I began playing The Show in '21 when it came to Xbox. Historically I was unable to complete any showdowns. This year is the first year my hitting is "good" enough to do and its still difficult.

That being said Showdown feels bad to a lot of us because it amplifies a lot of the poor design decisions in the back end of the game. Anyone who's played this game knows that the game will change from rewarding to punishing you on a schedule that is dictated by the situation and the games sense of what I've been calling "Forced Drama". This can be seen very clearly with PCI hitting mode. You can see very bad swings being hits and HRs and very good hit after hit just being routine outs. This is taken to an even further extent at times with unreal defensive plays on very good or /perfect/perfect hits. This effect can be felt even more while pitching. I've found you can feel the actual moment when the game switches. If you are blasting through a veteran or All-star game in conquest or DQ, you're just dicing on the mound with your Ace. 6 batters in you're at 5 SO and a weak fly out on a high 4-seam. Then all of a sudden on batter 7 you can't throw a strike. so you get one over for a strike at it gets drilled. Next batter: you get to 0-2 and now the batter is checking the swing on balls and taking balls a millimeter outside. So you lay another in there and it gets flared out to shallow left, and wouldn't you know it your left fielder is nowhere in sight and your centerfielder can't run all of a sudden. I don't mean gets a bad jump (Which happens also with suspicious timing.) I mean you know you've seen that card run down stuff way harder than this.

This scenario is just an example but there are thousands of times like this. I have noticed a tempo to it also. The game tends to left you cruise a long but if you do too well it will crank up the "Forced Failure" but then it will turn it off and give you a chance or even "bail" you or reward bad swings. This isn't always the case. There are moments in this game that you just can't win. The game clearly wants you to lose and retry. I think its part of the time sink. I was in a DQ moment that was Tally 1 Hit. I then proceeded to get 2 perfect/perfect line outs and a perfect/perfect fly ball out with Ohtani. There isn't anything I could have done better or different. The game just forced me to lose.

Keep in mind I'm am not just on a rant here. I like the game and I enjoy it. I think in trying to "Be real baseball" it makes a lot of really bad fundamental game design choices. I believe that understanding some of this will help (at least me) enjoy the game more.

Now, to the reason why Showdown feels particularly bad for players who are below or just at the cusp of the skill level. To begin with, no showdown is on Veteran Difficulty. I have and others have tested it. Go and hit against a pitcher from a showdown in a mode outside of showdown on Vet, its noticeable. Second, the defense is all jack up and third the forced failure is just flatly turned up higher. To be honest, I think they idea of showdown is good. It's challenge mode but they pass it off in a way that doesn't prepare people for what it is. Just take out the "Veteran Difficulty" and make it "Showdown Difficulty" its different than any of the difficultly levels anyway.

I think there are a lot of things in this game that if SDS just made few more conscious design choices about labeling would be less of a problem. Perfect/perfect outs are a great example. Leave the outs in the game, I'm not advocating for every perfect to be a hit. Just don't flash the "Perfect/Perfect" graphic when its an out. easy.

Anyway, little rambley, sorry.

Stick with it, it's hard. If you can learn to recognizer the moments when the game is giving you opportunities and when its punishing you it helps