Five Worst Gameplay Issues in MLB The Show 22

[JayhawkerStL]

Yeah, hitting and fielding are perfect for me, but I use button throwing and directional hitting. Players just play to their ratings. Arenado just botched an easy ground ball for me yesterday, giving me the animation of him looking at his glove.

I will say that I go to Quick Manage to sacrifice and steal bases now. I will work a count to when I want to steal, but then sim it.

To me, this game has turned out to be one of the closest to sim sports games I’ve played in forever, when you also uses Classic pitching. It kinda goes back to my Sim sports on PC days, when the notion of using a controller was the line not be crossed for a sim game. But I feel like this is as close to balancing text sim results with just enough use of the controller to feel engaged as any sports game I’ve played.

And this is coming from a long time MLB2K guy that really disliked The Show’s gameplay over the years. But this years game feels like what Sierra Sports might have done with BBPro over time.

I wish online was better. But I’ve played SMB3. I know the gameplay can be a million times better than what you get in The Show. And really, SMB3 is a fantastic online game, the rewards skill and strategy in really smart ways, with a ladder system Sony should just copy right now. I have no idea why anyone would spend a large amount of time in MP in The Show.

But for solo play, The Show is the closest I’ve seen a game hit exactly the simcade balance I prefer.

[DonkeyJote]

The foul balls thing, imo, mostly comes down to people not realizing just how common foul balls are. I kept track of my last 4 RS games online. In those, I averaged 24.1% of my strikes being foul balls. My opponent averaged 26.7%. The Major League median this year is 28% with a range of 26.3-29.2%. I also tested and tracked 9 games against the CPU on default Hall of Fame. I averaged 32.6%, the CPU 29.2%. A little high, but certainly nothing drastic. The rate of foul balls is fine.

I think a bigger issue (that impacts the total number of foul balls) is that there are way too many swings from players. Trying really hard to be disciplined, in those 9 games against the CPU, I swung 53.3% of the time (MLB median is 47.5%). In my 4 tracked Online games, I swung 51.2%. My opponents swung at 75.1%(!) of all pitches. Broken down to 84.1% of pitches in the zone (MLB Median = 69.1%) and 69.7% of pitches out of the zone (MLB Median = 32.3%). Now, granted, I'm playing on lower ratings since I've only played like 11 ranked games or something like that all year. But still, even more disciplined players swing way too much.

And there are three reasons for that imo. #1 is that pitching is still entirely too easy with pinpoint (the method most players are using online). You aren't rewarded for laying off that sinker down and away in the zone with no strikes, because there's a really good chance they'll be able to hit that spot again with no issue. And when you aren't rewarded for patience, you're going to get more aggressive.

#2 is that most of us don't have nearly the amount of pitch recognition and plate discipline skills to have anywhere near normal patience at the plate. So most humans are going to swing way too much not only because they aren't rewarded for not doing so (#1) but because they can't recognize when they shouldn't.

#3 is that pitchers are in the zone WAY too much. More pitches in the zone = more swings. When I pitched against a human, I averaged 37.8% of my pitches in the zone. MLB median is 41.6%. They were chasing, so there comes a point in most games where I just want to see how many times in a row they'll chase. But even using classic pitching against the CPU (which has pretty realistic plate discipline from my testing), I throw 47.3% of my pitches in the zone. And other humans averaged 56.5% against me. Even the CPU throws too many over the plate; 45.9%. When there's more pitches in the zone, there's more swings. When there's more swings, there's more fouls.

The TL;DR, foul balls aren't the problem. They need to make pitching much more difficult (leading to more balls directly, but also the threat of missing over the plate more encouraging less aggressive pitching), especially on higher difficulties. And they need to give players an aid for greater plate discipline. Maybe take the "Guess Pitch" feature, remove the penalty aspect from it, and tie it to vision/discipline (maybe vision gives you a peak at the pitch, and discipline at the location). Imo, that's the biggest issue with this game (also, there are way too many fly balls which is why there are so many home runs)

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[KnightTemplar]

Quote: Originally Posted by Armor and Sword

BUT......online gamers gonna online whine. Same story each and every cycle since the game became very popular with online competitive play. And then they infect our offline.

And if you’re online your record has to be 156 wins 3 losses. (tongue-in-cheek)

[CujoMatty]

Fielding throws sre way too easy. I would like to see the difficulty setting come back that sliders the green section. Also I liked 2ks throwing with the right stick. You had to line it up correctly as well as make it stop in a green meter. It left more room for user error.

Just a side note. I know vlad is a bigger dude but in one of the first real games of the year Buck Martinez had said in the broadcast that they clocked him and he actually has better than average speed. Don't know if that's true but thats what they said and I gound it quite interesting. Reminded me of another fat guy with decent speed Kirby Puckett.

[DonkeyJote]

Quote: Originally Posted by CujoMatty

Just a side note. I know vlad is a bigger dude but in one of the first real games of the year Buck Martinez had said in the broadcast that they clocked him and he actually has better than average speed. Don't know if that's true but thats what they said and I gound it quite interesting. Reminded me of another fat guy with decent speed Kirby Puckett.

He had a 26.8 ft/s sprint speed last year. Which is pretty close to dead on average. 44th percentile. This year, so far, he's been quite a bit slower. Down to 25.5 ft/s (20th percentile, pretty below average).

He's been up and down. Ran okay in 19, was pretty slow in 20, ran well last year, back down to relatively slow this year.

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[nbrammer3]

Couldn’t disagree more with this article. Hitting has been fantastic. This has been one of the better all around editions of the show in recent years. Sure there are some glaring issues (AI logic for one) I just hope decision makers with the show don’t make any gameplay changes moving forward.

[Firestorm]

Quote: Originally Posted by KnightTemplar

And if you’re online your record has to be 156 wins 3 losses. (tongue-in-cheek)

Gotta impress your pretend girlfriend somehow... lol

[strosdood]

Ya I don’t really understand this article, out of all years to be critical of the gameplay they picked the year it’s probably the best it’s ever been lol and why just randomly come out with this kind of article for The Show? I can’t remember any other game getting a whole write up for only things the writer thinks aren’t good…… must be slow on content this month 🤷🏻*♂️


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