In a couple of games i was playing today, i was specifically looking out for these two glitches that have been reported in the IGN review and by various board members: 1 - fielders diving for routing play balls and missing the ball; 2 - fielders not applying the tag on a runner even though there was plenty of time. I think i have found instances where these "glitches" occur as a result of being familiar with how MVP handles these situations. I'll comment on them one at a time.
1. The first issue is the fielder diving for a flyball unnecessarily. When you have manual fielding on, there is a circle overlay on the field that represents where the ball is going to land, and it moves appropriately as the ball continues to travel through the air. Our natural instinct is to place our fielder in the middle of this circle; the problems is, the circle represents where the ball is to land, not always where your fielder should be. If the hit is a high fly ball or pop-up, the ball tends to travel down towards the field in close to vertical position. Standing in the circle would then put you directly under the ball for a nice easy catch. The problem lies in balls that are more of the line-drive variety, whose downward travel tends to be much more horizontally oriented. Getting directly under the spot where the ball is going to land is nearly impossible; instead, you should be standing in FRONT of the spot where the ball is going the land, i.e.. standing in front of, or near the home plate side of the circle. The idea is to put the trajectory of the ball closer to normal glove height. If you are in the middle of the circle (or even closer to the back of the circle), you would basically have to bend over, or in some cases, dive to make the catch. And it's these situations that i believe are what's happening when people run into this problem. If you change the fielding to automatic (or even assist), the CPU will position the fielders for you; watch where it places them. In testing this, i notices on many occasions that the fielder was even a few steps in front of the landing circle on certain hits, and they turned out to be perfect routine catches. Keeping this in mind, i believe would could virtually eliminate any problems when our fielders dive for a route play and potentially allowing the CPU to score.
2. It seems that the first reaction of baseman is to take a step in and start looking for a potential play at other points on the diamond, while ignoring what happening at his own base. It's this delay that sometimes causes missed tags. What worked for me in a game i was playing earlier, is that instead of throwing the ball to the appropriate baseman, and letting him do all the work, you sort of have to "take control" and apply the tag yourself. I had a guy running to third, and as i threw it to my third baseman, i was prepared to move my third basemen in the direction of the runner as soon as he caught the ball. What happened was that instead of my third baseman actually "moving" off the bag towards the runner, he immediately put his glove in the direction of the runner while completely skipping his "stepping toward the middle of the infield" animation. Had i not done this, i believe my third basemen would have done his usual animation, and by the time i would have moved him back to get the runner, he would have been safe. Now this is something i want to spend more time testing, but as soon as i did it the first time, i felt like i was on to something.
I hope that what i said makes sense, and that those of you that may have been running into these issues will find it helpful. Let me know if you find these techniques to work for you.
(Sorry, this turned out to be longer than i thought)
1. The first issue is the fielder diving for a flyball unnecessarily. When you have manual fielding on, there is a circle overlay on the field that represents where the ball is going to land, and it moves appropriately as the ball continues to travel through the air. Our natural instinct is to place our fielder in the middle of this circle; the problems is, the circle represents where the ball is to land, not always where your fielder should be. If the hit is a high fly ball or pop-up, the ball tends to travel down towards the field in close to vertical position. Standing in the circle would then put you directly under the ball for a nice easy catch. The problem lies in balls that are more of the line-drive variety, whose downward travel tends to be much more horizontally oriented. Getting directly under the spot where the ball is going to land is nearly impossible; instead, you should be standing in FRONT of the spot where the ball is going the land, i.e.. standing in front of, or near the home plate side of the circle. The idea is to put the trajectory of the ball closer to normal glove height. If you are in the middle of the circle (or even closer to the back of the circle), you would basically have to bend over, or in some cases, dive to make the catch. And it's these situations that i believe are what's happening when people run into this problem. If you change the fielding to automatic (or even assist), the CPU will position the fielders for you; watch where it places them. In testing this, i notices on many occasions that the fielder was even a few steps in front of the landing circle on certain hits, and they turned out to be perfect routine catches. Keeping this in mind, i believe would could virtually eliminate any problems when our fielders dive for a route play and potentially allowing the CPU to score.
2. It seems that the first reaction of baseman is to take a step in and start looking for a potential play at other points on the diamond, while ignoring what happening at his own base. It's this delay that sometimes causes missed tags. What worked for me in a game i was playing earlier, is that instead of throwing the ball to the appropriate baseman, and letting him do all the work, you sort of have to "take control" and apply the tag yourself. I had a guy running to third, and as i threw it to my third baseman, i was prepared to move my third basemen in the direction of the runner as soon as he caught the ball. What happened was that instead of my third baseman actually "moving" off the bag towards the runner, he immediately put his glove in the direction of the runner while completely skipping his "stepping toward the middle of the infield" animation. Had i not done this, i believe my third basemen would have done his usual animation, and by the time i would have moved him back to get the runner, he would have been safe. Now this is something i want to spend more time testing, but as soon as i did it the first time, i felt like i was on to something.
I hope that what i said makes sense, and that those of you that may have been running into these issues will find it helpful. Let me know if you find these techniques to work for you.
(Sorry, this turned out to be longer than i thought)
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