Relief Pitching...

Can someone PLEASE help with this? For quite a while I've been reading about the game here and elsewhere online and decided I would get it when I bought a PS3, and I've had the game for 2 days now. I LOVE it, except that I cant understand much. The translation guide has helped immensely, but I CANNOT for the life of me figure out how to use relievers. Also is there a way to tell what pitchers are starters and which are relievers? Please help, would be very much appreciated.

ok so I finally figured out how to use my relievers, but idk if they are warm. I just was able to do a substitution. Is this like a lot of the American Major League games where u have to actually use your bullpen and warm the pitchers up first and then bring them in, or are they ready to go upon substitution? If there is no "warming up" or whatever then I should be fine, but if it is necessary to warm a pitcher can someone please help. Sorry if I seem ridiculous, I'm just trying to get the most out of this game. It truly is one of the best baseball games I have EVER played (and I've played a lot! most of my games that I've ever bought are baseball or other sports games), I just wish I could understand it! lol

First things first, these forums are moderated before posts are published, so you have to wait at least a few hours before they show up. This system makes it so you don't get the answers you want within a few minutes(like GameFAQS), but you'll probably get them within a day. The forums really work on a daily basis, as a lot of the guys are older, have families, and only have a small amount of time in the day to make their posts.

That said, your question is one of the more frequent ones we get from people transitioning from American baseball to Japanese yakyu. No Japanese games I know of have ever had a warm up system similar to American games. This is because the bullpen is very public in American ballparks, but Japanese pitchers warm up out of the crowd's sight. A lot of times they'll warm up in a bullpen underneath the stadium with a closed circuit camera showing the manager how that pitcher is throwing.

There is a difference between who you designate as a starter(red) and reliever(green) during Pennant. It doesn't matter during exhibition games. You'll only be able to set who is a starter and who is a reliever after games at the rotation screen. You can also give that pitcher a day off(gray) to prevent future injury. I advise resting all average relievers after an inning of work. Relief aces can go two or three days in a row without rest.

Relief stamina is reflected in the dark blue part of the stamina gauge. Starter stamina is light blue. Some people are better starters than others, so they have more of that starter stamina. Starter stamina WON'T build back up if you designate an off day for him. You should pretty much just leave your starters alone.

If you switch a reliever to a starter, it's going to take him a few days to build up his starter stamina, because he'll be completely drained to start out.

Don't use a designated starter as a reliever, unless you want him to enter the game with terrible condition and very little stamina. You only do that as a last resort.

I realize it takes time for the posts to go through, I dont understand what you were getting at. Did I seem impatient? I appologize.

I've basically been sticking to exhibition because I feel like I would just get LOST in pennant lol. So there is no way to tell who is usually a starter and who is typically a reliever in exhibition?

The point that the bullpens in Japan are out of sight occurred to me, but I figured I would ask the question anyway just to be sure. Can't hurt right?

Only way to tell is through personal knowledge of the teams and perhaps seeing how much stamina each guy has.

You seemed like you wanted an answer really fast in the second post, so I wanted to make sure there wasn't any issue there.

This discussion is insightful. I just assumed that the user did not need to actually select a pitcher to warm up prior to subbing him in in PYS4. It's also one less step that the user needs to worry about. In american games, I always had a hard time deciding when to warm a pitcher up since i play with DH off. I would always worry about warming a guy up and forgetting about him and he'd end up throwing his arm out in the bullpen warming up. also, not having to warm up pitchers in PYS4 is nice because if the DH is off, you can do a very easy double switch. just pitch hit for your pitcher when he comes up to bat, and there will be an interface that will appear automatically after the inning is over prompting the use to select the relief pitcher.

this leads me to a question. is there any way to queue the double switch? (queue a pinch hitter before the assigned player actually walks up to bat) like is there anyway to tell the game to automatically pinch hit the pitcher when he comes up to bat before he actually comes up to bat? or do you have to actually wait until the pitcher comes up to bat, then press START and pinch hit? it's a small thing, but i believe in american games like MLB2k8 you can actually perform a "double switch" in the interface...

I have also been sticking to exhibition games because I too feel like I would get LOST in pennant mode. i have no doubt that i would find my way into a game and into a season, but i feel like i wouldn't be using all the options that i would if the game were in english. therefore, i only want to go into this mode when i feel like i have an education in regards to the breadth of the Pennant mode interface. I have scoured the internet and have not found any guide for pennant mode for this game. There is a guide for MVP mode, and comments about pennant mode from posts that i have found in this forum. but i wouldn't feel comfortable putting all that time into a mode like pennant mode until i am confident that i know exactly the function of what every possible option in pennant mode does. There are a few posts on this forum saying like "its recommended to turn trades off" while in pennant mode and stuff like that, but no real guide. so when you first enter the mode, serious sports gaming english speakers just will not feel comfortable in this mode until there is a detailed guide. maybe for PYS5!

One other random question i have while I am posting this. In exhibition mode, after selecting teams, when the user is at the stadium select screen, I noticed that when the user presses the R1 button, there is a small black box with 3 Japanese letters that appear next to the stadium picture. when you press R1 again, it disappears. It is obviously some kind of stadium option that can be toggled on and off. Does anyone know what this option does?

That's probably the option for day games and night games.

You can only assign a pinch hitter after the pitcher goes up to bat. Sucks, I know.

BigManZam, I uploaded a screenshot of the exact option I am referring to. It's the option below the selection between day and night games. I circled it on the screenshot as you can see from the link below...

http://photobucket.com/albums/dd213/Boxing343/option_pys4.jpg

What is the user turning on / off?

The only thing I could guess it is is whether or not the sky is cloudy since there seem to be a few more clouds with this turned on. Does it occasionally rain at all? Are there any rainouts? It's probably something to do with weather since the dome stadiums do not allow you to toggle this option.

It's probably simple and obvious, but it'd be cool if anyone knew what exactly this option toggles...

Thanks.

You were right. It was obvious. That's the option for wind. It's set to "on" in that picture.

So, are there rain outs? In Exhibition Mode? In any of the other modes? How variable have you seen the cloud formations? I have the PS2 version. If there are not rain outs, do you ever see actual rain or is it just cloudy? I don't think I've seen any rain yet. I guess I prefer a sunny day game, but it would be cool to have some raindrops occasionally. Or maybe occasional snow flurries...I have the PS2 version of PYS4.

This game is awesome. I have been playing PYS4 and Wrestle Kingdom 2 : Sekai Taisen for PS2 like it's my job. And still barely touched the surface due to hex code japanese to english translation issues. And now there is all this talk about PYS5. I can't even imagine what that could like for PS2...

The PS2 version is always silky smooth, except occasionally on some infield ground balls, it slows down a bit but never drops frame rate. (always remains smooth) since i choose manual fielding, that slight slow down while keeping frame rate constant gives me an extra second to use the left analog stick to find the correct angle to catch the grounder.

these japanese companies must have talented, dedicated, and determined programmers to make such polished game interfaces and have them be so user friendly...

that is what makes PYS4 so great. the interfaces. the options. i have a very specific option set for this game based on individual dexterity and challenging CPU A.I. difficulty in a hope that, through practice, one day will be able to challenge the very best in multiplayer matches...

you don't find very many deep, polished, sports simulation games with customizable working interfaces from too many American companies...

There's no rain in PYS4. In the PS3 version, sometimes the sky looks like there's a typhoon ready to come in. There are already framerate issues at times, so I can see why they kept rain out of the game. There is rain in the Pawapuro games, though. MLB Power Pros goes so far as to close retractable roofs when rain starts coming down. This also eliminates the wind in that game. I think the ballparks in that game are the best ever. We'll see how MLB The Show does in a few months, but it's hard to beat the MLB Power Pros ballparks.

As for snow, it's really not an option since baseball is a SUMMER game. Hehe. There were some freak occurrences in the past couple seasons in April, though. Of course the Indians and Mariners had those blizzards that canceled their games and I remember the Rakuten Eagles getting snowed out a few times in their second season. Overall, though, it's probably too rare to write code for.

I wouldn't expect that much of a jump from PYS4 to PYS5 on PS2. I'd expect more of a roster change and some added functions. I think the PS3 version is the one Konami probably invested their man hours into. Not only to redeem themselves for the rushed PYS4 and PYS3 for Xbox360, but also to show off the PS3's capabilities. PYS4 is still one of the prettiest games out for PS3, and if Konami can top themselves again, it can be a showcase for Sony and the PS3. I think we're still a year or two away from them fully realizing the hardware's capabilities, though. When you look at how long it took them to upgrade Pawapuro and the PYS franchise, it seems that it takes around 2 or 3 years from the first incarnation to get it to evolve on a large scale. For example, Pro Yakyu Spirits 2 is hardly recognizable when compared to The Baseball 2002, though that's the game it grew out of. Pawapuro 7 is a lot closer to an N64 or PS1 game than Pawapuro 10, which was the first true PS2 Pawapuro. We'll find out just how much things have changed from a year ago when Konami lets out the first piece of news within the next week or two. I expect something in Famitsu this week.

As for your comment about Japanese game devs, I think what you said may have been true a few years ago. Japanese game developers were on a whole other level from American devs a short while back. They worked their butts off, had pride in their work, etc. The tide is definitely turning with this new generation of games, though. You have companies like Insomniac and Naughty Dog pushing the hardware more than anyone in the world. I'm consistently finding better reviews online from JAPANESE gamers about WESTERN games. Sure, they still love their turn-based RPGs and Nintendo, but there is definitely a new found respect and admiration for the big money western development studios.

I think what we're seeing now is Nintendo dominating the casual Japanese gamer, which hurts all the other Japanese devs, as money isn't being spread around. There are more hardcore gamers all throughout the world, which is why western devs have bigger budgets. Less profit for Japanese companies means smaller budgets for dev teams that cater to hardcore gamers, which means lower quality games due to lack of funds and time. Then you basically get a domestic dev team catering to a dwindling number of hardcore gamers, all the while competing with western dev teams who sell millions of units every year. It's no surprise that companies like Capcom are focusing their efforts overseas these days.