mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

[wudl83]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Read it but can't answer it right now, not at home (at my girlfriend) so I can't give you the sheet.
:wink:

I think a big problem is still that we do not really know which ratings are really effective for some things and which aren't. Or if they are effective only in SIM or in played games, too. It would take massive amounts of testing scenarios so I did not come up with it but as I read Nomo's post in The Show forums I started pondering some things regarding 2k.

What I noticed is
1) The slower a pitcher pitches the easier it seems to be for the CPU to hit him.
For example Sergio Romo's FB tops out at 90 mph. His slider tops out at 82 mph. Both pitches have a ton of movement (the slider even 99) and good control (both 90) in my roster. Although his contact ratings are really high, too, he gives up hit after hit after hit.
2) The faster a pitcher pitches the easier it seems to be for the CPU to hit HRs off him.
With guys that pitch slow you won't give up many HRs (as long as you don't hang them up), but with pitcher's who have a FB of about 94 mph or above you can bet on getting shelled a lot. Even on pitches that are outside the zone.
3) I still don't know how the "movement" rating of a pitch plays out ingame. I think you can see how much movement a certain pitch has ingame, but I don't know if it really has any effect. At least I could not tell you which effect it could have. Normally I would think that the more a pitch moves the higher chance the CPU hitter whiffs. But I can not confirm that to be honest. I have not really seen any effect of the movement of a pitch besides the animation.
4) I still don't know if the "eye" rating of a hitter is responsible for his plate discipline or if the discipline is determined by his contact rating, his K and BB tendencies, a mixture of all those or whatever.

There are some more things I don't understand/agree on. And as long as we don't understand those things we won't be able to address a few more "flaws". We also do not know if e.g. BB-tendency is responsible for a CPU pitcher to pitch outside the zone much or if this is only depending on his control ratings. And so on.

[themistro24]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Read it but can't answer it right now, not at home (at my girlfriend) so I can't give you the sheet.
:wink:

I think a big problem is still that we do not really know which ratings are really effective for some things and which aren't. Or if they are effective only in SIM or in played games, too. It would take massive amounts of testing scenarios so I did not come up with it but as I read Nomo's post in The Show forums I started pondering some things regarding 2k.

What I noticed is
1) The slower a pitcher pitches the easier it seems to be for the CPU to hit him.
For example Sergio Romo's FB tops out at 90 mph. His slider tops out at 82 mph. Both pitches have a ton of movement (the slider even 99) and good control (both 90) in my roster. Although his contact ratings are really high, too, he gives up hit after hit after hit.
2) The faster a pitcher pitches the easier it seems to be for the CPU to hit HRs off him.
With guys that pitch slow you won't give up many HRs (as long as you don't hang them up), but with pitcher's who have a FB of about 94 mph or above you can bet on getting shelled a lot. Even on pitches that are outside the zone.
3) I still don't know how the "movement" rating of a pitch plays out ingame. I think you can see how much movement a certain pitch has ingame, but I don't know if it really has any effect. At least I could not tell you which effect it could have. Normally I would think that the more a pitch moves the higher chance the CPU hitter whiffs. But I can not confirm that to be honest. I have not really seen any effect of the movement of a pitch besides the animation.
4) I still don't know if the "eye" rating of a hitter is responsible for his plate discipline or if the discipline is determined by his contact rating, his K and BB tendencies, a mixture of all those or whatever.

There are some more things I don't understand/agree on. And as long as we don't understand those things we won't be able to address a few more "flaws". We also do not know if e.g. BB-tendency is responsible for a CPU pitcher to pitch outside the zone much or if this is only depending on his control ratings. And so on.

I know, I have my own questions but one can only understand so much about the various ratings and slider settings.

I've resigned myself in leaving my settings as-is (I use MK's base with some tweeks) and staying with it.

[wudl83]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Ok I think I understand the game at least a little bit more now.

I did 3 test games. I played all games with Jered Weaver (I only pitched, super simmed the hitting) against the Rangers. I did NOT change the sliders playing those games.
I used:
- user pitch speed 85
- user pitch break 60
- user pitch control 25
- CPU hit contact 75
- CPU hit power 90

In the pictures below you see the outcomes of those three games including the ratings I assigned to Weaver.
In the first game I gave him 99 control for all pitches, 99 movement for all pitches, 99 contact, 99 doubles and 99 for homers. I also gave him 99 strikeout tendency, 99 walk tendency, 99 groundball tendency.
In the second game I changed the movement of the pitches to 25 and the rest was like before.
In the third game I changed the control of the pitches to 25 and movement back to 99, rest was like before.

Conclusions:
- the worse the control, the more hits and walks you will give up
- the worse the movement, the more hits and walks you will give up; I do not know yet if it influences how good a hitter hits a pitch; I think the higher the movement rating the higher the chance a CPU batter whiffs (therefore I had slightly higher K numbers in game 1 and 3 when movement was at 99)
- control seems to be more important for giving up hits than movement
- it seems that the homerun rating of 99 isn't influencing giving up homeruns as much as the CPU batting power slider
- the contact rating seems to influence how good a hitter hits a pitch (Rangers didn't make good contact besides those homers, overall a lack of doubles, most hits were singles that went through 1B/2B, 2B/SS and SS/3B)
- the overall tendency of throwing balls isn't affected by anything else than trying to throw at the corners; low control does not mean you will throw a ton of balls, it simply means you won't hit your spots
- all the tendency ratings we can assign to a player seem to not influence the gameplay (maybe only influencing sims), you can see that I did not walk many guys although I had control at 25 and walk tendency at 99; also the rate of flyouts was always very high for a groundball tendency of 99, so I think the tendency doesn't influence gameplay

All in all I think 2k has done a decent job on the effect of pitching ratings on gameplay.
But the biggest problem to me now is that CPU hitting is (at least I think it, gonna do some further testing) influenced by three things:
- the control rating of a pitch
- the movement rating of a pitch
- the contact rating of the pitcher
IMO the contact rating is quite redundant in this scenario, so is the doubles and the homerun rating. Let's think about what makes a pitcher give up hits in reality:
- pitching into bad spots which hitters can hit easily (--> bad control)
- flat pitches which hitters can hit easily (--> bad movement)
Let's think about what makes a pitcher give up homeruns in reality:
- hangers (--> bad control)
- being a fly ball pitcher (having not much sink in his pitches --> pitch repertoire)
There is nothing in reality which we could compare to the contact rating or homerating which we can see in the game. But in reality pitchers have a certain control over a pitch which let's them make spot pitches or not spot pitches, and pitchers have pitches with certain movement that let's batters whiff a lot, make bad contact or on the opposite make hitting easily when the movement of the certain pitch is bad.

I do not understand why 2k has given pitcher's those contact or homerun ratings. Of course a flyball pitcher is more prone to giving up the longball than a sinkerballer. But that's because of his repertoire and control and not because he has a certain tendency to give up the long ball regardless which repertoire, control and movement he has.

Next I will drive down the tendency ratings to 25 and the contact and homerun ratings to 25, too. Gonna come up soon again with a little bit more info.

[wudl83]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Okay, did some further testing. I won't show you another excel-sheet since all can be said easily without it.

Played two more games (skipped the last scenario since I think it simply would be expandable).

1) Control + movement for all pitches 99; contact, doubles, triples, homeruns rated 25; walk, strikeout, groundball tendency at 0.
Results:
- Rangers batting .235, had 2 runs on 8 hits (1 triple, no homerun)
- I struck out 9, walked 0, pitch count was 112 (84 strikes, 28 balls), 8 GOs, 2 FOs

2) Control 99, movement 25 for all pitches; contact, doubles, triples, homeruns rated 25; walk, strikeout, groundball tendency at 0
Results (I played only five innings because it was quite obvious):
- Rangers batting .421, 6 singles, 2 doubles, 0 triples, 0 homeruns
- I struck out 5 over 5 innings, 0 Walks, pitch count was at 73 (53 strikes, 20 balls), 3 GOs, 2 FOs

Conclusion:
In a slightly descending order those variables are influencing a pitcher's BAA:
1) Control
2) Contact
3) Movement

Maybe you could even exchange 2) and 3), but since I got shelled more with the contact at the minimum I think contact is the second most important rating.

Look:
- with control and movement maxed out the rangers still only could hit .230 something, despite having a contact rating of 25
- with control maxed out and movement minimized combined with contact at 25 I got shelled
- with contact and so on rated 99 it was an easier time pitching

I am not quite sure what is influencing the strikeouts of a pitcher when playing a game. I am note quite sure what is influencing the walk rate of a pitcher when playing a game (maybe the CPU contact sliders or the eye ratings are responsible for that? don't know)
But I am 100% sure that the strikeout, walk and groundball tendency rating do NOT influence gameplay.

I am also unaware of how much the doubles, triples and homerun ratings are important. I did not give up a homerun with a rating of 25. But I gave up homeruns when rated 99.

But the main thing for me is the following.
In my tests I only used either maxed out ratings or the lowest possible ratings. When you take a common roster, you will have a ton of guys who have something like about 70 control, 70 movement on the pitches and about 70 contact rating.
Now keeping in mind that it is even possible to hold the CPU to an AVG below .250 with 25 contact etc. or to have a BAA of way over .250 with control and contact at 99, it seems obvious to me as why I had the feeling that it didn't matter much to me with which pitcher I was pitching and every pitcher "felt the same".
When you have a pitcher with ratings in the lower 80s he will play a little bit better than a pitcher with ratings in the lower 70s, but not to an extent that it matters so much that I will recognize it severely. And taking in mind that you only have to give up 2 hits in the first (maybe even a homer) and because of the game mechanics the pitch rating drops about 10-15 points, meaning you won't be able to use it effectively in the rest of the game, it's even less of a surprise.
Since the differences between 25 and 99 are "so small" the differences between 60 and 70 or 70 and 80 are even smaller. I bet it's the same with hitting ratings. That could explain why playing a game against a team like the Astros that is mainly rated in the 60s and low 70s is not too different from playing a game against the Mariners that is mainly rated in the low and high 70s.

And when we try to abstract it further, this also means for a pitcher to be effective you always need to give him high control, high movement and high contact. Because when one thing is lacking it makes the pitcher worse than one could expect.

At least now I think I understand why 2k came up with so many awkward ratings in their official rosters. In the basic rosters you will se numerous guys that had a ton of movement on their pitches when in reality they have none. Same with control or contact ratings. I think they did this because without the proper movement the pitchers simply would be too hard to handle when playing the game compared to their real life counterparts. That's why some elite pitchers have gotten some elite bonus pitches, which aren't elite in reality but need to be elite ingame. And that's also why some mediocre guys, who have maybe two elite pitch and three bad pitches in reality, may have 4-5 mediocre pitches ingame.
Quite unrealistic, but it seems to be the way the game is coded for. In my roster I used brooksbaseball's pitchfx for the movement of the pitchers (they have a x- and z-axis movement). Now I understand why pitchers with high control and little movement got hit as bad as pitchers with less control and higher movement.

IMO that is why it will be impossible to find a perfect slider set.

[wudl83]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Oh and another thing, seems like I am a little bit spammin here right now, sorry.



I reset the roster to default. In the default roster the rating for the pitches is always close. Meaning that when you have a pitcher with maybe a 4-seamer control of 85, you can bet that the movement is in the range of 80-90. It's very rare that you see a pitcher who has big difference in the ratings for movement and control. It's always close.
I think my tests showed the same thing. Control and movement both matter for a pitch to be effective ingame, so the ratings must be close because otherwise the pitch isn't effective. So it's not like in reality where a pitch can be effective, although it has little movement, as long as the pitcher can command it. And in reality a pitch can be effective, although the pitcher may not be able to command it well, as long as it has a ton of movement.
But the game works different.
The only pitch that shows big differences between control and movement are the changeups. I don't know why, but all the other pitch ratings are close.

Therefore a pitcher's "control" rating, which can be seen in the rotation/bullpen overview next to the overall, stamina and composure, is more or less missleading and labeled wrong. It should be named "repertoire" or something like that.

[mkharsh33]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

There came a point in time where I simply had to settle on a set. Page 1 - post 1 is updated to reflect what I am using (along with my roster set). I get good variety. Pitch cautiously to power bats. For those still playing along...

[ItzTacosYerrp]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

There came a point in time where I simply had to settle on a set. Page 1 - post 1 is updated to reflect what I am using (along with my roster set). I get good variety. Pitch cautiously to power bats. For those still playing along...

Yeah man, I use your sliders religiously

[jhendricks316]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

Does Inside Edge affect catcher suggestions? I never "bought" it for my teams, because I was doubtful that was the case.

[bigpun23]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

will these work on mlb 2k13?

[mkharsh33]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

will these work on mlb 2k13?

I don't think so... But there are some other sets to choose from. I LOVE 2K12, so I'm not even tempted to pick up 13.

[bigpun23]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

do you ever use power swing? or can you still get a good number of home runs with contact only?

[mkharsh33]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

I have made some big-time changes to this set. I decided to experiment with "Legend" and then tweak from there. I figured there must be a reason why 2K settled on that set. I'm now really loving it!! Some other edits, but I can now understand why they've went the direction with "Legend" settings that they did.

If anyone is interested I'll post them - I'm not sure what kind of interest we still have for 2K12...

[shogunofharlem3]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

I have made some big-time changes to this set. I decided to experiment with "Legend" and then tweak from there. I figured there must be a reason why 2K settled on that set. I'm now really loving it!! Some other edits, but I can now understand why they've went the direction with "Legend" settings that they did.

If anyone is interested I'll post them - I'm not sure what kind of interest we still have for 2K12...

Post away!!!! Looking forward to trying them out.

[ItzTacosYerrp]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

I have made some big-time changes to this set. I decided to experiment with "Legend" and then tweak from there. I figured there must be a reason why 2K settled on that set. I'm now really loving it!! Some other edits, but I can now understand why they've went the direction with "Legend" settings that they did.

If anyone is interested I'll post them - I'm not sure what kind of interest we still have for 2K12...

oh jeez


POST THEM NOW MK!@!@!@

[mkharsh33]

Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching

UPDATED SET - POSTED ON PAGE 1 - POST 1

Double-check your numbers. The only tweak I would suggest is this (if you don't like something):

- raise user batting contact to 40
- raise cpu AI pitch success to 75

Don't fear the user batting power at 40. In a game last night, maybe one of the funnest I've played, I hit a HR with a 64 rated power (3 in total).

These sliders work best with the updated rosters, now tweaked with each POSITION player (NOT pitchers) with an acceleration rating of 99. Enjoy!