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MLB The Show 20

Started by Crewe, March 19, 2020, 10:10:12 PM

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Crewe

I normally picked this up every year, but skipped last year because my playing time waned somewhat.
However, I grabbed it this time and here's some impressions. Note that I only play RTTS.

First off, I didnt back up any of my 2018 RTTS guys in the cloud and it turns out, you cant import them in to 20 unless via the cloud.
I say that because its a guess and the reason is, it also appears you cant import anyone that isn't from the 2019 game. I could be wrong if someone else can check that. At some point, I think I can fire up my 2018 version, save a RTTS guy to the cloud and then come back to 20 and see if I can import.

I think this was setup in 18 but I cant recall so Ill go ahead and discuss:
Once I get this game, the very first thing I do is load music and set sounds, chants, yells and the like. Takes a good while, but once you do it, it's done.
I can recall that you used to have to do, say your chant sounds. You would have to go to that category, scroll through your entire library of music/sounds and pick which ones you wanted for chants.
Then do yells, then music cues...good god can you imagine how frustrating and boring that is?
Well now, you can select any category all at once.
Your music (and or sounds etc) are in column one on the left. On th right are three other columns with checkboxes; music, chants, yells (at least I think thats what they care called, doesn't matter for our purpose here)
So you only have to scroll all your music once; checking every category in which you want that music to appear all at the same time. So much more user friendly.

Enough of that, on to the game.

The good
I always always always hated how your guy would go from zero to top speed in one step. it looked foolish, wasn't realistic and was quite unnerving, especially as a fielder. one step, full speed for ten steps to the spot and stop on a dime. It played silly.
Well, no more. The animations have been updated to have a much more realistic feel and appearance and will easily lead to errors in the field if you aren't careful, which I like. Although, I'm seeing a lot of E7's right now  :o

Perks
So this has evolved over the years and I like where it is right now. You can prioritize your characteristics and thus your perks. Captain, Heart and Soul, Maverick and Lightning Rod are the choices. You can pick a few to start and gain more as you go to help develop your guy. Although, Im about three months in to my first season and I haven't progressed in the perk area at all yet so Im not sure how it works. If it's based off of challenges, well then, that makes sense because, I suck at challenges. That said...

Challenges
This too has evolved and I think its really cool. used to be, say at bat, the manager would just give you some stupid meaningless order you had to follow to gain progression points. I recall I was under a red light, no steals, ever, because I got caught a few times in a row. Well, I got on base an the manager told me to steal lol I literally got benched for trying to steal when he told me to but after the game said I didnt understand what no steals meant.
None of that shit anymore, a nd it doesn't happen often in a game, or sometimes even once every two or three games. It's very situational.
Say a man is on second; you might get something like this:
Maverick: Make contact with every swing and drive in the run (and get x points for clutch lets say)
Captain: Swing only at pitches over the plate making contact and drive in a run.

So, much much more interesting and believable situations.
Now, I could get 4 hits a game, seeing a beach ball floating to the plate, then I get a challenge and swing at three pitches out of the zone and Im done lol Challenges make me choke.

Relationships
This is another aspect that is really cool. The the opportunity arises, you can build relationships either with your teammates, or stoke a rival.
You usually get options of three rival players or teammates. You'll be able to see what stage you are at with each one and how you wish to go forward.
The three stages are unknown or unfriendly (basically, you dont know each other) friendly and bros, or rivals.
At each development stage, you get perks. Such as, if you have a bud on base, he can boost your contact for that AB.
Owning a rival, playing within a division etc all have the potential to add perks which makes it feel like games mean a bit more than wins or losses. There's meat behind your progress, rather than just wild silly meaningless challenges.

The umps variability is actually reasonable now. In 18, if my check swing was appealed, it was always "no swing." Got kinda boring.
I was in a clutch sitch and was able to finally heck my swing on a two strike count. An appeal was requested and that turd rang me up! I was so surprised!
At that moment I didnt care much for it obviously, but I really like the fact they changed that horse hockey.
Also, behind the plate treats calls that could go either way just like that, either way. And some bad calls too. They've really tweaked the algorithm to make this more realistic and fun.

Real minor league rosters!

Training
Im still in a young season so I haven't seen everything yet, but it seems to be much more refined and upgraded with a few twists. Some events that would force you to take 20 actual practice balls before now just automatically gives you your progression points.
There are some activities that are quite fun and frustrating though. If you have ever played, you'd recognize the toss up drill where you see a strike zone while balls are 'tossed" in to the zone and you have to hit them to gain points, and its a lot tougher, to me anyway, than it looks.
Things like that have made it a much better and faster transition through off days.

The bad
it is darn near impossible to check swing. I dont mean having a half swing called a strike. I mean, I cannot perform a check swing but maybe once out of 30 tries. I used to be pretty decent at it, but not now.

Just as hard or harder to draw walks. it seems that most of the time, the pitcher will start you off with something right down the middle of the plate.
hardly anything out of the zone, certainly not enough to garner a walk. Ive tweaked the sliders I normally do as this is something Ive had to do for years to draw walks, but its not working on this version yet so Ill keep tinkering.

If you round a base or try to steal and go back, just forget about it. you're dead meat. The animation pushes you too far down the line and can't recover.
This has been an issue for a few versions now.

The ugly


When trying to steal a base, stretch a single to a double, or a double to a triple, the throw is going to be on the money, 100% of the time, period. Right at the shoe tops. Every. Single. Time. never a bouncy throw, never the slightest bit offline. Never bobbled. Nothing. If you don't beat it outright, you're toast.
That sucks ass.

This game didnt take too long to download but holy crap, the install took a flipping lifetime, so, be prepared for that little inconvenience.

Finally, and this is one of my bigger complaints and always has been. You move up too damn fast in the minors. Now I know, you have to appease all the 8 year olds who want to hurry up and get there but damn. Two months in to my career and Im boosted to AAA. That's just not reasonable, at all.
Im sure, despite hitting .270 and part of a myriad of players at my position in the organization, Ill be elevated to the bigs in no time. I really really hate that.

*****

Everything else is pretty much the same as far as operation goes, that Ive seen anyway.
Many of the perks and development features make this game way more interesting than just drab binary progressions and whatnot.
Overall, still the same game, but to a more satisfying degree. I dont know what all was changed in 19 so some of these elements may not be new to you.
Whew, that's enough. let me know if you have anything to add or if Im overlooking something. Im still new to this version so that could be likely!





TheNorm

Was gonna ask you about this since I've seen you playing it lately. Thanks for the info!
"But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." - Martin Luther King, Jr

Crewe

no problem norm. And I have to add, that my initial concern was correct.
I fired up 18, saved my RTTS guy to the cloud.
Opened up 20, tried to import from the cloud aaaand you cant. You must have the 2019 version in order to import in to 20, which really really sucks.
I lost a 10 year guy I was working on...I mean I still have him, but in 18.
I guess I could wait until 2019 is $20, but I just won't do that simply to port a player over.

Crewe

ok, so, like I said, in no time, Id be prompted, well, I was.
It's just absurd to me, and I should add, during the rookie Showcase series, I declined the draft for four years for college, because an 18 year old in the bigs is just stupid. Even at 22, no way I should be sniffing the MLB.
That said, I was drafted by Detroit who are currently 34-73, so I guess they would have room.
But even then, Im doing terrible, worse than ever.
I had a run on what I call my Klan games (3 k's a game, I know, bad taste, but Im a sad player right now)
My average was almost below .050, seriously LOL It was for a long time bouncing around the .075 range but never got sent down.
Amongst my K games, Im managing to get a few hits here and there and am now at .140 but who knows what will happen. I also continue to make errors in LF because once your guy stops to wait on a fly ball, if he is a step out of the indicator area, he will not adjust until its too late, hence the error. So you basically get one shot at stopping correctly. I guess it gets better as you progress, at least that show I remember 18.
O and Minnesota and Detroit fields suck ass! You can even see the ball out of the pitchers hand until its beyond you because of the sunlight behind the pitcher on the backdrop.
Which is another complaint, how come every game starts in the daytime? Completely unrealistic.

BojackHorsefella

Quote from: Crewe on March 26, 2020, 03:48:06 PM
I had a run on what I call my Klan games (3 k's a game, I know, bad taste, but Im a sad player right now)

This genuinely made me laugh out loud on reading

Crewe

Quote from: BojackHorsefella on March 26, 2020, 08:15:12 PM
Quote from: Crewe on March 26, 2020, 03:48:06 PM
I had a run on what I call my Klan games (3 k's a game, I know, bad taste, but Im a sad player right now)

This genuinely made me laugh out loud on reading

LOL yea, gets me too

TheNorm

Klan games lol...I'm dead. Good one
"But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." - Martin Luther King, Jr

Crewe

So Im in my second season and lets just say I didnt even whiff the Menoza line. However, I did eclipse 200 strikeouts. unfortunately, I only had a couple of hundred at bats. I made Adam Dunn look like a contact hitter.

So, you guys that play or have played, what hitting method do you use?
I see everyone uses the circle method where you place the contact circle in the area of the oncoming pitch and then use the x button to swing.
Ive never in my life ben able to hit that way and have always used the right analog stick with strip, the timing swing, in order to hit.
Course, none of its working right now lol

BojackHorsefella

Yeah, I've always done the "Pure Analog," I think, where you're just flicking the right stick forward on timing.

Back in the '08 and '09 days, I just used X and Square. I'm like you, never have been able to line up that damn circle.

Crewe

Glad its not just me.
Do you do the analog stick back and forth, or just the flick forward?
If you move it back, you are in control of the timing step too.

BojackHorsefella

I like doing the just flick forth.

TheNorm

Also purely just a flick the right stick forward person. Always tended to end up with better contact that way, relearning the timing going back then forth was too much of a hassle.
"But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." - Martin Luther King, Jr

Crewe

whoa! there's almost a half a dozen of us!! lol

Rigg44

I to am a flick the stick guy.  Man that sounds bad but you know what I mean.

Crewe