OSFM – NoobTubeTV

Pick Bad Teams For Franchise Mode At Your Own Peril In MLB 18

As I finished downloading the OSFM 1.5 Roster I started to think about which team I wanted to use for my initial three-year contract on MLB 18: The Show’s Franchise Mode. Most aspects of Franchise Mode are generally fun for those of us that enjoy crunching numbers in terms of which players we can afford and how we can project our team succeeding because of our prowess as a General Manager.

Josh Bell MLB 18 — Josh Bell’s Lone Home Run In My Time With The Pirates (12 Games) was to the shortest part of Comerica Park. (Where Home Runs Go To Die)

I generally avoid using top-tier teams because it takes the roster building out of the game in the initial season for the most part. That left me with a few teams I wanted to test out for the sake of their stadium and the players I’d be working with.

I have no desire to use the Marlins or the Rays because I truly can’t stomach either stadium and believe that both teams should be relocated for the sake of obligation to cities that actually have good sports fans no matter how their team is doing… that’s right – ‘shots fired’.

This left me with trying the Braves, Tigers, and Pirates.

The Braves would have been a great one to use before they lost a bunch of their top prospects because they violated numerous laws in the real world. So, that means you get Freddie Freeman as your power bat and then Dansby Swanson and Ronald Acuna. Sure, two prospects that have a lot of promise is nice, but wow… the team is hot garbage outside of that.

Onward, you have the Pirates, a team that is half-gutted with a couple mediocre additions in Musgrove and Dickerson. Once you realize that the team has virtually no one that can hit for power (Josh Bell is meh…) you will see that they have even worse pitching and you are wasting valuable trade currency by keeping Marte and Harrison around. I feel the same about Romero as the closer… seriously, why would any team keep a 90+ OVR closer if they won’t win more than 70 games? This team is at least another five years away from winning in any sort of sim experience.

The Tigers… well, let’s just say that Miguel Cabrera is literally the only player worth anything to your lineup. Fulmer seems to be a shadow of his former rookie year exploits. The rest of the team and the farm system are basically a perfect personification and ‘playerfication’ for the city of Detroit. Trash is less trashy than the MLB 18 version of the Tigers. Add to it that they have a stadium that is conducive to boring baseball with the furthest Center Field wall in the MLB and no real way to rob home runs if you had a player that could jump – yeah – it’s that bad.

The only saving grace is that these teams will give you longevity in your journey to build a team from nothing. Outside of that – you will see that being a poor team in money and in performance is an aneurism waiting to happen. Well, not waiting… give it about five games – it’s a short waiting period for a video game aneurism.

Good Luck!

MLB 18 The Show – Sliders and Rosters

This year I will not be waiting for the OSFM Rosters. I will be using rosters for Franchise Mode that incorporate the top prospects with limited ratings changes and special attention to the potential ratings of these new players.

mlb-the-show-18

After simming through to draft day a couple of times I found that there are usually between one and a maximum of three players with 99 Potential in any draft class. I would argue that it should be rare for there to be three with that top rating… 95-98 should be just as rare in my not so humble opinion.

By midnight tonight I will also have sliders uploaded to the MLB Vault under the name ‘NoobTubeTV Sliders v1.0’. The roster will be named ‘NoobTubeTV Opening Day Roster’. This is primarily because I don’t find a lot of value in having completely updated rosters from June 15 if I have to start every season on March 29… it doesn’t bode well for the in-game rosters staying where you want them to be if you have CPU Trades turned on in this case.

I have also switched my batting camera from Fish Eye to Strike Zone 2. This gives a bit more immersion and makes it fun to judge balls and strikes. I have come to love this camera angle for Franchise mode.

Pitching difficulty has always left me a bit irritated because I can’t tell if it’s actually only for pitching or if the CPU batters are also more difficult. While I don’t particularly enjoy striking out 16 batters every time I pitch, I also don’t have a lot of joy when it comes to Legend difficulty and CPU batters hammering 10 home runs a game off of me. To that end, I have decided to stick with dynamic pitching difficulty at this point with the slider left at default for adjustment.

I have also gone to my house rule of pitching until I allow a CPU Run. This makes sure that I start every game batting and pitching and if I want to get those big strike out totals and such, I have to earn them and hope I shut out the CPU in the process. I have only managed to do this twice over the course of 15 games so far.

The three strike out rule with walks and home runs to counter-balance those outs has also given me a lot of fun games and more walks than I can remember in past iterations.

Speaking of more walks, I have been having a heck of a time trying to get the pitching sliders to function in a way that will allow the CPU to give me more reason to take pitches. The first couple of games I played felt like three out of every four pitches was a hitable strike. I have since changed the sliders around in a way that has produced a lot of fun at-bats.

Speaking of fun at-bats. I am all for having ‘realistic stats’ and gameplay. However, I noticed an incredible lack of hitting on the user side with All Star difficulty. I would have hits timed well and with the default hitting set to zone, I would also have location perfect… only to have a weak grounder or a popup. It felt realistic for a couple of games. Then it eventually felt cheap as the CPU would have the same contact for line drives in the gaps and seeing eye grounders. This has led me to adjust the first sliders to benefit the user in a way that gives a bit more solid hits and forgiveness for what I believe is a continued timing issue in MLB. This has been well documented by the community of MLB The Show and I prefer to change my sliders instead of complaining about it in forums.

The only aspect of this I have noticed is that I am seeing a lot more triples than I had back in MLB 17 (or any iteration of The Show). I have also noticed that it gives me a lot more long fly ball outs and feels appropriate when looking at home runs. I will most likely make an adjustment at some point when they undoubtedly patch something in the game and break the functionality of my first slider set. That’s how it goes in sports gaming – you deal with the little things that annoy you so you can have a great time.

Speaking of a great time, I am truly enjoying the game this year and hope SDS continues to listen to the community the way they have been. Look for the Opening Day NoobTubeTV files in the MLB Vault in the next few hours. Here are the slider adjustments as of today if you don’t have internet to download the uploaded file.

Slider Adjustments (All other sliders are default unless stated below)

Human Batting

Power +2

Timing+1

Foul Frequency -1

Solid Hits +1

Human Pitching

Starter Stamina +1

Reliever Stamina -1

CPU Batting

Contact +1

Foul Frequency -2

CPU Pitching

Starter Stamina +1

Reliever Stamina -1

Control -1

Strike Frequency – 1

Pickoff -1

Fastball Speed +3

Offspeed +3

Global Settings

All Errors +1

Fielder Speed -1

Trying To Bring Life Back Into Madden 13 – Updating Rosters

Now that off-season free agency has started and many of the stars have realigned throughout the NFL (with plenty of time left for more movement) there are many Madden fans left wondering why they should bother playing the game now that EA’s roster updates have been over for a month.

Your Madden 13 isn't quite dead yet. — Your Madden 13 isn’t quite dead yet.

I am happy to announce that there is a simple home remedy that I will be undertaking as we get closer to the draft – updating rosters manually. This is a substantial undertaking as Madden isn’t always the most end-user friendly game for roster editing. I did a similar service for Madden 12. While the XBox 360 is horrible for simple save transfers, here is a link to the NTTV post back in August that should help you out.

The rosters will be updated to the best of my ability to follow along with the busy free agent season. There will need to be some testing for how these might work in CCM. If you would like to assist with any roster moves please leave comments or like us on Facebook and post your suggestions!

If anyone would like these updates to be done for Madden 13 on PS3 you might have to donate a game to the cause as I have a PS3 but do not have Madden 13 for the console.