MLB The Show 16 Twitch Stream - Franchise Mode & Gameplay (Archive Available)

[jb12780]

Quote: Originally Posted by volsfan39

How about you both take deez nuts for free Alex!!! Exactly why I hardly ever comment here..

Seriously?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

[TheWarmWind]

Quote: Originally Posted by Drew127

To me, this is the main problem with console sports gaming. The target market is more casual and will never care about this stuff. As long as the dev team remains prohibitively small, and maximum profit remains the end goal, these things will be moved down the list in a hurry. I'd love to see a game with no agenda besides to make the most authentic, in-depth, true-to-life franchise mode experience as is humanly possible. But given the state of video games and the business, I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. Instead we can expect more fluff and gimmicks with card collecting and game modes that provide an arcade/RPG-like experience.

Didn't you JUST make this exact same post in another forum?

Also I don't think thousands of new animations, human ik, closed roof stadiums, player morale, precision input engine, presentation and stat tracking collaboration, enhanced progression and regression, improved path to balls, tweaked trade logic, tweaked player stamina and more are fluff additions, especially to franchise. The Show is about more than just the numbers. If that's all you care about, there is always OOTP.

[Drew127]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWarmWind

Didn't you JUST make this exact same post in another forum? Also I don't think thousands of new animations, human ik, closed roof stadiums, player morale, precision input engine, presentation and stat tracking collaboration, enhanced progression and regression, improved path to balls, tweaked trade logic, tweaked player stamina and more are fluff additions, especially to franchise. The Show is about more than just the numbers. If that's all you care about, there is always OOTP.

I meant to post that reply in this thread, but realized it after it was posted. In any event, it's relevant to both threads and I want my thoughts on it to be seen. I can delete it from the other thread, if I risk getting crucified over it.

That said, you seem to have missed my point. I'm not claiming that nothing was done to the game. I am acknowledging the significant work that remains to be done with stat tracking to get it to where it could be, and frankly, where I feel it needs to be for a sim-focused baseball game.

I'm certainly not complaining about the stat tracking additions for this year - much better than nothing. But it's an opportunity to point out how much more needs to be (and can be) done with it.

I don't think it's very constructive or reasonable to try and deny my opinion by pointing out all the other things that were done. Yes, lots was done. But more can be done, and I'm going to keep advocating for it.

[TheWarmWind]

Drew, You're allowed your opinion on what is good or bad about the game, but dismissing the work outside of stats enhancements (including DD) as gimmicks is just not going to fly.

I hate DD (or any other mode online), but it's a well constructed and thought out mode, and it's here to stay, yes because it's profitable, but it's profitable because people love it. Yes, even hardcore baseball fans.

Also, claiming that SDS should just hire more people in order to get better stat tracking in the game is a flawed argument. The larger the company gets, the more diluted the vision gets. More inefficiencies crop up, and the need for a more centralized management system becomes greater. Soon enough, ALL that matters is profit, and the small voices in the company don't matter any more.

I am willing to bet A LOT that the ONLY reason why stats got a significant upgrade this year is BECAUSE SDS is such a small, passionate group, not in spite of it. They listened to the OS community and worked hard and delivered. One more hiring may bring us even more of that, but it also could take us one step further away.

[NAFBUC]

Quote: Originally Posted by Drew127

I meant to post that reply in this thread, but realized it after it was posted. In any event, it's relevant to both threads and I want my thoughts on it to be seen. I can delete it from the other thread, if I risk getting crucified over it. That said, you seem to have missed my point. I'm not claiming that nothing was done to the game. I am acknowledging the significant work that remains to be done with stat tracking to get it to where it could be, and frankly, where I feel it needs to be for a sim-focused baseball game. I'm certainly not complaining about the stat tracking additions for this year - much better than nothing. But it's an opportunity to point out how much more needs to be (and can be) done with it. I don't think it's very constructive or reasonable to try and deny my opinion by pointing out all the other things that were done. Yes, lots was done. But more can be done, and I'm going to keep advocating for it.

I could not agree more drew.........you were not bashing SCEA or saying I will not buy this years version. Valid points were made in a respectful manner. Everyone has 'priority features' they would like to see improved each year.

This forum is for discussion which is why the 'play OOTP' if you want stat tracking is getting old.

[tessl]

Quote: Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear

I would be opposed to scouting-based attributes or not having ratings for a couple of reasons. For one, the scouting such that it is in this game right now for the draft is one of the weaker and less-fully fleshed out features in the franchise mode. The scouts don't have much (any?) personality other than a handful of numbers that aren't really well defined. Aside from this, scouting all of the players in the league on a regular basis would be such a tall task for 4 area scouts that you'd need a great expansion in the number of scouts...and you'd want more differentiation/personality in your scouts if they suddenly became much more critical to the player rating mechanic. I wouldn't want my entire knowledge of the MLB, or even a sizable chunk, to hinge on the limited scouting system that is currently in place. Now, if the scouting aspect were to get a lot of love and improve in the future, then I could see the draw to adding in a scouting component to ratings. Ditto for coaching, because the coaches are way too basic as just a source the same attribute boosts/nerfs no matter what player we're talking about. Secondly, there is already "fog of war" in the current system. I believe you want something a little less cut and dried than looking at a rating number to make all roster decisions? But, even with "100% knowledge" of the ratings, some players will inevitably underperform and some will overperform. You will "like to hit" more with some players than others and some of this already feels quite unrelated to just the raw ratings. For example, sometimes I feel (placebo? perhaps) that I bat better with certain batting stance types than others due to having a larger/smaller strike zone and how the AI pitching attacks that specific player. So things like this, which are not based on ratings, can help drive my decisions on playing time and who gets key at bats. I also think you get a nice variety of outcomes in played and simmed games and it never really feels like because player X has contact rating of Y, player X must hit .260 or whatever. And on some level, if you feel that just scrolling through for the highest CON vLHP is too boring, wouldn't scrolling for the highest Batting Average vLHP feel much the same? Wouldn't the process still be basically reduced to looking at a single number whether that's a rating or a stat? Wouldn't you still be "managing a bunch of numbers" one way or the other? I realize that you guys are both advocating for an option to have this and I agree that having an option to hide ratings would be perfectly fine, but I'd only want it as an option and not the only way of doing things. And this POV is coming from a guy (or one of a handful of guys) who (1) enjoys playing a "stats only" set up in OOTP and (2) who's probably done more simming and testing the stats and ratings on recent MLBTS titles than anyone not working for SDS right now.

+1

The way I view attributes is they are the game's way of making up for the inability to do what happens IRL. From the time these players are first scouted and even more so when they sign and put on a uniform in the low minors they are being watched and their abilities gauged by professional scouts, instructors and coaches. The coaches know how fast they are, what their reaction time, fielding ability, arm strength and other attributes are. There might be some surprises when they first put a drafted player in a uniform because the scouts sometimes miss on a guy but when the coaches and instructors get these guys they begin assessing their attributes. Most of them never make MLB precisely because the coaches in the system know their attributes aren't good enough.

In the show we don't have the ability to put them through base running drills, fielding drills, test their arm strength and agility, watch them in a batting cage, etc. The show as a game is good but that simply isn't possible. Therefore the game gives us their attributes. An organization would have to have a pretty worthless group of scouts, coaches and instructors not to have a good idea what the attributes of the players in their organization are.

I could see a system giving you only a general pie chart view of players attributes outside your own organization and requiring you to assign a scout to a player to reveal his more detailed attributes but for players within the organization I believe it would be unrealistic not to know their attributes.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Quote: Originally Posted by nomo17k

The problem is not the variance in results (which everyone seems plenty in the game), but the way *expected* results can be rather accurately derived from in-game attributes, when those are the true drivers of the simulation engine (which they are in The Show). Inferring ability to perform in future from past performance (stats, memory, etc.) or by subjective impression (e.g., scouting) is entirely different from looking directly at the true ability. For statisticians, those are basically the differences between sample mean (something like scouting), population mean (perhaps stats like WAR), vs "true" population mean (attributes). Basically scouting and advanced stats like WAR are trying very hard, from different perspectives, to estimate what that "true" talent level is for a player. The game, on the other hand, is actually giving us THE truth. And a whole a lot of people enjoy doing scouting and calculating WARs. No need to do so in a game that provides the truth upfront.

That's where I tend to disagree. The variance is the whole, entire issue here. If 85 contact equated to a definite batting average, then it would be a boring game. That's not the case. That the 85 contact rating tells us a player is a good contact hitter relative to most others is not a problem or an unreasonable advantage, because this type of information is readily available simply by having even a passing knowledge of the real life players. With or without ratings, most baseball fans would know this.

The derivation also goes both ways. If you are saying that *expected* results can be fairly accurately derived from in-game attributes, then the same can be said about reverse engineering the in-game attributes and them being fairly accurately derived from the *expected* (or actual) results. Maybe one approach is more interesting or seems more mysterious to some people, but it is basically the same approach where you are relying on quantitative data provided by the game that hints at the true abilities of a player in order to make decisions.

The variance that links the rating to the result, whether in a sim or played game, and the interplay of different attributes/factors to muddy the waters (I don't even think the originator of the "it's a no brainer to pick the higher power rating but not necessarily the guy with the most HRs" theory would reduce the likelihood of a HR to a single rating), is the whole issue. The variance being large enough to give us a range of different outcomes marginalizes any advantage we gain from discovering, as mentioned in your stats mini-lecture, the "true" population mean for free.

Quote: Originally Posted by BrianU

I gave examples of how picking between a 40 HR guy and a 45 HR guy is not the same as picking between 75 Power and 74 Power. The result variance has zero to do with this. You literally get a bigger PCI and a better chance with the higher rated guy. That's absolute, it is wrong and illogical to pick the lower Power guy all else equal if you need a home run. I don't see the argument. I'm done replying because I already made my point successfully about why the 40 HR guy might be a better choice. His current Power vs L rating (The only thing that matters) could be higher than the 45 HR guy. Because he may have less ABs, gotten 30 of his HRs more recently by coming into the game hot leading to a higher Current Power rating while the 45 HR guy started the season hot and has been cooling off leading to a lower Current Power rating. You would not pick the player with the better avg or HR or steals because those numbers do not directly correlate to performance they are just guidelines. Whereas current rating that we see now directly relates. The baserunner on second is my perfect example. There is absolutely never a scenario when picking a 66 speed guy over a 67 speed guy makes sense. There is no variance in getting from 2nd base to home on a hit to the outfield. The 67 speed player gives you the best chance. Now if you don't have access to their Speed rating you have to decide based on what you know from playing with them and from their statistics. You are ignoring the difference between being able to see the players Current Ratings and their statistics. Statistics have a lag in them if you will, and are not absolutes like Current Ratings are. Two players batting .270 are not equal. Say you are playing in June, Player A got 30 of his hits in April while slumping the past 4 weeks while Player B started the season slow but got 30 of his hits in the last 4 weeks. Who do you go with when you need a walk off hit? Well even that information is not enough because you don't know what Contact ratings they started the season with. on top of the fact that ratings are dynamic month to month. So who has the higher Current Contact rating? You stop judging players on ratings and start judging them on what you know about them. And that is when you are one step closer to baseball nirvana. I'm not sure what you are arguing against because you would never have to play this way, but if you woke up one day and thought "You know what my whole life I've been playing videogame baseball instead of sim baseball today I want to do things different" You could turn on your sparkling PS4 and do just that. ...

I'm arguing that this ratings-less approach is not much different than what we already do with ratings. I still don't agree with you. Not that we have to agree or that either one of us needs to really care outside of having a respectful, high brow discussion for a change that has probably gone off topic by now...

Whether you are looking at ratings or at the stats that were produced as a function of said ratings, you have basically the same level of predictive power. If you are arguing that the ratings are too deterministic as to what future outcomes will be (always choose a 98 OVR over a 97 OVR etc..) then I can just as easily argue that a 40 HR player will always be more successful than a 35 HR player in hitting a homer when you need it. If the single ratings are that strictly tied to results and outcomes, then you can't uncouple the 2 as you are trying to do here by saying using one approach to decide how to manage is fundamentally a different ballgame than the other. Your hypothetical 40-HR player would definitely have the higher POW attribute and you'd be enjoying the results of that massive PCI.

Whether "what you know about the player" is 67 CON or that he hit .286 last season (which is based on said ratings) or that your scout says he's a plus contact hitter, you have similar predictive power about what will happen in his next AB.

[RCMacc44]

Quote: Originally Posted by tnixen

It's not spot on at all. They are still missing all the year flags in left center field. The 2 LED stat boards on the right field wall is wrong. Also the LED stat board in the right field upper deck is wrong. Team logos instead of team names on the Jumbo tron. Also not confirmed yet but I bet the Liberty Bell animations also is still wrong. Plus still no real life stat LED ribbon boards that go around the stadium.

Also the most annoying thing to me is that the warning track isn't the volcano ash like in real life so in the game it looks tannish-grey instead of red.