MLB The Show is one of the most popular sports video games on the market. After being exclusive to PlayStation for most of its lifetime, the recent expansion to Xbox and Nintendo consoles has opened the series up to a whole new audience. On top of that, MLB The Show is the only major MLB console video game on the market. What was once a field full of competitors in the baseball gaming landscape has now been narrowed down to just one. How did MLB The Show beat out all of its competition?
One reason for this was its revolutionary career mode, Road to the Show (RTTS). This game mode allowed players to go through what a real MLB prospect experiences on the journey from the minor leagues to the big leagues. The mode allowed players to only control their character, giving them an authentic experience of what it feels like to be one small part of a MLB team. Road to the Show set the series apart in a way that the competition could never replicate.
However, the mode isn’t what it used to be. Back in the day, it was the top career mode in sports gaming. Now, almost every major sports game that is released has some kind of career mode. On top of that, failure to update and innovate the mode in ways that keep players engaged has left the mode a shell of its former self. Fans of MLB The Show now tend to spend more time in other modes like Diamond Dynasty. With some of the changes to RTTS, one could argue that is the intention. But others, those who picked up the game solely for RTTS, may be asking themselves what happened to what used to be one of the most talked about game modes in the genre. Well, to answer that question, we have to go back to where it all began.
Now Batting, Road to the Show
MLB 07 The Show
RTTS made its debut in MLB 07 The Show on the PS3. MLB 06 The Show had a career mode, but you controlled your entire team instead of just your player. It was just Franchise but without the management parts. This type of mode was available as the Classic option in MLB 07 The Show, while the new RTTS option allowed you to control just your player during games. This was, however, the only main difference between the two. Everything else from character creation, progression, and interactions was the same between the two options.
MLB 13 The Show
If we jump ahead six years to MLB 13 The Show, the last game developed solely for the PS3, we see a few differences in the mode. There are three sliders that you can use to adjust your player’s base attributes before you add your extra points at the end. There are also a lot more customization options. Finally, you are now able to enter the MLB draft instead of just picking a team. This seems to be where the changes end, as once you start playing the games, things are pretty much the same.
MLB 14 The Show
Now moving over to the first game on the PS4, MLB 14 The Show, we see a few new changes. You now have the option to have your player be based on a real MLB player. If you choose to create your own player, instead of the sliders from the last game we have minimum points based on your position. You also get five more points you can place wherever you want. These determine what your starting attributes are.
We also now have the prospect showcase, where you play three games and your performance determines where you get drafted, or you can still just pick your team. However, once you get past this, not much has changed. Progression has changed slightly. Now instead of spending training points on training areas with a primary and secondary attribute, you just spend them directly on an attribute itself. This is a more streamlined and focused way of increasing your attributes.
However, the core gameplay loop is still basically unchanged. You play a game, use the points you earned in that game to increase your stats, and then go play another game. That feels like that’s all there is to do. The first hour or so of the RTTS experience is the only thing that has changed since 2007. There is so little change here, you would think this was a Franchise article.
MLB The Show 16
Let’s jump ahead a couple of years to MLB The Show 16. Here we begin to see some effort to improve the mode. First, one of the three showcase games has been replaced with the Bowman Scout Day. Here you go through a couple of drills to test your skills based on your position. After this, you play the two showcase games, and you either get drafted or select your team again. But this year, we start to see some changes to the gameplay loop after you are on your team.
Now, when you finish a game, you can quickly progress your player and continue to the next game instead of loading all the way back into the RTTS menu. This is such an amazing improvement. It means I get to spend less time looking at loading screens and menus and more time playing baseball. This mode wastes as little of my time as possible and keeps me playing the game as much as possible. It is crazy to me that to this day, we have not seen another sports game implement this in their career mode.
This wasn’t the only new feature that affected the actual gameplay. The new ShowTime ability allowed players to slow down time during critical moments. You could also give up some of your ShowTime meter to equip the new perks. You can unlock perks by increasing attributes to certain thresholds. This allowed you to tailor your player to your play style. It added to the replay value of the mode, as you could make players at the same position play completely differently.
The RPG Era
MLB The Show 17
This effort to improve RTTS wasn’t a one-and-done thing. In MLB The Show 17, new cutscenes were added with multiple dialogue options. This was the first taste of having an actual story going on in RTTS. The first time you play through it, it’s really cool. However, the closer you look at these cutscenes, you start to realize that what is happening in these cutscenes isn’t that new. A lot of what happens in these cutscenes already happened in RTTS, it’s just being presented differently.
For example, in previous games, you had the choice to go to college to gain extra training points between the Showcase games and the draft. This was just a menu that would pop up showing you your options. Now, it’s a conversation you have with your advisor. The effect is the same, it’s just presented in the form of a cutscene instead of a menu.
The same is true with the old interactions menu. These are now replaced with cutscenes that will happen randomly throughout your playthrough. If you want to request a trade, you’ll have to wait until you get a cutscene where you talk to your agent. You’ll have to pick the right dialogue options to trigger that choice. The same is true with all of the other interactions. Instead of going to a menu where you can choose them once they become available, you just have to hope the cutscene pops up at some point, and you pick the right dialogue choice.
I don’t want it to come off that I didn’t appreciate the effort to add some sort of story element into RTTS. In fact, I liked this addition at the time. Besides, it was the first year of trying something like this. Certainly, these cutscenes were bound to be added to and improved on going forward. There’s no way they would just be left in the game mostly unchanged for, let’s say, the next six years.
MLB The Show 18
Moving onto MLB The Show 18, this is where things started to go downhill for RTTS in my eyes. Now when creating your player, instead of choosing which areas you want your player to excel in, you are forced to choose from a list of archetypes. These archetypes come with new caps on how high you can train your attributes. So now, it almost eliminates the possibility of being a five-tool player. If you wanted higher than 75 power, you weren’t going to be able to get higher than 40 speed. So good luck trying to make your character get a 30-30 season. This was addressed in MLB The Show 19, where now you can increase your caps through training on your off days. This meant that you could, in theory, still get up to a 99 in every attribute.
One thing that didn’t change in MLB The Show 19 though was the new progression system. Starting in 18 and carrying over to 19, progression was no longer based on spending attribute points earned in-game. Your attributes would now automatically adjust based on your in-game performance. Since it took longer to progress attributes through gameplay, this means the majority of your progression would now come from off-day training events. These events would have you complete mini-games to increase either your attributes or your cap.
Even in MLB The Show 18 where you had a hard max cap, you would start with a lower cap and need to increase that up to your max cap. So, if your Speed max cap is only 40, you would still need to spend one of your few training sessions on getting your cap up to 40, so that you could then later spend another training session to increase your speed up to 40.
Does that sound confusing? That’s because it was. And to a degree, it still is. This more complicated and time-consuming form of attribute progression led RTTS down a path that still infects the mode today. This addition of archetypes and attribute caps led RTTS to become a more restrictive mode that is focused less on player fantasy and choice and more on grinding and playtime.
Now I don’t want you to think the idea of player archetypes is awful. Other sports games have implanted this idea very well in their career modes. NBA 2K has player archetypes, as well as attribute caps in their MyCAREER mode, as did Madden NFL in their Superstar Showdown mode. So why do these mechanics work in those modes, but not in RTTS?
The main difference is that RTTS is an offline, single-player mode. Those other modes are online, multiplayer-focused modes. That means they require each player’s build to be balanced against another so that no one build or archetype becomes too powerful. RTTS does not need to be balanced. It does not matter if you get your player to a 99 in every attribute, because that would only hurt your own experience instead of the experience of several other players.
The Two-Way Dilemma
MLB The Show 21
This did change in MLB The Show 21. For the first time, you were now able to take your RTTS player online and put them on your Diamond Dynasty team. This change was not very popular with players, especially once it became clear how overpowered these players would become in multiplayer modes.
This wasn’t the only change that RTTS saw in MLB The Show 21. New live-action podcast segments were added in between games and key moments. These segments featured former players and MLB media members talking about your performance. While these were a cool addition to the mode, after your first time seeing them, they can become very repetitive. I found myself skipping past these more often than not.
The big theme of RTTS this year was the addition of two-way players. This year, you always would start as a two-way player. You would play one game as the starting pitcher, one game as a DH, and one game in the field. You would then have a conversation with your agent to decide if you want to continue with this playstyle or switch to just a pitcher or position player.
These two changes meant that the entire progression system for RTTS had to be reworked. Here is how it worked. All of your attributes would start at 30. Through gameplay, these attributes could be increased. However, they could only be increased to 50. Well, how does that make sense, especially in a game where some attributes could go all the way up to 125? Three other systems now determine the entire rest of your attributes.
First is the Loadout. These are the biggest attribute boosters. This basically replaces the archetypes from previous games. Each Loadout has a rarity rating, similar to Diamond Dynasty cards. They can either be bronze, silver, gold, or diamond. As you progress, you will unlock higher rarity loadouts with better attribute boosts. You progress your loadout by completing missions within your loadout program. These programs are basically the same as Diamond Dynasty programs. Speaking of Diamond Dynasty, there are missions in these programs that can only be completed by using your player in Diamond Dynasty. While these aren’t required to be completed to progress, it is very clear that this change was moving RTTS to be more and more integrated with Diamond Dynasty.
As you progress your loadout, you will be able to equip more perks. Perks have been reworked from the perks we had seen in previous years. Now, they are just attribute boosts. They also have the same rarity scores, so higher rarity perks will offer better attribute boosts.
The final part of your progression is your equipment. Equipment has been a system in RTTS for several years at this point and has been basically unchanged. I just hadn’t mentioned it to this point because those other games that had equipment had their servers turned off already. Because of this, I wasn’t able to get a good feel for how equipment affected progression in those games. Here, I can say definitively that equipment plays a huge part in your player’s progression. Each piece of equipment works like the perks, in that higher rarity equipment will offer better attribute boosts.
So now we have a new progression system where ratings start at 30, progress to 50 through gameplay, then from 51 to 99, or 125 for your main hitting and pitching attributes, is determined based on your loadout, perks, and equipment. Now I have said that I wasn’t a fan of the previous progression system that had attribute caps and focused more on off-day training than gameplay. So why did I not like this new system either?
First, this new system was far too dependent on the player also interacting with Diamond Dynasty. On top of the loadout program missions being tied into the mode, perks and equipment could all be purchased through the Diamond Dynasty Marketplace. This opened the door to players just using real-world money to get all the best perks and equipment. Now, in years past, this wouldn’t be as big of an issue. As I said previously, RTTS has been an offline, single-player mode up to this point. So, if you paid money to not grind out the good perks and equipment, you were only hurting your own experience.
However, RTTS has now become an online mode. Because you could now use your player in multiplayer modes against other players, this made RTTS officially a pay-to-win mode. You could pay real money and get better equipment and perks to make your player better than someone who didn’t spend money could. You would then have an overpowered player on your Diamond Dynasty squad that would be better than a similar player for someone who didn’t spend money. This exploit was used extensively in Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 21, especially early on where there were few highly rated cards.
The second reason I didn’t like this change is that it killed the replay value of RTTS. Let’s say you had a fully maxed-out player. You had all the best load-outs, perks, and equipment. Then, you decide you want to start a new playthrough at a different position. So, you delete your save file and start a new one. You will start with all of the loadouts, perks, and equipment you had in your old save file still unlocked and available to be used. The only thing that you would lose is any attribute progress you earned through gameplay. However, as we have seen, this is a minor part of player attributes.
To test this out, I created a brand new save file in February 2024. This is almost three years after the game came out. I equipped my best equipment, load-outs, and perks that I had unlocked when I originally played this game back in 2021. My player started as an 81 OVR before playing a single game. I had 87/85 contact stats and 119/115 power stats. I also had 94 speed, 66 stealing, and 81 plate vision. At this point, what is the purpose of continuing to play? I already have an incredibly powerful player. This is in no way realistic or fun.
Now you might say, well if you want a realistic experience, you should equip loadouts, perks, and equipment that would cause you to have realistic ratings. I agree that I can do that, and it is what I do when I start new playthroughs of RTTS. However, I shouldn’t have to put these restrictions on myself, the game should already do it. The game should make sure that the experience is fun and realistic, not the player. If I have to come up with weird rules and restrictions to make the game fun, then the game isn’t fun. I’m just having fun with what I have.
MLB The Show 22
Not only was RTTS completely gutted with this new progression system, but the mode also had several other small bugs and flaws. This is why MLB The Show 22 mainly only brought small quality-of-life changes to the mode. One of these changes was being able to make more than just one ballplayer. You can also now choose if you want to be a pitcher, position player, or two-way player before you start the mode. If you choose to be a pitcher, you could now actually get to pick your pitches before you start.
The Diamond Dynasty progression missions were also removed. To compensate for this, you progress your loadout programs at a faster rate. Finally, dynamic perks have been added back into the game as we saw in earlier titles.
All of these were great improvements to the mode. But they didn’t really add anything new to the mode. They were just undoing some of the mistakes that MLB The Show 21 made. Once you have made your ballplayer, nothing has really changed. You progress slightly faster, but the progression system overall is still bad. Things didn’t get any better with MLB The Show 23.
MLB The Show 23
During the lead-up to MLB The Show 23’s release, each feature premiere had been anywhere from 30-45 minutes long and had been received very well. However, the Road to the Show one was only 15 minutes long. And improved bat sounds took up the first 5 minutes or so.
The main thing added to RTTS this year was Face Scan. This feature allowed you to upload a photo of yourself to the MLB The Show Companion App and have that put onto your ballplayer’s face. This feature works alright, but it isn’t a game-changer. Other sports games have had this feature for several years now, and again it feels like all the improvements to RTTS are only in the first half hour of the experience.
The ballplayer customization menu got a facelift, but it all still works the same as it did in the last game. The final addition this year was Dynamic Challenges 2.0. Dynamic Challenges have been in RTTS since the PS3 days. They occur during critical points of a game. You get tasked to do something specific to get extra rewards. So what does Dynamic Challenges 2.0 do?
Well, not much. The challenges all seem to be the same ones we have seen in RTTS for years at this point. The only difference was that you could now earn program points for completing certain challenges. Oh, also the screen where the challenges pop up is black now.
Now What?
For me, this was the low point for the mode. While I may not have agreed with a lot of the changes made to RTTS over the years, they were at least changes. SDS made a genuine effort being put in to make the mode better. But in the last few years, it feels like the only purpose of RTTS has been to push players toward Diamond Dynasty and in-game purchases. Then on top of this, SDS decided to trot out new menus and Face Scan as the only additions to the mode last year. At that point, it’s time to call it quits.
And that’s what I did. I’ve barely played any RTTS over the last two years. I hate it because this is a mode that I loved so much for so long. RTTS still has the potential to be the best career mode in all sports games. But for it to claim that crown, SDS needs to put some major effort into transforming the entire mode, not just the first hour or so.