PT is becoming unplayable

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by bailey

You guys can pile on all you want, but it won't detract from my enjoyment of the game. It rewards long-term planning, patience, and effort which is why it will always be "niche". I don't know why that had to have 101 cards, but who cares? OVR is meaningless and I'll be getting Pedro Martinez and Ted Williams by the end of August anyway.

Exactly

In competitive online games, only about 2% of gamers get to enjoy those awesome, consistent wins. If everyone won all the time, the game would lose its challenge and excitement, making it pretty boring. That small group of top players keeps things interesting and pushes others to get better. Not wanting to keep up is just a lame excuse. I've been frustrated myself sometimes too because losing sucks, and not getting great cards from packs also sucks.

The draft format is the same for all. No one can pay their way through, so everyone gets an equal shot. This means you don't have to be a big spender or buy loads of Perfect Points with real cash.

The same goes for rewards. Imagine if everyone got 101 Perfect cards from Standard Packs. I'd probably stop playing right there. What's the point? Might as well just print the cards at home!

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by biggerme

The same goes for rewards. Imagine if everyone got 101 Perfect cards from Standard Packs. I'd probably stop playing right there. What's the point? Might as well just print the cards at home!

The point is there should be no OVR 101 for anybody in a 100 OVR game. But this game keeps moving the goalposts. They can change the ceiling however they want to the game's detriment. This is why FTP do not feel like they accomplished anything playing within their individual free time and financial situation. Why shouldn't a new player see what is happening and then just ride away from it after a few weeks in lower levels that the Dev team and ownership have completely forsaken? If you ain't Perfect Level, then you ain't important. That may as well be pasted across the Banner at the top of this Forum and the Log-In Screen of PT.

There was never a need to start pushing numbers through the roof. They had plenty of yearly room to work from down upward because they start new every year. There are too many 100 OVR cards already. Now the roof is leaking upwards.

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

But this game keeps moving the goalposts.

Name a game that does not, it gets crowded surprisingly fast at the top and I am dropping fast in League play also, but that is fine

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by biggerme

Name a game that does not, it gets crowded surprisingly fast at the top and I am dropping fast in League play also, but that is fine

Who said I am dropping in league play?

Edit: A person does not have to be losing to be unhappy with the direction of a game.

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

Who said I am dropping in league play?

Edit: A person does not have to be losing to be unhappy with the direction of a game.

Misquoted,
but I take a point, occasionally some more casual format would be good just for the sake of fun and less time commitment.
There can be too much of new content to keep up ...

[LeeD]

There's just an overall feeling of sloppiness with this year's card progression. Look at last week's new cards for a perfect example. We got Early Eras up through the 1970s? A thorough mismash of cards, the main point being to add three more 101 cards without any regard for actual eras. Mordecai Brown retired in 1916. Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned from baseball in 1920. Warren Spahn was born in 1921! One of these is not like the others. Calling Warren Spahn an Early Eras player shows either lack of knowledge or complete disregard for the game's history.

How about Tournament Rewards cards like Negro Leaguer Bill Pierce, who doesn't get a chemistry bump like the other Negro League players because he's Special Edition? Gary Carter gets a mediocre perfect as a Hall of Fame Showcase player, while Joe Mauer gets a massively-overrated 101 because he just got elected. Hints: Joe Mauer never hit 30 home runs. Never drew 100 walks. Was replaced as catcher and didn't catch a single game after his age-30 season. His primary calling card is batting average, which is oh so un-Sabermetric. Nonetheless, he gets 100 Power and 115 Eye because...28 home runs and 76 walks in 606 PA?

And...no Build-a-Lineup. No live All-Star missions. Only thing we can depend on is that actual achievements (other than this quirky obsession with who hit .400 or had a bunch of home runs in one particular month) are trumped by opinions on the ceilings of prospects who haven't played an inning in the majors or are trumped by Peak over-valuations of players, assisted by the usual ratings creep.

Added to all of this is constant tinkering with how the underlying ratings play in-game, which apparently wrecks the decision-making process for a lot of early-release cards. Let's see. PT22 was all about BABIP. PT23 was all about Power. PT24 was all about PBABIP. PT25 is all about HRR. Anyone playing high-Diamond, mission-essential pitchers Jim Palmer and Bruce Hurst in league? I thought not. As one well-known Discord user posted...

"one stat to rule them all...." What will next year's "hot new rating" be?

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by LeeD

There's just an overall feeling of sloppiness with this year's card progression. Look at last week's new cards for a perfect example. We got Early Eras up through the 1970s? A thorough mismash of cards, the main point being to add three more 101 cards without any regard for actual eras. Mordecai Brown retired in 1916. Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned from baseball in 1920. Warren Spahn was born in 1921! One of these is not like the others. Calling Warren Spahn an Early Eras player shows either lack of knowledge or complete disregard for the game's history.

How about Tournament Rewards cards like Negro Leaguer Bill Pierce, who doesn't get a chemistry bump like the other Negro League players because he's Special Edition? Gary Carter gets a mediocre perfect as a Hall of Fame Showcase player, while Joe Mauer gets a massively-overrated 101 because he just got elected. Hints: Joe Mauer never hit 30 home runs. Never drew 100 walks. Was replaced as catcher and didn't catch a single game after his age-30 season. His primary calling card is batting average, which is oh so un-Sabermetric. Nonetheless, he gets 100 Power and 115 Eye because...28 home runs and 76 walks in 606 PA?

And...no Build-a-Lineup. No live All-Star missions. Only thing we can depend on is that actual achievements (other than this quirky obsession with who hit .400 or had a bunch of home runs in one particular month) are trumped by opinions on the ceilings of prospects who haven't played an inning in the majors or are trumped by Peak over-valuations of players, assisted by the usual ratings creep.

Added to all of this is constant tinkering with how the underlying ratings play in-game, which apparently wrecks the decision-making process for a lot of early-release cards. Let's see. PT22 was all about BABIP. PT23 was all about Power. PT24 was all about PBABIP. PT25 is all about HRR. Anyone playing high-Diamond, mission-essential pitchers Jim Palmer and Bruce Hurst in league? I thought not. As one well-known Discord user posted...

"one stat to rule them all...." What will next year's "hot new rating" be?

Yeah, the impact of underlying ratings changes really got to me. My carefully built house of cards based on OOTP24 ratings collapsed very fast, and it took me a while to catch up with the implications. I still have a large gap in interpreting them.

Examples: GAP. This has always resulted in a fixed number of XB Hits in previous versions of OOTP. In OOTP25, it's finally a percentage of Hits from Contact. That does change one's assessment of the GAP rating.

Sometimes I can figure out the results more or less, but then I get a curveball that I just don't understand. I think there is a need to verify the actual resulting League Totals from those Gold and Diamond full-season PT sims. That might help explain a thing or two, or not.

[Hwilensky]

You actually want the developers to explain something.....yoiu make me laugh!!! They got their money and ran....They are absolutely the worst with communication...they only answer post's with headers like "help I sold all my cards"...they suck!!

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by Hwilensky

You actually want the developers to explain something.....yoiu make me laugh!!! They got their money and ran....They are absolutely the worst with communication...they only answer post's with headers like "help I sold all my cards"...they suck!!

It’s adorable how you think you're making a profound point. Keep reaching for those stars!

[bailey]

If you want rigid application of real-life stats to cards, wouldn't you get the exact same cards year after year? How boring would that be? Plus, they have to make it up, anyway, for yesteryear players with scanty stats.

I don't miss the build-a-lineup, either. I think it's in the game but scattered around many missions. I like that better actually. I think it's also good that TE cards are a lot better this year, and more great packable cards. Fewer diamond leagues and harder tournament play make the game far more challenging than last year.

[Kushiel]

It will be fun to see the FL cards in 20 years. None will have 600 HRs. None will have 3000 hits. None will have even 3000 Ks. None will have even 200 wins much less 300. So much for wannabe Legends.

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by biggerme

It’s adorable how you think you're making a profound point. Keep reaching for those stars!

Do you deny the truth of his statement. Read all the pages on this forum and then tell us about how wrong he is.

Too many people live chained in Plato's Cave.

[HRBaker]

There are about 10,000 players from baseball history. That's 10,000 possible cards that can be created. There are currently 4,327 cards in Perfect Team.

If you make a career average card for each of the 10,000 players, add in "Best Seasons", "Award Winners", and world series "super cards" you can easily get to 20,000 possible cards.

If you add that each PT version specializes on various baseball Eras, with maybe 50% of all cards coming from that Era AND add the current season to start out the version, each version of PT would have a different "feeling" or "theme".

Design tournaments and missions around the "theme" for this particular version, and those options compliment the versions "feel".

Bottom line is there is no reason for fictional cards of any kind. With a little creativity and a version-to-version plan for "themes", there are more than enough cards to make each version of the game different without the need to to embrace Science Fiction.

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

Do you deny the truth of his statement..

Once upon a time, there was a baseball game series called Front Page Sports Baseball. It no longer exists, and OOTP Baseball is now very close to what we had back then. It was the best sports simulator of its time, with very high review scores. However, it folded after the third release and was discontinued.

OOTP, with its Perfect Team mode, has taken a different approach to keep the franchise alive instead of giving up. The only way to sustain these complex games is to make them profitable, even if it means making changes that not everyone likes. Tough luck.

I would rather accept these changes, even if I don't like them, than face a scenario where they stop publishing the game altogether. If you don't like it, don't play it. It's not mandatory. Complaining about it is just unproductive.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by biggerme

I would rather accept these changes, even if I don't like them, than face a scenario where they stop publishing the game altogether. If you don't like it, don't play it. It's not mandatory. Complaining about it is just unproductive.

Not complaining is unproductive. Without feedback (and most feedback is negative; i.e. complaints), the only measure that Markus and company have is sales data. That data is, at best, a crude measurement because it can't identify why players like or dislike the game. It can only measure how many and how much. Even if sales are constantly increasing, there is a likelihood that opportunities have been missed and that problems still exist. If sales are flat or declining, the time to find out why is yesterday rather than tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late to change the trajectory.

[biggerme]

Originally Posted by LeeD

Not complaining is unproductive. Without feedback (and most feedback is negative; i.e. complaints).

I get that it's important to talk about problems with features since I've had my own struggles this year. But we need to discuss these issues without pushing away the people we're trying to reach. Some comments here have gone beyond helpful feedback and seem unprofessional. How is anyone supposed to reply to a complaint that has a finishing touch like that - "they suck"?

[Hwilensky]

Originally Posted by biggerme

I get that it's important to talk about problems with features since I've had my own struggles this year. But we need to discuss these issues without pushing away the people we're trying to reach. Some comments here have gone beyond helpful feedback and seem unprofessional. How is anyone supposed to reply to a complaint that has a finishing touch like that - "they suck"?

While I may admit that "they suck" might not have been my best moment, but who are we exactly pushing away? The developers? They don't even answer the most basic of questions. I have a legit question, in another part of the forums, that has not been answered in months. So, remind me, who am I pushing away?

BTW, really nice job on the Wiki Page. Looks great, and I look forward to what you have in store for it.

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by biggerme

OOTP, with its Perfect Team mode, has taken a different approach to keep the franchise alive instead of giving up. The only way to sustain these complex games is to make them profitable, even if it means making changes that not everyone likes. Tough luck.

I would rather accept these changes, even if I don't like them, than face a scenario where they stop publishing the game altogether. If you don't like it, don't play it. It's not mandatory. Complaining about it is just unproductive.

I doubt that you know anything of tough luck. This is a game. Tough luck is living in a hole in Khe Sahn while rockets pound the ground and wishing for better luck to have been someplace else.

If I don't like it. You are correct, I could slink off into the void and let them wonder why people are leaving. Complaining being unproductive is a statement I might expect from COM2US. Are you a fanboy or do you choose to live with your head in the sand. Complaints fuel actions to improve products not vice versa. If a company is too thin skinned to hear customers opinions, then you will indeed live through your once upon a time fairy tale analogy again. Try those on a ten-year-old, not septuagenarians and above.

I will play as long as I choose and not one second longer or less. Whether you want me to stay or go has absolutely no bearing on my life. Like it or lump it left the playgrounds in 1958.

Have fun!

[Ty Cobb]

A couple of items:

Kush--he knows something of tough luck. That's all I'll say on that. I agree complaint fuels progress.

Hwilensky--Many people on the forums forget,..the DevTeam used to be owners. Now they're employees. It's a different dynamic, probably not a fun one. That said, they're still the most responsive developers I know of. Maybe ping your issue?

[Fabtron7]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

I agree complaint fuels progress.

Feedback fuels progress. Endless complaining by the same tiny handful of voices over and over on repeat day in and day out just turns into white noise.