Slider Tinkering

[FenwayMac]

Hey All! I have been wandering around this forum for a few years, and often check out the slider forums to see what tweaks seem to make a difference in creating a great gaming experience.

It seems that this year is a particularly difficult year to dial the sliders in. There seems to be many with overpower offense, while others are struggling mightily. I keep reading that many are waiting around for the perfect set to be completed.

The problem with this type of approach is that there are WAY too many variables in testing sliders among members. Yes, you want a large sample size, BUT you must also consider factors such as what team you are playing with, what team you are playing against, is it an exhibition, or a series where fatigue may affect performance, pitch speed,what hitting camera you are using, how good are you, and on and on and on.

There are simply going to be sliders that are going to be up for debate based on your skill and style of play.

Personally, the sliders I look for the most out of the testing are arm strength, fielder reaction time, running speed pitcher, fatigue, injuries, errors. I look for patterns between the forum strings to help me determine how these will help add realism to game play. I have found that there is a good level of consistency across slider sets on these, and I find that incredibly helpful

For the rest, I tend to start at 5, simply because you have to give the developers SOME credit that they are creating a balanced game out of the box. I then play some games and take note as to trends in the game. If I am smacking the hell out of the ball, then maybe drop power a tick. if I smash a line drive, I like to look at the post-pitch PCI result. If the curse if fairly off the ball, then I may drop contact a tick. If all the hits are looking the same I may drop solid hits a tick, or if I am popping and chopping, then raise a tick. Of all of these I would say that power is the most dramatic to change, while contact and solid hits will help you customize to your skill, or lack thereof when hitting. I tend to make the same changes to both HUM and CPU to be fair.

Pitching...I like to take a pitcher and run him into the earth to see how many pitches can toss without becoming completely gassed. I like my pitcher to pretty much max out at 100 at the most, so i adjust fatigue until it is in that range. Control..i dont like throwing meatballs when I am hitting the meter line perfectly, but want to pay if I am off the mark. I expect the same of the CPU, as I dont want to be chasing paint all game, but also don't want to massacre meatballs every at bat either.

With a little analysis and reading the descriptions of the sliders, I believe that (for the most part) we have the ability to set our sliders to tailor the experience to our skill level. There will never be a holy grail slider set, BUT there are gems you can gleam from all the hard work and testing results that others are posting. You just understand that MANY of these sliders are going to be highly susceptible to scrutiny based on the tester's set up.

For me, the gems are the defensive sliders. The offensive sliders are great, but your results may vary! My two cents. Thanks for listening!

[magiclakers32]

well said. my approach is very much the same...