Dude... It's February. If you haven't come to grips with the fact that MLBTS plays like a glorified mobile game, I don't know what to tell you.

Nothing is going to change as long as DD is separating fools from their money. It's clear that SDS/Sony has determined the whales suck at this game which is why the game plays like it does, and why people are becoming increasingly frustrated with these DD/Ultimate Team modes.

Gameplay is no longer developed to simulate the physical act of playing baseball - this game's sole purpose is to keep the 2% of the player base that spend gobs of money engaged and continuing to open their wallets. So unless those players magically get better, fretting over whether you're being proportionately rewarded is an act of insanity.

@KyleS779 said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

Pretty sure we are just looking at a group of developers, along with decision makers at the top, who have forgotten, or became too lazy, though it could be incompetence, to put out a solid game.

JMO - the initial release of the game the last 2 years shows the developers are doing a fantastic job and, if allowed, are more than capable of releasing a great game.

Developers aren't deciding to make these changes, it's 100% coming from the top. As backwards as it sounds, management determined users were having too much fun the first week, which was costing them stub sales (ie. if you're happy with the game, and by extension your cards, you're less likely to spend additional $$). So they essentially ordered the devs to mess up the game and frustrate people into pulling out the credit card.

We're going to continue to see this cycle until legislation is passed that outlaws these exploitative pay2win practices. Once the MTX go cosmetic-only, they'll have no incentive to manipulate gameplay in this manner.

JMO, they need to be careful with increasing speeds any more. I get that fastballs were useless in '18 but currently there are games, I'm assuming due to lag, where I literally have to start my swing the instant it leaves the pitcher's hand. I take BP on Legend with the pitch speed all the way up and still can't replicate what I sometimes see online on AS difficulty.

@omegaminus_sk said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

I only caught a tiny part of the stream, but I did see them talking about the prestige diamonds and how they were using them to respond to the requests for the return of some of the stat grinds. Except that in my experience, 95+% of the people asking for stat grinds were offline players looking for more to do than just play Conquest over and over.

As someone looking for better things to do with my DD collection without having to play H2H, was there anything new in this stream?

Nope. DD has a Destiny problem for offline players: "Lots of content and none of it matters."

The game plays like dogshvt online and SDS continually trying to push folks towards the borderline broken H2H modes, at least in relation to the offline portion, is going to catch up to them eventually.

@cvogsfashow said in NEW Video on Twitter for Custom Leagues:

@DriveByTrucker17 said in NEW Video on Twitter for Custom Leagues:

@cvogsfashow said in NEW Video on Twitter for Custom Leagues:

@LankyRyan said in NEW Video on Twitter for Custom Leagues:

Bonus: this gives offline only folks less to complain about when it comes to DD content.

Agreed! Tired of seeing guys who online play offline complain about DD not having enough offline options meanwhile it is suppose to be an ONLINE mode.

Imagine complaining about people wanting more content that you can also play.

I am all for more ways to play but not when I have to complete an insane Offline grind for cards that then can be utilized ONLINE. DD is literally an online mode. Hover over DD on the menu screen, Create, Customize, and Compete ONLINE. IMO, the game mode should have a small portion offline that the user needs to do. In 18, someone could make the argument that they spent more time grinding Immortals than playing online.

The problem wasn't necessarily the grind, it was that SDS didn't offer any alternative for folks that don't enjoy beating up the CPU ad nausea.

Your gripe is with SDS, not offline players.

@GradektheBard said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

@Furious_Boogers said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

@GradektheBard said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

@skepple15 said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

The only reason you can’t exchange or quick sell is to make people buy more cards nothing more nothing less, I don’t even really care about the quick sell thing, to me not being able to exchange locked in cards is a huge L. Basically what you have now is 40 dormant cards that you can’t do anything with, quash said people were abusing the system by locking in and exchanging, my question is how is that abusing the system? You don’t get to keep the cards after exchanging, you’re only abusing the system if the system is you have to buy more cards

I mean, sure it’s an obvious money grab, but considering the quantity of free content they give out (assuming similar to 19), I’ll let this one slide.

MUT/FUT/HUT folks rationalize it the exact same way...

Please never compare the content of the show to those other games.

They're going down the EXACT same path, MLBTS just started a couple years behind.

@ImDFC said in The three features that received the most L's in todays stream:

If you're playing offline, you don't really need the evolution version of a card. You do after all get to select the difficulty you want to play most of the time.

That's the point most are trying to make. The way DD is set up, your cards essentially don't matter offline. Virtually all the incentives are for H2H play which is probably the weakest portion of the game, at least from a gameplay standpoint.

Folks want a reason to collect cards outside of using them H2H.

Getting consistent soft contact on good input doesn't make hitting "hard", it's just s***y programming.

SDS should simply remove the ability to take an extra step in H2H. It adds nothing but frustration to the experience.

@iLurk84 said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

@HoffsDrawlar said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

While I somewhat agree with what you are saying and it may be the case, I am still seeing poor feedback (good/okay) for diamonds on balls in the center of the pci. Results just are not making any sense, where they were during the first week.

Yeah hence making you think a guy with a little more vision or contact that’ll turn to good/good. So pull out the credit card.

I'm really glad folks are starting to catch on. They've been compromising gameplay to push stubs ever since '17, though this latest change is by far the most blatant.

I hope they add him eventually. Obviously made a huge mistake, and paid the ultimate price for it, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a notable part of baseball history. I understand cancel culture is popular, and an easy way for dumb people to gain karma/likes on social media, but we shouldn't erase history because we don't agree with the personal choices someone made, especially when we don't know the whole story. Embrace the past and learn from it, good and bad.

I'm starting to feel it as well.

That being said, I'm not sure anything has really changed other than, after a dozen+ runs, I'm just over being forced to take 80% of pitches for the game to start rewarding positive outcomes. It's obvious that the mode favors/demands you wear down the pitcher and after a while it just becomes tedious.

Is anyone else finding that lineouts are often registering in the feedback as perfect/perfect grounders? How is it a grounder if it never hits the ground? Plus, as many folks have pointed out, good/okay is showing up on a concerning amount of inputs that probably should have been perfect/perfect.

Even if they publish numbers, I'm not sure how accurate they'll be based on how inputs are currently registering.

@KyleS779 said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

Pretty sure we are just looking at a group of developers, along with decision makers at the top, who have forgotten, or became too lazy, though it could be incompetence, to put out a solid game.

JMO - the initial release of the game the last 2 years shows the developers are doing a fantastic job and, if allowed, are more than capable of releasing a great game.

Developers aren't deciding to make these changes, it's 100% coming from the top. As backwards as it sounds, management determined users were having too much fun the first week, which was costing them stub sales (ie. if you're happy with the game, and by extension your cards, you're less likely to spend additional $$). So they essentially ordered the devs to mess up the game and frustrate people into pulling out the credit card.

We're going to continue to see this cycle until legislation is passed that outlaws these exploitative pay2win practices. Once the MTX go cosmetic-only, they'll have no incentive to manipulate gameplay in this manner.

@iLurk84 said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

@HoffsDrawlar said in Why the hitting engine turned into a cash grab:

While I somewhat agree with what you are saying and it may be the case, I am still seeing poor feedback (good/okay) for diamonds on balls in the center of the pci. Results just are not making any sense, where they were during the first week.

Yeah hence making you think a guy with a little more vision or contact that’ll turn to good/good. So pull out the credit card.

I'm really glad folks are starting to catch on. They've been compromising gameplay to push stubs ever since '17, though this latest change is by far the most blatant.

But then everyone will be happy with their week 1 cards and won't spend as much on stubs.

Plus, they have a national emergency to take advantage of.

There won't be significant changes.

The patch had little to do with gameplay - it was about players earning stubs rather than buying them. The increase in showdown difficulty and decrease in rewards is the most telling.

Another big part of exploiting people for MTX is making sure they're never content with their cards, which also rolls into overall gameplay. If folks are having a lot of fun with their current cards (ie. gameplay is great), even if they aren't the best, they won't spend as much money. It's not a coincidence that SDS "ruins" gameplay every year after the initial good reviews come in. They give folks a taste of the good life and then get them hooked on "maybe this 99 they just released will have me hitting like I was week 1...". It's all hyper-manipulative bull****.

What's most disgusting about this is that it appears they rushed it out early in order to take advantage of people in a trying time. Very disappointing.

That can't be it. If you're "bad", wouldn't you want good input rewarded even more than a good player, since achieving that input would be rare?

I really hope this isn't something more devious - ie. nerfing hitting because they thought users were becoming 'content' with their cards and not spending enough $$ on stubs.

Getting consistent soft contact on good input doesn't make hitting "hard", it's just s***y programming.

I'm actually not seeing any significant changes. I rarely play online but Showdown essentially feels the same as before, maybe with the PCI being a hair smaller, but if I didn't know about the patch, doubt I would have noticed.

Anecdotally, I MAY be popping out a bit more on balls entirely within the hard contact area, but that was definitely happening before as well. Also hit my first homerun of the year where the ball was completely outside the contact area, so maybe a bit more RNG? Ultimately, yesterday went 2/2 on the AL West Showdown and never felt like I was being royally screwed over(ie. RNGtheShow 19'd). Online may be a different story.