MLB The Show 23 Tech Test Impressions

 

MLB The Show 23 went live with its Tech Test on February 15. Open to anyone wanting to play, the Tech Test provides our first hands-on experience with MLB The Show 23. Naturally, this means we get to experiment with gameplay and get a feel for what the final product might look like. SDS talked about some nuanced changes to gameplay in the gameplay feature premiere, so I was excited to spend some time with ’23.

MLB The Show 23 Tech Test Impressions

The first thing we saw when booting up the Tech Test was the new menu interface. The background and tabs are sleek and dark, and I’m a big fan of the design. Navigation was buttery smooth with no lag or latency of any kind. Often in previous Show titles, the menus would feel sluggish and buggy. At least in the Tech Test, the menu navigation actually felt modern and responsive, and I certainly hope that carries over into the release.

Staying on the subject of visuals, the MLB The Show 23 Tech Test also showed off the new squad menu. Moving on from the traditional design, MLB The Show 23 will have a Tron-like baseball diamond as a backdrop with the cards you’re using placed at their positions. I’d love to share some photos but, at least on Xbox Series X, screenshots and video were not allowed. Nonetheless, I really do love this new design, and while it’s just menus, it’s a pretty important part of any gaming experience.

We do not have to cycle through menus or back in and out, either. This new design is fluid and all-encompassing. If you tab all the way to the right, you land on your lineup screen where you can build your batting order and see your bench. You can’t swap positions in the lineup screen, but with how smooth and responsive the menus are you can swap out players in your depth chart screen and tab right back to the lineup screen seamlessly. Again, this might sound trivial but I think it’s pretty sweet.

Tabbing all the way down to your bench obviously allows you to make adjustments there as well. But you’ll also be able to tab down to your starting rotation and bullpen from this screen. So within one menu screen, we can now adjust our starters and bench and set our lineup while also setting our rotation and bullpen. In terms of quality of life improvements, this is simple and one of the best.

MLB The Show 23 Tech Test Gameplay

The real juice being squeezed from the MLB The Show 23 Tech Test is the gameplay. We heard some good stuff from the SDS developers when they spoke about gameplay changes that left me cautiously optimistic.

I’m pretty happy to report that my time with the Tech Test was enjoyable, and that the gameplay changes were certainly noticeable. I didn’t count the number of games I played as I bounced back and forth between offline and online, but the game feels great in both areas.

The best way I can describe how gameplay felt in the Tech Test is tight and crisp. For the last several years, there’s been consistent stuttering and lagging when playing online. In the small sample size collected during the Tech Test, online gameplay felt incredible. Legitimately better than any online experience I’ve had with The Show before. The in-game menus and activity were lightning fast. Player control, animations and gameplay all felt tight and crisp. Even when matched up against players that were taking their time between menus, the game just feels so much better than last year.

I played on Xbox Series X last year as well, but so far MLB The Show 23 actually feels like a current-generation offering. MLB The Show 22 fell short in a lot of areas, but overall it just felt like a last-generation game masquerading as current-gen. MLB The Show 23 in Tech Test form blew ’22 out of the water in terms of “feel” and that smoothness will raise the floor of the online experience.

Visually, I won’t say that MLB The Show 23 looks significantly better than last year but improvements are noticeable. Uniforms appear to have some weight and texture to them and lighting seems better. Player models just look and move better, which helps with that tight and crisp feel. Everything just looks and feels better.

Purely speaking about gameplay, MLB The Show 23 felt similar to how SDS described the game. It’s easy for developers to point out back-of-the-box bullet points to create hype, but these gameplay changes certainly felt noticeable and the game played pretty damn well.

The biggest questions I had coming into the Tech Test revolved around hitting. We got a new swing analysis window that promised more sensible feedback and, so far, it certainly appears to be working as intended™. Despite years of SDS exclaiming that the PCI does not represent the bat, we now have in our possession a literal Bat PCI setting. This gives you the shape of a baseball bat around the Perfect region, and it looks amazing. By no means does this PCI shape completely eliminate any questions, but it’s a fun visual addition, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be my PCI moving forward.

I was curious if this was indicative of broader hitting changes, but this does appear to simply be visual. The bat will angle depending on location of placement (swing plane), but it doesn’t completely eliminate off-PCI contact. I had several swings where my PCI was completely off the ball that resulted in foul balls. The amount of times this outcome plays out will speak to how much the gameplay will or will not improve. I definitely saw less foul balls overall (online and offline) than I’m used to seeing. I even experimented with contact swinging to see if it triggered more fouls, but it didn’t really appear to in a small sample size. All good things.

Another specific area supposedly addressed was increasing favorable outcomes on Good contact grades and lowering the favorable outcomes on Bad contact grades. In layman’s terms, increasing the number of hits on Good swings and reducing the weak hits from Bad swings. I’m beyond excited by what I saw in the Tech Test. It’s a common analytical method to check out the PCI Contact ratings post-game and judge the results. For example, a 15 is the highest contact grade you can achieve aside from a Perfect-Perfect, which is denoted by a “P.” If you nail a 15, that means you had near-perfect contact that implies you should smoke the ball. Throughout my online games, I kid you not that I didn’t see a hit below an 11 rating, which means all hits were 11s and above.

Basic terms? Good swings were rewarded and bad swings were punished. I had several good swings that resulted in outs, but I didn’t care. I smoked a line drive to center field with Michael Harris that ended up as a lineout. No rage, no swearing that the game is out to get me — it made sense! It was a sinker low and below the zone that I pieced up, but it was a slicing liner that was easily caught. Totally okay with feedback and outcomes that make sense.

Where I’d get upset in the past, especially last year, is when my good swings were being hit right at fielders while I got blooped to death and watched opponents score without making solid contact. If you eliminate the excessive poor contact hits, it leaves so much room for appreciating the nuance of baseball. And when you do truly piece up a pitch and smoke it into the gap for extra bases, it’s so much more satisfying seeing that instant feedback knowing you crushed the ball.

Fielding and specifically the new throw meter will take some getting used to. I love the new additions of the yellow “dirtball region” and the dynamic throw meter. I’m sure those who hate it right now will adjust over time, but it’s such a nice change of pace and I quite enjoy it. I messed up a bunch of throws, but it didn’t induce rage. I laughed, watched the runner take an extra base, and moved on. That’s baseball.

I could ramble on for many more paragraphs, but I’ll keep it simple: MLB The Show 23 feels amazing in Tech Test form.

Concerns

While I’ve enjoyed the Tech Test and my hopes for MLB The Show 23 are even higher, there are certainly some areas of concern.

Notably, there’s been a lot of questions about the strike zone. There have been pitches that are entirely in the strike zone called balls with no clear explanation. There’s plenty of theories abound that this is either variable strike zones or catcher framing. I’ve tried experimenting with high fielding and reaction catchers and lower-rated fielders but haven’t picked up any noticeable patterns. This could be a nuanced system potentially affected by those attributes and potentially even a pitcher’s BB/9 or control ratings. If so, SDS should absolutely comment on the systematic changes in place so we can adjust.

If it’s something like unique umpire strike zones, that’s also potentially a really cool addition. Imagine if there were a dozen unique umpires in the game all with unique zones. A database could be established on what each umpire calls, which would add a variable to every single game played. For casual players, it might seem like a strike zone that simply doesn’t work or maybe they’d see it as real baseball. For more competitive players, it would be another layer added to the skill gap. Knowing umpires and their zones is a realistic scouting component for Major League teams and having a distilled version of that in the game would be interesting and unique.

If it’s common knowledge that the game works that way, then it’s up to the players whether they adjust or not. I love the idea. But until we get clarification from SDS, there’s no way to know. For all we know, this could be a bug in the Tech Test that gets ironed out.

Another concern I have involves pitching. There’s been a lot of chatter across the community about perfectly released pitches ending up outside the PAR zone. I experienced this multiple times myself and this is absolutely something that needs to be cleaned up. Taking away a perfect input and introducing randomness is the last thing any game needs — especially a game like MLB The Show that’s actively working on making input matter more. Hopefully this is something easy to correct and is fixed before launch, but it’s going to be a concern until SDS alleviates it.

Finally, the biggest concern I have involves hitting on All-Star. That’s where most online games take place in MLB The Show and there’s never really been a skill gap at that level. I played mostly on Hall of Fame and Legend during my time so far, and the PCI/Vision size is definitely smaller. But All-Star difficulty often includes massive PCIs, and I’ll be extremely curious if we end up seeing similar gameplay in the final release. All-Star has often felt like foul ball central because of PCI size, so it remains to be seen what we get at launch. Unless SDS finally implements some kind of difficulty selection for online play, it’ll be another year of All-Star purgatory if the gameplay changes aren’t as noticeable on that difficulty.

Bottom Line

MLB The Show 23 is off to a promising start thanks to the Tech Test. The nuanced gameplay changes were noticeable and felt really nice. In lieu of wholesale engine changes, SDS opted to make improvements on the margins in multiple areas, and it appears to have worked wonders. The concern will come from All-Star gameplay and that will be a true test of the reduced foul balls and weak contact hits. My testing experience showed significant improvements in those areas, but how will it play out with increased PCI and vision cones on All-Star? Again, some kind of difficulty choice or competitive playlist would make this irrelevant but for now it remains a concern.

However, it also needs to be said that the final product in ‘22 didn’t quite resemble the Tech Test last year. Specifically, the Dynamic PCI did not appear to function anywhere close to how it felt in the Tech Test or how it was described. We’ve heard a lot about the decreased foul balls and weak hits, but if SDS decides to back off that stance a little to appease players who struggled, then we might end up closer to MLB The Show 22 gameplay than most of us want.

For now, I’m still optimistic. There appears to be clear work and execution in making the game play and feel better and that’s really all we can ask for right now.

What are your thoughts on the Tech Test? Do you feel any noticeable changes or does it feel like more of the same to you?