MLB 14 The Show News Post

MLB 14 The Show: Online Play a Swing and a Miss at Launch

12:47 PM - April 4, 2014 by RaychelSnr

MLB 14 The Show had a lot riding on a smooth online experience for users this year, with several new online experiences in the offing giving baseball gamers a chance to have connected experiences like never before.

The problem with that is The Show series has consistently in the past been plagued with online server issues and this year seems to be no exception. A quick perusal through Twitter looking for people's comments on the online functionality yields few, if any, positive comments and reports.

Pasta Padre posted a report on his experiences experiences with regards to online play, with quite unflattering results. His experiences do seem to be the norm within the community though:

Quote:


	"That was an hour spent playing a game to its completion with no apparent problems during or after and it was time wasted. In fact the �Franchise Events� page, which lists pretty much everything going on in the league, is riddled with those messages about the games not processing."

Sports gamers have now witnessed two otherwise stellar games hampered with online issues over the past six months -- with NBA 2K14 having major issues with it's online servers and in-game functionality around the 2013 holiday season and now MLB 14 The Show introducing major new efforts with regards to online play which, at least at launch, do not fully function.

This raises questions on why several titles have chosen to focus on online functionality only to have that functionality be non-functional when the game launches -- thus hampering a major selling point of the title. While it is likely The Show will have its online issues fixed sooner rather than later, you have to wonder if the future where online connectivity is emphasized is truly any better than the days where simply putting the disk in and playing local offline games was the norm.

What have your experiences with MLB 14 The Show online been like on PS3?

Game: MLB 14 The ShowReader Score: 8.5/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS Vita / PS3 / PS4Votes for game: 12 - View All

MLB 14 The Show Videos

Member Comments

# 21 merchant1874 @ 04/07/14 05:23 AM

I never play the show online and have no interest in it which is the opposite of other sports games of which I only play online.

Although online the show isn't for me it is ridiculous that they still haven't sorted this. Especially in this day and age.

As someone else said SCEA San Diego has had a free pass for far too long regarding online.

It's got to the point they should just stop wasting time and give up.

# 22 SVCbearcat10 @ 04/07/14 07:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Knight165


	Is it a definite that you won't be able to continue your online franchise in '15? Those saves are on the server, correct?(I still haven't played online at all....so I don't know the ins and outs for sure) M.K. Knight165

Yes, Russell confirmed in the Online Dev Blog...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russell_SCEA


	Year-to-year saves do not work for online franchise.

# 23 BSUFAN @ 04/07/14 08:05 AM

From some previous experiences online is why I only play RTTS. It's a shame for those that do though.

# 24 allgames @ 04/07/14 10:39 AM

What makes this even more frustrating is that I have played MLB13 online every week until I picked up MLB14 and it was absolutely playable and not even close to the disaster that 14 is right now. How can they have made it worse with a new release based on the same game engine??

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# 25 HustlinOwl @ 04/07/14 01:04 PM

Hopefully it is all ironed out come PS4 release

Quote:


	Thanks to each and every one of you who’ve picked up a copy of MLB 14 The Show on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Vita. This has been an important year for the series, in many respects, and we’re excited to finally get the season started. We have been closely monitoring community feedback to online play. We recognize that users are having issues and are moving quickly to analyze and address. This year, we strove to revamp our online gameplay from the ground up. The goal was to provide 100% parity with the feel and input response of our offline gameplay. We have accomplished much of this: input and timing for Batting, Pitching, and Fielding online all feel the same as offline with virtually zero latency. As a result of this overhaul and our emphasis on a minimal latency experience, a number of visual anomalies and issues of synchronization have manifested that we are actively identifying and working to resolve. It is a process, one with growing pains, but we are confident the significant changes we’ve made this year will help to lay the foundation for a vastly improved online experience, both in terms of fixes we will deliver in the near future and also for subsequent entries in the series. We can also assure you that our highly anticipated PlayStation 4 debut will benefit from many of our immediate learnings and fixes from day one. We will keep you posted on the progress of online gameplay and appreciate your understanding and continued support as work to bring it to the level of quality we expect from every feature we release. -The Show Team

# 26 HustlinOwl @ 04/07/14 03:42 PM

lol, Dear God

# 27 coydog2020 @ 04/07/14 06:07 PM

I hope to God the online is working. I have been a member of the xbox family since the release of the first xbox. I bought a PS4 last friday because I wanted to play this game online. If there is a issue with the PS4 version I will be going back to xbox..

# 28 Rifle_Man81 @ 04/08/14 10:31 AM

There always seems to be issues initially. I played a lot of DD in MLB 12. In 13 I couldn't get through a DD game without a disconnect. Any game with a friend seemed to be laggy, but I probably played a 150 "Play Now" games and it worked great the vast majority of the time. I usually just play some RTTS for a couple weeks until online gets sorted. I was suprised they implemented online franchise. I would be curious to know the actual number of online leagues that make it into season 2. I would think a multplayer mode like DD/RTTS meets EASHL would make more sense, but with the stability issues I won't hold my breath on that one. The Show is one of my favorite games, but I haven't been motivated to purchase yet.

# 29 allgames @ 04/10/14 09:47 PM

The stuff happening now is truly bizarre. Warping players, players being called safe but are actually recorded as outs, strikes down the middle being called balls, just weird stuff that I've never seen before. The worst of course is the complete freeze/lock up that occurs in 1 out of 4 games for me. So much for an accurate W/L record online

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# 30 HustlinOwl @ 04/10/14 10:27 PM

lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by allgames


	The stuff happening now is truly bizarre. Warping players, players being called safe but are actually recorded as outs, strikes down the middle being called balls, just weird stuff that I've never seen before. The worst of course is the complete freeze/lock up that occurs in 1 out of 4 games for me. So much for an accurate W/L record online Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

lol is this after the latest maintenance??

# 31 allgames @ 04/10/14 11:28 PM

This was yesterday.

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# 32 HustlinOwl @ 04/11/14 12:10 PM

http://forums.theshownation.com/show...486#post207486

Quote:


	News: April 10 Server Update Changelist We are performing a SERVER MAINTENANCE on Thursday April 10 at 3am PDT. Please refrain from online games at that time. Here are changes in this update (please know we are still working on addressing other issues): Game:: 1. Challenge payouts to the creator are corrected. 2. In Online Franchise, we now prevent users from putting injured players back on the mlb roster using the Auto Fix feature. 3. League standings default sort changed to games back ascending. 4. Balks defaulted to OFF on Play Now games when users are set to Any. 5. Diamond Dynasty: Prevent users from recycling or activating cards in their sell orders. 6. Added position filter for RTTS leaderboard. 7. Fixed simulator issues in Online Franchises. 8. Ticker now shows ERA instead of earned runs. This is for the MLB.com bottom ticker in the Frontend. 9. Online Franchise stats tweaked. Sim stats for both batting and pitching should be pretty close to what we're seeing in Offline Franchise and in real life. The ratio stats, such as BA, ERA and WHIP, will be almost identical. The counting stats, such as AB, HR and K, will be a little higher because of the way we handle Energy online (players don't get any days off). TheShowNation:: 1. Added different emblems for community challenge creators. 2. General style fixes in community challenges, bug reports, market place, road to the show and home page. Online Gameplay Fixes are still in progress and we are working as hard and diligently as possible to address the issues. We are not happy with the inconsistency of online gameplay, same as you. We truly appreciate your patience as we work through what we believe will become a better gameplay experience. Thank you, The Show team

# 33 seanhazz1 @ 04/11/14 02:31 PM

I don't think the OP was right in comparing the 2K14 online issues with the MLB the Show issues. NBA 2k14 was totally unplayable online,and sometimes even offline. Gameplay modes modes were not working, there was no access to saved data with servers "acting up", frequent disconnects , no connection at all, the Park was abysmal and unfinished, and then there was the general 2k server down message many got for weeks at a time.

The Show's online issues are mere glitches by comparison, It ONLY took a week for the "first patch" update and people still have the offline modes to play with, unaffected by server issues, until some of the issues were resolved.

I have much more confidence in Sony fixing The Show to bring us what we've come to expect out of an online sports game, than I ever did for the 2K online issues.

# 34 ncaajunkie @ 04/12/14 06:26 PM

Finally got chance to play a game online. I heard people complain about online so I wanted to experience it. Full 9 innings no QC. These three games were online ranked against random people. First game I was the braves and they had Seattle. His first batter grounded out and he quit. Ok I'll try again. Next game I picked the braves and the game started and he picked the braves also. Great now he asked for a friendly quit and I accepted. Third game I picked the braves and he was the Oakland. The game had so many warping animations on running the bases and catching fly balls it was frustrating. I won 5-4 it was a crazy back and forth game.

Can you not see who you are playing when picking teams? Am I missing something? Every sports game in the history of sports games has had two teams, two users picking and selecting teams at the same time.

I will wait for a online patch to come out before I play online again.

# 35 allgames @ 04/12/14 06:31 PM

I don't mind not seeing the opponent or opposing team selected at first because people just quit if they don't like the matchup and it's tough to find someone to play. I do wish we could select No Same Team Matchups. I don't like playing clones. The warping is so frustrating because balls look like they are passing causing you to round a base only to be called out by a player magically appearing at the base. There are also players called safe but are actually out.

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# 36 twinsfan34 @ 04/12/14 06:40 PM

What's the wait time you guys have had after the Roster Upload to get started on the Franchise?

It said I had to upload a roster...it's been 3 hours...maybe slow servers(?) or is that typical - then you come back and have to start up the Franchise?

Any of you playing as the only Human in a 30 team league?

Even playing as multiple teams within that Online Franchise.

# 37 HustlinOwl @ 04/12/14 10:54 PM

Lol why all the negativity I dont get it (sarcasm) lmao at the damage controllers

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# 38 cardinalbird5 @ 04/13/14 03:31 AM

Alot of people are just wrong in here lol.

Yeah the show doesn't have the greatest servers, but the last few years have worked pretty good for me.

You can't expect a perfect connection every time either, especially in MLB when a lot of guys out of PR love to play the game. There is going to be some lag sometimes. But overall my experience has been good the past few years.

I don't know about MLB 14 yet since I haven't played it, but give it time. Most people won't even play it much after the first week anyways and Sony does a good job of constantly listening to feedback and applying it.

MVP Baseball also worked pretty well online (for me) 2005-2006.

It is ashame with the late release that the game isn't ready for online play yet, but lets not exaggerate and say the past games didn't work online either.

# 39 nomo17k @ 04/13/14 01:28 PM

I agree with cardinalbird7 in that online was actually fairly decent in MLB 13, in my opinion. (Did not play much in MLB 12.) To me MLB 13 was the first online version in which I thought the timing adjustment and the reduction of lags were good enough to actually feel close to playing offline games.

With MLB 14, things have changed so much online that I don't know what to expect at this point. There just are too many bugs, both related and unrelated to how the game was revamped, that I am not sure if I should keep filing bug reports or just wait till the game becomes stable enough .

The major change of how the game plays from previous years to MLB 14 is that now the online game appears to transfer control between gamers.

In MLB 13 and before, the game was synchronizing the games on both sides of gamers near real-time, meaning whatever is happening on one side is quickly communicated to the other side, so at any moment the games stay in sync on both sides. The good thing with this is that, the game is in sync most of the time. The bad thing is that this makes the game susceptible to network lags. What a lag happens on one side, it quickly propagates to the other side.

In MLB 14, it seems that both sides are not synchronized all the time. My observation is that now the games works like this:

(1) The primary control (i.e., the side of gamers who feels no lag) is on the pitching side, so it's lag free on that side. The pitching side selects pitch and location, delivers, and how the pitch was released gets determined. That info gets transmitted to the hitting side.

(2) The primary control is on the hitting side, which receives the information about how the pitch was released. Batter decides what to do with the pitch. It he takes and nothing happens, then go back to (1). If the ball is put in play, the info as to what kind of hit was generated gets transmitted to the fielding side.

(3) The primary control is on the fielding side. Fielding feels lag free, but the base running side appears to receive tons of visual anomalies like players and the ball warping and vanishing, because that side can only receive the info pertaining to the fielding actions after the fielding side does something. And when fielding, a lot of things happen in real time and must be communicated so that the other side can decide what to do next, so I feel transferring primary control this way has kind of backfired. Fielding may feel lag free, but controlling base runner is tough because the base running side does not get proper visual feedback on what the fielding side is doing.

The reason why the pitch speed appear very slow when you pitch is that between the pitch release and the batter hitting, (1) and (2), the pitching side has to wait wait a bit longer to receive the info as to what the hitting side did with the pitch.

I am actually very concerned about part (3), since that's where I see most of the glitch happening this year. And with the amount of weird things happening I am not sure how much of compromise we have to make on the visual synchronization issues to keep the feeling of lag free-ness on one side. (If all things fails, I think reverting to MLB 13 implementation at least for fielding is still reasonable.)

# 40 cardinalbird5 @ 04/13/14 01:50 PM

The hitting/pitching interface and transferring from one host to the other seems to not be a problem at all. I think that was a good idea on their part and it is also what Professional Baseball Spirits does as well.

The problem lies in the fielding/baserunning. I don't know if it is synchronized at the same time or what their goal was, but IMO it should revert back to how previous installments handled the fielding/baserunning. It should be real time. I never really had a problem with lag affecting my baserunning or fielding, unless there was just a huge hiccup in the network on a routine flyball or something. And in that case, most of the games would drop anyways since the connection wasn't great to begin with.

I really don't see any other work around since baserunning and fielding has to be in real time for pickles, stealing, tagging up, etc. The timing has to be precise and you have to have real time feedback from your opponent in order to retreat or advance on the base paths.

From the few videos I have seen, the fielding/baserunning is the main problem, so hopefully they can fix it.

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