Hey folks,

So I'm thinking about picking up MLB 15: The Show with it being my first ever baseball game having heard for years about it being one of the best sport games on the market. I understand some of the basics of the sport and I'm sure most of it I'd get use to the more I play, I did something similar with NBA which I played and loved for the first time these past few years and ended up watching a bunch of actual NBA games and started to love basketball and I've always been interested in baseball to give it a chance. I should note I'm from the UK and I'm not even sure if the game gets released over here but I can get a copy of the game or even a digital version of MLB 15.

Thing is, does it feature beginner friendly features for someone unfamiliar to the game or do they simply take it that all players know what they're doing and don't offer features for new players. I'd love to know as I'm seriously interested in giving MLB a chance.

Appreciate any helpful information. Thanks.

This is my first baseball video game, and if memory serves, the first video game of any sport that I've ever tried getting into, and I have certainly gotten right into it.

Being from Australia meant digital was the only purchasing option, and I assume the same will be true for yourself since we're both classified as EU. I only really started getting into watching baseball last year, but now I'm constantly googling sabermetric stat abbreviations, and have spent loads of time reading up online.

The Road To The Show mode is where I've spent the bulk of my game time so far, as a closing pitcher. RTTS puts you in control of a single player in their designated role every time they appear on the field, but you can also choose to simulate past all of the game time where you're not on the field, or not directly involved in play like standing around in the outfield, or you can even simulate through your own on-field appearances, if you just want to speed through the season; the extent of just how much simulation or actual gameplay takes place is highly configurable. It has a stat system with spendable XP, so you choose where to focus your training, as well as which attributes to develop further or allow to languish and drop off. I'm really enjoying the progression, moving through AA and AAA and then into the majors.

The difficulty for both batting and pitching has a "Dynamic" setting available, in addition to 4-5 static choices. I have it set to dynamic for pitching, so it becomes more or less tricky to time the pitches, for placement, speed, break, etc and I feel like it's always challenging me as the difficulty slides up and down, which is great. Haven't done a whole lot of batting aside from a couple practices and home run derbies, so can't really speak for that side.

There is a whole lot more to the game, with loads of different modes, franchises, collectible cards and an online marketplace, specialised batting/pitching practise sessions, home run derbies, RMT if you're so inclined, online head-to-head, weekly roster updates from the MLB proper, etc etc etc.

As an absolute beginner, I found that the UI was all a bit alien at first. It did take me a little while to get the hang of navigating all of the menus, and interpreting what each option meant and setting up difficulties and sliders the way I wanted, but you only need to sift through that stuff once, then maybe re-visit to tweak as you discover what you do and don't like.

I'm super pleased that I gave MLB The Show a chance.

Thanks for the info Jondan, some helpful stuff to get my head around. When it comes to getting into a new sport I tend to do quite a bit of reading, with the NBA stuff it was figuring out how the league itself functions and it appears the MLB isn't that different in some regards. I love manager/player modes like franchises most of the time though I do tend to struggle if I don't know all the players that well, it's not like manager mode in FIFA 15 because I've watched Soccer since I was a kid and know most of the players and the qualities they possess for trading/transferring, all the names in MLB are new to me. I'm sure much of it will become easy to understand once I start spending a good amount of time with it, some of the progressive stuff actually sound awesome to and the year to year saves is something I'd love other sport games to take on, would love that in FIFA.

Thanks again for the tips Jondan. Appreciate it.

l was in the exact same position last year. MLB The Show 14 was my first baseball and l can say the game was very beginner friendly and it does provide a beginner control layout to ease you into the sport. You'll probably pick up the main rules pretty quickly, theres the odd rule l don't understand yet but they rarely occur during an average game. It will take you time to get to know what makes a good player for example figuring out what's a good number for a batting average etc. l'm confident you'll enjoy your experience with it like l did.

Also l'm from Scotland and l bought my copy off Amazon, it's usually available on the PS Store but l've never actually seen any retails shops have them in stock.

I've been familiar with baseball games for a while so it's pretty old hat for me, but MLB 14 was the first game I'd actually purchased since MVP Baseball 2005 (depending on which pitching style you come to prefer, mine is Analog, this game pioneered the hugely influential Meter style included in MLB to this day). Since I'm fairly competent with sports games I can't tell you all the ins and outs, but I know one thing that would likely be very helpful at the onset is the option to turn the Fielding to Auto. This means that you are only concerned with the batting and pitching, the two core tenants of the game.

Even on beginner you'll likely run into situations where you're curious whether you should jump or dive, throw to second to try and get the double play or just throw to first and take the runner advancing. Or throw it directly to the base you'd like rather than the cutoff man to avoid an errant throw. By watching the CPU perform these actions on both your team and the opposing team you'd likely be able to pick up the contexts for a lot of these things much faster, and also avoid a lot of headache-inducing losses thanks to your poor angle on a line drive that allowed a single to become a triple.

I've never used this option since my experience with sim baseball goes back to the Triple Play series, and baseball as a whole back to RBI Baseball (SNES version, sadly) so I can't speak to its accuracy but I can tell you my opponents fielders tend to make MUCH smarter decisions than I do at times. I'm a real sucker for trying to get the man out at second on a blooper only to have him just barely beat the tag and then miss out on the man running to first as well, turning what could've been a man on second with two out into men on first and second with one out. Disappointing every time, haha.

Thanks for the info folks, I'll most likely get it from the PS Store at this point for ease sometime today. Nice to hear it's beginner friendly so I should be able to get the hang of it.

@machofantastico: Just a suggestion but you might want to look into finding a copy of last year's game. Unless you're really into online play or following the exact schedule of your favourite team, there's really no reason to buy this year's game over last year's. If you're just interested in a baseball game and want to see what the fuss is about, last year's game will give you all that for a lot less money.

Thanks for the tip but I've already ended up purchasing MLB 15 from the PSN Store anyway.

So I've played a few hours and have started to get around the basics. I think right now a lot of the work is being automated and I'm simply pitching and batting, though the constant numbers, stats and lingo shouted by the commentary (which appears to be pretty great) might as well be another language to me. I've played some of those live matches with actual day fixtures (basically exhibition) but I honestly don't know what mode to dig my teeth into. I usually love a manager/franchise mode but for one it's all a little intimidating and I don't really have a personal favourite team, maybe I should just give it a blast. Dynasty sounds neat though I've never really had much luck with the card based modes in other sports games, I love the idea of creating my own team and whatnot.

Well I guess I'll have to wait and see what takes my fancy. Any tips are still appreciated.

@machofantastico: Back when I was like 12 and trying to understand football, I picked up a used copy of Madden, started a franchise with the team of the cover athlete and left the difficulty on rookie. It sounds like you've already got the right idea in just playing the game for now. You'll pick up the more complicated stuff through context, and if I recall correctly they should have some kind of glossary somewhere in the game that can define some things, but if you've started reading about the Rule 5 draft or whatever, you've gone in too deep, turn around.

I'd recommend that for now, when you're looking at a player card, stick with the basic stats. The more advanced stuff like K/9, WHIP, and whatever else they've got on there isn't anything you need to worry about at this stage. Look around the rosters at the great players and check out their batting average, their runs batted in. You'll learn how these players distinguish themselves. I'll give you an example. There will usually be a speedy guy with good OBP at the top of the line up. OBP is on-base-percentage, an indicator of how often a player will end his at-bat by claiming a base, through a hit or from a base on balls (BB). Up next is usually a contact hitter. It's his job to move that guy up. Because the lead-off guy has some speed, he might even be able to move from first to third on a single, if the ball is hit in the right location. The player batting third may be the team's best all-around hitter, usually equally skilled in both contact and power. If he doesn't get the guy in, the guy batting fourth is in the clean-up spot. It's his job to "clean up" the bases, by driving in runs. More often than not, he's a power hitter and those are usually the guys on the team with the most "runs batted in". Home Runs are not the end-all-be-all, they're great to have, but if he hits a double, that's enough to bring in a guy standing on second base. There's a lot more that goes into this but I don't want to get too crazy on you. Look at line ups in those daily exhibition games, you'll start to pick up how and why managers build their line-ups the way that they do. Sorry if any of this is unclear, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.

Also, the recommendation to try out the Road to the Show mode was a good one. Focusing on just one player as you try to grasp a basic understanding of the sport itself could make it easier on you.

Thanks for the tips redyoshi, some real helpful information there. You explaining how a team is lined up makes a lot of sense to me actually, and yes I'm starting to realise that home runs (whilst awesome) are far from the bread and butter of baseball.

I think the biggest issue I've had so far is getting an hang of the different systems at play and how to best handle at-bat (see I'm talking all baseball now) because I keep wanting to hit the ball which is a bad habit because I'm realising the internal game between the pitcher and the batter. Trying to get the pitcher in a position that he's forced to throw a safe ball instead of throwing my bat at every ball he puts in, it's easy to forget this is a simulation and getting use to failing so often at-bat takes a little while to get use to. I know in baseball even the best hitters rarely hit a great run and so it's patience that's key. Right now I'm practising on batting quite a bit and getting into the habit of being patient.

I created a guy in Road to the Show and made the mistake of choosing a pitcher (and realised the pitchers don't bat) and so I'll probably restart. Franchise mode seems fun if a little overwhelming. I think once I start getting use to the flow of how it all feels I should be better.

@machofantastico: One of the things I've always felt The Show does incredibly well is making pitch type and pitch location distinct when you're batting, meaning it's not too difficult to identify what the pitch is and where its going to end up. The best advice I can give for batting is to really get the hang of what pitches look like coming out of the pitcher's hand.

Ideally you'll get to a point where you can tell the second the ball is released whether or not its something you want to swing at. I'd also reccomend not using the default batting camera and instead going for one that's zoomed in a bit more, which I find gives you a much better look pitches.

@machofantastico: Counts have a lot to do with what might be thrown your way; a 2-0 count is generally recognized as a fastball count, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Also know that if you swing at junk, you're not giving the pitcher a reason to throw anything but junk. Seriously, they won't even try to be anywhere close to the plate if you swing at everything. It gets pretty embarrassing. When I find this happening, I force myself to not ever swing at the first pitch and see if I can't get anything better if I get ahead in the count.

By the way, pitchers do bat, but only in the National League. But yeah, if you want to focus on hitting it's better to make a position player. I would usually have two separate careers running because of that.

When I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the plunge on MLB 14 last year I came across a guy from the dev team streaming the game prior to release to talk about new features and show off the graphics, and he explicitly said it's a nearly universal rule at the studio to just let the first pitch go by. I'm not sure if that's actual baseball strategy or something revealing about their code or just a preference a large number of people in the same building working on the same product developed, but it was an interesting thought.

…I tend to swing at the first pitch and ground into a 5-4-3 double play.

@nodima: That L1vingston guy, right? I was watching his stream (and am now unable to stop picking his face out in the crowds), and he was usually immediately able to tell if the pitch was bad or not once its left the pitcher's hand. He's a dev, so it should be expected, but something like that feels almost preternatural to me.

Actually, on that note, here's a link the OP might find helpful. He explains it much better than I could, as I also seem to conveniently forget his advice and ground into double plays.

Baseball is an extremely mental sport whereas most sports are about physical execution, always keep in mind about the situation!. When the devs said to watch the first pitch go by almost 100% of the time its for a few reasons. 1. As a batter you should be looking for YOUR pitch to hit. Thats usually a fastball over the middle of the plate or a slow/off speed pitch that is left up in the strikezone. Just because it is a strike does not mean you should swing, if the pitcher throws it into a good location then hitting it will result in an out most likely. Knowing the count, situation, how many outs there are, and type of batter is up all play into how the pitcher will react. 2. if you never swing at the first pitch you automatically double his pitch count (amount of balls the pitcher throws in a game). Doing this lets you get the hang of his speed and what he likes to throw. The more pitches you see during the game or at bat the better sense you get at what the pitcher offers.

In baseball, a batting average of .300 is considered really good. .270-2.90 is considered average. Many power hitters sacrifice their average for contact with power (hence the name) so their average might be .250 or so but will hit more doubles or home runs. Of course elite players will hit .310 with 25+ home runs in a regular season.

For pitchers, having a ERA (earned run average) below 3.00 is generally regarded as good or ok. The best pitchers will get below 2.0. As a baseball fanatic, I think this stat is very misleading. It is a great number to look at at first glance just to see where the pitcher stands but this number is an average amount of runs the pitcher allows over a 9 inning projection. So a pitcher might have a 4.00 ERA but if it is a start who normally lasts 5 innings before getting tired than that could mean he gave up 2 runs that particular game. It also includes outliers. Like any average in arithmetic, one high number or low number could offset it. If you have a pitcher at 6.99 ERA after the first month it could mean 2 things. He is either a terrible pitcher who does give up a bunch of runs (points) or he is doing pretty good and there was one bad game where he gave up like 10 and skewed the numbers.

If you play a regular season all of these stats will average out to show honest representation anyways. its 162 game season.

All the best!

Hi, is there an option to change pitch speed in either MLB15 the show or MLB16 the show? if so what needs to be turned on to do this? Where would it be found? Thanks.