05-09-2009, 09:58 PM
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#160
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Rookie
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Re: Three Things MVP 05 Still Does Better
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Originally Posted by Brian SCEA |
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Some tips on hitting:
* Whether your PCI is inside or outside does influence the direction of the hit.
* Whether your PCI is over or under the pitch influences flyballs and groundballs. There are also more factors than that.
* The right analog stick is a legacy feature for people who want to use it. When you use it, there's a contact penalty. Almost everyone uses the left analog to control hitting.
* The same goes for guess pitch, it's for people who don't want to use pure zone hitting. The game is designed for pure zone hitting, guess pitch is simply an alternative to that. That said, there's a lot of deep strategy to guess pitch for those who enjoy it.
All four of the above have been in the game since PS1 days in one form or another, which long predates any of the games being discussed. I'm sure earlier baseball games have had these concepts as well. I just wanted to clarify some factual errors being discussed, this isn't a comment on anything else. 
A common theme over the years is that every person would enjoy the game more if the features they didn't use were taken out. By the same token, every person would enjoy the game less if the features other people didn't use were taken out. Someday in the future of gaming it'll be great when we can ship custom tailored games, or more "flavors" of the same game. Unfortunately often those efforts produce quality issues by dividing efforts.
One reason for the Strategy Guide this year is because it's easy to jump to conclusions on how things work. For example Guess pitch has long penalized for incorrect guesses, but until it showed up in the Strategy Guide (and even after for a while) almost everyone thought it was a freebie. There's no particular reason to think of it as a freebie, but that's how urban legends combined with the internet work. The same about the classic vs. meter debate. Speculation easily wins over facts on the internet.
If you take a look at the very last page of the Strategy Guide, it reveals some subtle insights on hitting. I think it's a lot more fun to explore the game and discover these things on your own than to simply be told in a guide, and there's a lot more to hitting both in the game and real life. It ties into why real life pitchers pitch the way they do and favor certain zones with certain pitches. A lot of strategies in real life work in the game for this reason.
Why do you walk AI batters? You certainly don't want to, but you do. It's actually a complex question because it progressively happens over 4-10 pitches, and the answer reveals that there are a lot of things happening strategically on different levels. Just to name one example.
Hitting is definitely not just about pitch location and where the batter tries to swing at. Just to name one example, when the batter swings too early he can't help but roll his wrists and this induce more groundballs. Pitchers further exploit this by locating pitches away, which often end up being pulled foul by the batter for a chopper. Look at 6-way spray charts (Lft-Cen-Rt with FB-GB) and it's obvious what's happening. You can look at it through stat splits, by watching an early swing in slow motion, or asking any hitting coach. Better yet, look at the assymetries of how pitchers pitch and find out why. This and every other concept is why.
The point is the batter can be aiming dead center on the ball, but because he was too early he will always swing over it if aiming dead on. This would happen even if the hitter knew exactly where the pitch was going to land but not when. There are no batters in MLB who have a flat swing from beginning to end, and that is exactly why hitting is not just about pitch location and where the batter aims.
Each of the items listed in the Analysis Legend correspond to a key principle like this, and there are a lot more not yet described. In that regard, it's a lot like real life because there aren't any books that cover even half the mechanics of hitting. Some of the best ones were written 50 years ago!
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I hope you guys put a really good gameplay tutorial next year so I don't have to read about people complaining about the game just because they suck at it, and don't give a damm about trying to learn the mechanics, just want the game to play the way they want.
Look for the Training mode in Pro Evolution Soccer so you guys get an idea how to do it.
Last edited by Imnus; 05-09-2009 at 10:06 PM.
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