Hi everyone, my name is Mark Little and I am the Senior Producer for MLB 2K10. This is my second round of answers I am providing to better inform you about the game. It is great to see so many people having positive reactions to the demo. Our entire team worked very hard to build the game this year, and we are already starting to work on next year’s game.

Reading through the comments on the demo there are a few things that I wanted to clarify for people. First is about the jaggies or aliasing that some are seeing in the game. As most have recognized, we worked very hard on improving the visuals in all aspects. This includes a big reduction in jaggies and sizzle; but we have not completely eliminated all the jaggies from the game. As I mentioned last week, this is a big improvement, and I think that most will recognize the improvements that have been made.

Second are the letter grades in the Inside Edge Batter Breakdown screen that you can pull up for the batter you are facing as a pitcher. As some have pointed out, they appear to be incorrect and do not make sense for the players, especially the walk rating. I will confirm that there are some problems on this screen, but want to ensure everyone that there is not a problem with the underlying data and does not negatively impact the swing tendencies for the batters; this is only a problem with the display on the screen. Many of the letter grades are being displayed in the incorrect location, and the calculation that generates the letter grade for the walk rating has a mistake that makes the ratings significantly lower than the underlying data. We have fixed all the problems, and the fixes will be incorporated into an upcoming patch. I apologize that this screen has problems two years in a row, it definitely won’t happen next year.

bhurst99: Are there sliders for fielder's arm strength and fielder's speed?

Mark Little: There is no slider that affects the fielder’s arm strength. Fielder arm strength can be adjusted via the roster by changing the player's Arm Strength rating.

I’ll review with the team whether this is something that we can add in a patch, no promises but I’ll see what we can do. We’ll also add this to the list of possible gameplay sliders for next year.

Fielder speed does have a slider and that is talked about more in one of the questions below.

MJeter02: Is the bat cursor still an option this year when hitting?

Little: We do not have the zone hitting option this year. We completely reworked the entire batting and pitching systems and focused on implementing, tuning and refining our primary control systems first. Unfortunately we were not able to get zone hitting rebuilt for this year’s game. It is on the list of possible additions for next year’s game, so it would be great to hear how many people enjoy using this option.

Spectre: Crowd noise seems a little subdued in the demo. So has the crowd been tuned for the final version?

Little: Crowds definitely are fuller in the full game. There are two things that are making crowds subdued in the demo. The first is that it is only a three-inning game, which does affect the audio systems that are really designed to play out over a nine-inning game. Secondly, for the purposes of the demo we removed a significant amount of the audio to keep the size of the demo small enough for download. This is why the commentary and much of the audio is missing from the demo.

For more information about what our audio team has spent the year working on check out our Audio Developer Insight here.

Spectre: If people still think CPU batters are a little too aggressive, are there any sliders to help make it so they are less aggressive?

Little: To make the game as realistic as possible and also bring out the characteristics of the individual players, we use Inside Edge statistics and a set of statistics that we compiled ourselves to determine what players should do at the plate. This includes a lot of different factors such as count, player tendency, type of pitch, ball vs. strike, etc. We did this so that each batter has his own approach at the plate and, what works against one batter, may not work against the next. We really want to ensure that some batters are very patient and some batters are very aggressive. With that being our goal, it does not make sense to have a slider that makes everyone swing more or less, that would not keep with the realism.

In our testing and tuning of the game you can see this play out properly over a large sample set of batters and innings, and we do not see batters being overly aggressive, especially [ones] that have a tendency to be patient at the plate.

I’ve read the posts in the demo thread about cases where a batter swung when it was 3-0 that was cause for concern. While it is not common for players to swing at a curve ball on a 3-0 count, it doesn’t mean that it never happens. That is one of my favorite aspects of baseball -- in a season just about everything that you think won’t occur will occur at some point.

We are open to all of your feedback, so please keep playing and compiling your thoughts, but remember that when we are talking about batting and pitching, player tendency really plays a big factor in what happens.

Blzer: Is there an option to hide the ball landing and pitching cursors, or change the behind-the-pitcher camera so that it's always over the pitcher's right shoulder?

Little: We don’t have an option to turn off the ball landing and pitching cursor. I’ll put that onto this list of possible options for next year.

I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “always over the pitcher’s right shoulder,” so I’m not able to answer this question in detail. We definitely allow the ability to customize the pitching camera including height, position, and even inverted. Hopefully, with all the flexibility you can find the angle you are looking for.

jayhawker: I would really like some info on the ability to look at the lineup and bench of your opponent. Will there be a simple way to bring up a lineup that shows not only who is coming up, but if the hitter is a righty or lefty? And will we be able to look at our opponent's bench to get a handle on how we want to proceed with match-ups in the game?

Little: Our new pause summary screen (comes up when you press pause during the game) shows the lineups for both the teams, including some basic stats for who is up at the plate. It does not show whether each batter is a lefty or a righty. I’ll talk with the team to see if there is a way we can include that information on the screen in our upcoming patch. No promises but we’ll see if it is possible. 

Blazzen: In the demo, some balls that are hit down the line are ending up as long singles when they should probably be doubles since the fielders get to the balls very quickly. Is this tuned further in the final game?

Fielder speed is one element that really makes a difference to how the game plays. We spent quite a bit of time tuning it to what we feel is realistic and fun to play. This is also one of the topics that we know has quite a wide range of personal preference. As a result, we implemented a slider in the game for Fielder Speed that you can adjust if you feel that overall the fielders are a bit slow or a bit fast. Remember that each player also has a fielder range attribute that determines that player's speed while in the field. If a specific player is slower than you like, then adjust the Range rating for that player in the roster. If you think that all the players are a little fast or slow, that’s when you should adjust the fielder speed slider.

I think that once the game has been out for a while this would make for an interesting poll, so we can get feedback from a large group of community members.

KeMiKaL: Can line drives tail to the right or left, or do they always go in a straight line?

Little: As part of our rework of the batting system, we completely replaced the ball and bat physics. How the ball leaves the bat is based on realistic physics that are largely affected by pitch location, your timing and the type of swing you made. The result is that sometimes you will get line drives that go straight, some that hook and some that slice. The hooks and slices happen more frequently when the ball is inside or outside of the plate because this generally results in the bat not being perfectly square to the path of the ball when contact is made. Personally, I have faded quite a few hard hit line drives into the corners of the ballparks for some easy stand-up doubles, and for me, these usually occur when I take an outside pitch opposite field.

KeMiKaL: If my contact rating is a 90 and my power is a 30 (just an example), will I be able to hit sharp line drives into the gap? Does power determine how hard you hit the baseball on contact swings, or is it all about timing?

Little: The biggest determining factor in how well you hit the ball is your swing timing. So if you are able to time the swing perfectly, then you can make great hits, including line drives with players that have fairly low ratings. A low power rating definitely reduces how hard you can hit using any swing, and also how difficult it is to make hits with the power swing, but it does not completely eliminate the possibility of line drives. You will see more line drives from players with higher power ratings but those with lower power ratings can still generate line drives. In your example, it is possible but it is not likely that you are going to hit the line drives very often.

If you are building up a character in My Player, you can generate good results by focusing on being better in contact or power, but I would recommend not completely neglecting one for the other. A power rating of 30 is definitely going to hinder your ability to hit for extra bases, and while you may be able to have a good batting average, your slugging percentage is going to be low. Like most things, a little bit of balance between the skills is generally better.

a walrus: Are there different animation sets for poor fielding players and the players who field their position well, or does everybody have the same set of fielding animations?

Little: One thing we really focus on is separating the great players from the OK players. Obviously, we are talking about professional baseball players, so we take the approach of adding more to the great players rather than taking away from the average. The determination is based on their ratings so that as you improve players they will keep extending their animations. This is important for My Player and Franchise mode player development.

So the short answer is, yes we have unique animations that are only available for the best-rated players.

Thanks for the questions!

Mark Little

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