Major League Baseball 2K10 was the Jesse Spano of video games: brainy and beautiful, but ultimately just not the hottest girl in the room. That honor went to the PS3-exclusive MLB 10: The Show, the Kelly Kapowski of baseball games. Still, the beauty of game development—especially for sports games—is that a new year brings a new opportunity for 2K Sports to try and go all Showgirls with their baseball franchise and compete with its sexier rival. With about six weeks to go until the game's March 8 release, we were able to spend some quality time with MLB 2K11 and get a feel for some of the new features that gamers will experience when entering the virtual diamond. You know 2K Sports isn't going down without a fight, so check out five of the coolest things that may help this year’s title hit it out of the park...
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http://www.complex.com/video-games/2...bout-mlb-2k11/ -
Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
No real new information here. Very consistent with what we've heard already, which isn't a bad thing. -
Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
I like reading the glaring issues of 2k10 are being taken care of 2k11.Dallas Cowboys
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Playing; NHL 13, MLB 2k13, WWE13, DMC, Tomb RaiderComment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
I may give this game a go this year. Haven't played a 2K Baseball game since 2K7.
Will there be cursor hitting?Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
The fielding sounds interesting. One thing about baseball video games is that fielding gets repetetive and boring, so if they did it right it may be big. I just hope they didn't overdo the difficulty and turn it into an error fest.Pitchers and Catchers Report; Life Worth Living AgainComment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
The one thing that has always bugged me about fielding in baseball games is that it basically consists of just running. See the ball and run into it and your fielder takes care of everything else. Then press a button to throw (or a direction on the stick). On fly balls, they tell you where the ball is going to land, so 99% of what happens takes exactly no skill to complete..***n fielder to spot that computer tells me to go.
We have a somewhat complicated and intuitive pitching mechanic and they've come up with somewhat complicated and intuitive pitching mechanics over the years, but fielding a ball and throwing it, for the most part, hasn't changed since the original Nintendo Baseball, which came out almost 30 years ago.
Obviously catching a routine flyball is one of the easier things to do in sports, but as you said, it just becomes boring and uninvolved. I've always wanted someone to implement some sort of a catch button, similar to how as a WR in football, you have to go get the ball, but with much more room for error.Comment
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While I can't argue with you too much, I will point out that most games allow you to turn off the "catch indicator" which definitely makes tracking down fly balls more challenging. As far as a "catch button", this would not be that difficult to implement. In fact, it seems simple enough that my guess is that more than a few developers have prototyped it over the years and found that it either made fielding so difficult that it wasn't fun or so easy that it didn't really add much challenge. Just a thought..."Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
I disagree. It was the main theme of my one and only blog post.
Difficult fielding in baseball games leads to frustration rather than a drive to succeed. People want errors, but they NEVER want to run around the the OF after balls that should have been routine outs. What happens when we fail to make plays on the ball is that we get mad at the game for not letting us do what we were trying to do.
I'm sure most of us that play online have had those twinges of guilt as we circle the bases because our opponent was trying to move the wrong outfielder and ran the guy away from the ball. It doesn't feel like we earned those triples or home runs. Worse, while those kind of plays happen occasionally in baseball, they happen way too often in video game baseball, which destroys the immersion.
My contention is that 2K10's fielding was better than anyone gave it credit for. It allowed us to play the game at a speed that feels good, and rewarded us for being able to make good decisions about where to throw the ball, because 2K had implemented a throwing system that nearly eliminates the accidental throws to the wrong base that were all too common with button presses.
Again, we've all picked up infield hits because our opponent threw to the wrong base, which just destroys the integrity of the game. If 2K has actually made the right stick meter relevant again and we can get poor throws to bases that actually mimic what happens in the field, it is going to really increase the immersion. I think much of the suction fielding last year would have been over looked if throwing the ball was not an automatic rocket to the base you chose.
The previews say they have decreased the window in which the game moves the player toward the ball. That may help, but I suspect it is going to frustrate a ton of gamers if it is so short you have fielders stopping before you take control. If a batter hits a hard ground ball six feet to the right of the SS, the ball is getting there within a second or two. If the SS takes a step, stops, and then dives when you take control, watching the ball scoot through, it will not be considered fun fielding, at all.
I do think that 2K10 made the throws to be too fast, and they needed to be slowed down some. But if you slow the game down enough for a human SS to make the play I described, you then have to slow the speed of the runners and massively slow down the speed of throws. I think that makes for an ugly game in this gen. We all loved RBI baseball, but I don't think a game at that pace will work anymore.
My one worry about 2K11 is that they will have overreacted to the cries of auto-fielding in the same way they overreacted to the cries that pitching was too hard. Because part of the beauty of 2K10 was that plays pretty much worked as they should. All we really needed was bobbles, booted ground balls and off-target throws to be added to the mix. While 2K seems to have done just that, it will suck if getting the ball in the glove is a challenge that results in stupid long innings with OF's running after balls that should have been routine outs.Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
2k10's fielding last year was atrocious. The CPU was way too involved which basically left you at best with a system with minimal user interaction. Plus all the fielding animations were in hyper drive so I am not sure how you can say the game allowed the user to play at a comfortable speed.“The saddest part of life is when someone who gave you your best memories becomes a memory”Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
We'll it seems like the days of the CPU making/taking those 1st steps towards the ball before the user takes control are over with this years new Fielding Mechanic.
Only time with the game will tell if this is the next step in fielding, or another failed attempt to satisfy the masses.Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
As I said, it was far better than it was given credit for. I don't think the animations were in hyper drive, and the game played at good speed. Turning double plays felt perfect. It was hard to turn them from third, but the flip from the SS or 2B to the pivot man felt spot on.
If bobbles are added, and poor fielders not only make errors, but take longer to get throws to first, it's going to be perfect. But to call last year's fielding atrocious is just not accurate. At least, not for the reasons you are stating.Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
I never said it needs to be difficult. I just want it to be user involved.
Catching a football when wide open is not difficult, but in recent football games, it still involves user input, which is what I would like to see. The window to execute a catch can be wide enough so that, unless someone has no clue whatsoever, every routine catch would be routine, but at least the user would be involved in the entire play instead of running to a spot and sitting there for 2 or 3 seconds waiting for the game to trigger the catch animation. Instead you trigger the animation. You could then have complete responsibility of how the fielder positions himself to throw afterwards as you were responsible for not only his positioning, but also trigger when he started his momentum towards the ball and into his throw.
Also, on sharp grounders or line drives to an infielers left or right, timing becomes important and that's where I feel user input would benefit the current system. To pick that short hop, your timing has to be much tighter, especially if you are out of position trying to back hand a ball that you could have/should have gotten in front of.
Maybe your thinking of something much more difficult and techinical than pressing a button or pulling a trigger to trigger your fielder to catch a ball, but as I stated before, it'd be very similar to catching a pass in football. You do nothing and your fielder does nothing (the same as if you don't press a throw button or move the stick to swing), but you press a button as the ball approaches and your fielder moves his glove into position.
The timing of this would trigger all sorts of different animations (your fielder camping under a ball and making a lazy catch to your fielder running full speed and making a last second stab for a ball just out of his reach).
I can't speak for anyone else, but having input on anything brings much more satisfaction to the experience. Understanding there will be hiccups, like those that already exist, I don't foresee this being complicated enough to really add anything more than we see in every other game.Comment
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Re: COMPLEX "5 NEW Things" you're gonna LOVE about MLB 2K11
Well, I don't hit a button when I catch passes in NCAA 11. I recently had a 78 OVR QB complete 100% of his passes.
I've pointed out on numerous occasions on the NHL threads that folks complaining about not being able to score clean goals actually just can't aim. Sure they talk about their sense of achievement from scoring goals by spamming the upper corners. But mostly, the complain that the game doesn't read their aiming well enough, and they can only score on deflections.
If they crate a situation where you get to press a button to catch a ball as an option, great. It just seems silly. Because invariably the result is gamers claiming they did it right, but the game cheated them.
Fielding balls in 2K9 was not as hard as they made it out to be, but every time someone didn't line-up properly, they blamed the game, not their stick skills. I can agree that 2K10 went too far in taking the over the OF when catching the ball. But it's kind of what users asked for. But going all the way to requiring me to time a button press to catch the ball?
Not only do I not want to do that. I sure as heck won't want to come to the forums to read the boards of rage. If you make it so easy that the masses can't fail, then what is the point?
I agree with guys that made a point that removing the first step in hitting turned analog hitting into basically a different way to push a button. the only benefit was a more intuitive way to check your swing. But the challenge of two step hitting led to another whole round of bashing the game.Comment
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