MVP...simming the fun out of it?

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:18 pm

I've been reading lots of disparaging comments regarding this game, and I just don't get it. I love MVP. I guess my thinking is that I'd rather have a game that's fun over having to capture every single nuance of the sport. I really think sometime alot of you are far too critical of sports games because they're not "sim" enough. If you're only interest is in simming seasons and getting accurate stats, then why don't you stick with front office? Whether so and so bats an accurate .295 or not may matter on gameday, but why does it make a difference when you're playing a video game? To me, it's like refusing to play Halo because the lip synching is not absolutley perfect. To worry about such things is to miss out on a really good game experience. Just my two cents...

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:27 pm

tealboy03 wrote:Just my two cents...

That's everyone's statement when people bash their game of choice...not just 'your' two cents.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:33 pm

tealboy03 wrote:To me, it's like refusing to play Halo because the lip synching is not absolutley perfect.

No, it would be like if you played Halo and the grenades exploded in your hand or the rocket launcher shot sideways instead of straight.

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:54 pm

Teal,

I gotta agree with you. This game definitely has that "one more game" feel to it. Is it a complete sim? Heck no. Are there glaring issues with the game? Ohh yes. But....but....but, the positives far outweigh the negatives. It's unfortunate that we have to disect a game to pieces and then declare it "broken". This game isn't broken in the least. It's a VIDEO GAME....a baseball VIDEO GAME. It's meant to be fun, played fast, and played again and again. I don't have time to play an hour's worth of baseball while I sit on my ass. I know I should be doing something more constructive. So, if I can sneak in a half hour here and there and have fun playing, who gives a rats behind whether I walked 4 times during the game? I pay more attention to my average, home runs, rbis, doubles, triples, and so on. If you're a stats freak, then this surely isn't the game for you. I feel sorry for anyone who purchased this game thinking it would be. Enjoy the game for what is.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:03 pm

I'm glad the developers of football games didn't take this attitude back in the day when it was either too hard to run, the computer wouldn't run, it was too easy to complete passes, there were money plays galore, etc. They could have said, "well, the kids are enjoying it and we are selling a ton of copies so let's just add more animations and update the rosters."

I have enjoyed playing the flawed MLB and MVP, but as a fan of the game of baseball I refuse to give in until they have baseball games that are at least as good as the football games. The football games are miles ahead of the baseball games in terms of realism IMO.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:09 pm

Leebo33 wrote:The football games are miles ahead of the baseball games in terms of realism IMO.

Leebo,
I used to think this as well until I saw the Madden Challenge Finals on G4. Football games have a long way to go unfortunately. Sure you can get a pretty realistic experience in multiplayer if you play with somebody who plays a straight-up sim kind of a game but until football games make it impossible to drop the quarterback 20 yards and scramble until a man gets open and loft it way down field for a completion then football games are just as flawed as the baseball games.

Blublub · Post by **Blublub** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:11 pm

I am still enjoying MVP despite all the problems. But I think what really cheeses people off about it is that there are so many things that are flat out broken or don't work as advertised. More maddening is the fact that it seems like most of the problems could have been fixed with a little more testing and tweaking prior to release.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:17 pm

ScoopBrady wrote:
Leebo33 wrote:The football games are miles ahead of the baseball games in terms of realism IMO.
Leebo,
I used to think this as well until I saw the Madden Challenge Finals on G4. Football games have a long way to go unfortunately. Sure you can get a pretty realistic experience in multiplayer if you play with somebody who plays a straight-up sim kind of a game but until football games make it impossible to drop the quarterback 20 yards and scramble until a man gets open and loft it way down field for a completion then football games are just as flawed as the baseball games.

True. I guess I was thinking more of the single player experience which was very good to me this year with NCAA 2004 and ESPN Football.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:20 pm

OK time for another marathon post from hugo:

Teal, I hear what you are saying. I too think both games out now are fun, but I have problems with both as well.

Yet Leebo's point should be well taken; these problems may for you be as small as a lip-synch issue, but for him they represent some serious flaws. You are able to overlook them and still have fun; for him (and many others) they grate and grate and get under his skin, and he can't have fun.

Listen, if I walk into someone's living room and they are watching TV with the sound coming from the TV speakers, it drives me completely crazy. I can't deal with it well AT ALL. For many, they don't hear the difference between the TV speaker and a nice full-range surround speaker setup. I notice. Others don't. I can't understand how they don't hear it, but they just don't.

I think the critical responses to these games are fair enough, in that the things wrong with the games, MVP in particular, are really hard for many to digest. The lefty power thing for instance. It colors every single decision you make. Not sure the fastball can get by that Left handed hitter? Well, go ahead, keep it outside and it will probably die before the fence even if he does catch up with it. They put a righty on the mound, should you PH with the left-hander? Nah, you still have a better chance for a long-ball with the rightie. Now you may not have known about that problem until someone told you, but I bet if you played this game until June, you would start to notice it on your own.

And things such as the fact that the CPU will NEVER steal or hit and run are the kinds of things that for many are far too irritating to accept. It would be almost as if in a football game the CPU NEVER ran the football, even on 3rd and short. At first, you might think "hm, that's weird." But as you played more and more and came to realize the extent of the issue, it would completely change the way you play the game, and in such a way that you no longer feel you are playing a virtual version of the sport but an entirely different type of thing altogether.

The bottom line is, yes I think some people are simming the joy out of MVP, but hey, they want to sim their baseball, they don't want Triple Play or Right Handed Home Run city.

Now for me, i still think there may be life in this title for online play. I prefer to play people rather than the CPU in general (although baseball is usually a game I play lots v. CPU), and I don't like franchise modes in general, so the franchise problems don't bother me at all. It is a MAJOR problem though, that CPU teams only carry 10 position players and that player progression is completely broken in MVP. I mean, if you want to play franchise mode and actually play 10% of the games in a season, but have a ton of fun with the managerial aspects of franchise mode, frankly MVP is unplayable. If there were no franchise mode in the game, then it wouldn't be an issue, but it is promised as part of the package, so one should be able to expect that it would work; then when it doesn't people feel a bit ripped-off.

Also, I think part of the latent rage about MVP is that as the early one out of the gate, everyone read the reviews and was confident it would deliver. And then to discover some of the patently obvious problems in the game (paticularly the franchise mode issues, but also the no-steals and such), none of which was apparently mentioned in any of the reviews, and I mean not a one, well, you can imagine how that would cause a touch of anger.

I used to hate the fact that no baseball game let you double switch. It seemed like every year, the new games would come out, and the sub rules were broken with pitchers. For me, this meant I got half the game I paid for. I could only play AL ball because I refused to play NL ball with no ability to double swtich.

But what made it more infuriating is that NO REVIEW would ever mention thie issue at all. Never. So, I had to get all the games on my own and one by one discover that they all had no double switch. Or there maybe was one that did, but I hated everything else about it.

Now, one could say "hey it's no biggie, just play with the DH!" or "c'mon, just stick to AL ball then, if it's such a problem." Rasonable points of view perhaps, but not ones that I found acceptable.

So, I frankly applaud the over-critical look at sports games. I would rather read about everyone's problems and issues with the games, problems and issues that sports gamers who love sports and sport games would b*tch about, problems that mainstream reviewers will deliberately fail to mention, or perhaps not even be aware of. That way, I can objectively look at the issues in a game and decide whether or not that issue is a problem for me. I would much rather have that be the situation than to have everyone praise the sh*t out of a game (which understandably happens in the pre-release build-up anyway) and then discover to my chagrin that there is something really wrong, at least to me.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:21 pm

Yeah, I was really let down after watching that Madden Challenge as I had also had felt like Madden, NCAA, and ESPN Football were pretty damn realistic in single player. Now I realize it's because I play it from a sim perspective instead of a video game perspective.

Bill_Abner · Post by **Bill_Abner** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:22 pm

Blublub wrote:I am still enjoying MVP despite all the problems. But I think what really cheeses people off about it is that there are so many things that are flat out broken or don't work as advertised. More maddening is the fact that it seems like most of the problems could have been fixed with a little more testing and tweaking prior to release.

Exactamundo. Sorry if it is asking too much of a multi million dollar budgeted baseball game to:

A) Produce believeable stats
B) Have online play thats's not buggy
C) Provide a working Dynasty mode that resembles baseball

Exact realism is NOT the issue. No one expects that.

But if the above is asking too much, well, then so be it. I'm not lowering my personal standards because EA Sports decided not to finish the game, or ran out of time before the suits said "Ship it!"

And the Halo analogy doesn't fly. If people were complaining about the stadiums or the uniform colors -- then that's a trivial issue, like the lip sync. The problems in MVP are like if Halo's multiplayer feature was flat out broken or the game balance made it unplayable.

webdanzer · Post by **webdanzer** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:26 pm

hugo wrote:I would rather read about everyone's problems and issues with the games, problems and issues that sports gamers who love sports and sport games would b*tch about, problems that mainstream reviewers will deliberately fail to mention, or perhaps not even be aware of. That way, I can objectively look at the issues in a game and decide whether or not that issue is a problem for me. I would much rather have that be the situation than to have everyone praise the sh*t out of a game (which understandably happens in the pre-release build-up anyway) and then discover to my chagrin that there is something really wrong, at least to me.

Dead on, Hugo. I expressed similar sentiments on CG. I also don't understand WHY people complain about people expressing what displeases them in a game. If it doesn't bother you, then fine, ignore the criticism.

But some people come across that they prefer the ignorance is bliss attitude, closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'LA LA LA' when you talk about things like the lefty power issue.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:28 pm

It doesn't help that the majority of us have played High Heat and realize it is possible to program a baseball game that nails the core gameplay (and still play games in a half hour).

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:37 pm

It all comes down to personal taste. Some people don't care about atmosphere in a baseball game. I do, because without it the game is stale and lifeless. Case in point, I could never play more than a few games games of HH. It's presentation was bland. Would I like to see more walks, hits and run, steals, etc by the CPU in MVP? Sure. Is it a game killer to me? Nope. Is is considered broken to Jimmmy (age 12 down the street)? Nope. What about the majority of those who purchased this game? Nah. I think there's a small percentage who really care whether the game emulates realism. It's growing and the developers are more perceptive to that, but they're trying to find that medium between fun and realism. We're getting there.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:37 pm

One other thing I just though of is the develpment cylce for sports games and how that affects the quality of the releases.

Now, I was an N64 gamer. I played TONS of Goldeneye, single player and multiplayer. I waited patiently for Perfect Dark. Much like Halo2, PD was heavily hyped, highly anticipated, and delayed several times. I think it was released 2 years late in the end.

Now my POV was "take your time Rare, and get it right. 'Cause I may be a bit miffed now that I won't have the game in a month, but I would be a million times more pissed if I did have it and there was something really wrong with it for the rest of forever." So, in the end I was happy; it wasn't perfect (frame rate issues really) but it WAS brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And for me it was well worth the wait.

Sports games don't have that luxury. They have to publish a new one every year, and they have to get it out in a timely manner. I happen to think they have gone a bit too far with the baseball games in March and the football games in August, but it's obvious that what is at work is the ol' early bird gettin' the worm effect. Not to mention the bizarre one-year-ahead naming convention (thankfully EA broke that cycle with the baseball when they bailed on Triple Play).

So as sports gamers, it is trebly frustrating to have some things come out just plain great (for me in MVP it would be the slick presentaion, the manager options right there with the R2 and L2, the animations, the ball physics), and better than ever, while the same old things keep coming up broken (video game baseball never has walks, not v. CPU, not v. humans). But EA won't sit on the game 'till it's just right, they need to put it out before anyone else so they can get that spike of sales. That's just how it works with sports games, and I think what bubbles up every now and then is just that general disappointment. Here we are with these amazing machines in the latter half of their life-cycles and still, we would almost rather play a PSX baseball game, 'cuase it's a better game! Or play EA NHL'95 or something, you know what I mean?

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:46 pm

webdanzer wrote:But some people come across that they prefer the ignorance is bliss attitude, closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'LA LA LA' when you talk about things like the lefty power issue.

Oh I dunno if I would go that far, that's a bit unfair as well. I just think a lot of people see all the negative posts and wonder why there is all that venom, while they themsleves are having fun with the game. I understand that point of view, and it's less to do with 'someone's bashing MY game' than it does with 'well, if I can have fun with it, what's wrong with these crusty ol' curmudgeons?"

Listen, I still have fun with both. The Lefty power issue is really the only one that could kill it for me personally, because it's sort of like knowing about a money play in football, where you can say to yourself, 'well I just won't run that play now that I know it's a money play,' but for me when the chips are down and it's 3rd and 25, well, hello money play!

I just can't get it out of my head, and since it's true, it really changes the very nature of the game.

I dunno. I think maybe for online play it may be less of an issue, as I will still have that head-to-head fun, but I dunno! It may just be too big a deal.

But that's not to say I think MLB is the greatest thing since whatever (insert homey cliche). There are lots of things I just don't like, especially when compared to MVP, like for example the baserunning. The baserunning in MVP is great, they really seem to behave the way baserunners should behave. MLB is the same as baserunning 10 years ago. Heck, there's not even a 'stop' button, so you can't go halfway even if you wanted to! Does it bother me? Yes. Should I complain about it? Absolutely. Will it ruin the game for me? Probably not.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 7:00 pm

" it's less to do with 'someone's bashing MY game' than it does with 'well, if I can have fun with it, what's wrong with these crusty ol' curmudgeons?" "

Hugo:
Well put. (except I don't really think you all are a bunch of crusty ol' curmudgeons-a little tight assed, maybe, but not curmudgeons...

*) I'm not criticizing your right to complain, to be sure. Just offering an alternate view for those who may not need their bread toasted a specific shade of brown in order to enjoy it. If you don't like it, that's perfectly fine with me. I'm not the MVP evangelist, here. I just happen to really enjoy it, that's all. That being said, I really like NASCAR Thunder and Red Card Soccer, because I like the atmosphere of certain games more than their spot on representation of the sport. Hockey? NHL Hitz does me just fine- but you have to understand- I'm from the South, where the only ice we ever see is in our sweet tea...

*note: that's a JOKE, in case you missed it

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 7:07 pm

Jesus Hugo...relax on the keyboard man.

webdanzer · Post by **webdanzer** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 7:18 pm

hugo wrote:
webdanzer wrote:But some people come across that they prefer the ignorance is bliss attitude, closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'LA LA LA' when you talk about things like the lefty power issue.
Oh I dunno if I would go that far, that's a bit unfair as well. I just think a lot of people see all the negative posts and wonder why there is all that venom, while they themsleves are having fun with the game.

I'm responding to replies all around the World Wide Web here, not just on DSP. And I did say some.

But I've gotten the actual response from some that they don't even want to know about the issues, Hugo, and thus they decry the discussion of negatives as something detrimental.

And I still can't believe the venomous replies I've seen directed at people bringing up the lefty thing. I've been frankly taken aback by the tremendous, and sometimes mean-spirited, amount or criticism aimed at folks making this complaint.

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 7:27 pm

"And I still can't believe the venomous replies I've seen directed at people bringing up the lefty thing. I've been frankly taken aback by the tremendous, and sometimes mean-spirited, amount or criticism aimed at folks making this complaint"

I haven't paid enough attention nor played enough games to gather whether or not this is really a problem. However, there are several posters at OS who claim the "lefty power" bug is untrue. Now, I remember Badgun saying that he hasn't hit a homer with Edmonds in a dozen or so games, so I don't know what to believe.

Parker · Post by **Parker** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:04 pm

I haven't done any real testing, but from my games all using the Red Sox, I definitely hit far more homeruns with my right handers. I only hit a few with David Ortiz and Trot Nixon, but a ton with Garciaparra and Ramirez.

The game just has too many unsettling oddities for me to go back to it. I'm having a blast with MLB. The game only gets better when you play it more and more. I will see what ASB is like this week though.

Blublub · Post by **Blublub** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:42 pm

I think the consensus on the lefty issue is that there is all lefties take a hit on power. Big hitters still have the juice to hit it out of the park but will not hit it as far as righties. It's lefties with mediocre power where it is the most noticeable.

That's certainly consistent with what I found in home run challenge mode, although I haven't had enough lefties on my roster to tell how much of an issue it is in dynasty mode.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 9:53 pm

Leebo33 wrote:I'm glad the developers of football games didn't take this attitude back in the day when it was either too hard to run, the computer wouldn't run, it was too easy to complete passes, there were money plays galore, etc. They could have said, "well, the kids are enjoying it and we are selling a ton of copies so let's just add more animations and update the rosters."

I have enjoyed playing the flawed MLB and MVP, but as a fan of the game of baseball I refuse to give in until they have baseball games that are at least as good as the football games. The football games are miles ahead of the baseball games in terms of realism IMO.

I agree with you 100%.

As for the Madden finals.........

That was funny..I was watching and thinking wtf?!?!?!?!?!......

I unfortunately or fortunately am not able to scramble around like those guys in any of the new games.

Football games are a huge leap ahead of baseball games in every way.

Badgun · Post by **Badgun** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:35 am

sportdan30 wrote:"And I still can't believe the venomous replies I've seen directed at people bringing up the lefty thing. I've been frankly taken aback by the tremendous, and sometimes mean-spirited, amount or criticism aimed at folks making this complaint"

I haven't paid enough attention nor played enough games to gather whether or not this is really a problem. However, there are several posters at OS who claim the "lefty power" bug is untrue. Now, I remember Badgun saying that he hasn't hit a homer with Edmonds in a dozen or so games, so I don't know what to believe.

That's 50 games. I've played all 50 of my franchise games and haven't simmed one inning and in those 50 games, Edmonds has not even as much as reached the warning track. No near misses...not even close. On the other hand, Pujols and Rolen have combined for 36 in those same games. It's definitely an issue.

Badgun · Post by **Badgun** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:21 pm

Finally in my 51st franchise game, I hit a homerun with a left hander. Jim Edmonds hit a "he knew it when it left the bat" shot this morning.

Digital Sportspage

MVP...simming the fun out of it?

MVP...simming the fun out of it?

Re: MVP...simming the fun out of it?

Re: MVP...simming the fun out of it?