Tweaks To Increase Hitting Difficulty And Realism

[bangus]

Thought I'd share this if anyone is interested.

I'm an old-school PC baseball gamer and grew up on the Hardball series, FPS Baseball, HH, etc. back in the early 90s. The thing that's missing for me with 2K baseball is zone hitting. I personally find timing-only to be a bit mindless and a tad too easy for my tastes. So I've been tweaking aspects of the game in order to increase both hitting difficulty and realism.

The first thing I did was raise the pitch speed slider to 100. That in itself makes the game idiotically difficult as it's just too hard to read most pitches properly. And the ability to read pitches is a huge part of the strategy of hitting, plus it's a fun aspect of the gameplay.

I then globally lowered the pitch speed of most pitchers' pitches, way down. What that does is slow down and lower the speed of all pitches, making it possible to then read pitches when playing with the pitch slider at 100. Doing this essentially reduces pitch speed to what you'd experience with the pitch speed slider at 65 or so.

Next, I edited individual pitchers' pitch speeds, and raised in particular their FB speeds back up to where those speeds were previously. In some cases I set them even higher. What this does is increase both the visual and actual differential between slow versus fast pitches when compared to the game's default setup. Meaning, an 88 mph FB will now look the same or even slower than before, while a 99 mph FB will absolutely look much faster than it previously did.

You have to see and experience this in action, but I think you can understand how this adds a degree of difficulty and realism to hitting. And especially when the CPU or your opponent brings in a closer to toss heat at the end of the game. You've gotten your swing timing down during the middle innings and are used to the speed of some scrub reliever’s FB. But then their heat-throwing closer enters the game, and suddenly it looks and feels like he's firing missiles past you compared to the FBs you’ve been swinging at for several innings.

Anyway, try it Mikey, you'll like it!

Edited March 20, 2013 by bangus