Bud's Minimal Interaction All-Star sliders...

[budsticky]

First off, a quick trip up to the soapbox to give my view on sliders. For the most part sliders are very individualized as we all have varying skills and play the game in various ways (different pitch speeds, guess pitch on/off, L-stick hitting, etc...). After extensive testing with numerous games I have settled on a set that works for me and my style of play. I have tried most of the slider sets on here so a debt of gratitude is owed to all those whose work helped me get a good set of my own. So, for some these sliders may be too easy. Some may find them too hard. Some of you may not wish to play the game the way I do, and that's fine. But hopefully some of you out there will get something out of these.

So what type of player is my slider set for? Basically, I would consider my style of play the next step up from manage only mode. I do hit and pitch, but my fielding is set to auto as is my baserunning. When hitting I use timing only with no aids, no guess pitch, and only X button for swings. For pitching, I use classic mode and always try to hit the spots the catcher calls for. I am the type of player that likes to take myself out of the game as much as possible and let the ratings do their work. In fact, manage only mode was my almost exclusive style of play for most of MLB 09. For some reason I'm enjoying having some control in 10 though. The stats are still coming out believable so that's all that really matters to me in the end.

Speaking of stats, these sliders have been tested over many, many games. I have seen a wide variety of games from high scoring affairs to blowouts to pitching duels. The top tier pitchers are usually very tough on me, but once in a while I'll rough one up and knock them out in the second or third inning. On the other hand, I'll occasionally get owned by a 4th or 5th starter. Basically, I've seen the variety that I tend to see as I watch real baseball throughout a season. So my stats have evened out over the course of many games to look very much in line with what one would expect in real baseball. There might be a couple soft spots in the stats, but those seem to be more engine related. In particular, I'm thinking of outfield assists from guys getting gunned down 1st to 3rd. We all know about this problem and although I've toned it down some it still rears it's ugly head once in a while.


So here are my settings and sliders. For some of them I've included some annotations to explain why I set a certain slider a certain way. You'll see a number in brackets with the matching explanation at the bottom of the page. Again, any of this stuff is personal opinion and I'm just posting these in the spirit of sharing. All of my sliders are listed as clicks from the left, so 5 is defualt, 0 is, well, zero, and 10 is max, and so on. As you will see, a lot of my stuff is just on default. I think the game plays well for my style of play on default with some minor tweaks. Enjoy and feel free to share your experiences with these if you decide to use them.

And by the way, I just loaded these up on SC under "Buds Minimal Interaction Sliders."

Profile Settings

Note: I'm only including those I feel are important to the intentions of my set. A lot of this stuff will be user preference so I am not including those.

Hitting Difficulty: All-Star
Pitching Difficulty: All-Star
Pitching Interface: Classic
Guess Pitch: Off
Strike Zone: Off
Hot Zones: Off
Auto Throwing: On
Auto Baserunning: On
Fielding Assist: Auto [1]
Auto Sliding: On
Swing Influence: Off
Pitcher Confidence: On(although this is just visual, so I guess it doesn't really matter because pitcher confidence is always "on" as far as the game engine is concerned).
PCI: Off


Gameplay Sliders

Human:

Contact: 5
Power: 5
Timing: 5
Fouls: 5
Solid Hits: 2
Starter Stamina: 5
Reliever Stamina: 0
Pitcher Control: 5
Pitcher Consistency: 8 [2]


CPU:

All the same as human, but here are the ones unique to CPU:

Strike Frequency: 5 [3]
Manager Hook: 5
Pickoffs: 5


Global:

Pitch Speed: 0 [4]
Fielding Errors: 5 [5]
Throwing Errors: 5 [5]
Fielder Run Speed: 1
Fielder Reaction: 6
Fielder Arm Strength: 4 [6]
Baserunner Speed: 5
Baserunner Steal Ability: 5
Baserunner Steal Frequency: 7
Wind: 5
Injury Frequency: 5

[1] I feel it is necessary to have human fielding on auto to keep balance in the game. If some of you are really good at fielding you may like to do it manually, but for me it seems the computer is able to make plays that I simply cannot make and that impacts the balance of games. Plus, this just goes with the spirit of letting the ratings take over as much as possible IMHO.

[2] Pitcher consistency needs to be up to at least 8 to reduce the wild pitches, passed balls, and hit batters to a reasonable level.

[3] Most sets on here have this anywhere from 0-3. As much as possible I like to keep things at default so I tried this one at default and I really didn't notice that much of a difference. I still get ahead in counts early and I still draw a realistic number of walks. Sure, the CPU might get hot and start hitting the strike zone on first pitch once in a while. I almost always take first pitch, but when I see this happening I might look to swing at the first pitch. Maybe it's coincidence but the CPU seems to start thinking twice about coming in to you after you crush one on first pitch a time or two. Either way, I'm seeing fine results with this slider at default.

[4] This is purely my preference. I was having a real hard time picking up pitches on default so I swallowed my pride and lowered this to zero and it is much better. At default I find I was just trying to stay alive too much and I couldn't really get the time to recognize pitches. At zero I can do this better. Don't get me wrong, I still get fooled and strike out plenty, it just makes the game feel better for me. Speaking of getting fooled, I find a lot more of my strikeouts are of the looking variety with this at zero. I think this is because I can look for pitches more instead of just flailing away hoping to make contact. So even though the pitch is coming in slower it might fool me if I'm not expecting either the speed, location, or both. Not sure if that makes any sense, but it does to me.

[5] Many sets have these higher. I tried them higher but the errors being produced looked and felt artificial to me in some way. Plus my shortstops and second basemen were racking up errors at an alarming rate at some of the higher settings. I still feel I get a good distribution of errors at default.

[6] Purely to help reduce the 1st to 3rd outfield assists. It doesn't unbalance the game any to reduce this by one so that's what I went with.

[Heroesandvillains]

What can i say...I love in depth analysis! Thanks for posting your reasoning on the slider changes. (one note: you say manual fielding in the description when I'm pretty sure you mean auto)

Would you mind posting some of your stats? Team avg, cpu and user strike outs, 2b to hr ratio, bb's, strike percentage, etc.? Some of you're adjustments are different than anything I've seen as of yet and I'm sure a lot of people would love to see some numbers.

[mwolin]

I agree on the analysis, and I play very similarly to you. I tried your sliders and I think they are fine, but the one issue I have is hitting on allstar. Even at low pitch speed I have trouble picking up the ball, and am not interested in hours of practice. Have you tried lower hitting levels, ie veteran or rookie or are these too unrealistic for stats etc?

[budsticky]

Quote: Originally Posted by heroesandvillians

What can i say...I love in depth analysis! Thanks for posting your reasoning on the slider changes. (one note: you say manual fielding in the description when I'm pretty sure you mean auto) Would you mind posting some of your stats? Team avg, cpu and user strike outs, 2b to hr ratio, bb's, strike percentage, etc.? Some of you're adjustments are different than anything I've seen as of yet and I'm sure a lot of people would love to see some numbers.

Thanks. It is indeed what I meant and I will correct it. I'll post some stats a little later when I get time to sit with the game for a little while. Without looking I'm going to say that I probably strike out more than I should and swing at more bad pitches than I should, but that is because I'm still not a great hitter. So that stuff will probably look a little high, but not outlandishly so. The question I had to ask myself was how much I wanted to dumb down the game to meet my level of play vs. how much I wanted to retain a certain feel and know that I will get better with time. This is why sliders are so personalized. But I'll post what I've got a little bit later.

[budsticky]

Quote: Originally Posted by mwolin

I agree on the analysis, and I play very similarly to you. I tried your sliders and I think they are fine, but the one issue I have is hitting on allstar. Even at low pitch speed I have trouble picking up the ball, and am not interested in hours of practice. Have you tried lower hitting levels, ie veteran or rookie or are these too unrealistic for stats etc?

I did try rookie at one point because I was interested to see how it would work since it is the one mode that is touted as being timing only, which is basically how I play. The problem was that just about everything I hit was hit hard. To be fair though I didn't do this a lot so my observations are on a small sample size.

The thing about the lower levels is that the CPU pitchers also pitch on that level. So if you have your hitting set up to rookie or veteran the CPU pitches you at those levels as well. This means you get a lot of pitches right down the middle and very few walks. Now that they allow the user to have different difficulty levels for pitching and hitting the next logical step would be to allow us to split up the difficulty so that you could have the CPU pitching to you at All-Star or higher and still retain rookie or veteran batting.

I suppose one could dial in some sliders to try and make it better, but I had to decide where to put my energy, and I decided to focus more on all-star settings.

As far as general tips on hitting, I would say to be patient. I almost never swing at the first pitch. And if the first pitch is a ball I rarely swing at the second pitch either. And if I get to 2-0 I'll often just wait to see a strike. Being ahead in the count is so advantageous in this game just as it is in real life. Also, check after every swing to see what the pitch type was and how your timing was. If you find yourself swinging early all the time force yourself to sit back on pitches and vice versa if you're late all the time. It's all very easy to explain but you really just have to go out there and take your hacks in the game and you will get better. I am certainly no master hitter. I'm probably average at best. Change ups still kill me, but when I properly identify one and wait on it and send it 430 feet back it feels really good!

[eamuscatuli15]

Hey bud, nice read on your slider descriptions and reasoning. i'm at work at the moment so haven't been able to apply them to my game yet...but planning on testing some of these out. Still got a week till opening day so i don't mind looking around for other slider suggestions.

The one that interests me the most is the pitch speed at 0. does pitch speed slider apply to the cpu hitting as well...i.e., if i lower pitch speed to 0 will it make it easier for the cpu to hit the ball.

i play on hof right now and planning on moving up to legend at some point during the year.

thanks in advance for the response (hopefully)

later man

[budsticky]

Quote: Originally Posted by eamuscatuli15

Hey bud, nice read on your slider descriptions and reasoning. i'm at work at the moment so haven't been able to apply them to my game yet...but planning on testing some of these out. Still got a week till opening day so i don't mind looking around for other slider suggestions. The one that interests me the most is the pitch speed at 0. does pitch speed slider apply to the cpu hitting as well...i.e., if i lower pitch speed to 0 will it make it easier for the cpu to hit the ball. i play on hof right now and planning on moving up to legend at some point during the year. thanks in advance for the response (hopefully) later man

I don't believe the pitch speed has anything to do with the strength of the CPU's game. I'm pretty sure it's just something to help the user out and as far as the CPU is concerned it's just a cosmetic thing. That would make sense anyway. I can't confirm this though. A SCEA dev would be needed to confirm it, but I can make a pretty good educated guess that it doesn't make a difference as far as CPU batting performance. So yeah, the CPU is probably just running off of some programmed algorithm and I can't imagine the pitch speed makes a bit of difference as far as their skill.

[onelastbreathnj]

Bud, loving what I see so far. I play exactly the same way as you.

Quick question though. How are you pitching using classic? Tapping, holding?

Last year classic worked great for me but this year it's been rough. With consistency at 8 it's better, but I'm having an extremely tough time striking out anyone with classic.