MLB The Show season now half over entering the month of September, we’ve all had plenty of time to fully get a grasp on the good things San Diego Studios did with this year’s title, and things that could be improved on or redone. Many new additions were brought into Diamond Dynasty this year, which I feel brought many new players to the MLB community. Here is what I think SDS should work on for the next addition of “The Show” franchise.
ADDITION OF NEW LEGENDS
All in all, San Diego Studios did a MUCH better job this year of making it so every Diamond Dynasty team isn’t the same; 99 Trout, 99 Miggy, 99 Ted Williams, etc. In total I have counted 55 legends at the time of recording this video. They added almost double the amount of players from the past this year. But why stop there? Fulfill the baseball nuts dreams, and spend some money to get licensing to players such as Ken Griffey Jr. or Mike Piazza.
BATTLE ROYALE VS. FRIENDS
A big part of online gaming, is playing with your friends. Battle Royale in my opinion was probably the biggest addition they made to this year’s game, but I would like to see an option to draft a team like normal, but get to play against your friends. The system would work much like Madden’s Draft Champions where you don’t follow the regular rewards pattern, instead it’s simply for fun any you would not be rewarded with anything, aside from the stubs and XP you earn in game.
MOMENT CARDS
Log into any “Ultimate Team” style game mode. 2K, Madden, FIFA, NHL, they all have cards that are rewarded to players based on one game’s performance, or a couple of games. Moment cards along with more unique flashbacks and legends would be another nice way to make sure you don’t constantly see the same players/teams. Let’s say a .190 hitter on the year blasts four home runs in one game. Awesome performance, but considering he’s still having a pretty bad year, he shouldn’t receive an “upgrade.” Instead, give him a “Moment” card with increased power that honors the great game he played.
FEED ALL BUTTON
With all the new flashback players coming into the game this year, many are “rookie” editions of a player that once obtained, a special mission will show up, prompting you to do a certain task and once completed move onto the next tier. Then, you “feed” cards to your Diamond Dynasty player, improving your player, and giving you a percentage to the amount needed to finish the rookie’s missions and receive the Prime edition. The problem, is if you plan on feeding many of the same card, you must go back and forth, being very tedious and time consuming. A simple, “Feed All” button would speed things up so much.
IMPROVE CONQUEST MODE
Conquest is a mode where you take your own Diamond Dynasty team, and attempt to conquer the entire United States of America by defeating all 30 MLB team’s strongholds. The mode is a very fun mode if you want to play vs. the computer, but many found some problems. Like I said, the idea is very good, but it takes very little time or skill to beat the mode very quickly. If they make it more difficult to stampede over all the teams, and to where it takes longer for most players than a week to accomplish, it could be even better next year.
MORE TEAM CUSTOMIZATION
Diamond Dynasty I believe was the first to introduce uniform and logo customization in a “Ultimate Team” style mode, and that was back in ’12. Uniform customization is good, but as far as logos go, 2K Sports took a leap ahead of them. Currently, you must manually or use the community logo share vault to find a logo for your DD team. Adding a feature similar to 2K where you can upload a picture from the web for your logo would not only make things much easier, but also allow so many more opportunities for your team.
MORE MISSIONS
This year missions that gave you rewards for getting a certain number of hits or collecting the entire Red Sox team would give you Stubs, XP, and players. Inclusion of daily, weekly, and monthly missions would give players another reason to want to log on more. You can offer stubs, xp, tickets, packs, and players as rewards for completing these.
MULTIPLE LINEUPS
Once again, pretty much all games have this. Multiple lineups to fit any play style you may want to go for. May it be, power, contact, speed, or elite defenders, the only way to switch is to manually put in each and every player, every time you wish to play a different way.
BATTLE ROYALE IMPROVEMENTS
Starting Pitchers have almost NO value in Battle Royale, which is a quick three-inning game that offers rewards based on how far you make it “up the ladder.” Most people will tell you to just draft a good bullpen, and you will only need your starter for the first out or maybe the first inning. I suggest to instead only require three pitchers, making the odds of getting a diamond pitcher you may have drafted much better than a 1 out of 5 chance. Or, you can allow the player to pick their own starting pitchers, with restrictions. Like, not allowing the same pitcher to throw back to back games, and maybe also cut their stamina in half to make sure they can’t abuse the system.
CONSISTENT ROSTER UPDATE FRIDAYS
Roster Updates release every Friday… That’s all we know. I find it very frustrating as an avid player of this game that they can’t consistently put out the roster updates at the same time. I’ve seen it be released at 2 A.M., and then next week not come out until noon. I would just like to see them stick with ONE time, so you can always come to expect when the rosters will be updated, as players always go up and down based on performance, which changes Diamond Dynasty overalls, and the prices of those players.
Overall, I love this game. Compared to last year’s title, there are new modes, many new cards, and just so many new reasons to start playing Diamond Dynasty. But of course, every game has its flaws, and things it needs to work on year in and year out. Hopefully these suggestions can be added or improvements made to make MLB the Show 17’s Diamond Dynasty mode the best one ever. Watch out for my next MLB The Show 17 Wish List coming soon!