Ultimate Baseball Online

In and of itself, baseball is a simple game. One person throws the ball, one person swings at it and if he (or she) manages to hit it, then others try to field the ball and prevent the batter from advancing to or around the bases.

The world of massively multiplayer online games is not too far removed from a simple concept – create a world in which players from around the globe can meet up and weave their in-game characters into a new story.

The MMO genre usually is awash with fantasy worlds, where people fight monsters and gain experience to make stronger characters. There are few games that step outside that model.

Ultimate Baseball Online (from Netamin) does, though. Its idea is, right now, also one of the things that is creating a few problems. Why? Well, first a little bit about the concept and set-up of the game.

Players begin by launching the game and creating a character. Male or female, it does matter which gender you choose, but you do choose a position and the starting position does have some bearing on your initial attribute stats. A pitcher may have great arm strength, but running the base paths with any kind of speed will prove a challenge. After that, you head off to the UBO camp to learn the fundamentals of the control system by, alternatively, batting, fielding and pitching.

Why do you need to pitch if you choose a fielding position? Because for each game to run, you need to have a player-controlled pitcher. And if a player playing the position gets dropped from the network, or is getting lit up like the sky on the Fourth of July, any position player may end up on the mound.

Batting is done with the mouse. You use the right mouse button to select a power setting for your swing. The more power, the smaller the cursor and swing area. When the pitch comes in, you try to position the mouse over the ball target and left-click to swing. Then, if you hit successfully, you hit the W key to run. (Running forward is W, backwards is S, leading off base is D and scrambling back after to the base after a lead-off is A.)

Fielding is done by using the W key to move your fielder while holding down the left mouse button. The number keys, 1-4, will determine which base you throw a fielded ball toward. You can also target players and left click for strength of throw to pull up a sliding bar and throw to another player.

Pitching also uses a sliding bar that relies on the left mouse button to set power (first click) and then another left mouse click as the bar is sliding backwards to set accuracy.

Got it?

Once you learn the fundamentals, you are given attribute points to distribute each time you level. You can put the points into seven categories (stamina, arm strength, body strength, catching range, throwing accuracy, quickness and speed). At each level you are also given a skill point to use. There are two skill areas that govern pitch types and one batting zone skill area.

Then it is into the lobby and trying to find a game to play in. Any game that does not have all human players will have AI take the vacant spots. Unfortunately, the AI – at this point in the game’s development – still needs a lot of work. It may be artificial but intelligence is not something it is known to possess. Just as it does not have range.

But what could make UBO so good is also a failing. In order to play at the same speed as everyone else, the game needs to synchronize all the players in a game. If one player is lagging, the whole game is affected, often resulting in halting play if the game moves at all. This sometimes results in player disconnects or other players voting to boot out a player with a poorer connection speed. If you don’t finish a game, you don’t get experience for accomplishments within the game. No experience means you won’t level.

There are several player levels in the game – rookie, minors, majors and all-stars. The higher the level, the more you had better be prepared to bring your game. Players learning to play can slow the game – but hey, we’ve all been there and patience is a tool needed in this game.

The AI of the umpires, though, is lacking, as well. Balls hit fair are sometimes called foul, and sometimes marginally foul balls are ruled fair.

The music and sound is solid but sometimes the call of “Strike Three – Out!” comes up after the second strike. The animations are serviceable. Some of those in the playing community will quit if a game is not going their way, and while the language censor can pick on odd words to wipe, there still is a lot of name calling that can occur.

In spite of its potential, though, UBO is still a game that needs work. The game has some solid elements, but its weaknesses are a bit glaring. This is, more or less, the same game previewed two years ago and while progress has been made, it still has some distance to go to drop in that base hit. The idea is sound and baseball fans can but hope the kinks are ironed out. If they are, this will be an online game that will score a lot of runs.