Diamond Dynasty Year in Review: Game Modes

It is officially 2023, which means MLB The Show 23 is getting closer by the day. Now that the confetti has fallen, it’s time to get back into our look back at MLB The Show 22. Previously we talked about all things content and discussed the pipeline for said content in the form of programs. To start off the new year, we’re going to look at the game modes found within Diamond Dynasty.

Diamond Dynasty Year In Review: Game Modes

Offline Modes

One of the weakest aspects of Diamond Dynasty has always been the lack of real modes for offline players. The narrative often cycles to the idea that Diamond Dynasty is an online-focused experience, which certainly holds some truth. But the game also offers an offline element that makes it a part of the package. The offline-suite within Diamond Dynasty has been embarrassingly barren for years, and SDS appeared ready to shift that narrative with MLB The Show 22.

The offline community has long been asking for improvements across Franchise and Road to the Show, which is an entirely different discussion. In regards to DD, that same stale feeling was in full-effect and that prompted SDS to introduce Mini Seasons.

Mini Seasons

Mini Seasons was one of the biggest additions to MLB The Show 22, and at launch it appeared to be the missing link for offline players. Boasting a 28-game regular season and two rounds of playoffs against seven CPU-controlled teams, Mini Seasons was a fresh way to play Diamond Dynasty. Borrowing from the now retired Extra Innings mode, the CPU-controlled teams were actually replicas of real Diamond Dynasty teams constructed by rival DD players. Unlike Extra Innings, those teams featured static names and logos that never changed despite the roster evolving throughout the year. The CPU teams had somewhat unique “personalities” in the sense that the Cairo Cats always featured the best cards in the game, which represented the more competitive teams.

Outside of that, there was really no personality to speak of within Mini Seasons all year. This resulted in a big pivot for me since at the start of the season I wrote that Mini Seasons was a major victory for offline Diamond Dynasty players. At the time it felt true because it was so new and fresh. But over the first couple months of release, and as The Show trekked on over the summer, it became apparent that SDS wasn’t invested in the mode.

Part of my excitement toward Mini Seasons stemmed from the free card advertised for winning the championship. At launch, it was a modest Evan Longoria that certainly fit the bill of a solid reward card for a fair amount of time invested. SDS never explicitly stated that card rewards would rotate monthly, but it felt like a logical conclusion to draw along with the expiring missions that could be completed for additional rewards. The reality was we didn’t get a new card reward until late summer with Takashi Okazaki Johnny Damon. As the content cycle died out, Finest Willy Adames was added to the championship spoils.

When we talk about missed opportunities in MLB The Show 22, the lack of attention given to Mini Seasons ranks up there for me. Aside from the disappointment of not getting rotating cards each month, Mini Seasons just suffered from being as stale as anything else in the game.

Teams were based on real DD squads but there wasn’t a real variance to the rosters once you played the mode a couple times. Squads didn’t feel like they really scaled with the new cards being injected into the mode. As better cards released and our own teams improved, the CPU teams often lined up with the same cards from launch. Pitching to gold cards like Jim Edmonds deep into the summer just felt bad. That’s not to say that the teams never got better or changed, it just didn’t happen quickly enough to give the mode replayability.

The missions that were available often weren’t really challenging. They were just very specific team-build missions and often required much more time to complete than the rewards were worth. We did get some that were worth farming over and over, but at that point we weren’t really playing the game. The mystery missions were even more confusing. They were almost always negative outcomes paying out rewards. Committing errors or getting caught stealing is how you lose baseball games, yet these are real examples of mystery missions that paid out one-time rewards. Where was the value in adding these missions? You can say I’m just being negative but intentionally throwing the ball away or forcing steals and getting caught for rewards is just a strange design choice. Maybe it was a fun twist for some folks but it never made sense to me.

The one positive that held throughout the year was the reward payout for the time investment. If you got to 15 wins, you were virtually guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. You could then quit out of the remaining regular season games and sweep your way to the championship. I mentioned the lack of a new card reward each month, but every championship run netted the Championship Bundle, which featured 15 Show packs and a Ballin’ Is A Habit pack on top of stubs and XP. The mode got stale quickly and ultimately disappointed, but that reward payout was especially worth it early in the year while working towards collections.

Mini Seasons just fell flat. There’s no stat tracking of any kind, which means no continuity between seasons. I loved having another way of playing 3-inning games but that was also a valid complaint from plenty of people. Not having the option to play 6 or 9 inning games within Mini Seasons left many players feeling like it wasn’t worth their time if they wanted longer or fuller games.

Having tangible short-form and long-form game modes would provide much more variety for people to choose from and could even come with different tiers of rewards based off difficulty or game length. Realistically, there just wasn’t that much effort put in to maintaining Mini Seasons, which left it as an afterthought. On top of the other issues mentioned above, it went from feeling like a major victory to being a major letdown.

Conquest, Showdown, And Play Vs. CPU

I won’t spend much time on these modes as they are identical to past years. Conquest is the RTS-style territory-capturing mini-game that leads to 3-inning games to capture Strongholds. Showdown is simply a group of moments that leads to batting practice against a featured pitcher with an uninspired “drafting” format to curate your team throughout the challenge. Play vs. CPU is notable as being the only way to play a full 9-inning game with your DD squad offline.

SDS didn’t really do anything revolutionary with these modes and that’s part of the major problem for offline players. There’s just nothing to do. Once we get two months into the content cycle, the players on our squads change and that’s it. Conquest usually pays out a nice amount of packs and stubs, but for me it’s such a tedious mode that becomes more chore than pleasure. I dig the 3-inning game structure, but I have zero interest in capturing territories in a baseball game.

Showdown is a mode I typically avoid when possible as I absolutely loathe moments. Play vs. CPU often brought out the absolute best of MLB The Show 22 for me. Being able to nestle in to a full-length game on Legend in my created stadium was a blast. I truly had some of my best moments in this mode, and it makes me wonder why SDS does not give us more options to play like this? Why can’t we have a longer offline season mode with stat tracking and rewards based on difficulty? I don’t think there’s a ton of effort that needs to be put into making the offline DD experience better. Mini Seasons is a good start but we need more. I prefer playing online, but The Show often shines offline on Legend, and I would love a reason to play it that way more often.

Online Modes

The only new addition to the online front of DD in MLB The Show 22 was co-op. Another feature advertised during the pre-release hype that sounded like a game changer and fell completely flat. I can’t even comment on what the gameplay was like in co-op because I couldn’t get into a game all year. Every single time I tried queuing into a co-op game I got stuck in the matchmaking menu and never got beyond. It was a similar experience during the playtest phase pre-launch, except I actually got into a couple games during that time. I tried many times over the course of the game cycle yet I never had a chance to play co-op. I didn’t have a problem playing online in any other capacity and all my personal networking was in shape. The mode simply never worked for me.

I can’t comment on how the game played in co-op but will certainly comment on the lack of rewards for the mode. I’ll give SDS credit for communicating that they didn’t want a reward path in place until they felt they nailed the experience. Given that I just said I didn’t get to experience the mode at all, perhaps it makes all the sense in the world that we never saw rewards. If the mode was unplayable for some of us, it surely had other issues that needed to be prioritized before handing out free packs. But for those who seemingly had no issue connecting, the lack of a reward path left the mode as another afterthought in a year full of them.

Events

The most notable change to Events this year came in the form of Event Rewind packs. These have been seen before but SDS started releasing them almost immediately this year. I personally loved this because it kept cards cheaper than normal, which is always something I’ll applaud. It also changed investing habits as one of the easiest ways to make stubs in the past was investing in Event rewards early. By the time the major collections started releasing, those cards would skyrocket and net you a tidy profit.

Ranked Seasons And Battle Royale

These two modes are the heart and soul of online play in Diamond Dynasty. They both feature their own program paths that pay out rewards on top of the Choice Packs for reaching the highest levels of performance. I love the BR program and the fact that you can obtain one of the Flawless cards without actually going Flawless. Not just because it guarantees a typically high-end card, but because it keeps the market in line and prevents dozens of cards from reaching the 1,000,000 stubs mark. That number makes it impossible for most players to access certain cards, and I’m firmly against that. I’d rather cards have more unique flavoring like parallels or card frames to denote someone’s prowess at the game. I hate the idea that someone is unable to use the best version of their favorite player simply because it’s impossible for them to acquire the card.

SDS tried to promote more people playing Ranked by handing out rewards based off innings played. This did absolutely nothing to prevent people from quitting games early and practically reduced the inning rewards to redundancy. I talked about this previously when I championed the addition of a more competitive online mode. For many players, the time investment of a Ranked game makes it difficult to play a lot of games. If you’re playing someone who is clearly going to defeat you, what’s the best use of your time? For some, that’s simply quitting and starting a new game in hopes of a better matchmaking experience.

Bottom Line

I think SDS really needs something new and fresh in future iterations of The Show. Whether it’s similar to the Competitive Ranked Seasons I proposed or something entirely new, even the online modes have gotten stale. MLB The Show 22 was plagued by bad gameplay all year, which made playing online more cumbersome than usual. With improved gameplay and a swath of new ways to play, MLB The Show 23 and beyond would give us plenty of productive ways to stay busy on the virtual diamond.

MLB The Show 22 introduced a new game mode but then promptly ignored it. The advent of co-op was promising but fell massively short of its promise. Ranked and Battle Royale programs were positives as were the early and regular Event Rewind packs. The one word I’ve been using to describe MLB The Show 22 is “afterthought” and so I’ll stick with it here. So much of the game felt like an afterthought and that’s especially true with game modes this year.

What are your thoughts on Diamond Dynasty’s game modes? Are you content with the offerings or is there something missing you’d like to see?

Stay tuned for the final Year In Review when we discuss the big one: gameplay.