Super Mega Baseball 3

[Leadfoot5]

Is anyone thinking of starting up a cross-platform DSP On-Line League?

I've been experimenting with a small league that is made up of my sports board gaming friends and the functionality works great!! We all range in EGO from 45 down to 25, but each game feels on equal footing with the auto-ego adjustment made by the game.

[Aristo]

I would be very interested in playing. I've looked at the options via the Steam version, but have not looked at the Xbox version yet. I would assume they are the same. I know the PC version for the game has some extra features, like playing with no crowds, to improve frame rate, I suppose.

Playing on Xbox, I am around a 40-45 Ego in Pennant Race, but on PC I ended up in the upper 50's. I started the PC version later, so I think think I was more dialed in, and I did have an insane great 5 games for my initial ranking. It was much higher, but steadily dropped until where ti s now, and settled in more.

I really haven't been plating SMB3 the last a month or two (pandemic time, maybe two weeks, lol), as I was starting to burn out because I was playing it a ton. I decided to pick it back up[, but instead just do a solo franchise, which I had really not looked at much. Playing that has been a lot of fun, really, and it has made me hope they were getting this update out soon.

I'm still just floored by how rock solid the gameplay really is. I don't need there to ever be a license. I like the idea of this as a great canvas for online league play. I'd rather see more customization of stadium environments and a SuperMega take on commentators long before a license.

[Zlax45]

I would be up for it...

[Aristo]

I got a chance to play some head to head SMB3 live tonight. We hung out with the one couple we hang out with during the pandemic, and my friend Juan and I played some SMB3. He had really struggled with it the game and was wanting me to help him learn to hit better.

We just played some 3 inning games to kind of learn the head to stuff, and it's pretty great. The pitch system is hard but so perfect for head to head. You can see where your opponent has the cursor when he presses the pitch button, but he can keep moving the pitch location until he lefts up on the pitch button. It makes it hard to learn how to aim and be secretive, but once we got the hang of it, it made every at-bat a blast.

Unlike online, you can't guess the location so easy, because it is much harder to hit a location. So it really became a weird game of cat and mouse as I not only had to figure out what he was doing, I also had to figure out how it would end up.

He started the night on 14 Ego, but boosted it to 20, then 30. He raised it to 56 for a game, where I have mine, but that turned out poor. And really, its hard to move up or down that much, as the speed of every thing changes. But he settled at 30, and it just made for great games. It was surprisingly great for a couch baseball game.

Not that we get to do nearly as much couch gaming anymore, but its worth noting.

[Diablo25]

Teal and I played an online game or two a while back and I was shocked at how little lag (if any) there was. The Show online games have always had issues. They’ve gotten better. Keep in mind that The Show is a much more graphically intensive game. Maybe The Show online games will be better on the Xbox (its going to be available on the Xbox in ‘21) with Live being much more stable. Obviously timing is crucial in baseball so any legit lag would ruin the game. SMB3 is like playing a LAN game.

[Aristo]

I play a lot of Pennant Race, and by far the best baseball game I’ve played online.

One advantage of no license is that every decision seems to be made to improve competitiveness. And it comes through in every aspect.

Playing my friend last night, it wasn’t hard to have fun competitive games even though our skill levels were way different. And the fact is, my friend knows baseball inside and out. The only disparity was in how much time we’ve spent playing and getting used to ALL timing, from pitching to running, to fielding. It works so well.

The only thing I struggled with was when he started at Ego 13. Technically, it was no problem. But seeing every fastball move so slow felt really odd, and affected me trying to hard to throw harder. And his pitches were rockets!

But we both won games of 4-3, 3-1, and so on. For online specifically, lack of a license is so much. Not one time were we saying what should have happened. It was just what we did.

[sportdan30]

Uh oh… Metalhead Software joining EA Sports.

[tjung0831]

Uh oh… Metalhead Software joining EA Sports.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Rodster]

Uh oh… Metalhead Software joining EA Sports.

That makes a lot of sense for EA. Take Two bought NBA Playgrounds and EA buys the Baseball version. I would love to see EA revive the NBA Streets franchise.

[Sudz]

Anybody play the latest version?

10-hour trial up on EA Play.

[sportdan30]

Anybody play the latest version?

10-hour trial up on EA Play.

Yep, I have the ballpark edition on the PS5. Enjoying it quite a bit. Definitely more "fun" than The Show.

[fsquid]

I love this series but I just can't see myself paying 50 bucks for the new version. What do you like better in 4 than in 3?

[sportdan30]

I love this series but I just can't see myself paying 50 bucks for the new version. What do you like better in 4 than in 3?

I'd hold off on buying for the time being as there is a couple franchise bugs that are currently being worked on. Also, there's some lighting issues that need to get fixed too.

All in all, there are supposedly improved offseason additions that allow you to hang on to your prized players longer. Also, they introduced a loyalty trait that makes it easier or more difficult to sign a particular player. The fielding has been a subtle improvement, but may not be noticeable if you don't play the series very much. Each team now has their own stadium. There are now over 200 past MLB players you can use in your franchise if you wish (some big name all-stars and others not so much).

[sportdan30]

New update is out.

[sportdan30]

Game is on sale for $35. After the latest update, I fully recommend it.

[AcemanPR]

It's also free to play on Xbox from now through the weekend.