Dumping Ground for Upcoming Feedback - nomo17k's Blog

nomo17k's Blog

Dumping Ground for Upcoming Feedback

Posted on February 17, 2012 at 06:34 PM.

(2)

I'm just using this space to keep my old feedback for MLB 11 the Show from being erased in case any is reused for upcoming game.

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RTTS Position Player
Pros:

This mode is really fun. I like that here are various options to play in detail/speed up the game.

New training point system (performance evaluator) is a great addition.

RTTS Position Player
Cons:

Basically everyone ends up becoming a 5-tool player without any character.

Running can be frustrating because of camera view, though using static control will probably makes things too easy and boring.

Fielding can become old quickly, not challenging enough.

Still too easy to develop a player. It's basically linear no matter how good/bad I play. Maybe there should be a way to reward truly great performance more, and reward mediocrity much less. Also once a player reaches certain level of goodness, he consistently performs well which leads to higher training points, which makes the development faster, so it's basically a runaway situation, guaranteed for success. I know it becomes harder to add ratings as the score goes higher, but still too easy to max things out.

I find stealing to be still a bit tough even with a player with great abilities. Steal success rate is in low 70% in MLB, so most of time these should be successful with decent stealers. I find this is not the case. Also, being picked off happen too often.

RTTS Position Player
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Realistic minor leaguers.

This is more a generic issue about how SCEA generates fake players not specific to RTTS, but players with unrealistic abilities, hard throwers with knuckleballs in particular, need to go away. Facing many pitchers like those is completely unrealistic. I bet they are harder to hit than those in the majors. Most generated players should follow certain templates, e.g., sinker/slider type, fastball/curveball type, etc.

Play next appearance.

This would be relevant for both position players and pitchers. It would be a bit helpful to be able to define a "stopping date" when we choose the play next appearance option. The reason is that I tend to play a series against a particular team in a bunch so that I can take advantage of familiarity to the opposing players. As it is, I cannot predict exactly which game I'll be playing, but I don't think I have an option to quite the game for the day at the end of a series.

Quicker access to (or more detailed control of) options.

What I mean is that I wish to be able to change certain options during the game more easily. For example, if I'm playing a player with a base stealing speed, when I'm a lead runner on 1B or 2B, I'd like to watch every pitch for obvious reason. But when not, then I just want to use result play. I wish some options can be chosen dynamically like that.

Baserunning camera and third-base coach box.

As many gamers tell, sometimes you cannot see the third base coach because he is out of the camera view. We could easily solve this by having a small box (like the one we have for base runners) which always shows a relevant coach to get signals from.

I actually like the variety that the base running camera angles provides, but also feels at times struggle with controlling the base runner since the view changes unexpectedly. Most of the time it switches to familiar ones which we can learn by experience but when not, the runner stops and changes direction. That's frustrating. Maybe could use a bit larger tolerance when view is switched quickly.

Nature vs. nurture.

As quite a few games have mentioned, it should be harder to develop innate abilities (running very fast, throwing harder, etc.) compared to something that can be nurtured or developed via practice. Maybe certain attributes should not increase as much as others even when the same training points are used.

Developing through actual practice and in game.

Probably most gamers would hate this, but given it's basically guaranteed that you will develop into a star, I personally prefer more challenge. If much of the attribute ratings actually develop through what you do in games and/or through practices (from which we can gain only "maintenance" amount of training points right now), then a player will likely to develop into a type that the gamer actually represents. If the gamer is good at contact, the RTTS player will be a good contact hitter. If the gamer is good at hitting HR, the RTTS player will be a power hitter, etc. Just a wild idea though.

More rewards in advancing career.

As many have said, once you get to the MLB level, there won't be much to play for. Either there should be something to more to play for at that level, or make it harder to be a major leaguer so that when you get called up, you feel like having a sushi dinner...

More weights on stats.

MLB 11 is indeed a huge upgrade over '10 in terms how players get promoted, both position players and pitchers. However, I feel the ratings still have too much weight when stats are not catching up. I'll try to make a similar point in the franchise part as to how we could make stats weight more.

Third base coach sign.

In the game this always occur at the first pitch. It should be happen at a more realistic count.

Also, related to the above stats related issue. The coach shouldn't keep giving out steal sign when a player's SB success % is like 20% despite his ability attributes are great.

RTTS Pitcher
Pros:

As above.

RTTS Pitcher
Cons:

As above.

Perhaps I'm just good at pitching (never played the position in real life though), but I just don't get challenged enough when I develop my own RTTS pitcher.

RTTS Pitcher
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Some things that I mentioned for RTTS hitters hold for pitchers as well (e.g., nature vs. nurture).

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Analog Hitting
Pros:

The interface allows to swing with a timing that's closer to how a hitter would swing. This allows more natural check swings. Timing in hitting is definitely more fun.

Analog Hitting
Cons:

Not sure the amount of "rating hit" for not initiating the forward swing at the right timing is appropriate; there should be a reduction but not when a hitter isn't really fooled. I feel adjusting the timing to an off-speed pitch by slight hesitation is a good hitting technique...

To me slightly offsetting from center with analog is still a bit tough. My natural thumb movement is not straight up, from bottom left to upper right, so I tend to move that way unless I force my thumb to move forward. This makes it harder for me to turn to an inside pitch (when I hit as a righty).

Sometimes the batted balls travel in weird directions. An inside pitch hit late shouldn't necessarily travel to the opposite field with such an authority.

Analog Hitting
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Opposite field power.

I haven't been able to hit much with a power threat this year so I'm not sure if this is still an issue, but in the game it is too easy to hit with authority to the opposite field (at least it was in MLB 10). With the realistic pitch speed (which is fast, the way I love it), more often than not a gamer is late in his swing and hits to the opposite field. In reality you will get penalized for it (as in reduction in power), but in game that often leads to opposite field HRs. As you see in this article:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/ar...the-other-way/

HRs to the opposite field are rather rare. I feel the game is doing a great job producing fly balls/pop ups for late swings, but too often they clear the wall.

Slap hitting.

Slap hitting would add a variety to the ways we play the game. A non-power threat LHB with great speed will benefit from this. A major reason why someone like Ichiro is such a mediocre hitter in this game is that he cannot take advantage of his speed and ability to convert poor hits to infield singles. I see that in the game all hitters basically have the same follow through, that of a full swing, so no left handed batters are taking advantage of the extra couple steps they could take when they run toward 1B as soon as they make contact. Not sure how you can incorporate this to the current scheme, but it would be fun to slap over the third baseman's head or go for a bunt depending on how the fielders are positioned, etc. That would add another dimension to the hitting.

Swing speed via analog.

Not sure if this works well, but what about reflecting how fast we move the stick to the swing speed? We now do this by preloading the type of swing, which works well (love contact swing by the way), but it may add more challenge to hitting. I like challenge but maybe not for everyone...

Deceptive pitchers.

Not sure if this should go here. Despite their mediocre stuff, some pitchers thrive because they hide pitches very well. I'd imagine it is hard to implement this in game, but if there are ways to simulate "deceptiveness" somehow, it might be fun... Maybe depending on the "release deceptiveness" rating, the pitch skips a couple frames in visual so that hitters have less time to judge the pitch? Not sure.

Analog Pitching
Pros:

More user control than classic, but harder than meter.

It is fluid. Hard to have pin point command (though see below).

Analog Pitching
Cons:

You can get by without worrying about walks.

Pitcher ratings don't affect pitch command much it appears.

Doesn't appear to be in sync with pitcher's delivery.

Pick off is too easy and happen too often.

Analog Pitching
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Smaller strike zone or less command.

I still find it quite hard to throw "balls" just of the strike zone. It's very easy to widely miss or throw in the middle. For me, the stick's tendency to go back to center makes it harder to aim slightly off center which I need to do to paint the corner. Perhaps this was intended, but since my thumb movement naturally is from bottom left to upper right, I have less problem pitching inside of RHB, but still not very consistent aiming outside. Is it just my skill? Perhaps, or I should just tilt the controller... In any case, it's disappointing that walks don't come at a realistic rate. Either make the strike zone smaller or make the dependence on pitcher control ratings more obvious... Or, need to punish poor strikes more so that we need to pitch around or nibble to avoid getting hit hard.

Consistent release point.

Ideally, I'd like to use analog without actually looking at that "cone" meter thing, as I don't want to play a dart game of some sort. Since every pitcher has his own delivery, doesn't it really make sense to totally make the analog motion in sync with his arm action? Then you will eventually learn to move the analog stick to the delivery and not that funky meter thing. I want to be looking at the catcher, not some funky meter thing when I pitch.

Pitch out.

This shouldn't always be a high-90 fastball for every pitcher. At least the max speed of 4SFB a particular pitcher can throw.

Splitter/forkball.

I feel these pitches are not as effective as they should be in the game. First of all, there is not much difference between splitter and forkball in the game. People tend to have different definitions of what differentiate these two pitches, but I tend to think simply on things and I feel the major difference is the pitch speed. What's common (rough) is the lack of spin.

In terms of physics, these pitches really should have much less spins than other pitches, which creates more drag and the turbulence causes the pitch to drop suddenly in somewhat unexpected directions. It's not like slider or curve or other high-spin pitches which forces the pitch to move in a certain direction. In the extreme case, it becomes a knuckleball, but when pitched with a more velocity it becomes forkball, with even more velocity, splitter. So the movement really should be much, much less exaggerated version of knuckleball. Forkball also can have much lower velocity, around mid to low 70s.

Sorry to be carried away in a minute detail, but one of my favorite pitchers of all time (Hideo Nomo) was a two-pitch pitcher with great forkball, who racked up an unusually high number of strikeouts for somebody with very mediocre fastball (around 90 mph), so I have some affinity for this pitch. He basically lived on the effectiveness of splitter/forkball, so I've seen how effectively these pitches can really be. It can be as effective as changeup, really effective in the game. Examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYEBEtj4Ry4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeHD9rp2Teo

Seeing how hitters can get really, really fooled, it's really an off-speed pitch with a less exaggerated knuckleball movement.

Pitch effort and break.

I agree that pitch effort should correlate with the amount of energy a pitcher loses in putting extra velocity in fastballs. Many starters do this to pitch deep in a game. However, I'm not sure a pitcher should lose as much energy throwing breaking pitches (sorry I've never been a pitcher). What I would like to see more iis a bit more change in the break/command on a breaking pitch due to effort put into it. Perhaps the greater the effort, the greater the break but with less command and velocity, and the opposite for less effort. Reason is that sometimes a pitcher would want to throw a breaking pitch with more command to get a strike, but I think he needs to sacrifice break to do so. Of course I may be off target if this is already implemented.

Pitch selection for SCEA rosters/generated players.

It really doesn't make much sense for almost everyone to throw 4SFB as his primary fastball. Given another fastball-class pitch with more movement but with less velocity, pitchers tend to use it more often and save 4SFB for occasion where faster velocity can be effective (e.g., high fastball to get K/popup).

Pitches thrown low actually have faster speed.

This was discussed in this thread:

Problem with high/low pitch speeds?

In game it's reversed. I was confused at first but it actually makes sense. Whether it's worth fixing I'm not sure.

Analog Throwing
Pros:

Less feeling of pure dice roll.

Analog Throwing
Cons:

Doesn't feel much advantage of using analog.

Analog Throwing
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Aiming toward where you actually throw.

This was mentioned in an earlier post. Instead of just aiming the predefined direction, it would be more fun to flick the right stick in the direction of throw and the flick speed determines the throw speed. It may be very hard to get this right in relation to the changing camera angles. But if we can do this we might actually really feel as if throwing.
Relay man placement.

Quite often the cut off man (mostly 1st baseman hanging around near the bag) is placed in a weird place, so relay throws goes to weird place.

Less accurate long throws.

Not just relevant to analog, but in game I feel those long throws (say from outfields) are too accurate, resulting in many more assists than reality. Not sure if this is already done, but the accuracy of throws should become less and less for long throws for any player.

Fielding
Pros:

Fielding
Cons:

Too repetitive.

Not much challenge.

Fielding
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Making catching a ball harder.

What about making us press a button or something right when catching a ball? Depending on the timing, it affects the probability of resulting in mishandling. Also, make the positioning of a player against a grounder matter. It's easiest to catch a grounder at a short hop or long hop, so make that sort of thing count toward the probability of fielding error, if not already?

I just feel fielding is too easy, repetitive, and boring. There is not much to do.

CPU fielder AI.

Quite often CPU fielders make unnecessary throws when there is no chance of getting runners out. This is not good, as it only creases the chance of throwing error.

Wildness of wild pitches.

Simply too many wild pitches happen in the game. WPs only happens about 0.3 times per game per team. The game produces roughly one per game per team. That's too much.

Multiple fielders pursuing a ball.

I don't think the game makes more than one fielder pursue a ball (backing up is already happening). This may be a good addition to spice up fielding. What about making calling off another fielder in such play as part of the fielding routine? Miscommunication could end in a collision, which may result in injuries, etc.

Pitchers are too good.

The reaction of pitchers should be reduced in general. Also, too many balls hit in the middle end up hitting the pitcher. This is unrealistic. A batted ball hitting pitcher should be relatively a rare event.

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Attributes/Player Ratings
Pros:

Pretty good job of reflecting various aspects of abilities in a simple but effective set. Very fun to create players of very different types.

Attributes/Player Ratings
Cons:

It's not clear what some attributes *really* do. Vision and discipline, related to strikeouts and walks, but when he actually plays game, how exactly do they change his play...? Maybe detailed online descriptions would help...

I think splits stats (and therefore ratings) are a bit exaggerated concept. There has been debates as to, say, clutch ability differences really exist among players.

Not all player attributes are editable. Why make things locked for no reasons?

Attributes/Player Ratings
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Pitcher pick-off/stretch move attribute.

I'm not sure if any existing attribute contributes at all to how good a pitcher is at pick-off move (or holding base runners in general by varying pitch motions from stretch), but controlling running game is an important aspect which may not be done well in the game right now.

Injury history.

Maybe a player is more susceptible to a certain type of injuries than to others.

Stamina, injuries.

Each player, both position players and pitchers, should have stamina (how long/often he can play) and injury susceptibility as different attributes.

Actually, pitcher stamina has too much effect on limiting pitch count IMO. Some pitchers can pitch both as starters and relievers, so there shouldn't be such a clear cut stamina difference between starters and relievers in many cases. The issue becomes a problem when we want to convert a reliever into a starter. In practice, I don't think there should be much problem doing this for most pitchers.

Position by position fielding attributes.

Or at least a couple different attributes which determine whether a player is suited for middle infield, infield corners, outfield, etc. Don't have time to make concrete suggestions, sorry. Some positions require similar abilities than others, so this would be a good addition. This also makes more sense when converting a player to a new position.

Pitch calling ability for cathers?

Swinging aggressiveness.

Not sure if this is the right way to go and probably not relevant when a user controls the player, but what I'm trying to say is some hitters are aggressive in their approaches (i.e., free swingers) compared to others who patiently sit on certain pitches. I actually don't know if there is any way to change the aggressiveness of CPU hitters but if we can have some control over this, approaching hitters may become even more fun.

Pitcher confidence sensitivity.

I think pitcher confidence is a great idea but plays a tad too much role in the game for some gamers (I'm okay in '11), giving them impression the game is scripted when their starter gets shelled in the 1st inning or relievers get shelled in later innings. I think the ave MLB stats tend to show starters allow more runs in the first inning (not sure for relievers just coming in), so starting out low confidence and being susceptible to getting shelled reflect reality, but I think some pitchers get affected by confidence more than others. So, why not make this an attribute to each pitcher? Maybe "slow starter" attribute or something...? Don't have time to think thoroughly now that the due is close, but I think mental aspect is important for pitchers, and they get affect by confidence to varying degrees.

Go to pitch.

I like watching how AI pitches, but some pitchers rely on a go-to pitch more in critical situations. Since we don't have any control as to how much each pitch gets really thrown, it would be great if we can have control over at least their out pitches. Not all pitchers need to have this attribute set, but for some, it would be a good addition.

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Commentary
Pros:

I'm still new to the game (started with MLB 10) so I probably don't find this part of the game as stale as others may. I actually even enjoyed Rex Hudler; Karros is okay but not much of a character in the game unfortunately. Having commentary does add a lot to enjoyment, although I've never been so crazy about such a thing, as I care about how the sport plays much more than peripheral stuff.

Commentary
Cons:

It does feel stale hearing the same line over and over again.

Commentary
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Context sensitivity.

I'm sure people are thinking about better ideas, but what appears to be lacking most is the deeper game/season context sensitivity. The commentators do seem to be aware of immediate game situations at a basic level, but not much else. They should have different things to say in a game with contenders than in a game with last place team, for example. Also the announcers don't seem to be much aware of what happened earlier in the game.

I guess that's why they have to repeat the same lines over and over, because the events that trigger comments are basically same regardless of what situations they are commenting on. In order not to use up all the available comments in the game, the more context sensitivity should help because those comments that happen in rare occasions will be saved for rare occasions.

Announcers questioning strike/ball calls too much.

Enough said. I think they should only do so only in important game situations or umpire's been blowing too often, and not every other pitch or so.

Presentation
Pros:

Visuals are absolutely fantastic in general.

New animations.

I appreciate how SCEA keeps adding new animations to add a variety of plays in the field. I was blown away by MLB 10 already, but this not-so-well advertised improvements have absolutely increased the enjoyment of watching the gameplay. I almost never get bored watching the game unfolding even if I'm not actually playing. This is very important for MOM/GM players. I wish new plays keep getting added.

Presentation
Cons:

Awful pitching motions.

Not sure if this is considered part of the presentation, but most pitching motions don't look realistic. Some pitch as if they don't even cut it at the girls' JV softball level (Pineiro... what the hell is that!?). Their arm actions are really awful. Hopefully somebody who can actually pitch redo the pitching motions... Pitching motions are disservice to the game which has such beautiful visuals. Pitching is something we keep seeing over and over, so the improvement here would go long way I feel.

Highlight reel.

I like the concept and watching this myself, but quite often it's not clear in which context the play is happening, making me wonder why the particular made into the highlight (just adding who's on base, how many outs in text would help). Also, sometimes the scene is cut short both ways. If an outfielder misplays, the reel tends to start from the portion where a backup picks up the ball and throw to the infield, but then we don't know what happens afterward.

Player of the Game.

I don't feel the algorithm is solid. What the game needs appear to be more context sensitivity. Should give to either a great performer for the game or somebody who created a game changing moment. The latter doesn't seem to happen often.

Presentation
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Pitching motions.

Many of pitching motions should be redone... Some motions, they have entirely different arm angles from windup and stretch. Unless a pitcher is intentionally changing arm angle to fool a hitter, his pitching motions after certain point of delivery should look very similar; otherwise they cannot have a consistent release point.

Maybe customizable pitching motion (i.e., define motion by a stick figure or something...) can be a great addition; don't know if this is possible at all though.

Shortening Fast Play even more.

This need not happen (for me at least) if something like the SuperFast Play mode that I mentioned in the other thread gets implemented, but a game still takes about 45 - 60 min with Fast Play, which is decent given the details we have but not ideal for people who want to play a lot of games or just short of time. In presentation, there are still places here and there that may be cut shorter (like the wait between pitches and foul ball cut scenes). The effort in this area would be appreciated.

More context sensitivity in the crowd cheers.

This goes with what I mentioned above with the announcers. The audio elements are there but not much of the game/season context sensitivity. Maybe the game situations can be assigned a score of some sort, goes up or down depending on the importance of a particular situation (e.g., a go-ahead runner on in the 9th gets obviously a very high score), and the score can be offset/enhanced by the importance of the game in season so that you keep hearing the elevated noise overall during the game (e.g., playoff/WS or something like Subway series would get very high score). Feels very weird when a potential go-ahead run gets picked off at 1B and the crowd stays quiet...

Unlocking mode specific views.

Regardless of game mode, we should have access to all available preset views, e.g., using a dugout view in a CPU vs CPU game. I think it's only available in MOM right now?

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First of all, I'd like to thank people at SCEA very much for reading my comments. I'm very thankful somebody takes this much care into realizing the true feeling of baseball in a video game environment. The game is obviously great, definitely one of the best video games that I've played in my life and have rekindled my passion for (real) baseball which I had not been playing/watching for quite a while. I sincerely feel lucky to have found this game. I'd like not to waste this opportunity to thank you again, SCEA developers.

I made a lot of bland comments in order not to waste the opportunity presented before the threads close, but really most are just for possible improvements and not much pointing out deficiencies etc.

Player lock-in mode in gameplay.

This was suggested earlier in this thread, but I'd love to see this in the gameplay mode. Basically, you have an option to pick one player that you wish to have the total control over for that game, and you play the gameplay like in the RTTS mode. I'd think this would not be very hard to incorporate given the RTTS does this very well already.

I love playing the game, but I'm not crazy about having control over all the players, as it's not really how an individual participates in baseball. It would be great to have an option to take over a career of an individual player who's already in the game rather than creating one from scratch in RTTS.

Text-to-speech function for player names (or whatever)

Not sure if this is easy to do but adding this function may eliminate the need for recording voices for player names. If we want to create a player with a name not existing in the database, we are out of luck or need to choose the one that sounds closest right now. This function could provide a way to solve the general issue of not having recorded voices for certain identifications...

No locked save file.

Really what does locking save file to specific hardware does? Only introduces inconvenience and it's just a very cheap way of doing business.

Naming save file.

A useful option would be to allow us to name (or to attach a brief description to) a save file for franchise, RTTS, etc. Things can get confusing if we keep multiple save files at different different progress points.

Umpires.

More consistent variable umpire strike zone. Variable strike/ball calls are great. But not sure if there is really consistent offsets among umpires; I don't feel there is. We all know in MLB the strike zone is a ball or two wider outside. I don't necessarily feel this needs to be impremented in particular, but if each umpire really has his own tendency and sticks to it (plus random blown calls on pitches on black), this would add another dimension to the game for smart pitchers like Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux who exploit it. Imagine an ump named Eric Gregg blowing calls but consistently. That would be fun.

Breaking pitches up in the zone. It's harder to judge breaking pitches, so quite often breaking pitches landing up in the zone get call balls, as most breaking balls are meant to be thrown low and apparent mispitch has a larger chance of being called a ball by the ump. Maybe nitpitcking, but I sometimes feel weird when a hunging curveball up in the zone becomes a strike. By a similar reasoning, breaking pitches low in the zone tend to get called strike.

More sliders for adjusting minor nuances.

From reading past threads in OS, it looks like in the previous versions of the Show there used to be more sliders for adjusting different aspects of the gameplay. While I like the simplicity of the current set, there are certain things that we cannot change independently, e.g., infield errors and outfield errors. Want to adjust CPU hitters aggressiveness? Not sure what to do exactly, but it appears the Contact slider is the one to use, but it will affect other aspects of the game that I don't wish to change at the same time... You get the idea.

Also, finer than 0 - 10 scales may be appreciated. To decrease the HR power friendliness of '11, I lowered the Power slider but to have a realistic amount of HRs, I wanted to set it at 3.5, between 3 and 4. I could not of course.

- It would be great if we could adjust fly ball to ground ball ratio. Currently there is a slight inflation of ground balls, which leads to inflated GIDPs. We cannot adjust this well with current sliders.

- CPU hitters are slightly more aggressive than real life I think. A way to adjust this overall with a slider would be great.

- Even when maxed out, there are not enough fielding errors in '11. Sliders to adjust errors separately for infielders and outfielders would be great.

Game physics-related issues.

Grass vs. turf. It would be great if the speed/bounce of the grounder gets reduced by a different amount depending on the surface. On grass, the liveliness of the ball should get killed much greater and faster.

Hit variety. This has improved over MLB 10, but I think the game is still not producing some kinds. An obvious one is a very high chopper. If a hitter can hit a towering popup by swinging under, then he is also capable of hitting one very hard to the ground by swinging over. I rarely see very high one bouncer for example. I feel this kind of variety would add more fun to fielding. Also, I've been seeing an inordinate amount of poorly hit balls staying around the plate. I cannot have a number, but this probably has an effect of increasing the fielding chances for pitchers and catchers to an unrealistic degree. When you hit a 90 mph pitch with a bat moving at a similar speed, that's simply unrealistic based of energy/momentum conservation. Am pretty sure not everything is physics based in the game, but something nearly impossible in reality shouldn't happen that often.

Wind effect. At default, the wind effect is a bit exaggerated which led to many HRs. Typically, wind would blow stronger at a higher elevation from the ground, so towering fly ball should incrementally get affected as it goes higher along its trajectory. I'm not sure if it works that way already. Looks like in '11 the ball path gets deflected at a constant rate with the trajectory, looking at the projected path onto the ground. Things would be more complicated in reality of course, but this slight improvement might reduce the wind effect to a realistic level, while adding a slight challenge to fielding powering fly balls.

Identifications of fly ball, line drive, and ground balls. These are often dubious. Sometimes a clear weak fly ball (more like a pop up) gets called as line drive by announcer.

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Actually, I mean franchise/season mode, as I haven't tried franchise yet this year due to the unfixed bug. My feedback is on things that are relevant for both modes.

Franchise Mode
Pros:

Lots of options.

Franchise Mode
Cons:

AI is not very smart.

Those famous glitches that didn't get fixed in '11...

Franchise Mode
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Customizable league.

This may be a long shot given each incarnation of the Show is really tied to the previous year's MLB, but this game has such a fantastic baseball gameplay engine that I feel it's a shame not to be able to create our own world of players in a more flexible manner on it. I love playing with different rosters, such as classic MLB rosters, and the restriction the current system imposes really limits the ways we can do this.

Superfast play mode.

I love the gameplay mode. It's quite amazing the attentions SCEA has given to the mode to emulate real baseball.

Unfortunately, it takes a long time to run a game, 45 - 60 mins, so it is unrealistic for us use that great engine for every game to go through a season. We have to use that "sim" mode, which I feel is a poor man's dice roll game...

Would it be possible to create a mode so that a CPU vs CPU game is played without that pretty visual feedback (to speed up the game), but all the results go through the gameplay engine? For me it's fine if it still takes 5 min or longer to finish just one game, as long as the game results go through the same fantastic gameplay engine. Some players I have created accumulate very different stats with "sim" and "gameplay." Given a choice, I want to take the results that come out of the gameplay, the full simulation, because I really enjoy watching CPU vs CPU games with AI trying to make best strategy based on available pitch selection, for example. The sim mode appears just dice roll on the other hand.

More stats.

Severely lacking in this department. Everyone knows. I'm a stats nerd, but I don't necessarily care that you go delve into the "Sabermetrics" type of stats (by the way the advanced stats add-on DLC is pretty meaningless as they only compute things that we can compute easily from the standard stats). At the very least, I'd like to see the year-by-year stats kept separately for each players. It may take too much resource to keep those for all the players in franchise. Maybe a separate "stats" save file to keep track of them? Can only load and use it if the gamer wishes.

More stats derived AI decisions.

A log of decisions that AI makes are based on player ratings. This obviously works well given that the ratings reflect players' true ability in game, but can results in the feeling of weirdness when the stats don't reflect the ratings, which happen quite often due to random fluctuations.

If the Show takes baseball stats more seriously and keep track of them, then I suggest that AI decisions get influenced more by the stats accumulated in the recent past. For rookies, use ratings only. For players with a bit of MLB service time, weigh the past stats in based on the amount of actual playing time. If the player has played enough, just use stats. You get the idea... I get turned off when AI makes the best decision based on ratings despite the stats don't warrant it, because of course that's the best decision given we always know the true ability of a player (just have a peek at his attribute ratings), but in real life we never get to know one's true ability, so we go by stats more.

Data export feature.

Now that most save files are locked and we are not allowed to generate our own backeup files, there should at least be ways to keep our play history by exporting various data, such as player, roster, stats, etc. Being able to generate something like CSV files will go a long way. I hate erasing stats every time I need to move on to the next stage of the game. It's sad there will be no trace of retired players once I erase them. With the data export feature, at least I get to keep them for later appreciation...

Manager Mode
Pros:

Gameplay is great even just for watching due to great visuals and realistic animations.

Manager Mode
Cons:

Too many bugs.

Takes too long to play a single game.

Manager Mode
In your opinion what needs to be changed, added, or tweaked to make this portion of the game better? Along with that what would you like to see more of?

Managerial tendencies for CPU.

This is relevant for any game mode I think. Each (CPU-controlled) manager should have different tendencies in their in-game strategies, lineups, player usage, etc. This would be a fun addition.