MLB The Show 20 is now just under eight weeks away, and we have been treated to the first gameplay trailer to soak our appetite for the new game.
The release of the trailer, and the reveal of the developer livestream schedule, was the biggest dump of information about the game we’ve had. Before that we knew very little other than the cover star and release date.
NOW WATCH BELOW to keep up-to-date with the Gaming World!
Of course, a huge part of any game is the game modes available, and in Road to the Show San Diego Studios have one of the more established career modes in any sports title.
With that said, NBA 2K’s narrative driven mode is arguably the leader, and EA have joined them in creating a cinematic story mode, while RTTS has stayed away from that.
As a result, it has to rely on improvements to its existing features to stay competitive, and after MLB The Show 19 failed to make any huge/meaningful changes to the mode, the burden has fallen on The Show 20 to elevate the mode.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about MLB The Show 20
What we want to see
While RTTS remains a huge single player mode, it does have some shortcomings and areas it can improve.
Depth
This could be interpreted differently and added to a whole host of aspects of the game, but while there doesn’t need to be a narrative with cinematics and voice actors, RTTS ultimately can feel too similar to Franchise Mode after continued gameplay.
The training mini-games, teammate relationships and interactions and personality types were good in MLB The Show 19, but more depth would take them to another level.
After several interactions and training sessions these features ultimately felt fairly shallow and inconsequential, or even repetitive.
How do you make them deeper? Adding more training exercises and making some of the mini-games more difficult as your ratings improve would go a long way, while also offering a touch more realism and replayability to the mode.
READ MORE: MLB The Show 20 Trailer reveal – watch it here!
As far as the personality types are concerned, having more situations that affect your personality in different ways would be a good start. Personality isn’t as straight line as becoming more ‘maverick’ and not having your others change.
Being able to merge personality types more, and have them affect the types of interactions you can have further down your career would make it feel much more impactful while keeping it fresh as the game advances.
Social media
Social media use is one of the biggest aspects of professional sports, off the field at least. In an era of marketing, franchises like NBA 2K, FIFA and Madden NFL have incorporated social media use into game modes to varying levels of depth and success.
READ MORE: Washington Nationals player rating predictions
In RTTS you have a social media feed, but you can do nothing more than see a few novelty tweets by some teams and fans. Adding interaction with them and social media decisions can further your personality type and the opinion of you in the locker room, by high level executives and fans.
If realism and playability is the goal of RTTS, adding this would make it even more immersive, which is ultimately far more satisfying for the gamer.
Diverse storylines
This doesn’t mean adding cinematics and voice actors, but just making your experience more customizable.
In Madden NFL 20’s Face of the Franchise mode, despite some issues, you impact where you are drafted based on your on-field performance. Meaning you can go undrafted with poor ratings, so you have to grind to stay on the roster, or you could be a first overall pick with high initial ratings and great expectations, bringing a new set of challenges.
Whereas in RTTS you will always be an AA player with low ratings who has to slog through the minors. It’s not realistic and is repetitive year upon year. You can’t impact your starting OVR or draft position all that much.
Perhaps adding a shortened senior year of high school, like in NCAA Football, NBA 2K with March Madness, and Face of the Franchise in Madden 20 with the College Football Playoff. It changes starting ratings and expectations once you’re drafted, which makes your play even more consequential and the mode more replayable.
Meaningful contracts
For your player to play for a team you need a contract, obviously. But in most sports games they mean nothing. It is just a figure on the screen for you to judge yourself on (which your player rating does anyway).
Contracts should be made to mean something to improve realism in RTTS, which could be done in two different ways.
First, there could be options to spend that money in the game, bringing financial management into the mode. Want to buy your parents a house? You can – which in turn impacts your personality. But, if you’re too reckless with your money it can ruin your player’s career.
READ MORE: Philadelphia Phillies player rating predictions
Alternatively, contracts could pay in game currency. Your RTTS player could play for Stubs that you can use in Diamond Dynasty. This would limited, but it would make contracts meaningful while also promoting other game modes from playing RTTS. The entire game experience would improve.
What do we know so far?
With the release relatively close, we do now have some information on new features.
Multi-Reward challenges
This feature seems to add to the personality system.
Dynamic challenges are a great feature and were very valuable to improving your player. Now, based on a shot in the trailer, you can impact your personality types while improving your ratings based on dynamic challenges.
For example, getting a hit after taking the first pitch could improve your plate discipline and contact, and improve your maverick personality.
This gets a thumbs up from us.
Dynamic on-field relationships
Another shot of the trailer showed your player going to turn a double play. After throwing to your teammate at second base the ‘friendship’ emblem (two hands shaking) pops up above your teammates head.
While that’s all we have on this feature, it seems to suggest that having strong relationships with your teammates may assist your on-field performance.
Alternatively it could mean that turning double plays or getting assists/making good plays will improve your relationships.
Either way it adds more depth and purpose to the personality and relationships feature, so it’s another thumbs up from us.
NOW WATCH BELOW: The official gameplay trailer
Considering the overall quality of MLB The Show 19 and RTTS, and the sneak peak of a few new features we’ve seen, we are very excited for MLB The Show 20 RTTS and can’t wait for March 17.
READ MORE: Oakland A’s player rating predictions
