Good Bad and Ugly regarding PT23

[daves]

I have been through Perfect Team since it started with version 2019. It took off in PT21 during the pandemic. PT22 had many outstanding changes and was the most enjoyable version to date, unfortunately it will end 7 months early. PT23 was slow to be released and was/is buggy but it had some good bad and ugly changes.

Good:
1. Card shop addition. It has all cards in the shop, better sorting ability, and the missions filter makes it easier to find the cards you need to complete the mission.
2. Card pack animation has improved. You can have a Diamond card covered and you can click to reveal. Awesome.
3. Card art improved

Bad:
1. Mission rewards were punitive. Spend 100kPP for a historical pack or two? NL series was weak. Future Legend rewards were inadequate.
2. Late start for game and OOTPGO23 and buggy.
3. Rewards on top of rewards are too much. You get a decent reward for winning tournaments, and you get 50K in additional rewards? Rich get richer in this game.

Ugly:
1. Retiring cards for major missions. Patience was important in previous versions. Now that element was eliminated. Retiring Platinum cards as part of a MAJOR mission is horrible. Price gouging is awful in the game, now it’s worse. Release OOTPGO23 in time for cards to be retired? I usually play till the game ends. But retiring cards makes this game unenjoyable and thinking of retiring myself. I guess only certain players were in mind when this idea occurred.

Feel free to share your thoughts. I am sure many may agree and/or disagree.

[professor ape]

I can’t argue with your points. One other thing that I’ll put in the “Good” category is that there doesn’t seem to be as defined of a set of mega-cards. There seems to be more trade offs to consider with the top cards. Given enough time, we’ll always narrow onto a meta but at least I’ve felt that there are decisions to be made when making roster moves.

[HondoLane]

Originally Posted by daves

I have been through Perfect Team since it started with version 2019. It took off in PT21 during the pandemic. PT22 had many outstanding changes and was the most enjoyable version to date, unfortunately it will end 7 months early. PT23 was slow to be released and was/is buggy but it had some good bad and ugly changes.

Good:
1. Card shop addition. It has all cards in the shop, better sorting ability, and the missions filter makes it easier to find the cards you need to complete the mission.
2. Card pack animation has improved. You can have a Diamond card covered and you can click to reveal. Awesome.
3. Card art improved

Bad:
1. Mission rewards were punitive. Spend 100kPP for a historical pack or two? NL series was weak. Future Legend rewards were inadequate.
2. Late start for game and OOTPGO23 and buggy.
3. Rewards on top of rewards are too much. You get a decent reward for winning tournaments, and you get 50K in additional rewards? Rich get richer in this game.

Ugly:
1. Retiring cards for major missions. Patience was important in previous versions. Now that element was eliminated. Retiring Platinum cards as part of a MAJOR mission is horrible. Price gouging is awful in the game, now it’s worse. Release OOTPGO23 in time for cards to be retired? I usually play till the game ends. But retiring cards makes this game unenjoyable and thinking of retiring myself. I guess only certain players were in mind when this idea occurred.

Feel free to share your thoughts. I am sure many may agree and/or disagree.

I agree with you on the "Good" - especially the first one:
The card shop is a massive improvement over the auction house. Great work there, OOTP team.

I mostly agree on the "Bad," especially with #2, and that would be my biggest complaint. Killing a portion of the user base with the botched release has proven to be a big detriment to the player and overall experience. I like the tourney leaderboards, though - I've just missed out on Top 10 a few times, and I'm F2P.

My big change from your list: I'd move "Ugly" to "Good" - I really like the Platinum Series, and the overall idea of revolving limited edition sets. I'm with you, I take my time on missions that are costly and difficult to prepare for (i.e. Future Legends and Negro League missions), but I think it's a nice change of pace to have to rush a tough mission set.

Now for my (likely unpopular) review:
I think the best thing they've done with PT23 is with tourneys, tournament rewards and limited edition cards. The expanded card rewards and LE's (and even the PS as the year progresses) have added a huge variance to tourney play compared to previous years - my Gold and Silver cap teams are about completely optimized, and yet very different from many other completely optimized squads I come up against. There are several options for most positions, and the true top guy is debatable.

In this regard, I'm very happy with PT23. This year has really encouraged players to make teams for all the different tourney formats and that has added so much for me. The amount of cards that have use and value and the strategy of employing them has increased a lot. And it's been rewarding: I've won 27 tourney cards so far this year, including two 100's, and played in each PTCS series (and remember, I'm F2P).

Even the quick-play tourneys, which are still an essential play for F2P, are varied to a great degree. Last year and in previous years, it was pretty much the same roster playing the same roster - I would occasionally update my quick-tourney team(s), and add a new player to my main squad from time to time - and 99% of cards didn't even have a chance of adding value to my squads. It always became stale. They addressed my biggest issue in a huge way.

Overall, this actually makes it my favorite version of PT, despite it's botched launch and lower user-base. The variety in play and the amount of rosters I'm constantly trying to maximize is a lot of fun.