MLB The Show 21’s Stadium Creator: No Search, No Night Games

The bad news about it MLB The Show 21‘s new stadium creation toolkit? The vault of user-shared creations is nearly impossible to find, and there is no search function to help you once you click through to the menu and find where it is.

The good news, I think, is that this makes offensive content harder to find.

I’m kidding, but only partially. MLB The Show’s stadium library is not completely overrun with offensive creations full of libel. Several parks, however, have received a lot of attention in some forums and social media for their offensive content. Since these stadiums have user IDs associated with them, moderation may be underway, if not already done.

Either way, Stadium Creator mode makes it hard to showcase the good creations or appreciate the hard work SIE San Diego Studio developers and their fans put in during the first week of release. The biggest obstacle is how users’ creations are displayed, or not, as the case may be.

First, MLB The Show 21 already has a set of four “Vaults” where players share things like custom grids, slider difficulty levels and, more importantly, logo designs for created teams in Diamond Dynasty and elsewhere. Players expecting stadiums under a new tab in The Show’s Vaults have wondered where the hell are all the ball fields, as that seems like the most logical place for them.

But the stadiums are in a tool option in Stadium Creator mode, which you only see when you open the Tutorial Park or any of the other 29 fictional field templates as if you wanted to edit them. Here are several screenshots to illustrate where that option lives:

To find Stadium Creator’s User Content Vault, first open the tool from the Create tab in the game’s main menu.

Image: SIE San Diego Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
MLB The Show 21 and open one, as if you wanted to edit it.”/>

Go to one of the 30 templates included on the disc MLB The Show 21 and open one, as if you wanted to edit it.

Image: SIE San Diego Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
After opening a park for editing, the vault will be the third icon from here. Click on this and you will see everything that other users have uploaded; you just won’t be able to search any of it.

Image: SIE San Diego Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

The game’s UI isn’t much more useful from that point on, either. The batch of submissions (currently about 50,000 strong) will be presented one way and one way only: in descending order, starting with the most recent upload. You cannot search or filter the group at all.

Dedicated fans have tried in various ways to share information about their parks outside of the official system, but it is difficult to track down a specific creation without looking for it.

Green cathedrals, once and in the future

The difficulty of finding parks is a real shame, as quite a bit of effort is already being made with the in-game tools.

Recently I came across “Publix Park” from PlayStation Network user MOLDY TRISKIT. It’s something Tampa Bay Rays fans have thought about as a replacement for the unlovable Tropicana Field.

interior shot of a fantasy stadium in MLB The Show 21's Stadium Creator. — “Publix Park”, an open-air stadium concept for the Tampa Bay Rays, whose domed home field is IRL cavernous, outdated, sparsely attended and ugly.

Other players have been working to bring back their favorite team’s green cathedrals. From Redditor TeamKillerTurbo, this is Detroit’s Tiger Stadium (1912-1999). Until the creator pointed out that all users must place a butcher’s eye in their stadium (the big blank wall or the empty midfield seating area, giving batters a background to see the little white ball), I didn’t know that Tiger Stadium didn’t have any.

Tiger Stadium (1912-1999) as created by a fan in MLB The Show 21

Any Bay Area baseball fan who remembers how the fickle winds could blow pitchers like Stu Miller off the mound would no doubt enjoy this recreation of Candlestick Park, by SomeLadyNamedRuth.

Interior of a fan-created Candlestick Park, the former home of the San Francisco Giants, in MLB The Show 21

They also captured a rendering of Denver’s long-gone Mile High Stadium, which wasn’t just home to the NFL’s Broncos. The minor league Denver Bears and Denver Zephyrs named it home before the Rockies moved in on a short-term lease.

Right field and the stands behind it in Mile High Stadium, as recreated by a player from MLB The Show 21

And here’s a great pursuer from SomeLadyNamedRuth: Anaheim Stadium, as it appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, with the Big A towering over left field again!

I’d love to take them to my Road to the Show of Franchise playthroughs, but there’s no way to grab them unless I know the specific page they’re on (even now), and have the patience to jump to it one page at a time .

I certainly appreciate San Diego Studio, which includes 30 parks of various sizes and architectural types to mess around with – so you can rebuild your high school ball field, minor league venue, or even the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. The options given to players are strong.

But moving objects, cycling through the very deep library of what’s available, and manipulating the height of the outer wall are all multi-step processes that take time to understand. Stadium Creator comes with several guided tutorials, and it’s good to check them all out to know what you’re doing. But for now, it’s time I prefer to play baseball myself, especially when I know there’s almost no way to share my creations in any meaningful way.

Source

Green cathedrals, once and in the future

Share this:

Related