[Syd Thrift]

It's essentially OOTP's version of the "vs" games that are a big part of MLB: The Show and Madden now. I played the two-years-ago version for a bit before I got bored / disappointed with the lack of crackdown on certain types of unfair play and had the same experience last year albeit with a shorter "fun factor" period. I think the strength of it is that, especially early on, you're trying to figure out the meta and working on building up a team to compete against real, actual people.

Also, completely not my cup of tea but let's face it, the gacha aspect is very compelling to some people. There is TBF a bit of a rush when you go in and buy a few packs and come out with that 1 in 10,000 Diamond card. It's fun to people who like that kind of thing, a little extra dopamine rush, etc. Also, relatedly, there are little "missions" you can complete within the game to unlock various cards that are sometimes good and sometimes not but often feature players you have an affinity for for some reason. I know last year I actually dumped (a little bit of) money into the game so that I could get the Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre upgradeable cards; those were two of my favorite Mariners ever and it was fun having them on my teams.

I will say that I'd really like there to be more options and, perhaps going against the tide of some, more different types of cards to collect. I kind of hate that MLB: The Show runs a similar game type except that you actually play against opponents in real time as an arcade experience and yet that game has more of these kinds of options. Specifically I'd love ballparks (you want to have your park play a certain way? Use a ballpark card; this might also allow people to have parks that aren't within that 90/110 constraint) and managers (you built a team that's all "3 run homeruns win ballgames"? Acquire Earl Weaver). To some degree that means that hardcore OOTP vets have less opportunity to fiddle around with their teams but to me that would be a feature rather than a bug.