San Diego Studios revealed a lot of new features during last week’s stream, but one of the
features that is not being talked about and still has some question marks behind it is the new Precision Input Gameplay Engine being implemented in MLB The Show 16.
What is Precision Input?
Gameplay focused on determinism, firmly prioritizing user skill with better
benefits for accurate inputs and bigger penalties for inaccurate inputs. Basically, this will affect everything that requires timing and hand eye coordinationg including hitting and pitching. The main aspects of hitting will be noticeable in zone hitting and potentially pure analog hitting (which they are supposedly bringing back the stride).
Zone Hitting:
For zone hitters, PCI placement will have a bigger impact on your success at
the plate. This year we will see less randomness with the PCI and more
consistent feedback for each swing.
In the past, we would often see pitches where the PCI was not even touching the ball and it would result in a HR or we would see a ball squared up perfectly with good time to equate
into a weak fly out or ground out.
Hopefully this year, we see a more consistent engine with the zone hitting and users are rewarded more with good PCI placement and timing. An example of this can be seen in the images below.
Analog Hitting:
This is all speculation, but the stride is supposedly coming back. If so, then
this means the user has more control of their outcomes at the plate.
Pure analog hitting will require good timing with the stride, good timing with the
swing, and good analog placement that controls the placement of the PCI.
Users should get rewarded for better stride timing and swing timing more
than ever if this is implemented properly.
Directional Hitting:
This should be impacted the least, since the users are forfeiting the ability
to control the placement of their swings. In theory, good swings will be
rewarded more, but the problem is that when users choose to use
directional hitting they are sacrficing bat placement and leaving that feat to
be decided more on attributes. In speculation, good timing swings may be
slightly more rewarded and vice versa.
Pulse and Classic Pitching:
Pulse and Classic pitching will be affected minimally by precision input. You
may be rewarded more with good timing on the pulsations when using
pulse pitching, but classic pitching strictly goes by the pitchers’ attributes.
Meter Pitching:
Meter pitching will be impacted significantly by precision input. If the user
can consistently hit the green spot of the meter then they will hit their
spots, however if the user is off then the pitch will be off even more than
usual.
Analog Pitching:
Similar to Meter pitching, Analog will be heavily impacted by precision
input. Users will be more rewarded when they hit their intended spot and
punished when they miss.
In the past, you were not punished as much when missing a spot with analog and the ball would still go where your input took it. Now users may be punished even more, however if you can consistently hit your spots with analog then it will be very effective.
Fielding:
Precision Input may have an impact on Fielding. That is yet to be
determined, but it would affect analog throwing and button accuracy the
most.
Overall, this feature will reward those with better timing and placement.
This should be a positive, especially for online play where you want user
skill to determine the winner and not attributes, randomness, and luck.