'17 Moonshot HR's

[bcruise]

So....let's talk about this. Based on what I saw from pre-release streams and now my first couple games played, I feel like HR's are traveling far too long on average. Lots of 450+ foot shots, and a few tremendous blasts like my 501 shot with Bryant in my first game. Nice to look at, sure (and to show off Showtrack) but I feel like the frequency of these blasts is going to wear on me quickly.

I believe these are happening because the new ball physics have "unshackled" the game's fly balls, so to speak. With the huge number of new ways for the ball to fly off the bat, we're seeing carry like we've never seen before in this series.

So, if this continues to be an issue beyond our initial sample size, let's look into some possible slider remedies. Obviously most people are going to knee-jerk to the power sliders, and I'm certainly not opposed to taking those down a notch or 2. But the one I believe might really solve this problem is Solid Hits. This slider effectively increases/decreases the size of the "sweet spot" within the PCI, determining the frequency with which you'll be able to put a batter's full power potential behind a swing. On default, I feel like we're seeing that full potential too often, and that's what's causing the long HR's. Some tests I did with that slider down at 2 in CPU vs CPU games looked very promising. The CPU could still hit HR's (I believe there were 5 of them in my first game with this setting), but they weren't moonshots.

Solid hits does affect more than just HR distance of course, and that's where this gets tricky. I don't want to kill off extra base hits for the sake of lowering HR distances, but so far at least I've still been seeing a few doubles as well as HR's. And, since I am actually seeing HR's I know the potential is still there for doubles and triples as well, even with that slider turned down. Lower launch angle + same hit speed = a likely 2B or 3B instead of a HR. The last thing I want is for this to turn into whack-a-mole slideritis where it fixes one thing but breaks others, so ultimately if this doesn't work I'm willing to live with extra-long HR's for the sake of overall game balance.

The reason I don't want to mess with power sliders too much is that Exit Velo (aka Hit Speed) still looks very good to me. I can barely break 120 mph with Stanton squaring a ball up perfectly. I did a post about Hit Speed last year in the Little Things thread, and it still applies here in '17:

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...&postcount=169

I didn't have a whole lot of time to test this out last night, but I'll be playing around with it extensively today. And I wanted to put my thoughts out there to start up some discussion. Would love to hear the slider makers' thoughts on this situation once they get a few games under their belts.

[Armor and Sword]

Right now testing it at 3 and want a sample size. Lets stay in touch on this.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[Aensland]

I have to agree, there's way too many no-doubters and tape measure home runs on the default setting. First home run I've seen in 2017 was a 472ft moonshot by Adonis Garcia. I saw Brandon Crawford hit a 470+ft shot on the OS stream, and some guy on youtube hit one over 600ft, which is "arcade-like". Plus the remaining 95% of homers I've seen since started playing have been no doubters, well over 400ft.

[NewNapkin]

Yeah, I think this started last year. Definitely needs to be tuned... hope we can come up with something!

[BillPeener]

I crushed three straight home runs off Kluber with Bryant, Rizzo, and Zobrist. Power is definitely too high. I moved it down to 4 and will test from there.

[bcruise]

Update:

Unfortunately my above theory doesn't seem to be holding up as well for user vs. CPU testing as it did for CPU vs CPU. Even with zeroing user solid hits I hit 5 homeruns in 3 innings with Boston (2 with Mookie Betts) and all were 450+. It works okay to allow the CPU to hit some normal-looking HR's but it can't stop the user from squaring up the PCI and destroying the ball.

So the power slider might be the only option after all. It WILL fix the long HR issue guaranteed, but I hate having to move it because it will lower the apparent hitspeed/exit velos. The HR's will look normal, but the numbers will look less than you'd expect relative to how far the ball is traveling. Kinda ruins the ShowTrack effect.

You can still hit the ball really hard with power lowered if you square up, so I doubt we'll see a huge XBH decrease from that. But I'll play around with it in some actual games to see what happens.

[bcruise]

First game with Power = 2 on both Human+CPU was a positive result. 4 doubles and one wall-scraper HR (Jay Bruce). That's exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see.

Lots more coming - the bigger the sample size on this, the better. And I don't plan on turning this game off anytime soon.

BTW, I'm playing HOF default pitching/batting/fielding except for Power at 2 on user and CPU.



I was the Royals.

OT - I also walked SEVEN times. That's pretty rare even by my standards - I've rarely had trouble drawing at least some walks in this game every year. It's all about the hitting approach and the willingness to take close pitches or ones you can't cover.

[BrianU]

Quote: Originally Posted by bcruise

Update: Unfortunately my above theory doesn't seem to be holding up as well for user vs. CPU testing as it did for CPU vs CPU. Even with zeroing user solid hits I hit 5 homeruns in 3 innings with Boston (2 with Mookie Betts) and all were 450+. It works okay to allow the CPU to hit some normal-looking HR's but it can't stop the user from squaring up the PCI and destroying the ball. So the power slider might be the only option after all. It WILL fix the long HR issue guaranteed, but I hate having to move it because it will lower the apparent hitspeed/exit velos. The HR's will look normal, but the numbers will look less than you'd expect relative to how far the ball is traveling. Kinda ruins the ShowTrack effect. You can still hit the ball really hard with power lowered if you square up, so I doubt we'll see a huge XBH decrease from that. But I'll play around with it in some actual games to see what happens.

SDS always puts in big effort in patches, when the initial release settles down we should make a coordinated effort to tell them to look at this it's the only major issue with gameplay imo