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MLB The Show 17 News Post


Check out the latest MLB The Show 17 franchise mode details, from the PlayStation.Blog.

This year we added two completely new ways to play the game — let’s start with Critical Situations.

Instead of waiting for the best parts of the game, Critical Situations takes you directly to those nail-biting, game-deciding moments when they naturally occur, breezing past some of the time-consuming baseball details that can get in the way of an action-packed experience. This makes games short, intense experiences that have a huge impact on your team’s record. One of the many possible situations that might pop up: your star player at the plate with a chance to win the game with one swing.

In addition to these intense, game changing moments, you’ll also encounter other important situations, such as keeping long hitting streaks alive or hitting three home runs in a game. In these situations you’ll be “locked” to the player involved, meaning you’ll only play his at-bats or fielding chances (much like Road to the Show, for all the veterans reading this). And this leads us perfectly into our next Franchise feature, Player Lock.

If you’ve ever wanted to see what you could do with your favorite MLB player over a full season, but you’re strapped for time, you’re in luck. Player Lock makes this possible, allowing gamers to play exclusively with their favorite players and help progress through the season faster. With Player Lock you can say goodbye to playing full 9-inning games! And don’t worry — it’s not permanent. Before every game, you can choose a different player to “lock-on,” meaning you can mix it up between your star players or the prospects that are just getting their first taste of The Show.

What about all the simulation-minded Franchise players out there? We haven’t forgotten about you, and we think you’re going to love our next feature: Quick Manage.

Just as if you were calling the shots from the dugout, Quick Manage is a text-based simulation mode that puts you in complete control of all the managerial decisions during a game. Want to bring in the closer an inning early to lock down the game? Think a sacrifice fly will score you the winning run? All of these actions and more are available to you in Quick Manage, so you control your team’s destiny.

If you’re wondering what’s so “Quick” about this mode, it’s the fact that you see the results of your actions instantly with the press of a button. We’ve given you plenty of managerial depth as well, as you can see in the screenshot below with all ways you can pitch to the hitter.

Getting antsy and want to get back into the action? With Quick Manage, you have the ability to enter the game at any point and can jump back-and-forth between managing and playing as many times as you’d like. This means that you can pick and choose when to play, while always being in complete control of your team.

And for all of you stat enthusiasts who want our MLB players to perform even more like they do in real-life, we’ve got one more thing for you, and that’s our newly introduced Player Quirks.

Quirks are very specific traits assigned to a player based on real-life data which give the player a bonus when triggered. As you can see in the screenshot above, Anthony Rizzo has the Breaking Ball Hitter quirk, which means he excels at hitting curves, sliders, and other breaking pitches. When you’re playing as Rizzo, you’ll want to look for breaking pitches to hammer, since you’ll get a hitting bonus when swinging at these types of pitches.

There are tons of different Quirks for both pitchers and position players, and in addition to changing the way you go about at-bats, we think they’ll also change the way you construct your roster.

MLB The Show 17 screenshot gallery - Click to view MLB The Show 17 screenshot gallery - Click to view MLB The Show 17 screenshot gallery - Click to view MLB The Show 17 screenshot gallery - Click to view
Game: MLB The Show 17Hype Score: 9/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS4Votes for game: 36 - View All
Member Comments
# 81 Caulfield @ 03/07/17 06:39 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tessl
I'll explain using the example of Rizzo who was profiled in the blog. Rizzo's contact R is 80 power R 82 which reflect what does IRL. In 2016 he hit .305 vs R with .970 ops vs R. The developers who determine attributes have a formula based upon IRL stats which they use.

His quirks include "excels when hitting with 2 strikes", "excels at hitting breaking balls" and "performs better when team is behind". His attributes already include what he did with two strikes, vs breaking balls and when the team in behind. The .305 avg vs rhp which gives him an 80 contact R include that stuff. If he gets a boost in attributes above and beyond his normal attributes in those situations without an accompanying decline in other situations to balance it out his stats will be higher than IRL. Multiply that by hundreds of players across the league and the potential exists for stats to be out of whack.
Hopefully quirks have been vetted and tested, then tested some more. I kinda think pitcher quirks will offset batter quirks enough overall that stats will still fall in line.
 
# 82 bcruise @ 03/07/17 06:46 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tessl
I see they have also added missions to franchise. I wonder what that entails and whether the cpu teams also get the same benefit from missions as the user team.

They have definitely taken franchise is a new direction.
Missions are DD related, that came up in the DD stream. It's more than likely franchise challenges/rewards that you can do to improve your DD team (which is kind of nice for those who play both modes extensively).

In DD, those Missions usually consist of stat milestones that you'd reach naturally over the course of a lot of games. So I don't feel like it's going to change the way I play Franchise at all, if these missions are the same.
 
# 83 tessl @ 03/07/17 06:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear
A couple more quirky thoughts on quirks...

First thing we should try to establish is whether these quirks will affect both simmed and played games. It could be implemented much like how the velocity and pitch edits don't affect simmed games at all. Maybe not.

Secondly, as someone who has extensively edited player ratings in the past, this is exciting in the sense that 2 hitters with identical 99 contact attributes might not perform the same depending on their quirks. If you take a guy with maxed out ratings and load him up with quirks, it could allow him to go 'off scale' regarding his production. Or it could just make him super awkward. Then again, maybe not.

I think for something like "quirks," it all comes down to the implementation. If you make quirks very minor, there's not much difference in having them. If you make them powerful, that would add an unwanted (imo) arcade element into the gameplay. There's so much we don't know (on/off switch?) (affects simmed and played games?) (magnitude of the boosts?) at this point.

Do missions in franchise sound to you like they add reality or do they sound like an arcade element?
 
# 84 Aggies7 @ 03/07/17 06:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcruise
Missions are DD related, that came up in the DD stream. It's more than likely franchise challenges/rewards that you can do to improve your DD team (which is kind of nice for those who play both modes extensively).

In DD, those Missions usually consist of stat milestones that you'd reach naturally over the course of a lot of games. So I don't feel like it's going to change the way I play Franchise at all, if these missions are the same.


I actually like that. I'm not a huge fan on DD or any Ultimate team type mode. But I love how you can continue playing modes you like and building a DD team. So if you want to jump in for a change of pace 3 months later you aren't way behind. Just my opinion though.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
# 85 tessl @ 03/07/17 07:01 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caulfield
Hopefully quirks have been vetted and tested, then tested some more. I kinda think pitcher quirks will offset batter quirks enough overall that stats will still fall in line.
I agree. Would not be thrilled about a game where the best quirks determine who the best players are.
 
# 86 yanks22009 @ 03/07/17 07:14 PM
I really like the addition of quirks. reminds me of 2k's badges and I hope they are very similar to that.
 
# 87 tril @ 03/07/17 07:14 PM
This game looks absolutely beautiful....
 
# 88 patssox2004 @ 03/07/17 07:25 PM
I'm liking quirks, just hope they don't have too much of an unrealistic influence on the stats of franchise mode. I did see in the presentation twitch stream the dodgers have like a 100-30 record, so hopefully if the quirks arent properly working by releaee day they are fixed in a future patch.
 
# 89 WaitTilNextYear @ 03/07/17 07:33 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Russell_SCEA
Market research + user research + resources + telemetry + development priorities + ? = X

We couldn't be more exited, happy, and proud about the tremendous effort, feature set and all the long hours we've put into MLB The Show 17. We will continue to do what we've always done. And that formula had worked out for us very nicely over 10 years in.
Ahhhhh...2 variables and one equation. My simple algebra does not work here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tessl
Do missions in franchise sound to you like they add reality or do they sound like an arcade element?
No, because there's nothing mandatory about doing missions. I also don't think completing them results in artificial gameplay boosts--my understanding is completing missions just gets you items and packs.
 
# 90 dran1984 @ 03/07/17 07:37 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Impetuous65
At what point will you realize this is a "video game"?
Seriously? So let's just throw realism out the window and turn it into an arcade game since it's a video game. The whole point of a "true sim" experience is to make its authentic as possible. Using your "logic" why should they waste time on accurately designing uniforms and stadiums to be realistic? Why should they work on trying to program realistic gameplay and stats? Why implement MLB Nework to give the game a realistic broadcast package?
 
# 91 AncientDiety @ 03/07/17 07:39 PM
Not gonna lie, very underwhelming, quirks are nice though, but Franchise needs an overhaul or something, it never feels like you are a part of a league, and stat overlays were done better in games 8 years ago, where is the in game stats, box scores, league news? The Show is fantastic, but franchise is really getting stale. hope Thursday brings some news.

If Thursday doesn't shed any new light I am going to be very disappointed.
 
# 92 ninertravel @ 03/07/17 08:31 PM
I really got no interest in the situational thing, it's just like quick counts, if I am gonna play a baseball game I want to play the game from start to finish, but can understand those that want to have that.

Looks like no word on importing a player into franchise roster again, ohh well lots more work and videos of doing that for another year

excited for the stream in 2 days though I love that manage mode in simulation !
 
# 93 thaSLAB @ 03/07/17 10:30 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tessl
Do missions in franchise sound to you like they add reality or do they sound like an arcade element?
They have zero effect on gameplay. They are simply bonuses/rewards for playing the game.

Sent from my htc 10 using Tapatalk
 
# 94 ShowTyme15 @ 03/08/17 12:11 AM
Tad bit off topic, but the game went gold today in case anyone was wondering. We will probably see early copies within the next few weeks.
 
# 95 Jon Arbuckle @ 03/08/17 12:31 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ninertravel
I really got no interest in the situational thing, it's just like quick counts, if I am gonna play a baseball game I want to play the game from start to finish
I have never once used quick counts since it takes away my favorite part of hitting, namely approaching each at-bat as something like a game of chess with research, patience and a bit of guesswork necessary if you want to get the better of your opponent. Cut straight to the chase and what should be a rather cerebral game turns into one of reaction. I realize some will prefer that but it's simply not for me.

But the new features that allow more gameplay options during simulation seem like a different animal to me. It's kind of a way to selectively dip your feet in the water rather than jumping all the way in or staying completely out every game. I'll continue to grind through every single gameplay moment during my RTTS's but these new jump in/jump out options seem ideal for allowing players to determine their perfect pacing in franchise mode.
 
# 96 bcruise @ 03/08/17 04:50 AM
You know, everything else good about quick manage aside, I'm glad that it even exists this year instead of Sportscast manager. That feature was the main cause of an awful bug that wrecked morale not just for the current franchise you were using, but any other one as well until you closed the game and restarted (this is the "all starting pitchers team roles get flagged as Bullpen" bug). The cause was using Sportscast Manager to sim a game. It still exists in '16 to this current version.

Since they ripped Sportscast out of the game and replaced it with Quick Manage, it's pretty likely that they nailed this one. At least I hope they did, because with how much they're promoting the fast sim modes, there's going to be a lot of people using Sportscast's successor.
 
# 97 Unlucky 13 @ 03/08/17 08:08 AM
Well, I'm really hoping that they're just holding back all of the real info for Thursday, and we'll see the improvements to franchise mode then. What we've gotten so far aren't anything of the sort I'm looking for.

Does anyone know if we'll be getting a bullet-point list of features like in years past? I can't watch videos.
 
# 98 Jolly Roger @ 03/08/17 08:16 AM
Man, I dunno...these player quirks scare me a little. I really hope they can be given and, perhaps more importantly, taken away by us.

Performs better when team is behind; performs better in 9th inning or later; good at driving in runner on 3rd with less than 2 outs...these are all versions of that folksy intangible people call "clutch," the existence of which is debatable.

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/clutch/

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/why-w...-about-clutch/

To me, a quirk is more something like "pitcher throws to first more often/doesn't throw to first very often," "first strike swinger," etc.


Quote:
in addition to changing the way you go about at-bats, we think they’ll also change the way you construct your roster.
Goodness, I hope not.
 
# 99 TheBleedingRed21 @ 03/08/17 09:01 AM
Come on man. I grow tired of seeing they "changed the way you play, the way you approach an at-bat", no they did not.

They simply ADDED more ways to play that might appease those who don't wanna play the same way you do. There was nothing changed unless YOU choose to play that way.
 
# 100 Armor and Sword @ 03/08/17 09:23 AM
In regard to player quirks....you the player still have to execute!! So if you get fooled on a 2-2 sinker in the dirt.....you get fooled.

If Rizzo is a great 2 strike hitter and hit’s the curve great too.....well you still have to time your swing properly....and what if you get a 0-2 country fastball instead and you were intent on looking for that hanging curve?

Again, I think the ratings boosts will be cool and add a huge layer of personality to the game and the players! But we the users still have to execute.

I think sim stats will be fine too. I am not too concerned at all.
 


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