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Forum LockedVirtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates

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Slumberland View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Virtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates
    Posted: 05-04-2009 at 9:09am
Though it hurts my pride, I think I'm going to drop it down a level from Legend.  I can win some games there, but the frustration level is such that I'm scared what the downstairs neighbors must think of me after all the high decibel F-bombs I was dropping this past weekend.  There's just a little too much wonky stuff still going on in an otherwise excellent baseball engine, and the concentration level needed to compete on Legend is so grueling that when one of these things goes wrong I want to throw my PS3 out the window:

-low line drives hit just to the side of infielders, where if you take control to get them in position, the fielding animation never kicks in, and the ball sometimes goes right THROUGH them.

-balls hit to the wall where my guy gets thrown out at second... I can understand this happening to a catcher every once in a while, but it happened to Jose Reyes the other day.

-entire games where I feel like I've got a wet noodle in my hands instead of a bat.

I love how much harder hitting is now, but I still need it to be fun, I guess.  These little flaws don't bother me too much when scoring runs isn't such a ridiculously hard proposition.  So HOF here I come.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 9:30am
I restarted my franchise, since a crash was apparently only a matter of time with any pre-patch 'chises due to schedule adjustments made in the patch.  Sort of a bummer, but sort of nice to start with a clean slate on HOF and have a bit more fun.

Lost in the opener to the Reds, 6-5, after taking the lead in the bottom of the 11th, and then giving up a two-run walkoff bomb with my closer on the mound.  Fun game though.  Santana was sharp early but had one rough inning.  We gave up three homers as a team overall.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Derek Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 12:03pm

Were your Legend games largely low-scoring, Slumber? 

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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 12:26pm
Not for my opponents! Smile
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Mike_S Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 3:34pm
"Lost in the opener to the Reds, 6-5, after taking the lead in the bottom of the 11th, and then giving up a two-run walkoff bomb with my closer on the mound.  Fun game though".  That's the type of thing that happens in my season all the time!!  :-) Don't mind too much as long as it's fun...

Anyway, got in a two-game set in my season against Detroit last night.

Tim Hudson pitched well in the first game and picked up his first win of the season.  Carlos Beltran who has been hitting around .150 for the year so far finally busted out with 3 doubles.  We won, 6-3.

The second game was an odd one.  It was a pitcher's duel at first that became a slugfest late.  Mark Mulder was awesome early, and El Duque pitched well for the Tigers.  The early highlight was that El Duque tried his "El Droppo" lob ephis pitch for the first time in the fifth inning, and Sean Casey deposited it in the bleachers!  Unfortunately, Mudler then tired and walked some guys and then gave up some runs -- and then the bullpen got absolutely destroyed with 2 three-run bombs.  We went down 10-2, then had an unexpected big rally in the last two innings, but it wasn't enough.  Lost it 12-9.

We're now 3-9, 5 GB in the East, with a big 3-game division series against TB (7-5) coming up.  TB has two great players in A-Rod and Gus Campbell (a former Rookie-of-the-Year fictional player who just kills us) but the rest of their team is typically only fair.  For us the hitting is starting to come around, but the bullpen has been pretty bad lately, I think I'm going to try to re-arrange the roles a little bit, we need a nice stretch to get back toward .500.



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Post Options Post Options   Quote TedSGN Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 5:28pm
Mike, I'm tempted to hook up my xbox and play high heat again.  What settings do you use?

Edit:  Went back and read your first post.  MVP level.  So what exactly are the small slider adjustments you made?  I'll just try MVP for now.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote JasonSGN Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 5:45pm
Originally posted by TedSGN

Mike, I'm tempted to hook up my xbox and play high heat again.  What settings do you use?


Is High Heat 2004 not compatible with the Xbox 360?

I've been tempted to play my PS2 version.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote TedSGN Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-05-2009 at 5:48pm
The lists say it is, but every time I put it in the 360 it just spins and then doesn't play.  Like it doesn't recognize the disk or the game.  It works in my xbox so it isn't the game.

Is there something I have to do besides just throw it in the 360?
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Mike_S Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-06-2009 at 3:42pm
No idea if HH2004 is compatible with the 360 or not.  I think it SHOULD be, we weren't doing anything strange that would make it non-compatible, but who knows.

Both PS2 and XBox versions of the game play well.  The XBox got a bit more late development time, so a lot of very small "odd and end" bugs occur in PS2 that I have not seen in XBox. 

The last few versions of HH are "meant", in theory, to be played on MVP settings.  If you are an "average" quality arcade player -- by "average", we're talking about the average of gamers who worked in our office and helped play-test tuning, so that's actually pretty good by real world standards -- your player stats and game results should come out very close to what you'd expect.  Pitching is harder, as you need to be knowledgeable and quite unpredictable to get "standard" stats on MVP.  All-Star is a little easier for both batting and pitching, but not much.  Without question, All-Star and MVP difficulty settings are the only two I would expect to give you relatively-true stats without much slider tweaking.  And HOF is just super-hard unless you are a great reflex/arcade player.

Now here's where things break down a bit, hence the need to utilize sliders a little:

- Most of the game tuning was done on the PS2 version.  XBox has better frame rate, so doing well on hitting is slightly easier.

- Different parks will give slightly-different results than they should, in that the sim engine deals with things like park effects internally, but then the 3D models of the stadiums affect the game physics in ways that aren't always exactly corresponding.  If you choose a team that plays in a "standard"-size, limited-odd-angles field like Yankee Stadium,this problem is minimized.

- It's hard to strike out much for experienced HH players batting at default settings; it was tuned that way because most gamers don't want to strike out unless "they" miss the ball arcade.  Especially on the XB version due to the improved frame rate.  I would personally rather strike out 5-6 times a game for realism, and always have the threat of the strikeout, even if once in a while it feels like I swing "through" the ball.

- The game was made after the 2002 season.  At that time, teams scored around 11 runs per game (between both teams).  Offense has scaled back a bit since then -- now teams are scoring something more like 9 runs per game.  So making it feel "right" for now is not what felt exactly right then.  It depends on your personal level of tolerance in believability...

The key slider adjustments to play with are the Human Hitting, Human Power, CPU Hitting, and CPU Power.  If your stats aren't belivably right after a bunch of games, this is where to play around.  The other key one is about Human Strike Outs (don't remember the actual name offhand, I think it may be "Contact Ease" or something like that).

Slight adjustments to these make a big difference over time in regard to stats.  Moving a Hitting Slider one notch roughly corresponds to 30 points difference in batting average -- which is the difference from a team hitting .270 or .300.

My personal settings are something like (with 5 being default middle value):
- Human Hitting: 4
- Human Power: 7
- CPU Hitting: 6
- CPU Power: 6
- Human Contact Ease (?): 3

YMMV.  I play in Fenway which is not an "average" park.  I also have a speedy, low-power team which might explain the need for Power = 7. 

I think all my other sliders are at default, with maybe injuries and errors bumped up a little (7??)

One other interesting slider is "Simulation".  At default, this balances your arcade input and the players' stats in creating results.  If you max this out, your players' stats should come out just about perfect -- but there'll be times when it feels like you barely make contact with the ball and then it goes flying out for a Home Run.  For me, I'd rather play at default and then tweak the key sliders above to balance out any small weirdnesses.

I'd start by playing at either All Star or MVP, play 10 games or so, and see where your team stats are at for Batting, Pitching, and Fielding.  Since my first season (48 games) I don't think I've touched any sliders.

Have fun!!






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Slumberland View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-07-2009 at 8:45am
I picked up HH2004 on the way home yesterday on a lark, and yes Ted, it should work on the 360.  Maybe the most recent back-compat update never triggered properly on your system?  Who knows.

It's a shock to the system visually, coming from the PS3, that's for sure.  But I played HH2002 on the PS2 to death, so I'm used to the High Heat "environment" overall and it doesn't bother me too much.  Should be fun to have around and spin out a couple fantasy drafts, etc.  Robbie Alomar is still on the Mets in the default rosters.  Wow, bad memories.  Pitch speed seems crazy slow now, though... is there a slider for that, and does increasing the pitch speed change the physics at all, Mike?

My second game in the new Show franchise was a wild one... a back and forth affair that I finally won 9-7.  Balls were flying out of the park for both teams, which was fun to see.

One thing I'm doing different this time around is guess pitch set to no feedback, which feels a little more intellectually honest than flashing red boxes and an unfair advantage in stealing bases when you know a fastball isn't coming.


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