PT25 is nearing the end. Any Thoughts??

[Morgans Magic]

It would be great if there was some visual reminder in the page when your time is expiring on the draft page. like the timer is off to the left, are you telling me you can't flash something on the screen where I am looking at the cards? especially because it seems you would want to encourage choice and not just daily around the horn which I could quickly program a bot to choose for me

just saying

[Magus978]

I probably won't be back for 26. Just couldn't stay competitive past the summer. There's zero fun when you hit a rough patch and can't get out of it despite throwing everything you have at it.

I made myself crazy trying to compete in diamond tournaments. When I finally walked away from them, my mental health took a massive turn for the better. When it stops being fun, walk away and don't look back.

[ahunter5]

I got into PT at the start of the season hardcore. The folks in the community are great, especially EVC and Sporer. I was jumping on multiple times per day, and I actually created a Twitch account despite thinking that watching others play video games makes little sense.

Having said all of that, the combinators were a huge turn off, and once they announced cards going over 100 rating, I dropped. There's simply no way to keep it enjoyable with both items included. Combinators basically keep the FTP players out of contention, and the cards going over 100 was a clear cash grab as well.

It's a phenomenal idea for a game mode, but the way it was handled this year means I won't be back. I'm sure this affects absolutely nobody, but it's a disappointment for me.

[pastorjoeboggs]

Originally Posted by Magus978

I probably won't be back for 26. Just couldn't stay competitive past the summer. There's zero fun when you hit a rough patch and can't get out of it despite throwing everything you have at it.

I made myself crazy trying to compete in diamond tournaments. When I finally walked away from them, my mental health took a massive turn for the better. When it stops being fun, walk away and don't look back.

I feel this. I'm an FTP player who invests a lot of time in getting Twitch drops and trying to maximize sales in order to complete missions. In previous years, mission completion held value. The topper of a set, for example, would play well at Diamond for several weeks before being overtaken by a couple of cards and still being serviceable for several more weeks.

With the introduction of 100+ cards this year and the out of control card market, there's simply nothing there for FTP players like me unless we're happy just staying at .500 in Gold league week after week. I worked to complete the Matthewson missions and finally landed him a month ago. In four seasons in Gold, he's gone 34-38 with a 3.91 ERA and a 1.27 WHIP.

Add to that that I am pulling 90+% dupes in every pack at this point (even though I'm far from having all the cards) and the game is, like you said, more of a stressor than something I enjoy.

I haven't entirely made up my mind not to try PT26, but there really needs to be some significant changes to balance the competitiveness for it to be worth my energy.

[LeeD]

PT tends to get this way at the end of every yearly cycle. It's not the 103 and 104 cards so much as ten months of mission creep and the annual mad dash toward the finish. Remember when it became clear that 140 stuff was a necessity? Right. Now try 160 or 170, with the latest cards over 200! Talk about Matty (who's still pretty useful as a bullpen piece), how quaint is that Corey Kluber topper from Live series? They just released a low Diamond Kluber that's better than the original 100.

It's the nature of the beast. Every collectible card game has to do this in order to keep players interested in a path forward. Take heart, though. In a little less than two months, we'll be back to slobbering over Diamond cards with 90 Stuff and 90 BABIPs.

[daves]

I understand some of these frustrations, but what would you like to change in PT26 to make the game better?

[rburgh]

Instead of having 1 PeL and a dozen or so DL's, have roughly the same number of leagues at each level. But for PeL, PeL 400 will be the "championship" level and PEL's 401-412 will feed it with the two WS finalists advancing and the top 6 (CC participants and two remaining best regular season records remaining) staying in PeL 400.

Those demoted from PeL 400 will go back to the PeL 413+ and have to earn their way back, with the top 4 remaining teams from PeL 401-412 remaining and the rest demoted to PeL 413+. Teams demoted from PeL 413+ will go to DL.

Steepening or eliminating the pyramid will do two things. One, it will give lots more teams the opportunity to reach PeL. Two, it will reduce the number of teams in Rookie, Stone, Iron, Bronze, etc, making it harder for the sandbaggers to stay at low levels.

Also to punish the sandbaggers, every league should promote 6 teams minimum (CC participants and two remaining best records), preventing the "I'll play all diamonds and perfects in my Iron level team and then shift in a bunch of Irons for the playoffs" gambit.

[pastorjoeboggs]

Originally Posted by daves

I understand some of these frustrations, but what would you like to change in PT26 to make the game better?

The biggest issue, in my opinion, is the skewed game economy. I'm not sure how you fix it, but when every card for the completion of a mission whose reward is a 101 player is sitting at 100k, it prices out - and demoralizes - FTP players.

Perhaps alter the odds of pulling perfect cards. If you're going to have so many of them, having the odds be 1 in 500 might help. Perhaps a 1 in 500 chance of a 100 while keeping the 1 in 1000 odds for 101+?

And I still think some kind of card price cap would be the biggest way to level the field a bit. Max sell prices of 500 (iron), 2500 (bronze), 5k (silver), 10k (gold), 50k (diamond), no limit on perfects would keep missions actually achievable for the non-whales.

[rburgh]

They have been the downfall of many countries' economies. And you can't cite a single instance where price caps have achieved their objective. Rationing of gas, meat, tires, and other items during WW2 simply led to a black market where those items became more or less unobtainable to those without "connections." A current example is rent controls in New York City.

What would happen to price caps on cards is similar to selling combinators - there would be a couple dozen bids for cards at the cap price and you would have to wait weeks to get to the head of the line.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by daves

I understand some of these frustrations, but what would you like to change in PT26 to make the game better?

I'm not complaining so much as pointing out that you can't run a collectible card game without pushing the bars upward as you move along. If the absolute best cards were available on Day One then most players could or would have their teams maxed out by the All-Star break. The rest of the year would just be tinkering around the edges.

[Magus978]

Originally Posted by daves

I understand some of these frustrations, but what would you like to change in PT26 to make the game better?

Honestly, nothing they can do will bring me back for 26. When I walked away from PT earlier in the cycle, I legit became happier because I wasn't running myself ragged fighting a losing battle in both league play and tournament play. I'm not going to jeopardize that for anything.

I'll happily spend the PT 26 cycle on the sidelines and watch how things develop before deciding whether or not to jump back in in the future.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Price caps won't work.

My suggestions are:

1) Multiiple ways to complete missons, that is no Jack Morris situatiosn. Another cars to 'unblock' would be a solution.

2) Key cards should always be available in packs.

[ahunter5]

Originally Posted by daves

I understand some of these frustrations, but what would you like to change in PT26 to make the game better?

A few things

1. Combinators are only in the game to make people spend money. I truly haven't seen one person say that they found the mechanic enjoyable.
2. If you're planning on changing how cards are rated halfway through the season (100+), you need to announce that at the beginning.
3. Most gacha games like this need the free to play guys invested to give the whales people to beat. The old mantra of 'if you aren't paying for a product, then you are the product' comes to mind. Perfect Team isn't free to play - just about everybody dropped $40 on this - so the game needs to quit treating the people that aren't paying additional money as free to play.
4. Perhaps a limit on adding non-newly acquired cards to lineups in the playoffs or just before the playoffs. That might prevent diamond studded teams from switching in a lineup of iron guys in the playoffs. Fine with adding newly acquired cards, but the tanking teams need to be stopped - its too much to monitor manually.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Price caps won't work.

My suggestions are:

1) Multiiple ways to complete missons, that is no Jack Morris situatiosn. Another cars to 'unblock' would be a solution.

2) Key cards should always be available in packs.

The Morris card was an obvious mistake on their part. I'm not bent out of shape about it because pulling Morris is free money for completing other missions, especially now that we can just buy all the best toppers from PT Elite for about the price of one Morris card. The real values in PT Elite are in the AL East and West anyway (Alvarez, Henderson, and Soto), and all of them have been surpassed since PT Elite came out. The Historical Rainbow pack plus Clase isn't worth the price of the total package, particularly when you pretty much need a garbage Perfect (two if you count the Live cards) to complete the Twins mission.

What annoys me most is on the other end of the spectrum, and that's all of the low-level missions that require 24 of 25 cards, 47 of 48, or some such. They're just begging for speculators to bottleneck these missions by buying up a couple of the cards and doling them out for three times the L10. The problem just gets worse when some of them are also Combi food. This "get them all" or "get all but one" nonsense has only been around for the last couple of versions...

and it's absolute poison for new players, who should be able to complete three-month-old missions without spending 500 points on a garbage Silver that isn't useful for anything other than a mission completion.

[Tinkerman]

Based off the last week or so, I think daily tourneys should have a function where they go into a round robin mode if they haven't filled by the deadline.

And how about a PD where you only get meta cards at each level to choose from? Could use someone's model to determine the card pool.

[LeeD]

I wouldn't draw any conclusions about tourney sign-ups this late in the cycle. A lot of players have packed it in for the year and are just waiting for 26 to launch, so it's not surprising that some of the dailies have gone from filling in minutes to not filling at all.

[LeeD]

I'll post an idea that I had in another thread.

Tournament rewards are now frequently used in missions, especially those that have top-tier players (Koufax, Wagner, Gibson) as toppers. That's all well and good; but as the cycle grinds on, it frequently becomes cheaper to just buy the topper and skip the underlying mission that requires tournament cards. Also, the tournament cards themselves disappear from the card shop as they are used and locked.

My idea is this:

Make previous tournament rewards available in packs after a new tournament batch is released. This would alleviate the problem of having missions that are not worth completing because the topper isn't shiny new and expensive, while the tournament cards remain rare or nonexistent and are thus overly-expensive.

[Tinkerman]

Originally Posted by LeeD

A lot of players have packed it in for the year and are just waiting for 26 to launch, so it's not surprising that some of the dailies have gone from filling in minutes to not filling at all.

You seem to be telling me that as if I don't already know... I'm saying we need something to deal with delays when they do occur. The final PTCS standings were 24 hours late this week, and that's some significant roster building time lost for everyone.

[Hawkwing7423]

Originally Posted by LeeD

I'll post an idea that I had in another thread.

Tournament rewards are now frequently used in missions, especially those that have top-tier players (Koufax, Wagner, Gibson) as toppers. That's all well and good; but as the cycle grinds on, it frequently becomes cheaper to just buy the topper and skip the underlying mission that requires tournament cards. Also, the tournament cards themselves disappear from the card shop as they are used and locked.

My idea is this:

Make previous tournament rewards available in packs after a new tournament batch is released. This would alleviate the problem of having missions that are not worth completing because the topper isn't shiny new and expensive, while the tournament cards remain rare or nonexistent and are thus overly-expensive.

Another vote for this idea.

[the_mad_monk]

End of the PT25 cycle and not one card for Roberto Alomar or Fred Lynn. Did they also withdraw from MLBPA like Bonds?

I too will probably be skipping OOTP26. Hopefully combinator cards will be a distant memory in PT27.

I'd also like to see Historical Perfect Packs for some mission rewards. Maybe even "Platinum Perfect Packs" to guarantee a 101+. I'm tired of pulling useless Chris Sale Live and William Contreras Live cards. Though, by the last half of PT27, staff will be creating 110+ cards.