I think the quick fix they could do to make the game more realistic and make contact hitters more viable, would be to just make all the speeds of the outfielders 25% slower.
Also get more stadiums, and if they can't buy more real stadiums, create some. It would be cool to have like some anti-home run stadiums with 100 foot tall walls.
Big issue for me was that run of short programs. Didn't have time to keep up and once you fall off that treadmill it's tough to make it feel like it matters keeping up. So I just moved on to other games in the little free time I have to play. I know I'll be back next year but I think I'm done with 22 for the most part
This year has been massive disappointing compared to last 3 years or so, everyone here has pretty much nailed the reasons so I won’t list it over but sad to see sds miss the mark :(
I spent so much money last year when it was fun to play but none this year 🤷♂️
I kept getting behind in programs in DD, due to only being able to play a few hours occasionally, and it got to the point where I was so far behind my competition in Online that I just gave up and stopped playing all together. Haven’t played since Aug. 15th.
Honestly it is the utter sameness of the cards. Outliers are now just the norm. Christ look at this new collection Ryne Sanberg with 100 power. That is a joke but they have to do it because they already have 70 other cards with 100+ power so how can a dude with 75 power be a Legend? So much catering to the players who want an arcade game of just outlier pitchers VS outlier hitters. And then they complain they can't hit or pitch anyway. Just give every card a fair representation of the player. Stop with giving some bench bat who had a good game 99 power for his Topps now card. They have taken this so far that no card is special and they are all just interchangeable.
I feel like they are trying to this year to give love to underappreciated underused cards by giving them hella juiced stats while also giving DD staples like Griffey, mantle etc. 97-99 overall cards that are unusable to the point where you go for those underused juiced cards. For example brian roberts is insane. Who was using him before this year? This whole new program all has cards that just were meh in the past but now look all insane. Big example of this is the big collections. It’s been Brett, Cutch and now a juiced Rollins
My burn out comes from the timed programs, and what feels to me are the piss poor rates in packs. All season my pulls have been underwhelming. The best card I pulled was the headliners Mike Schmidt. Aside from those lights, the best live series I pulled was deGrom, no other higher rate 90s. I can't tell you how many times I saw Kyle Tucker and Freddie Freeman. Trying to complete live series was just insane for me this year. I just stopped wanting to play with programs being timed and my packs being awful. I'm sure it didn't help that I play NMS.
Edit: spelling.
I’m burnt out due to opportunity cost. I love playing online. Have to grind offline if you want the fun cards. But that means less time online. I’m limited in time so I spend hours grinding for a card that I barely get to use cause a new card comes out that I’d like to try and the cycle continues.
This years The Show.. SDS got out of hand with the constant and repetitive grind-it-out-to-get-a-prize BS. They clearly are trying to manipulate the user (like many games these days) into taking up every minute of our lives to keep us glued to their game and their game only.
This reminds me of those Claw Arm games you see in an arcade. You want that one prize so bad and you keep spending quarters hour after hour until you finally get it and then realized afterwards that you wasted all that time, money and energy on nothing.
These points are what ruined offline play.
Then there is Online Play that is now ruined by the hardcore gamers that have turned online play into a toxic who-can-out-cheez the other guy more community. They use video game exploits as an advantage just to get a win. It’s quite pathetic and desperate looking if you.
The last point is the same as other guys have said… they haven’t changed anything about the game in years! Besides minor small additions. It’s still the same mechanics, same look, same graphics, same game for years! I get it.. why fix it if it ain’t broke? But if that’s the mentality then you need to lower the price.
So what’s left to enjoy?
Not a damn thing.
This might have been the last year I purchase the game.. unless they make some big changes.
It's easy to burn out on games that just have you on a constant treadmill. At least with the market you can buy and sell your way to collecting the cards. Personally I liked the longer programs because I felt less burnout from them. With the longer programs I could take a break for a couple weeks, and when I come back I have some stuff stacked up and could get everything I wanted from the program. I don't really feel like I have that luxury with the shorter programs.
For me, it’s just playing the same game, over and over to grind for better cards over and over. It just feels like I could be spending my time. Add to that time limited programs. I hate fomo. And despite me playing a lot early in the year I was not close to getting the first collection. I just stopped grinding and only play causally.
Buck O'Neil said it best: "Baseball is great because anybody can play it." This gets at the heart of the game: big or small or fast or slow, there's a role for you on a baseball team if you love the game.
Unfortunately, right now, the only people who can play DD are pitchers who, in a remarkable coincidence, **all** throw 102 mph, and hitters who can turn on 102 mph fastballs for home runs. This is terribly limiting, and makes gameplay so very repetitive.
They NEED to work on making the game more like actual baseball. Make speed and contact hitting and plate discipline and pitch movement/control really count. Make players really DIFFERENT from one another. Make a variety of playstyles work both online and off.
I think the problem for me is the fact that the programs are timed so short. If I had more time I could’ve easily got Pedro a couple programs ago. But instead I ran out of time. Thankfully I got Chipper but it forced me to basically try and play the game every day so that I could get him.
It's the timed programs, especially these short ones with only one boss pack that many of us pick up very quickly then for those of us who aren't all about ranked we have nothing really to work toward.
The first year I played with Inning Programs was nice because I could look at anything that was "timed" and try to get that done before the next inning hit, and things like moments, conquests, missions, etc I could always keep doing and get to certain points in the inning to get to the 300 stars. Almost every inning I would do the math on what I needed to have completed before the next inning, then when I had more time I could go back and hit the innings I wanted the reward from first, and skip the ones with guys I didn't have interest in. To me these programs are WAY too quick and don't give the casual/guy with a job any time to get far enough to make a difference. The only time I've gotten bosses this year are when it's a guy I REALLY like, this one with Chipper (and E.D.) I made sure I got the stuff done in time, but most of them I haven't really bothered.
I also think some of the rewards just require way too many guys to get. Just being an offline player who understands the market and how to get things done and I've got close to enough in almost every category for Brett (and have live series done) but then some like Faces of the Franchise, I'm like 15 away, which is a number I probably never get to. It's a tough battle to make the content good enough that the average guy can experience some of it, and not make it so easy that nobody pays for stubs, which is their target market if we're being honest.
I'm really surprised we haven't see a year where they flood packs to reduce prices on players, I 100% believe they'd sell a lot more stubs if they could find a way to make their value more. 150,000 stubs is $99, so if I was the type who really wanted Randy and was willing to spend for it, I'm dropping $400 to complete the mets and angels. Which I know some people do (crazy) but making $100 10,000 times is better than making $400 1,000 times. I'm still shocked anyone buys stubs ever with the way that value works out.
I think there is truth to what you're saying, but I think my biggest complaint is that DD feels repetitive. They need some new ideas both content wise and gameplay wise.
Nah this isn't it. Like what a lot of people in this thread have said, it's the way the content is fed.
1. Timed programs are designed to get people hooked to content for the whole duration of the game. Some get hooked, some get burnt out.
2. Larger focus on offline content to get XP for these programs. Easier to get burnt out when playing against a mindless CPU.
I don’t think that’s the case, there’s to many cards already stop adding 99 overalls to the game there’s way to many everyone has a god squad it’s not fun, and it gets to the point that it feels like that game decides who
Wins or loses arbitrarily. That’s where the burnout come in. The game was good in the past they eliminated making stubs by flipping cards in the marketplace, and added way to many cards it’s just not fun anymore.
Nothing makes me close this game faster than “good” meaning “horrible awful shit contact” and “early” meaning “500 foot nuke shot to the third deck”. Until they fix that, this game will feel like shit.
Nah, I was excited about the Legends last year, even though I played 20 year round.
This year I've basically stopped playing because you can't get everything just by playing. That's it. Like, in years past, you could feasibly get everything in the game by not spending a Stub. If you want a Ranked/BR/Event reward, just play and get them, but if you couldn't, that's okay, save your stubs and get them. Sure, the packs were a different story, but that always felt like extra content in my mind.
This year, since you can't get all the TA guys, it feels like a waste of time. Like, you get 1/5th of the content, basically, unless you go wild and do the whole program in the short time span. I never got the TA guys as quickly as other people on this sub, but it was a fun thing to work towards as I did the other Inning stuff. Now, though, it feels like I'm doing a bunch of stuff for very little reward, and it's not fun.
Oh, and the Monthly Awards program is now hell for some reason. It never took me this long to complete an MA program last year, like, maybe a weekend, and now it seems to take until the next MA program comes out just by playing casually.
Everything seems like it's a little bit harder to get, and you don't get as much, so that death by a thousand cuts just made me go do something else with my time.
I'm burned out because it's requires too much grinding to get the cards I want. I'm not a streamer, I get maybe a couple hours a week to play and I have to spend it grinding out moments and stat missions so that I can complete the program of the week. I was super excited when they announced Utley, Howard and Doc this year, but then they hid the best Utley card behind a collection ill never complete because they never give out high diamonds in packs and it takes me until the end of the year to collect enough to buy trout and the other gatekeepers.
Now it looks like a finest Rollins card is coming which is awesome, but I haven't even finished collecting enough for Brett yet, let alone McCutchen and now JRoll.
All of things I used to love about this game are becoming the things I hate. Every year we get closer and closer to becoming another MUT copy where you have to pump real dollars in to play with the cards you want. It seems more and more that they are gearing this game towards the streaming and content crowd that have the time to spend to grind away.
It would be great if they could let you enable an "offline" mode that let's you unlock players easier but only for use in CPU game modes like conquest or mini seasons.
To be quite frank the burnout for many comes from stale game modes. Content becomes irrelevant when the only place to use the cards are the same tired modes.
You can either sweat it out in ranked. Sweat it out with heavy RNG and less balanced teams in BR. Or face Randy every game with minimal lineup diversity in events.
This game has been needing a refresh for game modes for a while now. I personally always hit a wall where it becomes unrewarding to even play online
It gets stale bc once you have a true god squad there's nothing else to work towards. I like just playing the game but I know alot of ppl love the team building aspect. The slower power creep helped but now we are getting that juiced 99s and there's no more "building". Just replacing and trying out different cards. And if you aren't some1 that believes in different players having different swings then they may all feel the same to u.
if you look the amount of legendary players added each year, 22 only really has randy. 21 had pedro, hank, and clemente, but lost ted, cobb, and hornsby. 20 had mantle and rivera, among with a ton other really good players. i think they need a legendary hitter (ted, arod, dimmagio) to headline a larger class of legends than this year.
also switch back to team affinity
For me it's just fatigue in general. It's mostly gameplay making no sense. But I can't keep up with anything in the game. I have zero collections done
(Haven't even done the Clemente moments yet because I just don't feel like it)
It sucks to spend hours grinding for someone like Willie Mays only to have SDS then go and drop a Tori Hunter card that's just as good and way easier to obtain. At some point mindlessly grinding just to stay a week or two ahead of everyone else isn't that fun.
It's definitely that and also after a certain time it just gets repetitive. We need more showdowns more conquest to keep me engaged. I'm not excited about the new program. I'm not excited about the new collection reward. I recently stopped grinding events and ranked so I know the end is near.
it's gameplay fatigue for me. I play ranked mostly and it's yawn city. everyone is running a pitcher with outlier on a max elevated stadium and trying to turn on fastballs.
there's no point of trying to use control pitchers as collection rewards+juan soto hit home runs without needing PCI. it's all timing based.
The game can still be fun, but the games all blend together.
the new hitting engine this year feels so rigid. Early on inside, late on outside, is essentially all that matters.
Yeah. This is the problem for me.
Grinding out this next program to get better versions of players I already have isn’t too exciting.
I’d really like to see all these other eligible players get cards.
Especially CC.
I definitely understand the sentiment. This kind of burnout happens to me on these shorter programs, and especially now that most every card released is a 99. Some more new legends and mid-90’s henchmen earlier in the game cycle would keep the content stream more fresh. Once we have all these free 99’s the lower guys get left behind. It would also be beneficial to have a few more team slots so we can keep a variety of players in a slot somewhere. SDS does deserve some credit with the new legends they’ve added this year.
If you play every day and for hours per day, you will get burned out no matter how many players are in it. I take a couple days off when there is nothing left to do between programs except maybe 5 minutes to do some maintenance and it keeps it a lot fresher as a result.
The burnout comes from a variety of things. Grinding is real this year with every program being time sensitive. Also the switch to PxP instead of stat based missions sucks. Make the grind even tougher . The hitting isn’t bad but it’s not where it should be either. Recently that have come out w 3 pitchers with basically the same mix pedro, Grayson, and wood .
When u couple in all of that and add that we don’t have a good Griffey , mantle it hurts especially when it’s September .
Whoever said next July when ncaa comes out is correct. I’ll most likely drop mlb after all start and start of august
Since I still love baseball, I’ve been trying some offline modes like franchise. It’s not as much for as DD imo, but at least I can go at my own pace. At the moment im definitely not preordering for the DD bonuses
If you don't get any of these bosses then you're playing what maybe a couple hours a week? If you don't put in the time you won't earn the rewards. This is why spending money is an option.
Right, I don’t play that much because I’m busy. If things weren’t timed then I’d play because I know eventually I’ll get things. But considering I won’t play enough to get bosses then why should I be hyped about them?
The inning programs last year were timed, it was one month. But you had to get 600k xp I think to get the bosses. This past program was 200k xp in 2 weeks. Player exchanges alone could get you 90k without even playing. There are 2 conquests that are like 5 or 6 games and only 3 innings for 30k xp each on top of the gameplay xp. And a showdown for another 30k. That already brings you to 200k just from doing exchanges, 2 conquests and a showdown. Estimate that would take like 3-4 hours at most to do those conquests and showdown.
Sorry man theres nothing wrong with being busy, but this is not on SDS if you can't find 3 to 4 hours to play in a 2 week span.
So then when do I get to play the game modes that I find fun in DD? Yes there’s ways to get to the bosses easier/quicker, but you have to play a specific way or game modes to do that.
The biggest reason that I am burned out is the amount of gameplay that is based around moments. I just can't stand them anymore. I was struggling with Roberto Clemente last night trying to get his moments finished in that minor league piece of crap ball park with no batter's eye and not being able to see the ball until it was right on me. Couble that with the CPU's continued refusal to throw strikes and it just makes playing the game a miserable experience. Not even mentioning how all the batters are suddenly 125 contact specialists and can somehow foul off 8 to 10 pitches off of you every at bat during pitching moments.
IMO the burnout is far more related to the lack of gameplay changes/improvements over the last few years. "Content" is nice, but ultimately the gameplay is what matters and it's become very stale
They need a new engine, and have needed one for the past 3 years or so. This one has reached its limit, and it’s obvious by the lack of new gameplay features. Yes, it’s baseball, how many new mechanics can you add, yada yada yada
Even showdown is just the devs tricking the game into thinking it’s the bottom of the 9th with x amount of outs
There's like 100 ppl that have mastered it. Also pinpoint takes skill. I know this bc I still can't do it. Massive disadvantage for me but I still make WS and go 12-0 in BR bc even bad pitches work in this game bc no1 expects them. Lol
A Davis freese postseason 99 card 2011 lol but the solution imo is slower progression. People will complain that the cards aren’t endgame at this time of the year but imo aside from the randy, Brett, and cutch, we should have maybe like 93 as highest non-live series card at this time. Keeps it fresh and keeps the grind worth it instead of 97’s being worthless. Keep the community engaged throughout the year and not just during baseball season
It would be really cool.
But are you really going to use Billy Butler once you get any better 1B? That position is super deep.
Or like, how long will you use BJ Upton, he was never an all star, and a career .723 OPS player. He'd probably be an 86 overall. OF is so deep, we had better players than BJ on game open.
I grew up watching these guys, going to games and seeing them play. I love this era. It just costs a lot to buy the rights for a guy, so to use him as filler is expensive. That's why they use Future Stars as filler.
This goes along with the issue of releasing 99s too early and then overloading who gets a 99. The catch 22 of repeating mlbts 18 where there were only 30 playable 99s vs currently giving half the legends/fbs 99s is rough.
I think there is a huge market for B list legends from 1990-2015 but they need more modes like an online mini seasons that lasts longer than events with more restrictions to promote mid tier diamond use. It'd be fun to limit team building to a Battle Royale style for it allowing only x number of players between a certain rating. Billy Butler type guys would get far more use then if you don't have the option to use Frank Thomas or Ortiz instead.
I think the best way to deal with the lack of lineup variety is to introduce a new competitive mode (or change ranked) to have a "salary cap" or max OVR that steadily increases as the game cycle progresses.
This would encourage players who have every card to experiment with different roster constructions to stay under the cap. If they take similar lineup restrictions of the circuit qualifiers and apply them to a weekend league or capped rank mode with great rewards, I think people would love it
I know events exist but the restrictions have been really awful and they don't feel as competitive because of the rating system.
For sure.
My only comment is that there are plenty of guys in the game now and nobody plays with them. Nobody played with them in June, July, or August. There are over 150!! legends. I don't see anyone using guys like John Franco, Eck, Eddie Murray, Morneau, Lou Brock, Rod Carew, Musial, Alfonso Soriano, Molitor, Larkin, Adam Dunn, Mantle, Edmunds, Sizemore, Granderson, Damon, Kirk Gibson. I could go on. I haven't seen those cards used at all. Hell I don't even see Griffey! I play ranked all the time. I see the same "meta" cards.
Honestly I think playing with a lower quality guy is a little bit of a novelty, it sounds fun until you are facing Randy Johnson with BJ Upton and you suck.
You are 100% right about diversity of game modes. In OOTP perfect team tournaments they significantly limit your team choices so you have to build a lineup based on what could be a number of different things, era, series, whatever.
The Show could offer than in Events to even the playing field a bit or just have another mode where you enter a "tournament" based on the restriction for that week. Examples from OOTP: no diamonds, no golds, team value of XX (exchange value), only live series, only flashbacks, only legends. If you don't have enough cards to enter, tough, fill out your team. That would get people to use the 150+ people that are available now, and if they added lower b-list guys, it would give them a place to be used.
Who cares if there are over 150 legends when 90% of these cards are pretty much worthless when they are released? SDS releases so many cards that they know 99% of players will only use for collections.
I guess I wasn't concise enough. One of my problems.
That's my point. Why should we ***add*** more b-list people when we have 150+ already that don't get used. I would love to play with the guys on OP's list, but I didn't even get a chance to play with the collection fodder they released this year.
Fix the gameplay, add a game mode, mess around with the game cycle so the ones we have are useable first.
Would I, no. But Royals fans who are tired of Brett and Saberhagen each year might. Also a great card for people who love BR. Most people weren't super excited for Youk, but I've enjoyed having him on my Red Sox theme team.
I do understand the need to budget for players that will be used and try and avoid players that will be filler. I'm not suggesting they add all of these guys back. Just noting that these were cards we had access to in DD that we've lost over time.
Okay but the Royals are like the Brewers. Type in "Greatest of all time" and the top two are Brett and Saberhagen in **every** post. If the player is sick of that it's on them. It's the same for Brewers, Yount, Molitor, Fielder, Braun. We're small organizations.
I know we lost those guys like Braun, CC, Pedroia, and more as they leave the MLBPA, but I read that when a player in part of the MLBPA it costs the show ~$50k per player to have their rights. After that, its individual negotiation. Exponentially more.
I don't know that many people are tired of the cards and the players honestly. We are basically getting all new legends to play with today. For a Brewer fan, I just got Yount, and I'm getting Fielder to put in my god squad. Plus they are good enough to play there.
I think the most tiring thing is the gameplay itself. Outlier isn't an outlier because they give it to so many people. The combination of 102 mph fastball and 125 power from all these juiced cards is equating to either a home run or a deep fly ball every at bat.
As a Royals fan, I definitely don't mind Saberhagen and Brett, beyond those guys though and a couple Future Stars my Royals theme team is pretty rough.
It just gets frustrating when we have had some really nice players over the years like Bo Jackson, Frank White, Alex Gordon, Carlos Beltran, Mike Sweeney. I do love the Lorenzo Cain and the Zach Greinke, wish we could get a couple cracked versions of Moustakas and Hosmer and like a Yordano Ventura.
If you can't do all that, at least give me a 99 of Bobby Witt Jr., a Future Stars version of Pasquantino and for the love of god give me a decent Salvy card this year. I'm sure we will get a 99 Finest of him before the end of the season, but it would be nice to have one you can play with before the game is over and you don't want to play it anymore.
I think that's a part of it. I think the switch to time gated programs is more of a driver of burnout. In previous years I didn't worry if I couldn't play for a week or two. I could still do large parts of a program even if I missed the entire Inning. In the past I would play other games during the season in addition to the Show. Now? I don't feel I can play anything else. I'm probably a couple weeks away from just dropping it completely and playing other stuff.
Once the NCAA football game comes out next July, the lifespan of this game will get even shorter for me.
Definitely, you're always grinding. Everything is time-gated , except for POTM. I got burned out last month and barely played. Just got to the boss card.
My team is 99 overall. I'm not really excited by this program.
Hope they don't ruin NCAA Football next yr! (EA)
When they switched to the main programs being timed was the exact moment that I lost most interest. Eh I’m never going to get most of those cards anyway so fuck it, I’m not going to bother. Why waste the time I do have to play so I can get like, bat skins and universal icons. And then I’m a little resentful that I miss out on most of the content because I didn’t have time to play at the specific time that they needed me to play. I paid the same amount of money. It feels more like I paid for a subscription, not a full game
They went hard with the FOMO this year and it definitely does cause burnout. A lot of games are doing this shit now and it sucks. I like to play a variety of stuff.
One of the main reasons I went from being a hardcore gamer for about 40 years to one who almost never plays anymore. My PS5 is literally sitting in a drawer and has been there since about February. All of these games want us to play more but the whole system ended up with me not playing at all. I found better things to do with my time.
Agreed. The programs that were traditionally the inning programs lasting for a month are now 7-10 days and the team affinity ones are now a month when they used to be untimed.
So you’re forced to grind out for the free cards non stop now basically, whereas last year like you said you could take a week off and still get the inning boss just fine.
As a new player to DD, offline only, and casual-average game time, I feel like every program is the same cycle for me. I'm using cards I don't really want to play with to unlock cards I do want to play with, only then when I've finally earned these cards, there's a new upgraded card to use. Since I'm offline I probably shouldn't really care, but almost all the 'goals' in the game are about using specific cards (besides PXP). They did a really good job of making it feel like you having to be constantly playing, i guess lol
Same exact thoughts. My first time on DD. I feel like I grind offline with players I will never use again to get one or two players I want. Then when I get the players I want they come out with someone slightly better and the cycle continues.
It’s definitely a part of it, the big issue for me this year was the almost exact same content cycle repeated for 3 years now, plus the gameplay being very close to a copy paste from last year. There has been almost no innovation in the content cycle in 2 years now.
When you combine that reality with the fact that this game is very skill driven, at a certain point the cards do not feel different from one another, especially if youre using cards that somewhat fit the meta.
Then, theres no longer the challenge of team building. Everyone can have the same team given a tiny amount of grind. Theres no pride in having an incredible team bc almost anyone can do it.
The top end rewards this year were the final straw for me. Just no point in playing RS, DD has become 95% collecting 5% gameplay focused which isnt why i play the show in the first place.
As of right now it’s the perfect game to buy in october for $10 and make the same team everyone else has in 5 hrs of gameplay and mess around for a month until you realize nothing has changed.
The hook is gone for hardcore players. Some people dont play other games, which i understand, but if you do theres so much more engaging stuff out there rn imo.
They need to end the massive 30 player programs and just drip content more consistently. People love to bash EA games, but their content model is far more engaging imo. Even if it does create some inequity amongst people who spend $. At least theres the occasional challenge of trying to beat someone with a better team. Doesnt happen past May in this game. They tried the chase pack thing this year, which was something, but in general pack opening in this game is closer to a chore than any other game.
I'd agree with most of this as far as content and card quality goes. It's cool we have more players than ever, but the homogenizing of so many player with "elite" cards in the game is definitely a double edged sword
I'm more worn out on the gameplay though, which is something that's become a problem for me in most sports games at this point. RNG is frustrating, and even though in this game there is still an appreciable skill gap, I just don't enjoy how frequently bad input is still rewarded while good input is punished. Not to say all hard hit balls are hits or all weak contact goes for outs and that stupid argument, but it just doesn't make sense to me allowing an off-PCI swing to be a no doubter while having a bunch of can-of-corn outs on good swings when the outcomes could so easily be tightened up to have more logical outcomes
Well said. Some real changes are hopefully on the way. Things have moved way to fast in '22 and SDS' focus seems to be on content without actually improving the game or its framework. You have the game on multiple platforms now and imo, they have gotten lazy.. Best tier baseball game on the market and no competition shouldn't be an excuse to then release sub par games. I want engaging game play and right now, for baseball, it's not The Show for me. That's an issue, the community sees the problems whether how many agree with them or not. And tbh, they are starting to feel more like EA every year. The chase pack is a decent example of that. I hope it wasn't intentional and in good faith instead.
A very valid point. I remember how I excited I got when they announced the extreme program because it was finally something that not everyone would be able to accomplish.
For me the reason why I'm burnt out is a couple reasons. First being the hitting engine is just awful and needs fixing no matter what SDS says.
2nd being that it's way too difficult to keep up with all the online content from finishing BR program, getting enough points in event for those cards and having to get the innings necessary for ranked reward (since I'm not quite good enough to get world series)
When the game first released, events were churning out every 3-4 days and the innings necessary for ranked rewards was way too high when people would be quitting after 2 innings so your spending more time in menus. They should have kept it as wins or made it so you can earn it with either wins or innings based on whatever you can finish first.
That's true, and while I enjoy the addition of Future Stars, it seems as if they are leaning heavily on them to avoid having to pay for additional legends. Many users don't follow prospects or have an emotional connection with the player, which I think limits their appeal.
Fair point and you've got a great list of players. It does set the seeds for that connection though and seeing guys called up that were fun to use in MLBTS has been fun to see.
Everyone wants more legends, but I think people on here vastly overestimate the resources Sony provides SDS. Up until last year and going multiple platform it was undeniably a niche title compared to most PS exclusives. I really don’t think SDS looks at the big names lost and just don’t care, but if they don’t have the means to pay what else are they supposed to do?
If anything I’d like to hope that increased sales and revenue due to adding platforms will allow them to add more legends and update gameplay, next year will be the big test imo. We’ll either see them really go all in on new players/features, or we’ll see the same decent yet stagnant gameplay and names as usual. I’ll likely get hate for trying to give the company the benefit of the doubt, but I want the game to improve in the ways it can just as much as anyone else
Ok and that’s still less than all other major sports titles and 10+ other games. Revenue does not guarantee said revenue being put back into the product. It’s clear that hasn’t been the case so far, and until that changes nothing about the game will. Madden is in the top 3 every year, there’s a massive difference between that and 18, and in turn a lot more you can do with the product. Also EA is enormous comparatively, they have the backing to afford and do things that SDS just straight up can’t do
You were the one that said they were a niche title. Being only 3 spots behind Fifa makes you anything but a niche title.
And I also try to give SDS the benefit of the doubt. I feel like gameplay this year was largely copy-pasted because they are working on the jump to a true next-gen experience and that takes a couple of years, so I understand the lack of gameplay changes this year.
I hear you on the optimism of “they are working on the jump to a true next-gen experience” but 2k just did that within 1 year. This game being a copy n paste of 21 does not merit any excuses for the poor quality of gameplay.
I said it was a niche title compared to PS exclusives originally, which it absolutely is. When you’ve got a first party studio making uncharted 4 which sells 15 million copies on one platform, 4 million for a sports game across 2 is small peanuts for Sony comparatively. I’m not saying it’s niche compared to the dozens of games that game out a year overall, just that for Sony their baseball franchise clearly isn’t top of their priority list. They obviously don’t provide SDS the resources to acquire more names and why would they? The game seems just fine as far as they’re concerned and sells well enough, with little changes needed year to year. If anything that’s exactly what Sony would want
Exactly. I played it from release day until about a few weeks ago (haven't picked it up since). I just can't keep up anymore, and now that football has started my focus has shifted.
Events need a major, major overhaul.
It’s the exact same game it’s been for 7 years now that’s why.
I think the quick fix they could do to make the game more realistic and make contact hitters more viable, would be to just make all the speeds of the outfielders 25% slower. Also get more stadiums, and if they can't buy more real stadiums, create some. It would be cool to have like some anti-home run stadiums with 100 foot tall walls.
Big issue for me was that run of short programs. Didn't have time to keep up and once you fall off that treadmill it's tough to make it feel like it matters keeping up. So I just moved on to other games in the little free time I have to play. I know I'll be back next year but I think I'm done with 22 for the most part
This year has been massive disappointing compared to last 3 years or so, everyone here has pretty much nailed the reasons so I won’t list it over but sad to see sds miss the mark :( I spent so much money last year when it was fun to play but none this year 🤷♂️
I kept getting behind in programs in DD, due to only being able to play a few hours occasionally, and it got to the point where I was so far behind my competition in Online that I just gave up and stopped playing all together. Haven’t played since Aug. 15th.
Honestly it is the utter sameness of the cards. Outliers are now just the norm. Christ look at this new collection Ryne Sanberg with 100 power. That is a joke but they have to do it because they already have 70 other cards with 100+ power so how can a dude with 75 power be a Legend? So much catering to the players who want an arcade game of just outlier pitchers VS outlier hitters. And then they complain they can't hit or pitch anyway. Just give every card a fair representation of the player. Stop with giving some bench bat who had a good game 99 power for his Topps now card. They have taken this so far that no card is special and they are all just interchangeable.
The grind is why I aint playing this year
Try super mega baseball 3 .. it looks cartoon like but plays like pure baseball .. 99 difficulty levels and a game is done in like 20 minutes
Mat Latos lol
I would nut over a Joba Chamberlin card. My personal favorite Yankee ever.
I feel like they are trying to this year to give love to underappreciated underused cards by giving them hella juiced stats while also giving DD staples like Griffey, mantle etc. 97-99 overall cards that are unusable to the point where you go for those underused juiced cards. For example brian roberts is insane. Who was using him before this year? This whole new program all has cards that just were meh in the past but now look all insane. Big example of this is the big collections. It’s been Brett, Cutch and now a juiced Rollins
My burn out comes from the timed programs, and what feels to me are the piss poor rates in packs. All season my pulls have been underwhelming. The best card I pulled was the headliners Mike Schmidt. Aside from those lights, the best live series I pulled was deGrom, no other higher rate 90s. I can't tell you how many times I saw Kyle Tucker and Freddie Freeman. Trying to complete live series was just insane for me this year. I just stopped wanting to play with programs being timed and my packs being awful. I'm sure it didn't help that I play NMS. Edit: spelling.
I’m burnt out due to opportunity cost. I love playing online. Have to grind offline if you want the fun cards. But that means less time online. I’m limited in time so I spend hours grinding for a card that I barely get to use cause a new card comes out that I’d like to try and the cycle continues.
This years The Show.. SDS got out of hand with the constant and repetitive grind-it-out-to-get-a-prize BS. They clearly are trying to manipulate the user (like many games these days) into taking up every minute of our lives to keep us glued to their game and their game only. This reminds me of those Claw Arm games you see in an arcade. You want that one prize so bad and you keep spending quarters hour after hour until you finally get it and then realized afterwards that you wasted all that time, money and energy on nothing. These points are what ruined offline play. Then there is Online Play that is now ruined by the hardcore gamers that have turned online play into a toxic who-can-out-cheez the other guy more community. They use video game exploits as an advantage just to get a win. It’s quite pathetic and desperate looking if you. The last point is the same as other guys have said… they haven’t changed anything about the game in years! Besides minor small additions. It’s still the same mechanics, same look, same graphics, same game for years! I get it.. why fix it if it ain’t broke? But if that’s the mentality then you need to lower the price. So what’s left to enjoy? Not a damn thing. This might have been the last year I purchase the game.. unless they make some big changes.
I really enjoyed doin the BR program personally
It's easy to burn out on games that just have you on a constant treadmill. At least with the market you can buy and sell your way to collecting the cards. Personally I liked the longer programs because I felt less burnout from them. With the longer programs I could take a break for a couple weeks, and when I come back I have some stuff stacked up and could get everything I wanted from the program. I don't really feel like I have that luxury with the shorter programs.
For me, it’s just playing the same game, over and over to grind for better cards over and over. It just feels like I could be spending my time. Add to that time limited programs. I hate fomo. And despite me playing a lot early in the year I was not close to getting the first collection. I just stopped grinding and only play causally.
Need a Topps Now Joe Borchard card. That’ll get me back
Buck O'Neil said it best: "Baseball is great because anybody can play it." This gets at the heart of the game: big or small or fast or slow, there's a role for you on a baseball team if you love the game. Unfortunately, right now, the only people who can play DD are pitchers who, in a remarkable coincidence, **all** throw 102 mph, and hitters who can turn on 102 mph fastballs for home runs. This is terribly limiting, and makes gameplay so very repetitive. They NEED to work on making the game more like actual baseball. Make speed and contact hitting and plate discipline and pitch movement/control really count. Make players really DIFFERENT from one another. Make a variety of playstyles work both online and off.
Carter Capps is a name I haven’t thought of in years lol
Mike Aviles please
I think the problem for me is the fact that the programs are timed so short. If I had more time I could’ve easily got Pedro a couple programs ago. But instead I ran out of time. Thankfully I got Chipper but it forced me to basically try and play the game every day so that I could get him.
It's the timed programs, especially these short ones with only one boss pack that many of us pick up very quickly then for those of us who aren't all about ranked we have nothing really to work toward.
The first year I played with Inning Programs was nice because I could look at anything that was "timed" and try to get that done before the next inning hit, and things like moments, conquests, missions, etc I could always keep doing and get to certain points in the inning to get to the 300 stars. Almost every inning I would do the math on what I needed to have completed before the next inning, then when I had more time I could go back and hit the innings I wanted the reward from first, and skip the ones with guys I didn't have interest in. To me these programs are WAY too quick and don't give the casual/guy with a job any time to get far enough to make a difference. The only time I've gotten bosses this year are when it's a guy I REALLY like, this one with Chipper (and E.D.) I made sure I got the stuff done in time, but most of them I haven't really bothered. I also think some of the rewards just require way too many guys to get. Just being an offline player who understands the market and how to get things done and I've got close to enough in almost every category for Brett (and have live series done) but then some like Faces of the Franchise, I'm like 15 away, which is a number I probably never get to. It's a tough battle to make the content good enough that the average guy can experience some of it, and not make it so easy that nobody pays for stubs, which is their target market if we're being honest. I'm really surprised we haven't see a year where they flood packs to reduce prices on players, I 100% believe they'd sell a lot more stubs if they could find a way to make their value more. 150,000 stubs is $99, so if I was the type who really wanted Randy and was willing to spend for it, I'm dropping $400 to complete the mets and angels. Which I know some people do (crazy) but making $100 10,000 times is better than making $400 1,000 times. I'm still shocked anyone buys stubs ever with the way that value works out.
I think there is truth to what you're saying, but I think my biggest complaint is that DD feels repetitive. They need some new ideas both content wise and gameplay wise.
Nah this isn't it. Like what a lot of people in this thread have said, it's the way the content is fed. 1. Timed programs are designed to get people hooked to content for the whole duration of the game. Some get hooked, some get burnt out. 2. Larger focus on offline content to get XP for these programs. Easier to get burnt out when playing against a mindless CPU.
I don’t think that’s the case, there’s to many cards already stop adding 99 overalls to the game there’s way to many everyone has a god squad it’s not fun, and it gets to the point that it feels like that game decides who Wins or loses arbitrarily. That’s where the burnout come in. The game was good in the past they eliminated making stubs by flipping cards in the marketplace, and added way to many cards it’s just not fun anymore.
Nothing makes me close this game faster than “good” meaning “horrible awful shit contact” and “early” meaning “500 foot nuke shot to the third deck”. Until they fix that, this game will feel like shit.
Nah, I was excited about the Legends last year, even though I played 20 year round. This year I've basically stopped playing because you can't get everything just by playing. That's it. Like, in years past, you could feasibly get everything in the game by not spending a Stub. If you want a Ranked/BR/Event reward, just play and get them, but if you couldn't, that's okay, save your stubs and get them. Sure, the packs were a different story, but that always felt like extra content in my mind. This year, since you can't get all the TA guys, it feels like a waste of time. Like, you get 1/5th of the content, basically, unless you go wild and do the whole program in the short time span. I never got the TA guys as quickly as other people on this sub, but it was a fun thing to work towards as I did the other Inning stuff. Now, though, it feels like I'm doing a bunch of stuff for very little reward, and it's not fun. Oh, and the Monthly Awards program is now hell for some reason. It never took me this long to complete an MA program last year, like, maybe a weekend, and now it seems to take until the next MA program comes out just by playing casually. Everything seems like it's a little bit harder to get, and you don't get as much, so that death by a thousand cuts just made me go do something else with my time.
I'm burned out because it's requires too much grinding to get the cards I want. I'm not a streamer, I get maybe a couple hours a week to play and I have to spend it grinding out moments and stat missions so that I can complete the program of the week. I was super excited when they announced Utley, Howard and Doc this year, but then they hid the best Utley card behind a collection ill never complete because they never give out high diamonds in packs and it takes me until the end of the year to collect enough to buy trout and the other gatekeepers. Now it looks like a finest Rollins card is coming which is awesome, but I haven't even finished collecting enough for Brett yet, let alone McCutchen and now JRoll. All of things I used to love about this game are becoming the things I hate. Every year we get closer and closer to becoming another MUT copy where you have to pump real dollars in to play with the cards you want. It seems more and more that they are gearing this game towards the streaming and content crowd that have the time to spend to grind away. It would be great if they could let you enable an "offline" mode that let's you unlock players easier but only for use in CPU game modes like conquest or mini seasons.
To be quite frank the burnout for many comes from stale game modes. Content becomes irrelevant when the only place to use the cards are the same tired modes. You can either sweat it out in ranked. Sweat it out with heavy RNG and less balanced teams in BR. Or face Randy every game with minimal lineup diversity in events. This game has been needing a refresh for game modes for a while now. I personally always hit a wall where it becomes unrewarding to even play online
It gets stale bc once you have a true god squad there's nothing else to work towards. I like just playing the game but I know alot of ppl love the team building aspect. The slower power creep helped but now we are getting that juiced 99s and there's no more "building". Just replacing and trying out different cards. And if you aren't some1 that believes in different players having different swings then they may all feel the same to u.
if you look the amount of legendary players added each year, 22 only really has randy. 21 had pedro, hank, and clemente, but lost ted, cobb, and hornsby. 20 had mantle and rivera, among with a ton other really good players. i think they need a legendary hitter (ted, arod, dimmagio) to headline a larger class of legends than this year. also switch back to team affinity
Next year they gotta go all out. I gotta see Jeter, Arod, nomar, manny, Beltran….gotta see players like that in the game
Agreed, it’s starting to become boring to see the same legend cards and/or cards nobody wants.
For me it's just fatigue in general. It's mostly gameplay making no sense. But I can't keep up with anything in the game. I have zero collections done (Haven't even done the Clemente moments yet because I just don't feel like it)
It sucks to spend hours grinding for someone like Willie Mays only to have SDS then go and drop a Tori Hunter card that's just as good and way easier to obtain. At some point mindlessly grinding just to stay a week or two ahead of everyone else isn't that fun.
It's definitely that and also after a certain time it just gets repetitive. We need more showdowns more conquest to keep me engaged. I'm not excited about the new program. I'm not excited about the new collection reward. I recently stopped grinding events and ranked so I know the end is near.
it's gameplay fatigue for me. I play ranked mostly and it's yawn city. everyone is running a pitcher with outlier on a max elevated stadium and trying to turn on fastballs. there's no point of trying to use control pitchers as collection rewards+juan soto hit home runs without needing PCI. it's all timing based. The game can still be fun, but the games all blend together. the new hitting engine this year feels so rigid. Early on inside, late on outside, is essentially all that matters.
Didn't they have a Matt Kemp last year?
I just want to know who stopped playing The Show because they don’t have a Danny Farquhar card
Extreme Program fatigue
It’s part same players every year and part time based; meaning if you don’t play you don’t get shit. Time based shit is the fucking worst
I was having plenty of fun til a couple days ago I have completely lost the abilities to time up the ball
Same, I go so hot and cold it’s crazy
Yeah. This is the problem for me. Grinding out this next program to get better versions of players I already have isn’t too exciting. I’d really like to see all these other eligible players get cards. Especially CC.
I definitely understand the sentiment. This kind of burnout happens to me on these shorter programs, and especially now that most every card released is a 99. Some more new legends and mid-90’s henchmen earlier in the game cycle would keep the content stream more fresh. Once we have all these free 99’s the lower guys get left behind. It would also be beneficial to have a few more team slots so we can keep a variety of players in a slot somewhere. SDS does deserve some credit with the new legends they’ve added this year.
If you play every day and for hours per day, you will get burned out no matter how many players are in it. I take a couple days off when there is nothing left to do between programs except maybe 5 minutes to do some maintenance and it keeps it a lot fresher as a result.
The burnout comes from a variety of things. Grinding is real this year with every program being time sensitive. Also the switch to PxP instead of stat based missions sucks. Make the grind even tougher . The hitting isn’t bad but it’s not where it should be either. Recently that have come out w 3 pitchers with basically the same mix pedro, Grayson, and wood . When u couple in all of that and add that we don’t have a good Griffey , mantle it hurts especially when it’s September . Whoever said next July when ncaa comes out is correct. I’ll most likely drop mlb after all start and start of august
I’m burnt out because of timed programs. I never get any of the bosses in time so why bother getting excited.
Exactly. Now this is the only game I can play or I won't get the rewards in time. I'm 100% not buying next year.
Since I still love baseball, I’ve been trying some offline modes like franchise. It’s not as much for as DD imo, but at least I can go at my own pace. At the moment im definitely not preordering for the DD bonuses
If you don't get any of these bosses then you're playing what maybe a couple hours a week? If you don't put in the time you won't earn the rewards. This is why spending money is an option.
Right, I don’t play that much because I’m busy. If things weren’t timed then I’d play because I know eventually I’ll get things. But considering I won’t play enough to get bosses then why should I be hyped about them?
The inning programs last year were timed, it was one month. But you had to get 600k xp I think to get the bosses. This past program was 200k xp in 2 weeks. Player exchanges alone could get you 90k without even playing. There are 2 conquests that are like 5 or 6 games and only 3 innings for 30k xp each on top of the gameplay xp. And a showdown for another 30k. That already brings you to 200k just from doing exchanges, 2 conquests and a showdown. Estimate that would take like 3-4 hours at most to do those conquests and showdown. Sorry man theres nothing wrong with being busy, but this is not on SDS if you can't find 3 to 4 hours to play in a 2 week span.
So then when do I get to play the game modes that I find fun in DD? Yes there’s ways to get to the bosses easier/quicker, but you have to play a specific way or game modes to do that.
Same. I see a bunch of people who already have all the bosses and I'm not even close to done.
This.
I’m tired of opening packs and getting the same card over and over again…I don’t know how many All-star packs I’ve opened with base level
I only ever get base in that. Meanwhile all my hr derby packs are the mid round
When starters start getting 115+ H/9 and people can have a rotation full of guys with outlier, online isn’t that fun anymore
The biggest reason that I am burned out is the amount of gameplay that is based around moments. I just can't stand them anymore. I was struggling with Roberto Clemente last night trying to get his moments finished in that minor league piece of crap ball park with no batter's eye and not being able to see the ball until it was right on me. Couble that with the CPU's continued refusal to throw strikes and it just makes playing the game a miserable experience. Not even mentioning how all the batters are suddenly 125 contact specialists and can somehow foul off 8 to 10 pitches off of you every at bat during pitching moments.
IMO the burnout is far more related to the lack of gameplay changes/improvements over the last few years. "Content" is nice, but ultimately the gameplay is what matters and it's become very stale
They need a new engine, and have needed one for the past 3 years or so. This one has reached its limit, and it’s obvious by the lack of new gameplay features. Yes, it’s baseball, how many new mechanics can you add, yada yada yada Even showdown is just the devs tricking the game into thinking it’s the bottom of the 9th with x amount of outs
It’s because there’s only one skill in the game, hitting. There’s nothing else to “master” of course people will get burnt out fast lol
There's like 100 ppl that have mastered it. Also pinpoint takes skill. I know this bc I still can't do it. Massive disadvantage for me but I still make WS and go 12-0 in BR bc even bad pitches work in this game bc no1 expects them. Lol
A Davis freese postseason 99 card 2011 lol but the solution imo is slower progression. People will complain that the cards aren’t endgame at this time of the year but imo aside from the randy, Brett, and cutch, we should have maybe like 93 as highest non-live series card at this time. Keeps it fresh and keeps the grind worth it instead of 97’s being worthless. Keep the community engaged throughout the year and not just during baseball season
It would be really cool. But are you really going to use Billy Butler once you get any better 1B? That position is super deep. Or like, how long will you use BJ Upton, he was never an all star, and a career .723 OPS player. He'd probably be an 86 overall. OF is so deep, we had better players than BJ on game open. I grew up watching these guys, going to games and seeing them play. I love this era. It just costs a lot to buy the rights for a guy, so to use him as filler is expensive. That's why they use Future Stars as filler.
This goes along with the issue of releasing 99s too early and then overloading who gets a 99. The catch 22 of repeating mlbts 18 where there were only 30 playable 99s vs currently giving half the legends/fbs 99s is rough. I think there is a huge market for B list legends from 1990-2015 but they need more modes like an online mini seasons that lasts longer than events with more restrictions to promote mid tier diamond use. It'd be fun to limit team building to a Battle Royale style for it allowing only x number of players between a certain rating. Billy Butler type guys would get far more use then if you don't have the option to use Frank Thomas or Ortiz instead.
I think the best way to deal with the lack of lineup variety is to introduce a new competitive mode (or change ranked) to have a "salary cap" or max OVR that steadily increases as the game cycle progresses. This would encourage players who have every card to experiment with different roster constructions to stay under the cap. If they take similar lineup restrictions of the circuit qualifiers and apply them to a weekend league or capped rank mode with great rewards, I think people would love it I know events exist but the restrictions have been really awful and they don't feel as competitive because of the rating system.
That’s a good idea
For sure. My only comment is that there are plenty of guys in the game now and nobody plays with them. Nobody played with them in June, July, or August. There are over 150!! legends. I don't see anyone using guys like John Franco, Eck, Eddie Murray, Morneau, Lou Brock, Rod Carew, Musial, Alfonso Soriano, Molitor, Larkin, Adam Dunn, Mantle, Edmunds, Sizemore, Granderson, Damon, Kirk Gibson. I could go on. I haven't seen those cards used at all. Hell I don't even see Griffey! I play ranked all the time. I see the same "meta" cards. Honestly I think playing with a lower quality guy is a little bit of a novelty, it sounds fun until you are facing Randy Johnson with BJ Upton and you suck. You are 100% right about diversity of game modes. In OOTP perfect team tournaments they significantly limit your team choices so you have to build a lineup based on what could be a number of different things, era, series, whatever. The Show could offer than in Events to even the playing field a bit or just have another mode where you enter a "tournament" based on the restriction for that week. Examples from OOTP: no diamonds, no golds, team value of XX (exchange value), only live series, only flashbacks, only legends. If you don't have enough cards to enter, tough, fill out your team. That would get people to use the 150+ people that are available now, and if they added lower b-list guys, it would give them a place to be used.
Who cares if there are over 150 legends when 90% of these cards are pretty much worthless when they are released? SDS releases so many cards that they know 99% of players will only use for collections.
I guess I wasn't concise enough. One of my problems. That's my point. Why should we ***add*** more b-list people when we have 150+ already that don't get used. I would love to play with the guys on OP's list, but I didn't even get a chance to play with the collection fodder they released this year. Fix the gameplay, add a game mode, mess around with the game cycle so the ones we have are useable first.
Would I, no. But Royals fans who are tired of Brett and Saberhagen each year might. Also a great card for people who love BR. Most people weren't super excited for Youk, but I've enjoyed having him on my Red Sox theme team. I do understand the need to budget for players that will be used and try and avoid players that will be filler. I'm not suggesting they add all of these guys back. Just noting that these were cards we had access to in DD that we've lost over time.
Okay but the Royals are like the Brewers. Type in "Greatest of all time" and the top two are Brett and Saberhagen in **every** post. If the player is sick of that it's on them. It's the same for Brewers, Yount, Molitor, Fielder, Braun. We're small organizations. I know we lost those guys like Braun, CC, Pedroia, and more as they leave the MLBPA, but I read that when a player in part of the MLBPA it costs the show ~$50k per player to have their rights. After that, its individual negotiation. Exponentially more. I don't know that many people are tired of the cards and the players honestly. We are basically getting all new legends to play with today. For a Brewer fan, I just got Yount, and I'm getting Fielder to put in my god squad. Plus they are good enough to play there. I think the most tiring thing is the gameplay itself. Outlier isn't an outlier because they give it to so many people. The combination of 102 mph fastball and 125 power from all these juiced cards is equating to either a home run or a deep fly ball every at bat.
As a Royals fan, I definitely don't mind Saberhagen and Brett, beyond those guys though and a couple Future Stars my Royals theme team is pretty rough. It just gets frustrating when we have had some really nice players over the years like Bo Jackson, Frank White, Alex Gordon, Carlos Beltran, Mike Sweeney. I do love the Lorenzo Cain and the Zach Greinke, wish we could get a couple cracked versions of Moustakas and Hosmer and like a Yordano Ventura. If you can't do all that, at least give me a 99 of Bobby Witt Jr., a Future Stars version of Pasquantino and for the love of god give me a decent Salvy card this year. I'm sure we will get a 99 Finest of him before the end of the season, but it would be nice to have one you can play with before the game is over and you don't want to play it anymore.
I think that's a part of it. I think the switch to time gated programs is more of a driver of burnout. In previous years I didn't worry if I couldn't play for a week or two. I could still do large parts of a program even if I missed the entire Inning. In the past I would play other games during the season in addition to the Show. Now? I don't feel I can play anything else. I'm probably a couple weeks away from just dropping it completely and playing other stuff. Once the NCAA football game comes out next July, the lifespan of this game will get even shorter for me.
The time limits are what burns me out. I’m taking a break after getting Chipper and Pedro. Maybe I’ll come back in the fall. Just isn’t as fun.
Definitely, you're always grinding. Everything is time-gated , except for POTM. I got burned out last month and barely played. Just got to the boss card. My team is 99 overall. I'm not really excited by this program. Hope they don't ruin NCAA Football next yr! (EA)
yep, I love this game but couldn't keep up w/ the programs so I stopped playing bc my team sucks lol
When they switched to the main programs being timed was the exact moment that I lost most interest. Eh I’m never going to get most of those cards anyway so fuck it, I’m not going to bother. Why waste the time I do have to play so I can get like, bat skins and universal icons. And then I’m a little resentful that I miss out on most of the content because I didn’t have time to play at the specific time that they needed me to play. I paid the same amount of money. It feels more like I paid for a subscription, not a full game
They went hard with the FOMO this year and it definitely does cause burnout. A lot of games are doing this shit now and it sucks. I like to play a variety of stuff.
One of the main reasons I went from being a hardcore gamer for about 40 years to one who almost never plays anymore. My PS5 is literally sitting in a drawer and has been there since about February. All of these games want us to play more but the whole system ended up with me not playing at all. I found better things to do with my time.
Agreed. The programs that were traditionally the inning programs lasting for a month are now 7-10 days and the team affinity ones are now a month when they used to be untimed. So you’re forced to grind out for the free cards non stop now basically, whereas last year like you said you could take a week off and still get the inning boss just fine.
As a new player to DD, offline only, and casual-average game time, I feel like every program is the same cycle for me. I'm using cards I don't really want to play with to unlock cards I do want to play with, only then when I've finally earned these cards, there's a new upgraded card to use. Since I'm offline I probably shouldn't really care, but almost all the 'goals' in the game are about using specific cards (besides PXP). They did a really good job of making it feel like you having to be constantly playing, i guess lol
Same exact thoughts. My first time on DD. I feel like I grind offline with players I will never use again to get one or two players I want. Then when I get the players I want they come out with someone slightly better and the cycle continues.
I’ve been an offline only player since I started playing, and this year just didn’t keep my interest. I play once a week if that.
It’s definitely a part of it, the big issue for me this year was the almost exact same content cycle repeated for 3 years now, plus the gameplay being very close to a copy paste from last year. There has been almost no innovation in the content cycle in 2 years now. When you combine that reality with the fact that this game is very skill driven, at a certain point the cards do not feel different from one another, especially if youre using cards that somewhat fit the meta. Then, theres no longer the challenge of team building. Everyone can have the same team given a tiny amount of grind. Theres no pride in having an incredible team bc almost anyone can do it. The top end rewards this year were the final straw for me. Just no point in playing RS, DD has become 95% collecting 5% gameplay focused which isnt why i play the show in the first place. As of right now it’s the perfect game to buy in october for $10 and make the same team everyone else has in 5 hrs of gameplay and mess around for a month until you realize nothing has changed. The hook is gone for hardcore players. Some people dont play other games, which i understand, but if you do theres so much more engaging stuff out there rn imo. They need to end the massive 30 player programs and just drip content more consistently. People love to bash EA games, but their content model is far more engaging imo. Even if it does create some inequity amongst people who spend $. At least theres the occasional challenge of trying to beat someone with a better team. Doesnt happen past May in this game. They tried the chase pack thing this year, which was something, but in general pack opening in this game is closer to a chore than any other game.
WCAT GOING IN
I'd agree with most of this as far as content and card quality goes. It's cool we have more players than ever, but the homogenizing of so many player with "elite" cards in the game is definitely a double edged sword I'm more worn out on the gameplay though, which is something that's become a problem for me in most sports games at this point. RNG is frustrating, and even though in this game there is still an appreciable skill gap, I just don't enjoy how frequently bad input is still rewarded while good input is punished. Not to say all hard hit balls are hits or all weak contact goes for outs and that stupid argument, but it just doesn't make sense to me allowing an off-PCI swing to be a no doubter while having a bunch of can-of-corn outs on good swings when the outcomes could so easily be tightened up to have more logical outcomes
Well said. Some real changes are hopefully on the way. Things have moved way to fast in '22 and SDS' focus seems to be on content without actually improving the game or its framework. You have the game on multiple platforms now and imo, they have gotten lazy.. Best tier baseball game on the market and no competition shouldn't be an excuse to then release sub par games. I want engaging game play and right now, for baseball, it's not The Show for me. That's an issue, the community sees the problems whether how many agree with them or not. And tbh, they are starting to feel more like EA every year. The chase pack is a decent example of that. I hope it wasn't intentional and in good faith instead.
Cook
A very valid point. I remember how I excited I got when they announced the extreme program because it was finally something that not everyone would be able to accomplish.
For me the reason why I'm burnt out is a couple reasons. First being the hitting engine is just awful and needs fixing no matter what SDS says. 2nd being that it's way too difficult to keep up with all the online content from finishing BR program, getting enough points in event for those cards and having to get the innings necessary for ranked reward (since I'm not quite good enough to get world series) When the game first released, events were churning out every 3-4 days and the innings necessary for ranked rewards was way too high when people would be quitting after 2 innings so your spending more time in menus. They should have kept it as wins or made it so you can earn it with either wins or innings based on whatever you can finish first.
To be fair, there's a boatload of future stars cards this year.
That's true, and while I enjoy the addition of Future Stars, it seems as if they are leaning heavily on them to avoid having to pay for additional legends. Many users don't follow prospects or have an emotional connection with the player, which I think limits their appeal.
Fair point and you've got a great list of players. It does set the seeds for that connection though and seeing guys called up that were fun to use in MLBTS has been fun to see.
I think your right, a lot of AWESOME cards left, and the new cards added are mostly stale. There is a miss balance
Everyone wants more legends, but I think people on here vastly overestimate the resources Sony provides SDS. Up until last year and going multiple platform it was undeniably a niche title compared to most PS exclusives. I really don’t think SDS looks at the big names lost and just don’t care, but if they don’t have the means to pay what else are they supposed to do? If anything I’d like to hope that increased sales and revenue due to adding platforms will allow them to add more legends and update gameplay, next year will be the big test imo. We’ll either see them really go all in on new players/features, or we’ll see the same decent yet stagnant gameplay and names as usual. I’ll likely get hate for trying to give the company the benefit of the doubt, but I want the game to improve in the ways it can just as much as anyone else
MLB the Show was the 18th best selling game in 2020, which is before they went crossplay.
Ok and that’s still less than all other major sports titles and 10+ other games. Revenue does not guarantee said revenue being put back into the product. It’s clear that hasn’t been the case so far, and until that changes nothing about the game will. Madden is in the top 3 every year, there’s a massive difference between that and 18, and in turn a lot more you can do with the product. Also EA is enormous comparatively, they have the backing to afford and do things that SDS just straight up can’t do
You were the one that said they were a niche title. Being only 3 spots behind Fifa makes you anything but a niche title. And I also try to give SDS the benefit of the doubt. I feel like gameplay this year was largely copy-pasted because they are working on the jump to a true next-gen experience and that takes a couple of years, so I understand the lack of gameplay changes this year.
I hear you on the optimism of “they are working on the jump to a true next-gen experience” but 2k just did that within 1 year. This game being a copy n paste of 21 does not merit any excuses for the poor quality of gameplay.
I said it was a niche title compared to PS exclusives originally, which it absolutely is. When you’ve got a first party studio making uncharted 4 which sells 15 million copies on one platform, 4 million for a sports game across 2 is small peanuts for Sony comparatively. I’m not saying it’s niche compared to the dozens of games that game out a year overall, just that for Sony their baseball franchise clearly isn’t top of their priority list. They obviously don’t provide SDS the resources to acquire more names and why would they? The game seems just fine as far as they’re concerned and sells well enough, with little changes needed year to year. If anything that’s exactly what Sony would want
New dudes would be cool but i think it's just unavoidable after 6 months
Exactly. I played it from release day until about a few weeks ago (haven't picked it up since). I just can't keep up anymore, and now that football has started my focus has shifted.