When it was first introduced in MLB The Show 21, the Stadium Creator feature successfully breathed some new life into the venerable series. Giving you the ability to harness your creativity and bring your grand visions of baseball destinations to life, it led to no shortage of fantastic stadiums courtesy of the community. In the last few years, we have seen everything from meticulous recreations of classic stadiums that no longer exist to elaborate original innovations that can leave you feeling like you’re playing the sport in a another galaxy or dimension.
In recent editions of the series, however, there’s been a concerning lack of attention devoted to improving the feature and addressing the community’s biggest requests. That’s why MLB The Show 25 feels like such an important entry in evolving what everyone agrees was a great addition to the series.
Let’s go over some of the biggest areas where the Stadium Creator could use some renovations of its own to improve the feature’s overall framework.
Improvements Needed For The Stadium Creator In MLB The Show 25
Roofs
From its introduction, people have sought the tools within the Stadium Creator to have their grounds possess as much atmosphere as possible. That’s why it was such a big deal in its second year when the creator broke free of its initial restraints of having games played only in the day by adding the ability to host night games. The hope was that something similar would eventually happen with the stifling parameters of being confined to outdoor stadiums. However, those limitations currently still remain in place. Obviously, there are many domed stadiums around the MLB and it behooves developers to reflect that by providing the building blocks to construct a roof over the heads of players and fans. It would be nice to see some variety too in exactly what kind of dome you want to hang above the field, allowing you to choose a fancy retractable one like Toronto features at the Roger Centre or something like the eyesore of catwalks looming above the Trop in Tampa.
Bullpens
Any list of gripes concerning the state of the Stadium Creator in the series is bound to include the inflexibility of where you’re able to place the bullpens in which the relief pitchers will warm up. As it stands, you’re forced to place the bullpens for the two teams in foul territory in left and right field. While this may be where you’ll find the bullpens in a few real-life stadiums, many modern ones have moved past this awkward and somewhat dangerous location that’s a little too close to the action. Because of how standard it has become throughout the league to see bullpens situated instead beyond the walls of the playing field, this must be included as an option within the Stadium Creator. It’s understandable if developers aren’t able to give designers free rein to start sticking bullpens wherever they want willy-nilly, but there should at least be a few designated spots from which to choose.
Seating
A baseball game is hardly much of an event without spectators taking it all in, so the seats that provide comfort and hopefully an ideal vantage point are a crucial part of any good stadium. That said, some credit is due for including the opportunity to have fans milling around the concourse areas of your stands in MLB The Show 24. The blocks of seats, though, that you can utilize to fill your stadium lack variety and are in desperate need of better organization and aesthetics. It’s frustrating how you’re often left with a conspicuous gap between the walls and the first row of seats behind them that just never looks quite right. It would certainly help to have templates that you could use as a starting point for the look of your stands and aisleways that could be inserted as needed. This hardly seems like much of an unreasonable demand considering similar templates were part of the first edition of the stadium creator before being inexplicably removed the next year. It wouldn’t hurt either to have an assortment of luxury boxes at your disposal to insert a modern touch to stadiums.
Walls
Every stadium is unique in its layout and some have features, like the Green Monster at Fenway, that help to give a park its identity. These grand gestures can be harder to bring to life within the stadium creator in a way that you can showcase to others. One common pet peeve among the community from back when stadium creator’s inception was how confusing it could be to significantly alter the walls of your stadium while still making sure that you would be able to use the stadium in online play. There are plenty of smaller touches too that could go a long way if they could be incorporated on your stadium’s walls, like numbers to reflect their distance from home plate or even lines on the walls to denote special home run ground rules. If they wanted to go one step further, they could allow people to go deep in customizing the foul poles and let everyone inject one last little bit of flavor at the very edges of the field.
Props
A crucial way that any designer can set their stadium apart from others is with a plethora of installations, unique signs, or advertisements throughout. The more props are included in the creator, the more imaginative designers can be in how they place these in the layout of a stadium. That’s why it’s disappointing how few new props have been added to the mode since its genesis. The least they could do is give designers access to flags from around the world since these are clearly already found in the game elsewhere. But it would even better to get inundated with an assortment of props and signs that could actually come in handy in enhancing a stadium’s appeal. If they really wanted to unleash everyone’s creativity, of course, they could go ahead and let people design their own signage to hang. Once you consider the kind of toxicity that permeates the online realms of sports games though, it’s easy to see how this kind of freedom could go terribly wrong.
Published: Jan 27, 2025 8:30 PM UTC