Members of the MLB The Show 17 development team recently held a live stream to touch base with fans for the first time since the game was released in late March.
Community Manager and Game Designer Ramone Russell welcomed us in talking about the not-so-smooth launch of this year’s. game. Specifically focusing on server issues and what’s been done since to stabilize the games shaky servers. While stressing there have been numerous maintenance sessions done and more going forward in an attempt to keep things running smoothly.
Developer, Chris Gill joined Ramone to talk about the game’s hitting engine. A source of contention for fans. Chris explained how certain things work such as swing timing affecting exit velocity, and how you can still hit for power to the opposite field even if you have to pull your hands in and are slightly late, especially if you are controlling a good hitter.
He also explains that being slightly late or slightly early shouldn’t be looked at as a negative and you shouldn’t expect to see bad results from that. Then he mentions that sometimes you can square up the ball perfectly but still hit a fly ball or ground ball because there is not a direct relationship to the perfect timing and where the ball hits the bat. It was explained that it’s not a 1:1 relationship as timing thresholds have to bleed over.
They also feel that stacked teams could be the issues with too many home runs being hit. But they are always looking at telemetry data. And in-fact they have a new telemetry data dump coming soon, and will make adjustments as needed.
Steve Hass, Live Content Manager joins the stream and talks about some of the fun stuff we can expect to be coming soon. He announced a few events that will be taking place over the coming days and weeks.
The first event is Showdown 1. This will pit a team of pitchers versus hitters with the AL as the pitchers and the NL as the hitters. There will be no Diamond players allowed in this event and the team overall must be a 78. The same for Showdown 2 except the AL will be the hitters and the NL, the pitchers. Showdown 1 began on June 30th and goes until July 6th, and Showdown 2, will run from July 11th to July 16th.
Also, a new event called Moonshot will run directly in between the Showdown events. Now much info was given on this event, but as the name suggests, it will be hitter friendly.
Some other notes to round out the stream:
- Battle Royale Flawless rewards will be out tomorrow. A 97 or 98 overall flashback.
- Ranked Season in Battle Royale will be back with special pack rewards.
- Ranked Seasons Monster continues through July 12th.
- Next Ranked Seasons Monster on July 13th, rewards will now give you 4 players.
- All-Star Summer Free All-Star Series pack. Chance of Diamond player.
- Patch 1.10 is in the works.
To close everything out Ramone lets everyone know that when there are issues going on with the game, they know right away and ask for patience before they can respond. And always know they are working their hardest to get everything fixed.
And as always they welcome all of our feedback.