too simple and doesnt give the player a sim experience or realy control over hitting..

[baa7]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

This hitting system is too simple and doesnt give the player a sim experience or realy control over hitting..

That's my biggest complaint. 2K took out their zone system in 2K6, which was a better zone hitting system than the one in The Show. And that's not even mentioning the fact they removed cursor hitting from 2K4. And on top of not offering those options anymore, they then created a hitting sytem that can only be described as simplistic at best. C'mon 2K: at least give some of us the option to use something other than timed hitting, sheesh.

I have to say though that I did like the swing stick. And I'm hoping they tightened it up and made it so you can adjust and increase the difficulty level via the Contact and Step Influence sliders.

[bowlerguy92]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

What system? Do they even really have one?

[CMH]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

What system? Do they even really have one?

Go away troll. Really. You're getting pretty tiring with your comments.

[bowlerguy92]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I'm not trolling I am a big fan of 2K baseball. Simply wondering if they even do have a system. Seems more so you just swing the bat and see where the ball goes.

[CMH]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

As for the hitting system, you can still make contact in The Show if you don't use the left stick. Trust me, I've tried and played many a game that way.

The problem is you have less a chance of making solid contact.

NoSkillz, the issue with no location over timing has nothing to do with hit placement. The Show does not try to replicate this falsehood in baseball. No one can place a ball where they want prior to a pitch. They can only influence it in a certain direction.

The Show's system is about placing the bat toward the location of the pitch to make more solid contact.

The system has it's strengths and weaknesses. Major strength is not making timing the only important factor. The major weakness is timing is not enough of a factor. Once you've become comfortable with placing the bat over the ball you make solid contact almost all of the time. That's my belief why hits become way too easy in The Show. But that's not a knock on the system. It's just a comment on what can be improved.

As for the comments on Mo's fastball. I'm going to argue that Mo's fastball isn't unhittable because it just moves. It's unhittable because it moves out of the strike zone and hitters don't adjust for that. So they end up getting jammed.

Basically, what I'm saying is that timing is still the most important factor in hitting. If you time your contact correctly with Mo's fastball you'll hit it on the good part of the bat without making too many location adjustments. It's either that or don't swing at all because it'll be a ball.

Obviously, his cutter looks like a fastball and that's why people swing. I'm not suggesting he's easy to face and figure out. But the principles are there. Similar to Maddux, it's not bat placement that hurts batters, it's the movement of the pitch that makes them believe he's throwing a ball to only see the two-seamer move back into the strike zone.

I guess what I'm saying is this. How much movement is a hitter really making to hit Brandon Webb's sinker? Not much. It's a matter of inches if they make solid contact or just hit the top of the ball into the ground. Either way, in video games you'll end up pressing down on the stick.

There's no way to clearly simulate location of the bat because it's not that extreme in swinging. Hitters will almost always generally swing the bat in the location of the pitch without thinking of where to place the bat. Timing is the most important aspect of hitting.


I know people usually bring up the curveball argument. Hitters with bad bat placement will swing over the top of the curve. True but not entirely true.

Think about it. If that hitter timed the curveball better what do you think will happen? The reason why the hitter swings over the curveball is because they swing early and their swing moves towad the start or mid-point of the curve's break. But you never see a hitter swing extremely over the top. It's always in the general area of the ball.

Now imagine this same scenario in video gaming. If the curveball is already moving toward the bottom of the strike zone you'll end up pressing down to make contact. No one sees how that's already an issue? If I press down I swing toward the curve. It's moving down. I'm swinging in the general area of the curve. Now it's up to timing and attributes to determine if I swung at the right time of that downward movement of my swing and whether or not the hitter is a good enough contact hitter to make solid contact rather than tipping the ball foul or missing it completely.

The point is simple. You'll still press down because the curve is moving down. Bat placement is a zone system that makes sense in the theory of it all but it doesn't make sense when thinking realistically. There is no hitter in the majors that will swing his bat upward to hit a curveball moving toward the dirt. It doesn't happen. Bat location is overrated in video gaming IF it doesn't make timing more important and include an attribute system that measures the ability to make solid contact.

That is why MVP 2005's system of contact (with the yellow balls that measure how long a player's bat can move through the zone and still make contact) was the best way to measure it. It wasn't perfect but they had the right idea.

[CMH]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I'm not trolling I am a big fan of 2K baseball. Simply wondering if they even do have a system. Seems more so you just swing the bat and see where the ball goes.

Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else I was getting tired of reading on these forums.

If so, I apologize. I think they have a system in place but it just needs work. We'll see how it is come demo time.

[bowlerguy92]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I just want to see some 2K videos so that we can see pretty much a final game and see what is REALLY in the game and what IGN just got to preview.

[CMH]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I just want to see some 2K videos so that we can see pretty much a final game and see what is REALLY in the game and what IGN just got to preview.

I agree. I can't take IGN seriously when they cleary didn't know how to play and then try to pass that off as clips of the new game.

If they didn't know how to play and they wanted to gave an accurate representation of a new baseball video game then they should have released CPU vs. CPU videos.

I don't care if you want to show us how bad you suck at pitch gestures. People don't buy a game to see how bad other people are. They buy it to see if it's any good or not. The only true way to measure that is to have the CPU play if you don't know how to.

Imagne if IGN released a Mass Effect video of them running around in circles because they didn't know they could talk to NPCs or shoot gunfire at enemies. Or if rather that, they kept shooting at the wall because they didn't know that the center reticule is the game's "aiming" system to hit the bad guys.

It would be a bad example of a solid game. No one would do that but with sports games, for some reason, these reviewers put out videos of how difficult of a time they are having learning the new system in a game. It's unfair to the team that worked hard on trying to make a realistic game of baseball.

[EnigmaNemesis]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I agree. I can't take IGN seriously when they cleary didn't know how to play and then try to pass that off as clips of the new game.

If they didn't know how to play and they wanted to gave an accurate representation of a new baseball video game then they should have released CPU vs. CPU videos.

I don't care if you want to show us how bad you suck at pitch gestures. People don't buy a game to see how bad other people are. They buy it to see if it's any good or not. The only true way to measure that is to have the CPU play if you don't know how to.

Imagne if IGN released a Mass Effect video of them running around in circles because they didn't know they could talk to NPCs or shoot gunfire at enemies. Or if rather that, they kept shooting at the wall because they didn't know that the center reticule is the game's "aiming" system to hit the bad guys.

It would be a bad example of a solid game. No one would do that but with sports games, for some reason, these reviewers put out videos of how difficult of a time they are having learning the new system in a game. It's unfair to the team that worked hard on trying to make a realistic game of baseball.

Totally agree with this.

Good post!

[jim416]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

I agree. I can't take IGN seriously when they cleary didn't know how to play and then try to pass that off as clips of the new game.

If they didn't know how to play and they wanted to gave an accurate representation of a new baseball video game then they should have released CPU vs. CPU videos.

I don't care if you want to show us how bad you suck at pitch gestures. People don't buy a game to see how bad other people are. They buy it to see if it's any good or not. The only true way to measure that is to have the CPU play if you don't know how to.

Imagne if IGN released a Mass Effect video of them running around in circles because they didn't know they could talk to NPCs or shoot gunfire at enemies. Or if rather that, they kept shooting at the wall because they didn't know that the center reticule is the game's "aiming" system to hit the bad guys.

It would be a bad example of a solid game. No one would do that but with sports games, for some reason, these reviewers put out videos of how difficult of a time they are having learning the new system in a game. It's unfair to the team that worked hard on trying to make a realistic game of baseball.

If, supposedly, everyone here is griping at IGN and saying IGN is historically awful, didn't 2k know this? 2k DOES have their own web page and it sits blank. Wouldn't the dev team know this as much as people here who are crucifying IGN? I would think so. Geez, I would hope so. So they gave a disk to IGN and said, "butcher the game"? Just more bad marketing then and 2k should take the brunt of that, not IGN. If, in fact, the game is much better than these lousy videos. But, we really don't know that yet.

[K_GUN]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

a few years back <I>this site</I> would get advanced copies of the games

why has this stopped?

probably 2k marketing again

[DSheppard]

Re: I like the idea behind the hitting system for 2K8

i think it really needs to allow you to influence where you hit the ball.

dont you ever hear how many hitters try to pull an outside pitch when they should be going the other way with it? it happens all the time.

in the bigs its easiest to hit a homer by pulling the pitch. but if you try to pull an outside pitch that a real player couldnt realisticly pull, it will normally result in poor contact and an out. this way you can influence power by trying to pull the ball, but be punished for it if you do it on the wrong pitch. and conversely if you have a runner on second and you just want to get him in, you can go for an opposite field hit that will usually just be a single, which has a much better chance of getting the runner in then pulling the ball for power that may result in flyouts.

and that kind of stuff does happen in games....

not to mention it just makes the player vs player gameplay better since you can play fine without using it, but more involved users can apply it with its pro's and con's to help them if they do so properly.

2k7's hitting became 100% about recognizing ball from strike, and offspeed from fastball. those are obviously important, but its too simple. you can allow players to play like that, but there should still be a system in place to try to influence the hit for those that want to get more involved, and its still realistic.

and failing that, at least a system like the shows where you need to follow the pitch. that again is both at least somewhat realistic and helps the gameplay. in 2k7 there is no difference between a high pitch and a low pitch, and outside pitch and an inside pitch. it makes the slider 100% useless unless its a ball.

take akinori otsuka for an example. in real life he will throw his slider in the strikezone and plays miss it because of the movement, not the speed. in 2k7 that pitch would again just be a slightly slower fastball unless you specifically use it to move into or out of the strikezone, within the zone its meaningless. in different hitting systems the user may have to adjust to the movement.