MLB The Show 16 Has Officially Arrived, Post Your Impressions Here

[JoeT]

Quote: Originally Posted by Woodweaver

Telemetrics are just one tool of many that are utilized to aid in the formulation of our design plans/focus. Remember there is a very large audience with an extremely varied set of likes and dislikes. It is, and will always be, impossible to please everyone in every aspect. We always strive to find a balance and provided the best baseball experience possible given our resources and limitations. We listen to everyone's feedback, but it would simply be impossible to implement every suggestion.

Quote: Originally Posted by Stolm

It just makes very little sense that such small/key animations are being cut and skipped, in such an immersion breaking way, while also introducing even more presentation modes with even more skips and cuts. First the reason we were given as to why these animations are being skipped over is absolutely ridiculous. We were told that the data collected showed most people were just skipping through them. Skipping through an animation is one button press. There is no giant delay. You are not losing time. There is close to zero time gained by skipping through them as opposed to cutting them out completely. On top of that with the new Batters Box rules, these animations should be even shorter then how they were before. The only result of removing these was to negatively effect the enjoyment and pace of the At-Bats. If these people that were skipping through a lot of these animation truly felt it was significantly impacting their precious time, they would be using Quick Play. And lets be honest here, most people are just mashing and skipping through these out of habit, then any dislike over these animations. I have seen the devs do it constantly in their own streams! That's just how some people play games. How many people skip over dialogue and text in an RPG, just button mashing through it? There are tons, but you are not going to cut all that V.O and text out because so many button mash through it. Why? Because that would ruin the experience........ And that's exactly what has happened to the At-Bat experience in The Show. You are quickly brought up to the plate, warped in and out of the box in a very distracting way, rushed to take the next pitch. Encouraged to get the At-Bat over with as quickly as possible. There is a pace to baseball, At-Bats don't happen at a break-neck speed. Having the option to quicken the pace is fine, but to have these jarring cuts as the default and most realistic option is a joke. Why do the devs feel the need to rip out key animations in a presentation mode supposed to be replicating an actual Broadcast and a more realistic experience, for such little gain? Each year there seems to be more and more of these cuts, I don't even want to get into RTTS and what an utter mess it is this year because of all of the them. Each year the game feels less like a sim experience and more like an arcade game. Instead of having different presentation modes catering to different players, you continue to push in a single direction. First there was Broadcast and Quickplay. Then key animations were cut from Broadcast, followed by the introduction of Quick Counts.And now we have Hybrid. All Presentation options where the goal is less content, and making a faster and more streamlined experience. And in turn a less realistic baseball experience.

Totally agree. And I'd like to point out that I've heard Ramone mention with pride how the Show has always retained older game mechanics whenever they introduce new ones (with hitting or pitching--for example when pulse pitching was added, they didn't get rid of other methods). And the devs should be commended for this approach of introducing other ways to play, without forcing users to have to make a change when they like what they already have. So that's what makes their decision about this so surprising--that this praiseworthy approach to development was not used for presentation style changes. Why not keep what was already in the game for those that like that?

And as for low usage of that feature, I wonder how it was tracked. Because, personally, I didn't use the "slow, full broadcast" style all the time and would often fast forward through AB's a fair amount. But late in a game or at key points in the game I would really want to enjoy the full immersion, the full drama of experiencing the most realistic feeling of at bats and I'd stop fast-forwarding. I'm curious if I would be considered a "non-user" of the feature since I only used it maybe 20% of the time.

I certainly understand and appreciate not every feature (especially those that aren't widely used) can be retained. But for a game that is (rightly) promoted and celebrated as "one of the best sports simulations on the market," I would think having the ability to play this "real time" version, really helsp make the game feel its most realistic and I would hope the feature will be re-introduced.

[CMH]

Quote: Originally Posted by Woodweaver

Telemetrics are just one tool of many that are utilized to aid in the formulation of our design plans/focus. Remember there is a very large audience with an extremely varied set of likes and dislikes. It is, and will always be, impossible to please everyone in every aspect. We always strive to find a balance and provided the best baseball experience possible given our resources and limitations. We listen to everyone's feedback, but it would simply be impossible to implement every suggestion.

Usually the best way to continue pleasing the group you've pleased is by not removing the things they are pleased with.

I understand there is a lot that goes into these things. And I don't mean to be argumentive as a way to shower disappointment.

It's just that you all already had this niche group very happy. And you had the press button group happy too.

Not sure I understand how creating a feature meant to show everything could warrant needing changes to please those that don't want to see everything when they already have a separate feature for that.

If what you're saying is, "we didn't have the resources to make the content to fill the space we normally skip through" then I definitely understand. Sucks but I understand. I imagine creating content most will skip through is not easy to have.

[NEOPARADIGM]

Quote: Originally Posted by Darkleaf

But but the data says we don't want it..

Was thinking about this all through my game today. First off: how many people who skip all the cutscenes even know there's a fastplay option? Where's the data on that? How many of these "skip everything" types are (not coincidentally) also the type to swing at every stinking pitch (people who are literally trying to finish as fast as possible)? And how many are NOT interested in seeing the batter's between-pitch animations but ARE interested in staring at the manager for 10 seconds, watching the ballboy come get a ball, watching slower-than-hell replays of swings, and staring at the pitcher for prolonged periods of time? In other words, what makes the stuff they DID leave in more interesting or important than the stuff they cut? Because I want to see the "data" on that.

[jada855]

I highly agree that immersion gets lost when the game is fast forwarded. Especially when using player lock and coming up to your first at bat and already down by 3 to 6 runs and no context of what happened. How could anyone be okay with this especially when you are trying to win games in franchise mode.

I am still holding out for hope that the Game Watchoptions from MLB 14 and MLB 15 will be patched back in once the online issues are fixed.

[Stolm]

Quote: Originally Posted by jada855

I highly agree that immersion gets lost when the game is fast forwarded. Especially when using player lock and coming up to your first at bat and already down by 3 to 6 runs and no context of what happened. How could anyone be okay with this especially when you are trying to win games in franchise mode. I am still holding out for hope that the Game Watchoptions from MLB 14 and MLB 15 will be patched back in once the online issues are fixed.

Yep this is part of the RTTS issue I mentioned.

Coming in 10-0, no idea what has happened. If you want to know going forward you have to click a prompt at the end of each and every cut scene, which then skips the curtain scene you are watching. Just an absolutely terrible design choice.

Both Play by Play, and Game Watch, need to be toggleable options under presentation.

[Smallville102001]

Quote: Originally Posted by Stolm

It just makes very little sense that such small/key animations are being cut and skipped, in such an immersion breaking way, while also introducing even more presentation modes with even more skips and cuts. First the reason we were given as to why these animations are being skipped over is absolutely ridiculous. We were told that the data collected showed most people were just skipping through them. Skipping through an animation is one button press. There is no giant delay. You are not losing time. There is close to zero time gained by skipping through them as opposed to cutting them out completely. On top of that with the new Batters Box rules, these animations should be even shorter then how they were before. The only result of removing these was to negatively effect the enjoyment and pace of the At-Bats. If these people that were skipping through a lot of these animation truly felt it was significantly impacting their precious time, they would be using Quick Play. And lets be honest here, most people are just mashing and skipping through these out of habit, then any dislike over these animations. I have seen the devs do it constantly in their own streams! That's just how some people play games. How many people skip over dialogue and text in an RPG, just button mashing through it? There are tons, but you are not going to cut all that V.O and text out because so many button mash through it. Why? Because that would ruin the experience........ And that's exactly what has happened to the At-Bat experience in The Show. You are quickly brought up to the plate, warped in and out of the box in a very distracting way, rushed to take the next pitch. Encouraged to get the At-Bat over with as quickly as possible. There is a pace to baseball, At-Bats don't happen at a break-neck speed. Having the option to quicken the pace is fine, but to have these jarring cuts as the default and most realistic option is a joke. Why do the devs feel the need to rip out key animations in a presentation mode supposed to be replicating an actual Broadcast and a more realistic experience, for such little gain? Each year there seems to be more and more of these cuts, I don't even want to get into RTTS and what an utter mess it is this year because of all of the them. Each year the game feels less like a sim experience and more like an arcade game. Instead of having different presentation modes catering to different players, you continue to push in a single direction. First there was Broadcast and Quickplay. Then key animations were cut from Broadcast, followed by the introduction of Quick Counts.And now we have Hybrid. All Presentation options where the goal is less content, and making a faster and more streamlined experience. And in turn a less realistic baseball experience.

I agree it is very silly. First of all baseball is just a long sport. Football and baseball are longer then basketball and hockey when it comes to how long a game takes to watch on tv. With out commercials MLB is the longest of all 4 sports Major sports. It was said that not showing foul balls was to speed the game up when really it hardly even does that any way. Not showing foul balls makes the game maybe and I mean maybe 5 minutes faster. If you want to play a game and not spend like 2 hours either play on fast play or with quick counts or just push x to skip passed ever thing. When it comes to camera cuts and such it is the same thing saves maybe 5 minutes. Really people cant spend a extra 5 minutes? Now if it took a like 2 hour game and made it a hour then I could understand why they do some of these things but really to make a 2 hour game a hour and 55 minutes is why they do this?

[capa]

They had the best of both worlds as a few of you have already detailed. Their decision to remove realtime play and cut scenes was a bad design decision IMO regardless of what the "data" says.

We all know data does not always tell the entire story. There are extenuating circumstances that are driving the data, as others have already detailed as well. As the title becomes more mature, we are seeing it slowly move in a different direction based on the erroneous assumption that the game needs to be sped up so people can finish faster. Also, the focus is on the online players for the most part. This is the market they are trying to appease - the head to head online crowd.

I do hope they take another look at how to please both sets of users. Not everyone wants to play the game as quickly as possible, and even if we do, we had the ability to do so before these things were removed from the game. It all comes down to options...let us decide how we want to play. And if resources or space on the disc is an issue, I still don't get what PBR brought to to table. Great graphical details that are really only observable in replay mode by moving the camera around?

Data told companies the Edsel was a good idea...new Coke would sell like crazy...betamax would outsell VHS...pajama jeans would fly off the racks...well...you get the idea...

C

[jb12780]

Reggie Stocker has some serious power. Ask Kodii Rockets.

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