Major League Baseball 2K9 Video: Giants @ D-Backs

[Trevytrev11]

Quote: Originally Posted by stealyerface

Perhaps the CPU will swing less at the balls in the zone if the pitcher locks the batter up with a nasty pitch that is perfectly executed. Steve, have you been able to see such a thing within the games that you used the old 2k8 style of pitching, that when you made the perfect pitch, the batter either flailed weakly at the ball, or let the pitch just go by? Bad pitches get smacked. I love that they got rid of the meatballs, but in real life if you make a bad pitch, you know it immediately, and expect the batter to recognize that, and jump on it. Maybe the problem is less the batter's programming, but the pitchers' lack of execution. Thoughts? syf

I see some logic to your statement, but at the same time, most hitters aren't going to jump on a poorly executed pitch if it is still in a good location. A flat 0-0 curveball on the corner is still a curveball on the corner, which is not a pitch most hitters are looking to hit. When even or ahead in the count, the hitter is usually the agressor and looking for something he can drive, not trying to fight of a pitchers pitch.

I think one thing this game has never done is give hitters a plan when hitting (or pitchers when pitch for that matter). First pitch curveball, fastball, slider, changeup, it doesn't seem to matter to the hitter as they will hack at anything. A 2-0 curveball on the corner is rarely a pitch a hitter will swing at, but in this game it seems to not matter (when I say this game, I mean this series-historically).

Also, they always seem to have nearly perfect vision and can tell a pitch that is on the black from one that is 1/2 of an inch off. It is very hard to get the computer to chase close pitches.

As far as whether or not the quality is the determining factor, maybe, but I still think the the logic is flawed. If your sitting on a pitch, your going to swing at that pitch if it is in the zone whether it's flat or not, unless it just completely fools you. But if your sitting on a fastball and you get a pitchers best fastball, your still going to swing. It seems executing a pitch perfectly should have a little more impact on whether you swing and miss or not more than whether you swing or not.
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The bottom line to me is they really get the pitcher/batter battle wrong when it comes to execution.

As a pitcher, it's too easy to throw any pitch for a strike at any time. This is a huge advantage to the pitcher, because in real life, the hitter is looking for his pitch on the first pitch and since the pitcher can easily locate anything else that he wants, the hitter would constantly be in a hole if real life logic existed in this game.

In real life as a hitter, when you're up 2-0, 3-0, 3-1 (and even 1-0 and 2-1), you know the odds are in your favor to see fastballs (especially against the non-elite guys). It's not guaranteed at all, but more times than not it is what you are going to see. It's the pitch a pitcher locates best and is easiest for him to throw for a strike to get the count turned towards his favor or evened up. But that doesn't exist in the game. A curveball for a strike takes nothing more than throwing a fastball for a stike. There is no punishment for a pitcher who tries to be too fine all of the time.

On the flip side, this is why you have unrealistic things like the Batters eye. They need something to put some sort of an edge towards the hitter. In real life, there is no boost for guessing right, you still have to read and react properly to the pitch. The same would hold true in the game. If you are sitting fastball in, you can just move the cursor there and wait for that pitch and react to it and chances are you would be more successful than if you had been looking for something offspeed and away (you don't have to move the cursor and your expectations for the pitches timing are set).

Hopefully the game goes away from this next year. Pitching and executing quality pitches is not easy to do and by making this happen, hitters will get more realistic pitches to hit in the proper counts...at least in theory

[stealyerface]

Great points Trev. I agree, and shall expand on them.

The trouble with the game programming is how you get the batter to take a pitch, sit on a pitch, and adjust accordingly. They have tried this with the Hitter's Eye, and supposedly, when you guess the location right with your little circle, there is a greater chance of contact for that correct guess. I am okay with this, but agree that if you are looking for a fastball middle-in, and get a hanging curve ball in the same spot, you may have guessed the location, but might be too quick through the ball as you were looking fastball. The olden days of Guess Pitch/ Guess Location seemed to remedy this because if you were actually looking curveball down, and got that pitch and spot correct, you ought to be rewarded accordingly with better contact/power.

Now, the Inside Edge is a great attempt to mimic the tendencies that both the pitcher and batter live on. If you know that Dice-K is down in the count 2-0, and that there is an 88% probability that he will throw a fastball in that count, and your batter has a propensity for swinging 22% of the time ahead in the count, but only 13% if the pitch is not a fastball, you can see the algorithmic train wreck that has to occur for each pitch/count/batter/pitcher/type of pitch/etc... to get this Inside Edge to work right. So, that said, the % that a batter might swing at every pitch if it is inside the strike zone, may have more to do with the fact that the pitcher throws the same fastball on the outside edge for the first pitch of the at bat. While i know I am giving too much credit to the programming dept of 2k to actually make adaptive decisions based on the player's tendencies, someday, if you throw the fastball-in, offspeed-away, and fastball-up EVERY pitch sequence for every at bat, then at some point the game has to punish you for your predictability.

Therein lies the issue at stake. What is the process by which the slider makes the cpu batter take a pitch? Is it a percentage of pitches taken per at bat regardless of location and count? If so, that would be totally lame and unrealistic. Is it based on the count/location/type of pitch and the batter's tendencies as to what gets taken, and also on the pitcher's ability to not throw that 2-0 fastball when the scouting report says he ought to? Yeah, god love them if they ever get that right!

So, if the slider is simply randomizing the amount of times that the batter will take a pitch for a ball or a strike, it defeats the pitcher/batter dual in which the guy that guess right, or keeps the other off balance wins. The CPU will never replicate the mind games of the pitcher and batter and purpose pitches and missing in a certain spot on purpose to set up the next pitch, simply because they will never get that programming right. There is always a trigger to the next step which triggers the next...and so it goes...

Which, leads me to the next point. The reason that I will use the 3 step pitching gesture from last year is that I believe it allowed me to "fool" the computer by where I was aiming the cursor to where I made the pitch end up. Follow me here. You are not pitching to a real person, you are pitching to the cpu. The same cpu that "knows" where you are setting up the cursor so that you can make the ball to where you have aimed it against the cpu who is batting. See the trouble here? I place the cursor, but when the cursor is placed on the inside of the plate, who is to say that that does not trigger the programming in the game to recognize the fact that I am throwing to a spot that is going to be a strike, and the cpu batter hacks away at it? So, by using the release gesture of last year's game, and utilizing the aiming mechanics to pitch a strike in which the cursor was an obvious ball at the beginning of the sequence, perhaps "freezes" the cpu's batter because it did not recognize the fact that the ball would end up a strike... I know this conspiracy theory is out there but I was able to throw 8-10, (and the most ever by me in a game-17) strikeouts per game with the number one and two starters for my team by using the pitch meter to make pitches strikes that I aimed out of the strike zone before the first movement. I mean, WAY out of the strike zone. Now the trouble last year was that if I got too cute with the release, I was meatballed, and the cpu drove in a lot of runs that were on mistakes. This year, the Meatball is gone, so I should be able to make better use of both sides of the plate, and not get pummelled by the Meatball code.

This is getting way long, so i will wrap it up. Last year, you had a cpu batter up 1-2 or 0-2. I would throw the obligatory fastball riding up the zone to see if they might chase it. The big hitters would from time to time, but most watched it go by. Then, I would move the cursor (No strikezone on that is lame) to about a foot or two outside the plate to the right handed batter. An obvious ball if the fastball is thrown by pulling straight back to 6'oclock...waiting for the meter to fill.... then straight back to 12 o'clock for a perfect gesture. Ahhh... here is where we pitchers hone the craft. Pull the stick straight back to 6o'clock...wait for the meter.... then instead of 120'clock, we release-gesture at maybe 1pm or even 1:20 (based on a clock's little hand position). This would cause the release score to be 50-60-70% but guess what? That ball would move back towards the plate like you were throwing a Maddux style 2-seamer. This was for the 4-seam fastball, but you could get late movement left or right based on how badly your "missed" the release. I got to where I could feel the slightest difference between a nasty back up fastball and a Meatball. Using this control scheme more often than not, the cpu batter would watch the ball, even behind in the count, and that fastball would back up over the edge for the punchout. This is why I had so much fun with 2k8 and LOVE LOVE LOVE that three motion pitching. I was able to use a fantastic set of gameplay sliders, as well as a purposeful manipulation of the release point, and get some very realistic pitch counts and results because I was, at least I think I was, fooling the cpu into taking a pitch because I threw a strike that the cpu recognized "should" have been a ball.

Does this make sense? I know it is kind of convoluted, but in my mind, it is how you can fool a batter that shares the same brain with the game you just told where you were planning on putting the ball with your aiming cursor. How can the results be realistic when you tell the cpu where you are going to throw the ball?

Rant over... can't wait for the game to come out. I am on board for release day!

syf

[Danny305miA]

That had to be one of the best, most realistic videos that i had seen in such a long time. Visual Concepts and 2k have done an amazing job especially with the time restraints that they had with each other. This is going to be great and i am counting down the days till March 3.

[Checmate101]

Man, the game is great..only problem I have is the bat sound, other then that things are looking great.