Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

[Trevytrev11]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

I'm obviously oversimplifying, as not every gamer falls in to one of these two very broad categories, but it essentially boils down to this: the sim crowd is more than willing to spend time and energy tinkering with rosters, settings, and sliders to make an arcade-style game more sim like. The casual crowd, on the other hand, is not going to spend any time or energy trying to make a sim game more arcade like; if they're not enjoying it, they'll just stop playing. It's really that simple. Anyone who can't see that, and understand that it makes business sense for 2K to cater towards the casual crowd, is simply being irrational.

It just seems they don't have to do much to make the game more appealing to casual gamers, it already does that. It seems the real work and the majority of the work is fine tuning everything for realism, which isn't nearly as important to the casual gamers.

If the game was just for the casual fans, it seems like sliders wouldn't even be necessary, just the four levels of difficulty.

They could change nothing next year and I would think the casual fans would be happy with the roster update...after all what else is imporant to them?

[ericjwm]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

I think the OP makes a great point, and I'd like to expand on it.

Put yourself in the developer's shoes: you have, on one hand, casual gamers. On the other, you have the hardcore sim geeks. Which side will you cater your game towards?

Casual gamers will probably not put much effort into the game. They just want something they can pick up, play, and have fun with, without having to worry about settings or sliders. They will be playing the game largely how it comes "out of the box."

The hardcore crowd, on the other hand, will be tweaking the game to their exact specifications. They will, for example, note the difference between a slider set at 60 and a slider set at 65, and calibrate appropriately. No matter how the game ships, they will be tweaking every possible aspect of it until they feel the game is as finely tuned as it can be.

I'm obviously oversimplifying, as not every gamer falls in to one of these two very broad categories, but it essentially boils down to this: the sim crowd is more than willing to spend time and energy tinkering with rosters, settings, and sliders to make an arcade-style game more sim like. The casual crowd, on the other hand, is not going to spend any time or energy trying to make a sim game more arcade like; if they're not enjoying it, they'll just stop playing. It's really that simple. Anyone who can't see that, and understand that it makes business sense for 2K to cater towards the casual crowd, is simply being irrational.

I would certainly love to see 2K make a more sim like game, but I can understand why they don't. If they lose the casual gamer, that person is likely gone for good. They can always win back the hardcore gamer (whom, I should add, will likely play the game anyways, no matter how vociferously they complain about its faults.)

EDIT: I should add that this all rests on having customizable options that actually make the game "tweakable." If the game is going to be quite unrealistic, regardless of how one changes the settings, rosters, and sliders, then that is a large problem. I'm hoping that all of the complaints people have about the game are correctable with the proper adjustments, like NBA 2K9; that game plays very arcade-like out of the box, but can be tweaked to play a very realistic game of basketball simply by downloading a good roster file and slider set.

No, there does not appear to be any kind of fix for the free swinging CPU with slider edits or attribute adjustments.


So if this series is tuned for (casual) arcade fans, then what crowd base is The Bigs intended for?...Which by the way is getting a sequel this summer.
As it stands, 2K's got two fast paced arcade games with different development teams, how wonderful!

[365NFL1]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

Jeez 2K always screw something up for MLB. What does this mean no K's or limited K's? It was hard enough to get K's last year without adjusting sliders I remember. The Show need's to come to 360.

[ericjwm]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

I don't agree that this was intentional on VC's part. I'm sure they're aiming to create as realistic of a baseball experience as possible. They somehow forgot to properly tune the AI batters tendencies for swinging & taking pitches. Their game testers should of payed closer attention & not let this slip by unoticed.

[MLB]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

Why don't they have a free swinging cpu when you have quick play or whatever it's called enabled and have them be realistic when it's disabled.

I like this idea.

[jfsolo]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

I don't agree that this was intentional on VC's part. I'm sure they're aiming to create as realistic of a baseball experience as possible. They somehow forgot to properly tune the AI batters tendencies for swinging & taking pitches. Their game testers should of payed closer attention & not let this slip by unoticed.

If its not intentional, then I seriously question the competence of those in charge of the core gameplay design. While I find the Brinkman-esqe mindset of "162 game season in only 3 weeks" abhorrent, I get it as a design decision. To accidentally tune the CPU to be a relentless hack master is to be oblivious to some of the basic fundamentals of hitting. That's a scary thing to contemplate.

[teambayern]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

If its not intentional, then I seriously question the competence of those in charge of the core gameplay design. While I find the Brinkman-esqe mindset of "162 game season in only 3 weeks" abhorrent, I get it as a design decision. To accidentally tune the CPU to be a relentless hack master is to be oblivious to some of the basic fundamentals of hitting. That's a scary thing to contemplate.

People have talked about Brinkman's quotes about wanting short games, but I seem to remember an even more direct one where he said something about not wanting full counts on every batter when the cpu pitches because no ones wants a 3 hour video game.

If he worried about time when programming how the CPU pitched in 2k8, I don't think it's a far cry to say something similar happened with CPU batting in 2k9.

THAT SAID, i have been finding the CPU swing selection a lot more acceptable than most have after a few more hours with the demo. I found that as I became more patient, and listened more to my catcher, I started getting better counts, and the Ai started to relax a little bit. It was no problem tonight getting them to chase things outside the zone, and I got them to take strike on 4 or 5 occassions over 2 or 3 of the 3 inning games.

[Ferrari997]

Re: Free Swingin' CPU intentional?

How about CPU aggressiveness stays the same, swinging away. Makes you really pinpoint your pitches and be smart about them. At the SAME time, adjust pitcher fatigue level so that pitchers get tired faster after maybe 35-50 pitches since games are shorter now and pitch counts are lower. Just need to adjust the ratio that's all! I dont know if thats a slider in the game though.