scarcity of cards in card shop - Page 3

rburgh · 11-03-2025, 02:17 PM

Quote:

PP doesn't buy groceries or gas, PP doesn't buy medicine, PP doesn't buy transportation, PP doesn't buy a house or your kids' college.

PP's buy ego points, pure and simple. If you're spending money on PP's instead of groceries, gas, medicine, transportation. your house, or your kids' education, you need professional help.

It's just math. One standard pack in 10 contains a gold card. 55% of those gold cards are historicals. There are 492 historical gold cards at this moment. 30 are mission rewards, and not packable. 462 x 10 is 4620. Divide that by .55 and you get 8400. That's how many packs you need to open to get one 85 Fred McGriff.

There are 13,356 teams right now. Probably 10% of them are inactive. That leaves about 12,020 teams receiving login packs (most) every day. 2800 of them receive an extra pack and 400 of them receive a gold pack (on average) on any given day. 12,020 + 2800 is 14,820. 14,820/8400 + 400*.55/462 means that, on average, 2.24 of the 12,000+ active teams pull a McGriff on any given day.

How many of those teams have completed the Jays mission he has bottlenecked? Not many. How many of the remaining teams want to complete that mission? Probably well over 1,000. If two of those cards are put up for sale every day, on average that Jays mission will be completed by about 250 more teams before PT27 comes out. But most of them will just be used to complete the mission. So the sellers will, eventually get what they want for the Crime Dog.

Welcome to the Law of Supply and Demand.

LeeD · 11-03-2025, 11:21 PM

All of this is true. However, the underlying problem is that there are far too many missions with natural bottlenecks. Needing all or all but one of the component cards for completion, needing every non-Perfect card for completion, needing cards released same day or week as the mission for completion, etc. This is what encourages speculation on mission cards and drives prices for certain cards to ridiculous levels.

Anybody think the Seager or Lolich or Tatis cards are worth 500-750K? As league cards, they aren't. Lolich is quite good but not as good as a lot of others selling for substantially less. Seager's low-end defense and lack of versatility make him a DH who can back up your real shortstop a day or two a week. Tatis has a lot of competition in right field and isn't better than a lot of lower-priced cards.

Rinse and repeat. We're paying exorbitant prices for gold rings that very quickly tarnish and fall off. How many PT Elite cards will make these three look like benchwarmers within the next few weeks? Quite a few, I would guess.

Yes, it's the nature of the game; but there are soooo many mission trees where we can just buy the topper for a fraction of the cost to complete the missions. Bumgarner at 190K right now. Want Junior Griffey? Just a bit more than one of the bottleneck cards in the Kid mission, which is only one of the six missions needed. In both cases, the value of the pack rewards doesn't come close to matching the additional cost of completing the missions.

I have one team sitting on 600K points, mostly because I've sold off a crap-ton of massively overpriced Gold and Diamond component cards (including a McGriff). Now debating whether I should hold, just buy the best cards in the shop regardless of missions, or tailor purchases to cards that are likely logjams for upcoming missions.

/rant

szczepam · 11-04-2025, 12:13 AM

I think it's time to accept that PT26 is just a broken game this year, likely beyond repair. 25 was almost perfect. We just have to hope that 27 will rebound.

LansdowneSt · 11-04-2025, 11:45 AM

The problem imo is that it's more time than I have in a day to micromanage posting cards for incremental gains. I quick sell nearly everything unless there is a material premium associated with a card. They should take all my quick sales, add a house XX% premium to the QS price and post them in the marketplace. It's not like I am not playing, I just don't want to help you get better and I want to do other things in my day than manage bids/sales.

cwhitman · 11-04-2025, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szczepam

I think it's time to accept that PT26 is just a broken game this year, likely beyond repair. 25 was almost perfect. We just have to hope that 27 will rebound.

you are the only person i know who has that opinion. between the growing pains of combis, moonball, and paul's huge growth in terms of understanding card balance, last year feels light years worse than this one.

LeeD · 11-05-2025, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwhitman

you are the only person i know who has that opinion. between the growing pains of combis, moonball, and paul's huge growth in terms of understanding card balance, last year feels light years worse than this one.

All of this might be true. Again, though, the problem lies in mission tree construction and not in card ratings construction. As was pointed out already by atomzero:

"Paying through the nose for a perfect card is one thing...
Paying 30k+ for any diamond card needed for a mission is another thing...
But when gold cards disappear from the market for days at a time, that is not a sign of a healthy game economy, and it has gotten worse and worse every month."

This is an accurate assessment. Look at the Playoff Moments tree. Astros? Ken Forsch. None available. Blue Jays? McGriff. None. Padres? Hurst. None. Dodgers? Two Diamond cards at 40K plus. Giants? Mission completion requires at least one Perfect at 200K plus and a Diamond at 60K plus. The only Perfect for less than 200K? Unavailable.

And that's just the team missions. There are also the four mix-and-match missions, one of which requires half a million points for one of three players that, in and of themselves, are worth a fraction of that.

Nearly every mission along the way is bottlenecked. If you can manage to complete them all, you get Bumgarner, who can be purchased outright for around 200K. This is a broken system.

edit to add a TLDR: Mission toppers in years past were some of the most desirable cards in the set. Lately, missions feel more like one of those bad TV commercials, where they throw in a free Japanese knife after you've already spent $300 on dishware and cutlery.

cwhitman · 11-05-2025, 10:47 AM

pretending like that's any different from previous years is silly, though. i still remember the 50k gold future legend two years ago that stayed that price the entire season. mission cards are always worth less than the missions in full. a large part of the mission cut down in terms of cards is to prevent things like the FOTF toppers a few years ago that replaced like, 21/26 meta cards in one release. mission cards are meant to be supplement to teams, not the dominant force, or teams look the same. tbh clubhouse has done that this year which has been the one weakness of clubhouse cards imo

and again, cards aren't available because people are filling buy orders! put up buy orders, you'll get more cards, for much cheaper than you'd get by waiting for a SO to pop up

LeeD · 11-06-2025, 12:04 AM

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I see missions as the driving force for player engagement. Over the past two or three years, OOTP has replaced that with tournament engagement while simultaneously making tournament success vastly more expensive (through Combis/Variants) and strangling tournament rewards (remember the 10/5/3 Quick pay-outs?). Yes, there are ways to achieve consistent tournament success without Variants, but get into PTCS and you won't go very far without them.

Toppers shouldn't be the end-all, but at least give us toppers that are better than the component cards. Then expand the numbers of cards that can be selected for mission completion. Replace any 34 of 36 with any 34 of 48. Watch the nonsensical bottlenecks disappear, and watch the gnashing of teeth over unavailable cards subside. It's not buy orders and sell orders. It's demand outstripping supply, over and over again.

In short, go back to PT22! The game was more fun, better leveled, and more open to new players.

Hwilensky · 11-06-2025, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeeD

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I see missions as the driving force for player engagement. Over the past two or three years, OOTP has replaced that with tournament engagement while simultaneously making tournament success vastly more expensive (through Combis/Variants) and strangling tournament rewards (remember the 10/5/3 Quick pay-outs?). Yes, there are ways to achieve consistent tournament success without Variants, but get into PTCS and you won't go very far without them.

Toppers shouldn't be the end-all, but at least give us toppers that are better than the component cards. Then expand the numbers of cards that can be selected for mission completion. Replace any 34 of 36 with any 34 of 48. Watch the nonsensical bottlenecks disappear, and watch the gnashing of teeth over unavailable cards subside. It's not buy orders and sell orders. It's demand outstripping supply, over and over again.

In short, go back to PT22! The game was more fun, better leveled, and more open to new players.

+1

Very well written, and I am sure agreed by 100's of players that are not on the boards.

rburgh · 11-06-2025, 07:16 AM

Is selling out the joy that FTP players used to get by getting to the Perfect level occasionally by (A) having a pyramid structure where even getting to LD is an accomplishment, and (B) making the missions tougher to complete.

So the game currently has a little over 13,000 teams, instead of the 40,000 or so that it had when I started playing in XVIII. That means that they're missing out on about 9000 buyers of the base game. And the virtual impossibility of an FTP team completing the Bumgarner or Clemente missions is going to drive even more users away. I think in a few years we will be down to 10,000 teams.

They should go back to the original league structure of approximately equal numbers of leagues at each level, but then within the Perfect level have promotions within the level so that league 501 is the equivalent of the PeL today, with the winner of that league anointed as the overall champion for the season. Meanwhile, have the current 445 leagues divided up into 44 or 45 leagues at each level, instead of the current structure where there are only 28 leagues High Gold or higher.

An FTP manager who doesn't have the time to treat this game as a full-time job can still, with luck, make his way to the Low Gold level, about 1/3 of which would be perfect level in a rectangular league structure. And he wouldn't care that he was in PL 537 and still be miles from being in PL501.

Chris Marquardt · 11-06-2025, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rburgh

Is selling out the joy that FTP players used to get by getting to the Perfect level occasionally by (A) having a pyramid structure where even getting to LD is an accomplishment, and (B) making the missions tougher to complete.

So the game currently has a little over 13,000 teams, instead of the 40,000 or so that it had when I started playing in XVIII. That means that they're missing out on about 9000 buyers of the base game. And the virtual impossibility of an FTP team completing the Bumgarner or Clemente missions is going to drive even more users away. I think in a few years we will be down to 10,000 teams.

They should go back to the original league structure of approximately equal numbers of leagues at each level, but then within the Perfect level have promotions within the level so that league 501 is the equivalent of the PeL today, with the winner of that league anointed as the overall champion for the season. Meanwhile, have the current 445 leagues divided up into 44 or 45 leagues at each level, instead of the current structure where there are only 28 leagues High Gold or higher.

An FTP manager who doesn't have the time to treat this game as a full-time job can still, with luck, make his way to the Low Gold level, about 1/3 of which would be perfect level in a rectangular league structure. And he wouldn't care that he was in PL 537 and still be miles from being in PL501.

Just some general notes:

the first PT version was part of OOTP19 (and did not have 40k teams)
all PT versions had a pyramid structure, the only difference is that PeL had in 19 and 20 multiple leagues
since PT21 and the solo PeL league there were always FTP team winners in each version

bailey · 11-08-2025, 06:29 PM

The PT26 structure is the best ever. You only have to have a top 6 record instead of winning the finals, (or making the finals in PT25) to reach the PeL. The only downside is they reduced the number of teams in PeL to 36 from 40. As far as 10/5/3, I think 3(silver)/2/1 is not much worse and is more than made up for by the dailies and PD offering stars and packs.

daves · 11-09-2025, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bailey

The PT26 structure is the best ever. You only have to have a top 6 record instead of winning the finals, (or making the finals in PT25) to reach the PeL. The only downside is they reduced the number of teams in PeL to 36 from 40. As far as 10/5/3, I think 3(silver)/2/1 is not much worse and is more than made up for by the dailies and PD offering stars and packs.

I do enjoy the constant improvements. Dividing up the levels between low and high is a plus. By doing well in High Diamond does deserve a trip to Perfect league.

Hwilensky · 11-09-2025, 09:03 PM

What they are hoping for, is that by bottlenecking the missions, people will spend money to buy pp in order to purchase those cards needed to complete them. It must be working because over the last three years it has gotten progressively worse. So they must be making enough money that by alienating most players it is worth it for them.

11-04-2025, 11:45 AM	#44
LansdowneSt Global Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: From Duxbury, Mass residing Baltimore Posts: 7,439	The problem imo is that it's more time than I have in a day to micromanage posting cards for incremental gains. I quick sell nearly everything unless there is a material premium associated with a card. They should take all my quick sales, add a house XX% premium to the QS price and post them in the marketplace. It's not like I am not playing, I just don't want to help you get better and I want to do other things in my day than manage bids/sales. __________________ Complete Universe Facegen Pack 2.0 (mine included) https://www.mediafire.com/file_premi...k_2.0.zip/file Just my Facegen Pack: https://www.mediafire.com/file_premi..._Pack.zip/file

11-05-2025, 10:47 AM	#47
cwhitman Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 238	pretending like that's any different from previous years is silly, though. i still remember the 50k gold future legend two years ago that stayed that price the entire season. mission cards are always worth less than the missions in full. a large part of the mission cut down in terms of cards is to prevent things like the FOTF toppers a few years ago that replaced like, 21/26 meta cards in one release. mission cards are meant to be supplement to teams, not the dominant force, or teams look the same. tbh clubhouse has done that this year which has been the one weakness of clubhouse cards imo and again, cards aren't available because people are filling buy orders! put up buy orders, you'll get more cards, for much cheaper than you'd get by waiting for a SO to pop up __________________ OOTP affiliate streaming competitive content on www.twitch.tv/cwhitdcfc as well as strategy and tips content on https://www.youtube.com/@CWhitDCFC

11-06-2025, 07:16 AM	#50
rburgh All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 971	The game company Is selling out the joy that FTP players used to get by getting to the Perfect level occasionally by (A) having a pyramid structure where even getting to LD is an accomplishment, and (B) making the missions tougher to complete. So the game currently has a little over 13,000 teams, instead of the 40,000 or so that it had when I started playing in XVIII. That means that they're missing out on about 9000 buyers of the base game. And the virtual impossibility of an FTP team completing the Bumgarner or Clemente missions is going to drive even more users away. I think in a few years we will be down to 10,000 teams. They should go back to the original league structure of approximately equal numbers of leagues at each level, but then within the Perfect level have promotions within the level so that league 501 is the equivalent of the PeL today, with the winner of that league anointed as the overall champion for the season. Meanwhile, have the current 445 leagues divided up into 44 or 45 leagues at each level, instead of the current structure where there are only 28 leagues High Gold or higher. An FTP manager who doesn't have the time to treat this game as a full-time job can still, with luck, make his way to the Low Gold level, about 1/3 of which would be perfect level in a rectangular league structure. And he wouldn't care that he was in PL 537 and still be miles from being in PL501.

11-09-2025, 09:03 PM	#54
Hwilensky All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 728	What they are hoping for, is that by bottlenecking the missions, people will spend money to buy pp in order to purchase those cards needed to complete them. It must be working because over the last three years it has gotten progressively worse. So they must be making enough money that by alienating most players it is worth it for them. __________________

11-03-2025, 11:21 PM	#42
LeeD All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2022 Posts: 800	All of this is true. However, the underlying problem is that there are far too many missions with natural bottlenecks. Needing all or all but one of the component cards for completion, needing every non-Perfect card for completion, needing cards released same day or week as the mission for completion, etc. This is what encourages speculation on mission cards and drives prices for certain cards to ridiculous levels. Anybody think the Seager or Lolich or Tatis cards are worth 500-750K? As league cards, they aren't. Lolich is quite good but not as good as a lot of others selling for substantially less. Seager's low-end defense and lack of versatility make him a DH who can back up your real shortstop a day or two a week. Tatis has a lot of competition in right field and isn't better than a lot of lower-priced cards. Rinse and repeat. We're paying exorbitant prices for gold rings that very quickly tarnish and fall off. How many PT Elite cards will make these three look like benchwarmers within the next few weeks? Quite a few, I would guess. Yes, it's the nature of the game; but there are soooo many mission trees where we can just buy the topper for a fraction of the cost to complete the missions. Bumgarner at 190K right now. Want Junior Griffey? Just a bit more than one of the bottleneck cards in the Kid mission, which is only one of the six missions needed. In both cases, the value of the pack rewards doesn't come close to matching the additional cost of completing the missions. I have one team sitting on 600K points, mostly because I've sold off a crap-ton of massively overpriced Gold and Diamond component cards (including a McGriff). Now debating whether I should hold, just buy the best cards in the shop regardless of missions, or tailor purchases to cards that are likely logjams for upcoming missions. /rant

11-04-2025, 12:13 AM	#43
szczepam Minors (Single A) Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 61	I think it's time to accept that PT26 is just a broken game this year, likely beyond repair. 25 was almost perfect. We just have to hope that 27 will rebound.

11-06-2025, 12:04 AM	#48
LeeD All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2022 Posts: 800	We'll just have to agree to disagree. I see missions as the driving force for player engagement. Over the past two or three years, OOTP has replaced that with tournament engagement while simultaneously making tournament success vastly more expensive (through Combis/Variants) and strangling tournament rewards (remember the 10/5/3 Quick pay-outs?). Yes, there are ways to achieve consistent tournament success without Variants, but get into PTCS and you won't go very far without them. Toppers shouldn't be the end-all, but at least give us toppers that are better than the component cards. Then expand the numbers of cards that can be selected for mission completion. Replace any 34 of 36 with any 34 of 48. Watch the nonsensical bottlenecks disappear, and watch the gnashing of teeth over unavailable cards subside. It's not buy orders and sell orders. It's demand outstripping supply, over and over again. In short, go back to PT22! The game was more fun, better leveled, and more open to new players.

11-08-2025, 06:29 PM	#52
bailey Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 3,359	The PT26 structure is the best ever. You only have to have a top 6 record instead of winning the finals, (or making the finals in PT25) to reach the PeL. The only downside is they reduced the number of teams in PeL to 36 from 40. As far as 10/5/3, I think 3(silver)/2/1 is not much worse and is more than made up for by the dailies and PD offering stars and packs.