Saturday, February 28, 2009

Ah the Wonderful World of Slider Adjustments

And the slider fun truly begins in earnest. (Said with all due sarcasm.) Jonah forwarded the following to me re: AI pitch sliders:

bigfnjoe96 posted:
The sliders posted are for the AI Pitching which I've already have a nice set.. Send these to Bill Todd to test...
AI Pitch Success: 10-25(10 lowest & 25 being the highest)
AI Pitch Selection: 100
AI Strike Zone: 25-50
AI Pitch Zone: 25-50
AI Composure: 75
I've tried these in one game and there's a definite difference to the pitcher's game with these. I even had my first batter get hit by a pitch; a first. I'm putting AI Strike Zone further down than this (trying 15) because it still felt like the AI was painting the edges of the strike zone more than it should. However, I'm not particularly skilled at ID'ing balls and stirkes, so it's pretty likely I just need the extra handicap.

As for the hitting sliders. My goal was to find something to get the hitter to take more pitches when they're located in the zone. Since I went up to All Start level (in my second or third game) the AI hardly ever fails to swing at a pitch in the zone. Here are the AI hitting sliders:

AI Batting Success
AI Batting Contact
AI Batting Power
AI Pitcher Handedness Influence
AI Inside Edge Batting Zone Influence
AI Batting Pitch Influence
AI Bunt Contact
AI Bunt Success

Hmmm. Seems we're missing the, "for the love of humanity, leave the bat on your shoulder for once!" slider. Bummer. I tried a game with Batting Contact reduced in the theory that a swinging strike is as good as a taken strike, but I was wrong. Watching the AI flail away, missing pitches with the slightest hint of movement just isn't much fun. I'm not sure there's a good way around this. Hopefully the 2k community is more industrious than I. (They usually are. I don't care enough about this stuff to be good at it.)