The release of MLB The Show 23 draws ever closer. But before, we move on to the next game; we need to finish looking back on MLB The Show 22. Recently, I released an article on the things I enjoyed about MLB The Show 22. Today, I am doing the exact opposite. This will be a journey through the things I did not enjoy about this year’s game.
Before we get into this though, I do want to repeat again that I did have a good time with MLB The Show 22. Besides being the first game I ever got to review and cover professionally, I had a lot of fun with the game this year. In my review of the game in April, I gave it a 7/10. Looking back, I still feel like that is an accurate score for this game. So, just because this is an article about my negative views towards the game itself, I don’t want anyone to think my view on this year’s game as a whole was negative. With all that out of the way, let’s get into it.
Hitting
My biggest gripe with MLB The Show 22 was the gameplay, specifically the hitting. Hitting felt incredibly inconsistent and unrewarding this year. When you made contact with a pitch, you had no idea what was going to happen. It didn’t matter how good your timing and PCI placement was. It just became commonplace for hitters with 110+ power in Diamond Dynasty to have Good/Good hits just be lazy flyball outs. Meanwhile, a less powerful hitter would hit a home run from the same swing.
Now I don’t expect every good swing I make to be a home run. However, consistency is the key to a fun and rewarding gameplay. Players should be rewarded for being good at the game. That is why SDS added the three different gameplay styles into the game. Online modes are supposed to play in a competitive style. This year it felt anything but competitive.
Another big gripe I had with hitting in MLB The Show 22 was the number of foul balls. This was mostly a problem when playing with other users online. No matter how far outside of the zone you threw a pitch, the other player could usually still foul it off. This led to players just swinging at everything. They knew, at the very least; they would hit a foul ball and get another chance.
Fielding
The final gripe I had with the gameplay this year is one I have had in general with MLB The Show for as long as I can remember. I have always felt that fielders, especially outfielders, move way too fast. Maybe it’s not that they move too fast, it’s that they reach top speed too fast. I think that slower outfielders should not be able to cover the same amount of ground as faster fielders. I think it should take slower players longer to reach their top speed to make plays. As it is right now, you don’t have to worry about your outfielder’s speed that much. This takes away from the strategy of setting your lineup because you just put the best hitters in, knowing their defense doesn’t matter. This also makes it harder to get a fly ball to fall for a hit since all the fielders are so quick.
Featured Programs
First off, I absolutely hated the Featured Programs format. This was done to combine the Innings Programs and Team Affinity from previous games. There were so many problems with this change. The new Featured Programs were inconsistent in how long they lasted. Some would be two weeks, some three weeks, some a month or so. It just felt hectic having to keep track of how much time was left on the program. If you were unlucky and didn’t have much time to play in one of the shorter programs, you just didn’t get those bosses.
Another problem I had with this change was the reduced number of rewards players could earn through gameplay. MLB The Show’s motto for Diamond Dynasty has always been Grind 99. This meant you could always grind out the best cards in the game only through gameplay. Diamond Dynasty had built a reputation of being the only card-collecting mode of the major sports games where you did not have to spend money to get all the cards. That changed with the move to Featured Programs.
In MLB The Show 21, the Innings Programs let players get one of three bosses. In Team Affinity, players could earn all 30 bosses from each release. With Featured Programs, it was inconsistent on how many rewards players could get through gameplay. The only consistent part was it was less than we had in previous years. The reasoning behind this was to increase diversity in lineups. The idea was players would choose whichever ones they preferred instead of just the best ones. However, players still just chose the best ones. In order to be competitive online you have to have the best cards. The only thing that this changed was now when big collections dropped, players did not have as many of the cards to begin with. This meant players now would have to purchase the other bosses that they didn’t have on the marketplace. This would be done either with stubs they already had or by buying more stubs with real money.
Other Programs
Outside the Featured Programs, the Other Programs seemed to also take a step backward. First off, I hate the fact that it is literally the Featured Programs and then just the Other Programs. Lumping every other program as just the other stuff kills the hype a bit. There were some great other programs this year: the Moonshot Program, the Postseason Program, the return of the Extreme Program. I think it would have been better though if these programs were separated out instead of all being lumped together.
My main gripe with the Other Programs this year was just that there wasn’t enough of them. The year started off with several based around the new Nike City Connect jerseys for several teams. To be honest, I could have used a few less of those. I don’t much care grinding that much for a jersey I am never going to use. As the year went on, I felt like more programs could have been added for players to grind. The Player Evolution programs were a ton of fun in MLB The Show 21, and for some reason we didn’t see as many of them this year. Towards the end of the year, we got a lot of Other Programs which made grinding much more fun as no matter what I did I was making progress towards multiple programs at once. SDS just needs to figure out how to have that level of content throughout the entire year.
Monthly Awards
Another thing I did not like about Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 22 was how long the Monthly Awards Programs took to complete. The Monthly Awards Program is supposed to be a big program. It encompasses rewards for the best players from an entire month. However, this year these programs just took too long to complete. First, you had to complete all of the Topps Now moments just to be able to start working towards the Monthly Awards cards. Then you had to complete more moments and PXP missions. The missions seemed to take especially long to finish. These programs took so long to complete, I only got the first two Lightning players. At that point I just gave up on getting the rest. Also, the Retro Lightning player not being available until the end of the month was weird. By the time players could earn these cards, they were usually obsolete compared to those that had come out since they had been revealed.
Diamond Dynasty Modes
The two new modes added to Diamond Dynasty this year also were not the best. The new Co-Op mode was a great idea that was a lot of fun when it worked. The problem is that it worked very rarely. The amount of bugs and issues this mode had throughout the year were just crazy. Add that to the fact that there were no rewards or missions for this mode and players really had no reason to play it. The new offline mode, Mini Seasons, had bugs like Co-Op, but the rewards for the mode were plentiful and repeatable. The only issue with the rewards in Mini Seasons was that it took forever for them to change. This means we were stuck doing the same missions repeatedly for the exact same rewards.
Franchise and March to October
I’m not really sure what to say about Franchise mode in MLB The Show 22. There really wasn’t anything new added to the mode this year for me to discuss. SDS advertised that they completely reworked trade logic. Despite this, trade logic was just as pathetic as previously. Two-way players are not able to be used like they are in real life, which was also advertised before the game’s release. Scouting remains overly complicated and unrewarding. The UI for the mode is in desperate need of a face lift. There just needs to be some actual effort put into bringing this mode into the modern era of gaming.
My feelings are pretty similar towards March to October. While I do like that the mode is now multi-year and you can target free agents in the offseason, there is still so much missing from the mode. There is no draft, no Rule 5 draft, no arbitration, no ability to skip certain moments and scenarios. All these missing features prevent this from being a true Franchise successor. Like Franchise, March to October will need a lot of work to get me to spend more time with it in the future.
Road to the Show
Road to the Show has been completely butchered the last few years. This is a shame since it used to be the main mode for the game. The problems are mainly due to the loadout and equipment system. These systems have ruined Road to the Show in my opinion. It forces players to focus on having better equipment and perks instead of how their player performs.
The storyline for this mode hasn’t changed since MLB The Show 17. The story is delivered in the same boring text boxes that pop up with the same boring dialogue. The story in this mode does not enhance the experience. All it does is slow down progress of the player. The podcast segments are alright, but after the first time seeing them they become very repetitive.
Overall, this mode just needs a complete overhaul. Road to the Show used to be the premiere career mode in sports gaming. But over the last couple of years, games like NBA 2K and even Madden have easily surpassed it.
eSports
While I did enjoy the two eSports tournaments for MLB The Show 22, there are some things about this year’s Summer and Fall Circuits that I feel were handled very poorly. First, SDS’s advertising for these tournaments, especially the Fall Circuit, was nowhere near what it should have been. The MLB The Show Twitter account did not even tweet about the fact that the Fall Circuit was going on until an hour before the second day of the tournament started. SDS missed out on advertising an entire day of their tournament.
The other problem I had was how long it took the winners to receive their prizes and money. The TOS for both tournaments states players would be paid within 14 business days. Despite this, the semifinalists did not receive their prize money for almost two months. SDS needs to either find a way to pay their contestants faster or change their TOS to actually match how long it takes to make the payments.
Conclusion
Looking back on my list of things I didn’t like in MLB The Show 22, it is all focused around gameplay and game modes. Gameplay has been needing some work for a while now. In game modes, Diamond Dynasty had some changes made this year that we didn’t ask for and turned out to not be that great. Every other game mode has been neglected for years now. The whole game feels stale now. We are two years into the new console generation. Outside of stadium creator you would still be hard pressed to find any major difference between the current and last-gen versions of the game. SDS needs to start making major changes to keep this game relevant in the space as we head further into this generation’s life cycle.
What changes specifically need to be made? Well you will have to stay tuned for the final part of this series where I will put together my wishlist of changes for MLB The Show 23.