MLB The Show 22 - (PS5/Xbox Series X|S) Impressions

[DJ]

Quote: Originally Posted by MetsFan16

I’ve been playing on PS5 since release and recently got a Nintendo Switch because I’ll be traveling for work a bit. Booted up the show on the handheld and I was really bummed by the graphical quality. I remember people saying the Tech Test was horrible and then when release day came it was much improved. Maybe I had too high of expectations for the graphics but it was hard to get through 1 inning. I’ll probably stick with flipping cards for stubs or playing mindless moments but definitely not touching my Franchise or RTTS on the handheld Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

Improvements mentioned were more related to framerate stability than graphics, I believe.

[countryboy]

The Giants city connect jerseys are sweet!

[Archie56]

Did they tweak the no doubt home run cam just a little bit within one of the most recent patches? Usually the hitter obscures the view from seeing the ball clearly but I noticed the last few weeks it seems like there's a little bit different of an angle after hitting a no doubter. I can see the ball better and where it lands. I'm still not a fan of it, but it's been more tolerable lately. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me

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[pokerlife]

Quote: Originally Posted by Armor and Sword

100 plus hour update. So.....we have poured in easily over 100 hours now of offline franchise gameplay. And the game is still a great game of baseball. But now the negatives have really stuck out for me and dampened my initial “wow” after release. Is the game still excellent? Yes. Is it the best ever? No. That still belongs to MLB 20 and IMO will probably never be exceeded. Why? The hitting engine. Back when 21 came out.....the biggest jarring change for me came with the hitting engine and the fundamental changes under the hood to it. I despise MLB 21. I think that was a low point for me with this series for many reasons....but the primary factor was hitting. MLB 22 is a good improvement. Make no mistake. But it still has a few lingering issues. 1. Check Swings - The mechanic is no longer ratings based. This has been discussed ad nausea.....so I am not going to get into it here...but it is a mess. Clear check swings are more often than not rung up as strikes.....and it is a clear check swing. Why? It is based on the pressure of the button press (whether that be a normal swing, contact swing or power swing). It simply is unbalanced and can really set me off when it costs me games. But I digress......I really hope SDS takes a much closer look into how the context of this is all over the place and it truly is a terrible experience. Check swings are a major part of baseball and hitting at the highest level. The inability to check swing on this game (it is a 90/10 ratio of strike to check which is ridiculous) can really grind my gears. I am still playing.....and have adjusted somewhat.....but every single iteration of this game before MLB 21 check swings were fair and far more balanced than what we have here. It simply is inexcusable that Competitive online complaints fundamentally changed a core game mechanic and removed the Discipline rating from the equation. Simply a terrible design decision which I have talked about with SDS at length about. I feel they slightly adjusted it on 22.....because on 21 it was 98% no check. The ratio was nuts. So enough of that.....but it is a huge complaint. And I know I am not the only offline franchise player who feels this way. 2. Play by Play - So we all know it was a rebuild. But in no way did we get 300 hours of lines. Sorry...most of that was recording names. The Play by Play is atrocious in terms of the same exact story’s about players every single solitary game.....and it get’s worse and worse as the season wears on. I am closing in on the All-Star Break and it is permanently shut off......I can’t even do it on the road anymore. It is simply terrible. Maybe the worst this series has had since it’s move to PS3. Obviously it is being rebuilt from the ground up.....and the name data base losses were tremendous too. A huge wart. So hopefully they continue to record and add lines.....because this is beyond bad. Sorry SDS....gotta call this out. 3. Hitting Engine Variety - Back to the hitting engine. MLB 20 still has the greatest variety of hitting ever produced in a console baseball game. Period. MLB 22 was a nice improvement from the sterile 21......but it still lacks the overall feel of a nice variation of results. Balls come off the bat too hot more often than not and sliders are not changing this....it is a fundamental core code under the hood thing. And I get it. It is trying to reflect the modern day game of the three result outcome. Well that has been accomplished for the most part. This limits MLB 22 to being a modern day baseball game only and eliminates the Roster Community from really producing classic baseball.....because it won’t play like classic baseball regardless of any slider adjustments. MLB 20 marked the end of an era for the classic roster community. If you still have MLB 20.....DL all you can before those servers are shutdown for good. There are 10’s of thousands of hours of roster work in that vault spanning a generation of MLB titles. The greatest collection of classic (and Bacons best Fictional Roster with career stats and service time) rosters ever assembled for MLB The Show. 4. Equipment - What in the world happened here. We have toy “Rawlings” gloves. It is a massive eye sore. And nothing....nothing has been said. Silence. Equipment removed.....why? At this point we should have total control of editing any and all equipment and we should not be losing standard, classic and new equipment. But the Rawlings gloves? Man it looks terrible and is a massive wart. And I was very hopeful it would have been added back by now. However I am now doubting it ever is for MLB 22. 5. Franchise Logic - Man......yeah.....it is not good. It went backwards and I am not going to get into the details as it has been discussed....but roster management is terrible by the CPU and continues to be a big issue. If you play without 30 team control you are not going to be happy long term. So back in April I gave the game a 9.5/10 but that new car smell and paint wore off after 100 plus games. Revised Score: 7.5/10 Pros: Visually beautiful, a gorgeous game in motion. Defense is simply the best it has ever been. The “in park” atmosphere is simply sublime. Audio is top notch. Presentation swipes, Stat-Cast, Regional theme, and the new News Ticker are fantastic additions. The game plays a great game of baseball. The ugly warts were outlined above and really hold back the game from being a true legendary addition to the series. 20>22>21 Final answer. I am still enjoying my Yankees season on 22 but where I go with it is up in the air after Year 1. I can see myself playing 22 for several cycles though along with the GOAT MLB 20 and sticking with these two versions. No doubt MLB 20 is living on in infamy for me with all the content. But 22 may also live on for several years. I don’t think this game can really break out until they stop developing it for the PS4/One but who knows. I just don’t see what a lot of franchise players want going forward. I also think it is reasonable to think March To October and Franchise get folded into each other at some point as that was made kinda clear in Emmond’s interview/podcast with a developer that they cannot do much with the current franchise engine anymore. And that has become clear to me as well with the logic regression. Have fun folks.

Disagree with you on hit variety. Im 100 games in , playing online only and i am still seeing new types of hits. Just had a homerun come up short and land on the padding on top of the wall and bounce back into play. Commentary is excellent for first year rebuild. It stays focused on the play by play and they know when to shutup. Sure it can be repetitive but they will get it there.

[countryboy]

Two things that I really like that are kind of under the radar things:


1) The new first baseman catch animation. Adds "life" to the game instead of just the couple we've had in years past. Different catch animations give a sense that the first baseman is an actual fielder receiving a throw versus just a catch machine

2) The look of games at similar start times over the course of a season. A 1pm game in St.Louis in July has a different look to it than a 1pm game in say April or even September.

[lvann4x]

I bought The Show 21, saw what they did to RTTS, and went back the The Show 20 to continue my careers in MLB 20 (and played it on PS5).
This means my impressions wil be compared to MLB 20 The Show.
As an RTTS player, other than the elimination of many perks (such as ShowTime at bats and base stealing attempts, as far as I know) and the overhaul in how your player ratings work carried over from ‘21, there’s not much positive difference.
The graphics are marginally better, but I don’t see a next-gen type leap. The batter’s eyes are much better, which makes it easier to see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand, but there are still many shoddy textures, and your player sitting around the clubhouse with teammates between games is repetitive and boring, and doesn’t look great.

Gameplay-wise, I see several buggy AI defensive decisions:
Balls hit back to the pitcher with a runner on first and less than 2 outs, the pitcher rarely throws to second base for the double play.

Runners on first and third, 1 out, grounder to first baseman, he runs to TAG the batter-runner, giving up the chance of a double play that would’ve kept the run scoring from third.

I play as a shortstop. I have 89 fielding. I’ll dive for a grounder and it’ll bounce off my GLOVE more often than I’ll catch it, resulting in an infield hit.
I can understand if it’s a 60-rated fielder or a guy playing out of position not being able to make a high percentage of diving plays, but an 89-rated fielder playing his position should be able to make the play 90% of the time or more on a dive that’s well-timed enough to have the ball hit his glove.
In fact, as the fielding rating approaches or surpasses 90, a mediocre-timed dive should result in a cleanly fielded ball the majority of the time (make the player move his glove to the ball as he dives).

My player was promoted to the majors WAY to quickly. I was hitting around .200 at AAA at age 19 and was promoted. I’m hitting .140 and batting leadoff in the majors. That leads me to two legacy MLB The Show problems.
1) If a player is drafted at age 18, his first full year in the minors is the NEXT year (age 19). Especially considering that every RTTS player starts out in AA, that accuracy of age is important for realism. Some miniscule percentage of players get to the majors prior to age 22-23, so my light-hitting shortstop has no business playing in the majors at 19. Hell, I didn’t even perform that well at AA!
2) Dynamic difficulty is a great concept, but it’s not working properly and needs some added functionality. If my 70 contact/60 power shortstop hitting below the mendoza line with a sub- 650 OPS in AA ball, my difficulty shouldn’t continue to bump up to Legend. If my player only had 50 contact and 40 power and I was hitting .190/.290/.310, then my difficulty might be just right, but still shouldn’t be increased.
What would be great is to be able to go to settings at any time between games and see what my current dynamic difficulty currently is (All Star, All Star +, HOF, HOF+, Legend, etc) and then be able to select which one of those settings I want to be at.
Currently, a user can only choose, All Star, HOF, Legend, with no + or ++ options available. The only way to recreate those “in between” difficulties is by adjusting sliders, which punishes us with XP nerfing.
The XP nerfing isn’t smart enough. If I want to INCREASE fastball speed and offspeed pitch speed by the SAME amount (both 7, both 9, etc), I shouldn’t be penalized. If I’m giving myself less time to see the ball on the way to the plate, I’m making the game HARDER and shouldn’t be penalized for that. It even says in the slider description that pitch speed doesn’t alter physics, it just alters the amount of time the hitter has to make the swing decision.
In the unlikely case that XP is NOT nerfed when pitch speed is increased, the don’t show me that warning popup when I change it.

Finally, in 2023 I saw Justin Verlander as the long reliever for the Astros.
This leads me to believe that the game probably still has future hall of famers who’ve earned hundreds of millions of dollars playing their final few years in the minor leagues or riding the bench/pitching long relief in the big leagues in their final few years.
Very few future hall of famers finish their careers in backup roles in the big leagues, and virtually none finish their careers playing in AAA all star games. This needs to be eliminated from The Show.

I remember during the developer promotion videos of ‘22 The Show, they said to discourage offspeed pitches up in the zone, they’d lower pitching accuracy in that location.
A better fix would be to punish too many offspeed pitches up in the zone by getting those pitches hammered into the gap and over the fence.
I use directional hitting with no PCI, and I have a BUNCH of whiffs against offspeed pitches up in the zone with GOOD swing timing. Good timing against an offspeed pitch up in the zone should result in solid contact the VAST majority of the time.
That will teach users how to pitch and will be more realistic.

A few more things I’ve forgotten to suggest for several years:
1) User baserunning in RTTS on Fast Play needs a minor tweak: When a ball is hit down the line that goes just foul, if the user is making their runner advance, as soon as the ball is ruled foul, it jumps to the next pitch and makes your runner try an early steal, where he’ll inevitably be picked off. A simple “kill” of the input (for lack of a better term) that requires new input after jumping to the next pitch would fix this.
2) Also in Fast Play RTTS, the first pitch of the next at bat after the user reaches base requires the user to go through the leadoff animation and the pitcher will often start his delivery before the user is able to extend his lead. Either skip the initial leadoff animation or add an extra 2-3 second or delay in the first pitch of an at bat when the RTTS player is on base.
3) In MLB 20, there was an option to see the broadcast view for RTTS baserunners when a ball was put in play. This needs to return, as it was the best way I could track the ball as a baserunner. No, real-life players don’t have this view, but turning their head irl is much quicker and more intuitive than rotating the camera in The Show.
4) A button to focus on the base coach would be nice, too. Some smartening of the AI base coaches may be required before implementing this feature.
5) In RTTS as a defender, some icon to show the speed of the batter while he’s batting would be a great time-saver. Nice to be able to know this without having to pause.

To be fair, I’m only posting my complaints and suggestions here. The Show is the only console sports game I play anymore (not big on basketball and Madden is Madden).
If someone told me that over the next 3-4 years, The Show was going to continue to have minimal graphical improvements, but eliminate all or most of the unrealistic areas of the game, including the things I listed, I’d buy it every year.


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[Quentin32]

Just had my most dominant pitching game ever. Man this ish was crazy. Should have let Gos for the perfect game but he was too tired.




A 25k no hitter on HOF difficulty

Much respect to my opponent for not quitting

[countryboy]

Signed Luis Castillo in the offseason. Had a great year for the Reds and I'm excited about him in the rotation. He has a good spring for us.

First pitch he throws in his season debut to Ke'Bryan Hayes of the Pirates is a 485 FT homerun smashed to dead center.

Not so excited anymore