Bahnzo
February 25th, 2009, 12:56 AM
And how this relates to 2K8 (and other baseball games I guess).
I've been re-reading "Ball Four", which is a book written by a former Major League pitcher Jim Bouton. If you don't know who he is, Bouton has a couple of 20+ win seasons with the Yankees in the early 60's before his arm basically gave out.
I read somewhere that one of the dev's of MLB2K9 when talking about pitching basically said, when making the correct motion and timing it correctly, that the pitch would be accurate. They didn't want to punish the user for doing everything perfect and then not get the perfect pitch.
Which makes sense, except it doesn't at all.
Bouton, in his book, talks briefly about pitchers and accuracy. He hates the notion that any pitchers have "pinpoint accuracy". He says he has talked with many other pitchers and they all agree that no pitcher can ever consistently throw to an exact area. Instead he estimates that even the best pitchers can probably be accurate to an area of about one foot, or 1'x1', when throwing to a spot.
Which has me thinking that there definitely needs to be some randomness built into pitching (especially for the user) in the MLB2K series. Even if you do manage to time and twiddle the stick in the correct motion, you shouldn't be able to locate every pitch with pinpoint accuracy. You should be able to hit your spot, but that spot should be a 1'x1' area that the ball could land in.
Something like this would make pitching MUCH better IMO. Maybe couple it with the pitcher's composure and stamina and other ratings. If a pitcher is pitching well and in the zone, then the "spot" for a perfect pitch becomes smaller. But when tired or rattled, that "spot" becomes larger. As it is now, pitching is much too easy from the user's perspective.
I've been re-reading "Ball Four", which is a book written by a former Major League pitcher Jim Bouton. If you don't know who he is, Bouton has a couple of 20+ win seasons with the Yankees in the early 60's before his arm basically gave out.
I read somewhere that one of the dev's of MLB2K9 when talking about pitching basically said, when making the correct motion and timing it correctly, that the pitch would be accurate. They didn't want to punish the user for doing everything perfect and then not get the perfect pitch.
Which makes sense, except it doesn't at all.
Bouton, in his book, talks briefly about pitchers and accuracy. He hates the notion that any pitchers have "pinpoint accuracy". He says he has talked with many other pitchers and they all agree that no pitcher can ever consistently throw to an exact area. Instead he estimates that even the best pitchers can probably be accurate to an area of about one foot, or 1'x1', when throwing to a spot.
Which has me thinking that there definitely needs to be some randomness built into pitching (especially for the user) in the MLB2K series. Even if you do manage to time and twiddle the stick in the correct motion, you shouldn't be able to locate every pitch with pinpoint accuracy. You should be able to hit your spot, but that spot should be a 1'x1' area that the ball could land in.
Something like this would make pitching MUCH better IMO. Maybe couple it with the pitcher's composure and stamina and other ratings. If a pitcher is pitching well and in the zone, then the "spot" for a perfect pitch becomes smaller. But when tired or rattled, that "spot" becomes larger. As it is now, pitching is much too easy from the user's perspective.