The thread where you celebrate your PT success or complain about your failures...

[Tinkerman]

Despite bad RNG, finished top of the league again, but yet another loss in the DS. At least I don't have to panic about picking up any new superheroes

Actually, I should probably sell off some talent, so that I can get the chance to be a plucky wildcard.

[Stormhound]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

I'm not holding my breath. Also getting the opinion their aren't many folks left here on the forums anyway that care much about how I'm doing, LOL.


Another week, another disappointment.

The celebrations were short-lived, the complaints all sound about the same...at a certain point, one ceases to speak for lack of anything original to say. At least, that's my excuse.

[mikezone13]

Fluked my way to wining Diamond, well it felt like it anyway. First EVER time in a perfect league across 4 versions of PT that I've played actively.. and fully free to play.

I am now truly fodder for the perfect league guys who have completed 170+ of the missions, have 200+ tournament wins and about half their roster with perfect and high diamond combinators.

My mind just boggles at how much $$$ and time has been 'invested' by some players. I've invested time by analysing performance of different cards, but I even hate buying my kids vbucks and robucks so no way am I going to invest extra $$$ into PT when it's not a level playing field. Now if we all had to pay the same monthly fee to access and there was no 'buying of PP', then that would be a different story, but I believe I'm in the minority with that view.

[dishnet34]

For what it's worth, a F2P team made the PeL World Series yesterday, so anything is possible. Good luck!

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by mikezone13

Fluked my way to wining Diamond, well it felt like it anyway. First EVER time in a perfect league across 4 versions of PT that I've played actively.. and fully free to play.

I am now truly fodder for the perfect league guys who have completed 170+ of the missions, have 200+ tournament wins and about half their roster with perfect and high diamond combinators.

My mind just boggles at how much $$$ and time has been 'invested' by some players. I've invested time by analysing performance of different cards, but I even hate buying my kids vbucks and robucks so no way am I going to invest extra $$$ into PT when it's not a level playing field. Now if we all had to pay the same monthly fee to access and there was no 'buying of PP', then that would be a different story, but I believe I'm in the minority with that view.

Well, that's different business model; everyone pays to enter PT (Just for the sake of argument, let's say $500.) and once your in it's a level playing field. Skill, time, and or luck from that point forward.

Only the powers-to-be would know if that kind of model would work.

[DcS]

F2P and started playing late but... Goin great

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers won their division and have the best record in the conference, so hopefully we'll see a quick exit from the playoffs! Got my best pull ever -- BY FAR -- from a Historic Gold pack and got Perfect Greg Maddux. Unfortunately for me, he has been quite atrocious. Chase Utley had a terrible season and had a tough time staying above .190 all season but did reward me with a 9000-point Achievement, Running Insanity, by stealing 6 bases in a game.

The Battle Corgis started the season out 16-36 or something like that and never got out of the cellar, but did play much better throughout the season. I am also proud to say that I have the worst-worser-worserest Jackson Holliday ever. Took him half the season to get above .200. Probably paybacks for all the times I cursed his dad trying to catch a routine flyball when he played for STL.

The Gunners turned it around this season and had the best record in the league. They really need some decent relief pitching as they blew multiple saves.

[DotDash]

Got relegated back to Silver last week after two exactly .500 seasons in Gold. Most wins in the league this week, so, you guessed it - yet another immediate exit at the hands of a Wild Card team. And of course, it was a reverse sweep. Versus a team that my team won all six regular season games against. I'm so absolutely sick of this clownshoes playoff 'randomness'. It's been like this for years, people have complained about it for years, nothing is done (it actually seems to be more pronounced now than ever.) Yuck.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by DotDash

Got relegated back to Silver last week after two exactly .500 seasons in Gold. Most wins in the league this week, so, you guessed it - yet another immediate exit at the hands of a Wild Card team. And of course, it was a reverse sweep. Versus a team that my team won all six regular season games against. I'm so absolutely sick of this clownshoes playoff 'randomness'. It's been like this for years, people have complained about it for years, nothing is done (it actually seems to be more pronounced now than ever.) Yuck.

The "problem" is the nature of wildcards. I hate them - always have. Set up originally to increase the length of a season and increase profits, what it does in reality is dilutes the meaning of a 162 game season. It now gives the second place team a 50-50 chance to win the season's rewards - whether it was behind by 1 game or 20. The differences in talent between two teams is much more pronounced in a 162 game schedule than a 3 game series. Play your 3 game series 54 times (162 games) and the better team will win MOST of them - but they also will lose SOME of them. Another terrible idea for the sake of money.

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers lose game 7 of the Gold World Series 5-4. The YakAnglers were up 3 games to 1 but couldn't get the fourth win. The Nirvanna KurtCobains win the Series and were the better team. We go back to Diamond and will more than likely be relegated just as fast.

The Gunners win the Bronze World Series and add their 4th Trophy.

[DotDash]

Originally Posted by DotDash

Got relegated back to Silver last week after two exactly .500 seasons in Gold. Most wins in the league this week, so, you guessed it - yet another immediate exit at the hands of a Wild Card team. And of course, it was a reverse sweep. Versus a team that my team won all six regular season games against. I'm so absolutely sick of this clownshoes playoff 'randomness'. It's been like this for years, people have complained about it for years, nothing is done (it actually seems to be more pronounced now than ever.) Yuck.

Oh, and apparently you can miss promotion to the next tier despite having the best record in the entire league if (or rather, when) you run into this BS. I had 107 wins in Silver last week, and now I get to repeat the level, what fun.

[DotDash]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

The "problem" is the nature of wildcards. I hate them - always have. Set up originally to increase the length of a season and increase profits, what it does in reality is dilutes the meaning of a 162 game season. It now gives the second place team a 50-50 chance to win the season's rewards - whether it was behind by 1 game or 20. The differences in talent between two teams is much more pronounced in a 162 game schedule than a 3 game series. Play your 3 game series 54 times (162 games) and the better team will win MOST of them - but they also will lose SOME of them. Another terrible idea for the sake of money.

Pretty sure the problem (no scare quotes required) is that we had a 6-0 record against this team during the regular season and a 2-0 lead in the playoffs (so 8 straight wins), but both 'upsets' and reverse sweeps are hardcoded in the game to happen way more often than they should. Oh and my post above where this nonsense leads to not getting promoted despite 107 wins.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by DotDash

Pretty sure the problem (no scare quotes required) is that we had a 6-0 record against this team during the regular season and a 2-0 lead in the playoffs (so 8 straight wins), but both 'upsets' and reverse sweeps are hardcoded in the game to happen way more often than they should. Oh and my post above where this nonsense leads to not getting promoted despite 107 wins.

Well, your team is much better than mine, but I look in vain for those proverbial reverse sweeps in my favor. Spent most of the week in last place, but an 18-8 spurt on Saturday earned me 1000 perfect points for a playoff berth. It was a weird division where every team enjoyed the thrill of being in first place at some point as well as suffering the agony of being in last place at some point.

[Stormhound]

Well, I got one (last?) pleasant surprise, sliding into the Bronze PTCS in 105th. It only took me 51 tournaments to make 64 points (Can you say "spamming the hell out of one tournament type"? I knew you could.), and I wouldn't have really worked it that hard except I got a 3rd and a 4th really early in the cycle and thus had a reason to focus on it. At least I'll get a free card out of it.

As to the main team, well, yet another slightly-under-.500 season, not enough to make the playoffs, but with some margin above relegation. Over 800 packs in, and can't even remember the last perfect I pulled. The kind of team even the fans forget about...

[Tinkerman]

I qualified for 6 PTCS formats this month. Thanks to work, I just managed to get the last roster done with about 1 minute to spare. I'm frickin knackered. I wouldn't be amazed if they all go out in the first round, though I would be soooo disappointed.

Both of my drafts were pretty sad. I think maybe the card pool should be reduced/normalized a bit for the really big events. The only new card I got offered was a LE.

[HRBaker]

Commodores will likely stay in Gold for 4th week in a row - playing a bit over .500 - about 60k PPs, but nothing to spend them on that will make a difference. Goal is to keep them in Gold as long as possible or until something significantly changes the playing field.

Classics will drop to Bronze after 5 weeks in Silver - incomplete Live Missions and no PPs to work with.

Stars (4 weeks in Bronze) may move up to Silver if they don't get beaten by a Wildcard team. Live missions complete, but only 3-4000 PPs so I don't expect to stay in Silver long.

Rail Kings (new team - only second week) got good initial pulls, a lot of pack luck, and I was much more selective on how I completed missions. with only 15 games left in current season, overall two week win-loss record is 245-64. I expect they will move up to Stone tomorrow (missed it last week by losing to WC team. This week I get a Bye.


My goal is to stick with OOTP until the All-Star break, but three of my 4 teams are - or are soon to be - stagnant. If I do go past the AS game, it will be the Rail Kings that keep me in it.

[Magus978]

Today is not the day for me to win the silver PTCS that I'm so <beep>ing overdue to win. Sometimes I wonder if the people who are blessed enough to beat me by that piece of garbage RNGjesus even know how to spell baseball.

Sickening. Absolutely sick. Why on earth do I ALWAYS run so <beep>ing unlucky when it matters the most?

[RunninYakAngler]

YakAnglers will be going back to Gold again despite me continuing to upgrade positions and blow thousands and thousands of PPs just for them to play even worse. At one 5-game stretch against 2 teams starting all Live Mission players, we were beat by a combined score of 60-20. I feel like just selling my Painter, Pujols, Holliday etc and going back to Live Mission players.

Battle Corgis have about the same players as the YakAnglers, but are in Gold. And we're a few games behind a Live Mission team for first place. Frustrating. Jackson Holiday is hitting around .240.

The Gunners are in first place in their division in Silver, but barely hanging on at this point. At least Jobe and Painter are somewhat decent at this level for me.

[Tinkerman]

Originally Posted by Magus978

Why on earth do I ALWAYS run so <beep>ing unlucky when it matters the most?

I was hoping we'd meet up eventually, but alas we both lost 5-4 in 4th round. Don't know about you, but I was 4-2 up.

At least you didn't graft for a month to get into the drafts, only to have just about the 2 worst drafts of the month in the main events. I didn't have time to be particularly salty about it yesterday, but today I am very annoyed. It's exactly what I feared would happen.

[DotDash]

Sorry to only post negatively in the complaints and celebrations thread, but here's another blog update.

Recap: 107 wins in Silver last week. No promotion due to 2-3 reverse sweep in the playoffs at the hands of a wild card team against whom I was 6-0 in the regular season.

This week:

- Added Mission Pujols and Yates before season start.
- Had a full season of Jackson Jobe vs. 26 starts last week.
- Added Edsall Walker during the season, who ended up making 11 starts.
- Added 99 Babe Adams as a reliever.
- Put 99 A-Rod at 3B in order to move King Kelly to RF, making DiMaggio a vs. LHP only player (and removing Al Kaline, who wasn't getting enough AB's.)
- Had a full season of Ethan Salas vs. 10 games last week, which should have benefited C Defense.

The result of these 'improvements':

- Went from a 107-win team to 77 wins at the same level.
- Dave Hoskins went from going 7-1 in just 11 starts last season to 1-11 in 22 starts (at which point he went to the bullpen and continued to suck.)
- Yates (a 75K reliever) only accrued 0.2 WAR in 44 IP, whereas the only other Yates in the league was worth 1.3 in 40 IP.
- Had to replace Edgar Martinez at DH after half a season of negative WAR production (.680 OPS.) Made the mistake of replacing him with 'Perfect' Pete Browning, whose 119 CON and 133 BABIP did not translate to a high enough BA to offset the lack of Power and Eye, so he ended up being even worse.
- Pujols was pedestrian at 1.6 WAR. That's a 140K card doing basically nothing in Silver.
- Jackie Robinson was 1.9 WAR worse than the year before (30 fewer plate appearances.)
- Helton was ALSO 1.9 WAR worse, same plate appearances (only staring vs. Righties.)
- Salas (110 C Def rating) was not an improvement over Harry Ford (95 C): 4.15 CERA vs. 3.16(!)
- etc.

I honestly wish that someone with a deep understanding of this game, dev. or player, would explain what goes into player and entire team performance variance from one season to the next. If it really is a matter of 'it's just dice rolls bro' (as some posters assert), then why even bother trying to manage/improve a team? You have no way of knowing what the impact of additions / moves is going to be anyway.

I don't think the 9th worst team gets relegated, so I guess we'll be in Silver again next week. I wonder if the pendulum of 'randomness' swings back the other way again...