Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

[AllJuicedUp]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Pitch Speed: 75 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARXJx...c7AUAAAAAAAAAA I know lots of people already use 75, but out of curiosity I tried to compare a real life pitch with an in-game pitch. The speed that matches a real life fastball (Bard's second pitch both on MLB.TV and in-game) is 75.

USER RUNNING:
Base Runner Speed: 80 This is another game-changer, maybe even more important than the oufield run speed.
I have always had the sensation that baserunners were too slow in this game: lots of double plays, not enough close plays at first, not enough extra base hits, that stupid animation of the shortstop that dives to get the ball and on his knees throws it to first and always gets the baserunner. All these issues were affecting the realism of the game.
Plus, I had the visual impression that the runners were slower than real life when stealing a base.
So I took the MLB base stealing times (3.25 seconds for the steal of second base for average players, 2.98 seconds for speedy guys like Bourn, Ichiro or Crisp) and I compared it with the game. I timed a couple of players and my suspects were confirmed: a player like Victorino timed 3.3 seconds to steal second in game. That was too slow.
So I upped the Base Runner slider till I got to the magic number of 80.
Other than a realistic visual effect, the slider is extremely important for other purposes: now it's possible to score from first on a double (like in real life), ofter players go from first to third on a single to right field (like in real life), the baserunner now beats the throw a diving SS almost every time, the double play are gone and like in real life (where the average is 1 double play per game) a defense turns the double play only if the runner is a slow power guy (Dunn, Butler, Ortiz) or if they are in perfect position. My defense turned a couple of double plays, one with the 2B fielding the ball, stepping onto 2nd and then firing to 1st .
So happy to see these results.

I hate to be a downer, but your methodology is very flawed.

First of all, you assume 75 pitch speed is perfect based on a faulty eye test. Meanwhile, you call a 3.3 run time "too slow" when it was merely tenths of a second too slow.

Why do you break one down to fractions of a second while settling for "eh, that looks good enough" for the other?

That said, 75 pitch speed is 1000000% absolultely NOT accurate to real life. It is significantly slower (I'd wager 100 pitch speed is actually slightly slower than real life as well, but I haven't tested this I'm just going based on my own eye test).

The real problem with this error though, is that baserunner speed while stealing will be slowed down the same amount as pitch speed. That is the nature of the animation. Until the pitch gets to homeplate, the entire game speed matches that of the pitch. Put pitch speed at 0 and watch your guys attempt to steal and they'll start in slow motion (before returning to normal speed as soon as the catcher catches the ball).

The error then, is that you are striving for accurate steal times, while having the beginning of the steal animation play out slower than real life. Which means 80 baserunner speed is actually faster than real life, since it is compensating for that slowed down beginning animation.

This is why you see so many people complaining about easy triples/inside the park hr's, etc, because while it may result in accurate steal times, it is doing so by making players significantly faster than real life.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I love people who attempt to use statistics to generate sliders. My issue is that you make some fundemental errors in the way you go about doing it.

Put pitch speed at 100, then re-time steal attempts, and I think you'd get closer to "real life" runner speed. Even then though, I believe 100 pitch speed is still slightly slower than real life, so you'd have to knock runner speed down 5-10 points from that. But in the end, I think it will give you much more accurate results.

[Beetlebum]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Thank you for your posts.
I really appreciate all the feedback and I must admit AllJuicedUp is right.
When timing the baserunning, I didnt take into account the pitch speed, as my tests were done with pitches that were slower compared to real life.


I changed pitch speed to 100 (and this might also help reduce the amount of walks that I'm drawing) and baserunner speed to 70.
80 was probably too much, as I was seeing about 1 triple per game.
Will also lower Catcher arm strength to compensate for it.

As for the rest, I am satisfied with the results I'm getting so far.

Thanks again for your opinions

[yastru]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

so, whats the verdict on these sliders. which one give more realistic results, this one or mkharsh ones.
im rookie into baseball things altogether and dont know much about games, but would like the game to be as much realistic as possible, and whats kinda buggin me out is that mk-sliders have different values for user and AI. not a big fan of that, but if its necessary..

[hetfield426]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Sorry, but you are wrong about the breakpoint/pinpoint pitching thing. The pinpoint shows the pitch AFTER the break. Why would they make a version that had the same mechanics as breakpoint, but by hiding the arrows showing which direction the pitch will break? If I select to throw a curveball, I will still remember it breaking 3 arrows down or something like that. Put the pitcher control at 100 and test it out, and you will realize that pinpoint indicates after the break.

Really enjoying these sliders thus far!

[econoodle]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

well, If you have bigfnjoes seal of approval, who is a slider legend, then I must give these a shot.
Going through everyones slider sets one by one to see which works for me as a base, or possibly straight up.
one question, why no dynamic player ratings? edit: i found the answer in post 15.

[mookie2661]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

If you want to time base runners, you can't really use steal attempts for that. You'd have to factor in the size of the lead the runner has among other things.

Instead, you should time the bat contact to first base time. It's what the scouts use. I think you'll find that 55 is perfect.

[dererstesoldat]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Awesome slider set man. I am not using the hitting sliders, since I use TC batting, but the pitching and fielding seem to be getting the job done. I lowered outfield throw speed to 80, as it seemed they were throwing 100 mph fastballs back in sometimes, and that seems about right. I also lowered base run speed to 65 for both ai and human and knocked catcher arm strength down to 60 to compensate, and now it seems perfect to me.

All in all, I think the 5 or 10 points people move in baserunning all comes down to personal preference, but you definitely got me pointed in the right direction. And pitching is much better with the 100 speed. Great work and thanks!

[MizzouRah]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

80 base runner speed doesn't work. I hit a gapper with Freddie Freeman at Rockies stadium. Center fielder Dexter Fowler stumbled a bit getting the ball but Freedie ended up with an inside the park homerun on something that should've MAYBE been a close play at third. I'm using 45 for base runner speed, feels good.

Yeah, I'm at 45 base running speed right now too.

These sliders have some great concepts though, I'm going to try some of your ideas Beetlebum.

[Beetlebum]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Many people don’t like baserunning at 70 or 80.
And they have a point, as I saw myself that there were too many triples (for example). I am leaning towards lowering the value again, to 55 perhaps.
But there is a problem: with a slow baserunning there are many unrealistic behaviors on the base paths that really influence the game.
Aside from the fact that there will be too many singles (in RL they only represent 66% of the base hits), the baserunning itself makes me raise an eyebrow. If I hit a single to right field with a man on first, the LEAST I expect from my baserunner is going from 1^st to 3^rd. If I hit a double, any 3^rd base coach in the game will send the runner home. In this game these things don’t happen with a slow baserunning. On a single to RF, baserunners only move to 2^nd. Same thing on a double: I will end up with men on 2^nd and 3^rd.
This is what I don’t like if baserunnng is below 60.
I am currently experimenting with the Base Running Aggression slider to see if this can be fixed.
Another problem with a slow baserunning slider are the double plays.
In RL a team grounds into a DP 0.75 times per game on average. This means 3 double plays every 4 games.
In MLB 2K12 theres almost a double play every inning. That’s another reason to keep a high baserunning value.
I am thinking of changing something, but I need to work on it. For the reasons above I don’t want to lower BR too much, but also I want to reduce triples. I might try with BR speed at 70 and BR aggression at 0.

One more thing I want to change is Steal Aggression. In MLB each team attempts only 0.9 steals per game, while in game the CPU tries to steal with almost every baserunner. Lowering it to 15 might do it, but again I need to play some games to have a significant sample size (I am at work now so I cannot play J).
I will keep you updated.

[MizzouRah]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Actually, it's a give and take thing with sliders.. as with all sports games.

At 45 speed, vs the Reds last night, they had a man on first. A double was hit into the gap and the runner came all the way around to score. I might have nailed him though, but I was quite lazy and never really checked to see if they sent him or not. Lost 1-0

I have players fast runners beat out those SS diving plays, but Yadi Molina.. forget about it!

[Rdrunner]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

Many people don’t like baserunning at 70 or 80.
And they have a point, as I saw myself that there were too many triples (for example). I am leaning towards lowering the value again, to 55 perhaps.
But there is a problem: with a slow baserunning there are many unrealistic behaviors on the base paths that really influence the game.
Aside from the fact that there will be too many singles (in RL they only represent 66% of the base hits), the baserunning itself makes me raise an eyebrow. If I hit a single to right field with a man on first, the LEAST I expect from my baserunner is going from 1^st to 3^rd. If I hit a double, any 3^rd base coach in the game will send the runner home. In this game these things don’t happen with a slow baserunning. On a single to RF, baserunners only move to 2^nd. Same thing on a double: I will end up with men on 2^nd and 3^rd.
This is what I don’t like if baserunnng is below 60.
I am currently experimenting with the Base Running Aggression slider to see if this can be fixed.
Another problem with a slow baserunning slider are the double plays.
In RL a team grounds into a DP 0.75 times per game on average. This means 3 double plays every 4 games.
In MLB 2K12 theres almost a double play every inning. That’s another reason to keep a high baserunning value.
I am thinking of changing something, but I need to work on it. For the reasons above I don’t want to lower BR too much, but also I want to reduce triples. I might try with BR speed at 70 and BR aggression at 0.

One more thing I want to change is Steal Aggression. In MLB each team attempts only 0.9 steals per game, while in game the CPU tries to steal with almost every baserunner. Lowering it to 15 might do it, but again I need to play some games to have a significant sample size (I am at work now so I cannot play J).
I will keep you updated.

I think 55 would be better. I am using your sliders and there are too many triples, and Michael Young hit an inside the park HR, though watching the SS holding the ball as Young rounded 3B was most disturbing about that.

As the Rangers, I tested and tried tweaking all the slider setups I've seen and after getting 9 hits and 0 runs in 3 games against those powerhouse pitching teams KC, Ariz & SD I decided to give yours a try. They do appear to be what I am looking for.

At least we are getting good wood on the ball now. With all the others I was not getting many off the ground or out of the IF and anything I did get to the OF in the air was caught. I just could not get anything past a defender.

Another thing was as hard as I tried to draw walks, we manged no walks in those games. The pitchers just would not throw outside the strike zone enough to get a walk. One thing that was constant, after a 3-0 count we saw 3 strikes, but hey, why not. If we hit them they were an out anyway.

I don't know if franchise mode is screwed up somehow so that the sliders weren't being recognized but it did appear no matter what tweaks I did there was no difference on the field.

I have the PC version just for info sake.

[wryan1978]

Re: Beetlebum's "Statistical All Star Sliders Set"

I've been using these sliders, but I changed the running speed to 50 and they've been working out really well. Now if they could just patch the 'zombie bald guy' glitch I'd be all set.

Great work here man, your hard work is appreciated!