"Our League" Season 4--Who Wants To Play Our Way?

[Charlatan]

Hey guys, been a few days.


Regarding the promotion/relegation thing: while it's painful being placed with a bunch of teams that are a lot better than us, I use the time to look at their rosters and see what players they're using, see their ballpark setups, and maybe try to figure out if they are using any strategies. Granted, that doesn't take a week but it's something!

About the teams we see week after week: isn't there is a setting that says (basically) "leave things the same"? So maybe a few of these familiar teams have it set that way.

I understand how it can be frustrating to feel like you're banging your head against the wall in a league full of whales or mini-whales or whatever but that's the nature of the higher leagues.

[stl jason]

Diamond league:

Annandale makes the most of their limited schedule so far and takes over the lead. Nowhere and Cary remain at a solid .600+ pace, while Waffletown falls back towards the .500 mark.

Going to add a "relegation watch" section as well, since that seems to be the spot to be for a number of OL teams. Currently in the drop-zone:

-Lemp Ave
-Cary
-Waffletown
-Shinbone

[Edster007]

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Hey guys, been a few days.


Regarding the promotion/relegation thing: while it's painful being placed with a bunch of teams that are a lot better than us, I use the time to look at their rosters and see what players they're using, see their ballpark setups, and maybe try to figure out if they are using any strategies. Granted, that doesn't take a week but it's something!

About the teams we see week after week: isn't there is a setting that says (basically) "leave things the same"? So maybe a few of these familiar teams have it set that way.

I understand how it can be frustrating to feel like you're banging your head against the wall in a league full of whales or mini-whales or whatever but that's the nature of the higher leagues.

There is a stay put setting but it is in the same drop down as use friends list. You can only choose one.

[Madmarcus]

Originally Posted by stl jason

Diamond league:
Going to add a "relegation watch" section as well, since that seems to be the spot to be for a number of OL teams. Currently in the drop-zone:

Luckily there is no -OL relegation slot or Silly would take it for sure!

[Charlatan]

Someone was asking about the mission chaining a couple of days ago. Here's something I wrote up about it on another board. If this is all obvious to you, feel free to skip it!

The mission structure this year features a bunch of chains. That means there is a tier of missions that you complete to get one or more rewards. Then there is another tier of missions that require some of the previous tier's rewards. They give yet more rewards. And there will for sure be at least one (if not more) tiers that do the same.

The important thing to note is that completing these chains requires locking the *reward* of the mission, not completing the mission itself. Completing the mission usually has rewards though, like extra "toppers" for completing things like divisions/leagues, etc. So if you buy the reward cards directly you miss out on the toppers. They have said the toppers are not required for future missions, so you should be able to safely sell them if you want to recoup part of the cost of completing the missions.

What do we know?

Existing missions:

Tier 1

• Live Team Collection
• Build-A-Legend
• Team Mission 1

Rewards you with a Franchise Hero #1 card as shown in the first picture below.

Tier 2

• Franchise Hero #1 [reward of above mission chain]
• Future Legend
• Unannounced mission
• Unannounced team mission #2

rewards you with a Franchise Hero #2 card as shown in the second picture below. One of the ??? has been revealed to be the Future Legend missions.

Given what we know, I think it’s somewhat safe to speculate a bit about future mission structure:

Speculation: Tier 3

• Franchise Hero #2 [result of above mission chain]
• Unannounced mission
• Unannounced team mission #3

would reward you with a Franchise Hero #3 reward card

And further speculation: I suspect there is going to be some ultimate card that is the end of all these mission chains. Here's one thought about it

Speculation: Ultimate Franchise Reward

• Franchise Hero #1
• Franchise Hero #2
• Franchise Hero #3
• ???

reward would be Ultimate team reward card

I don't know what additional mission(s) would be required but I suspect getting the ultimate player will be more complicated than just completing all the prior tiers - more missions mean people have an incentive to buy PP/packs and be involved with the game. That's purely a guess though.

Playing the long game, it seems like a good idea to think ahead to who these ‘ultimate’ players will be and to make sure you’re up to date on the missions for those teams. “Up to date” to me means completing associated missions for the team, including the boring Future Legend missions; maybe even being proactive and looking for team silvers/golds that aren’t currently in missions (because someday they WILL be in a mission, and their prices will only rise).

As mentioned a few days ago, I have identified five teams I want to pursue, given the potential rewards. But at this point all of that is a crap shoot, since we don't have a crystal ball. But as mentioned before, I have identified a few teams' potential ultimate reward and have been trying to complete the mission chains for these teams. And yeah, that means either completing the Future Legend missions or buying the Future Legend reward. It sucks to have to do that but I'm betting the price on the FL cards goes up once for any FH#2 missions that reward top tier players.

In addition, I am trying to buy up cards that I think will be in the future missions. My priority for these cards is as follows:

• cards from a team whose ultimate reward I want
• cards not currently in a mission
• cards only in trivial missions (name game, tallest/shortest)
• cards not in existing team missions

I don't have enough PP to do this for a lot of teams so I've initially zeroed in on a few teams (and even then I probably don't have enough PP). But it gives me a goal, and that's the kind of thing that keeps me engaged with the game. So there you have it.

[Charlatan]

Originally Posted by Edster007

There is a stay put setting but it is in the same drop down as use friends list. You can only choose one.

Right, I was saying maybe some of these other teams we see week after week have the drop down on that setting, and that would help explain why we see them so often.

Or it could be random placement!

[Edster007]

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Right, I was saying maybe some of these other teams we see week after week have the drop down on that setting, and that would help explain why we see them so often.

Or it could be random placement!

Only the wizard behind the curtain knows for sure. I assume that the odds are higher for it to happen at diamond level. Fewer diamond leagues to be placed in compared to other levels and it only takes one team from a friends list to get connected to one team from a different friend list and all the other teams from both lists get dragged in with them.

[allenciox]

Originally Posted by Edster007

Only the wizard behind the curtain knows for sure. I assume that the odds are higher for it to happen at diamond level. Fewer diamond leagues to be placed in compared to other levels and it only takes one team from a friends list to get connected to one team from a different friend list and all the other teams from both lists get dragged in with them.

Interestingly, it used to be that we got paired with BFF every week, but BFF has gotten so big at the top levels now that they switched to DLL now. In fact, BFF teams are so common at the gold level that, as you can see below, 23 of the 30 teams in G327 are BFF teams: still, they got paired with -E6 teams this week to fill it out.

Because of this pairing of multiple friends' lists at the same level that happens over and over again, I think it is their placement logic that actually causes this to happen. Here is what I think that logic is:

They first take all the players that have listed "keep in same league" and put them in the exact same spot: for league D367, for instance, they would place all those teams with that setting that don't get relegated or promoted that are already in D367.

They then take all the teams that have placement listed as "use friends" list. They need to place these before the players that list "random" placement because they don't know how many friends will end up being processed by this list. Starting with the first player on this friends' list, they:

Identify all the friends identified by that player at that level that also have reciprocal friendship that are on this "use friends" list. As they add teams to this friends' chain, they remove them from the list, and recursively do the same process with all those friends until the friends' chain ends. They then place all of them on that chain in a league that is closest to full that have space for that number of spots.

They then go to the next team on that "use friends" list and repeat the process, finding all in that friends' chain. Once they have identified a friends' chain, they then check to see if that group of friends can "fit" into any of the leagues created so far, starting with the one closest to full. If they can, they are added to that league. Only when all chains have been identified and placed do they start placing teams with "random" placement.

As an example, suppose that they first start placing D367 for the next week. They check all the teams currently in D367 that have stay put set that are not promoted or relegated. Say there are seven, which is the most for any diamond league. So D367 starts off with 7
members.

Now they go to friends' chains. Suppose that the first team they process is Cary Southpaws - OL. (Hey this is my example, so I get to use my team). They find 7 teams total in the chain that are at diamond level, and they check placement and find that D367 is the closest to full, but it has 23 spaces available so they add all those teams to that league.

Now, suppose the next team they process is a BFF team and it has 21 members at diamond level. They can't add them to D367 so they pick another league where they can fit and put them in there--- suppose it is D366, and D366 now has 25 total including the ones that stayed put.

Next on the list is a DLL team. They process nine members and find that it cannot fit in the league that is closest to full (D366: where 25+9>30): but they can put them in the next closest to full which is D367 which has 16 left to fill.

Once they finish all the friends' chains, the rest is easy. Just put all those that have "random" set to take up the remaining spaces in each of the leagues.

The key here is that they always try to add friends' chains to leagues first that are the closest to full already because they already have friends' chains in them. That is why there is a lot of pairing of different friends' chains together.

[revmcgator]

Gettysburg shot to the top of OL B225 like a...well, you know.

By getting the upper hand in their pitched battle with Sugar Hill, the Bullets have gone ahead of Bluffton. Gettysburg and the Gang have 10 games remaining against each other, including a season-ending 3-game set at the Big Ball Orchard in the South Bronx.

[Tinkerman]

Originally Posted by allenciox

The key here is that they always try to add friends' chains to leagues first that are the closest to full already because they already have friends' chains in them. That is why there is a lot of pairing of different friends' chains together.

By Jove, I think you've got it! Makes total sense, and presumably wouldn't be too difficult to alter slightly (if desired).

Also, I was wondering how many BFF there were in Gold, as OL are not paired with them this week. Lo and behold, there are too many to fit in a league with OL. Thanks, Allen.

[Stanley Kuppchaser]

Actually, Sugar Hill is not far from Coogan's Bluff, where Staten Island's Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world," also commonly known as the miracle of Coogan's Bluff. Believe the Warriors might more aptly stay east and play their home games in the ballpark pictured below. A young outfielder made a pretty good grab there in 1954, as well.

[Tinkerman]

Silver League:

Knockemstiff did indeed drag themselves all the way from bottom to top (my spreadsheet sort placed them at the top, not me!), then they finished the day with a 10-game losing streak

Even though I've had a very flakey couple of weeks with PT because work has been exhausting, OL keeps me entertained

This week in Silver is wide open going in to the final day, so good luck everyone!

[Edster007]

Originally Posted by Stanley Kuppchaser

Actually, Sugar Hill is not far from Coogan's Bluff, where Staten Island's Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world," also commonly known as the miracle of Coogan's Bluff. Believe the Warriors might more aptly stay east and play their home games in the ballpark pictured below. A young outfielder made a pretty good grab there in 1954, as well.

Coogan's Bluff was my original idea, it started as a tip of the cap to my Dad who was a huge Giant fan. I couldn't come up with a good nickname for the team and since Sugar Hill is in the area I went with Sugar Hill Gang.

[Edster007]

103 packs over coffee this morning. Nels Potter was the highlight. Along with Nels we pulled a live diamond, Josh Hader and over a dozen live Gold's including two Edwin Diaz and a Nelson Cruz both rated at 89. I am storing those until the next ratings update. I am still holding 3 Nelson Arenado cards from last month.

I ran out of time but it looks like I completed several more missions that I will submit after work today.

The Warriors are playing .500 ball after their 0-8 start to the season. Given the makeup of the roster I can be satisfied with that.

[Stanley Kuppchaser]

Port Ruppert won its only series in August, 2-1, to hold the pole position as the teams turn for home. With six games left, with four wins, they will turn away the other competitors. However, only New York is eliminated at this point and there is a large schedule of games remaining. Coney Island, at 7-2, he hottest summer team still has 15 left, while Algoma, Paxville, and Texarkana each have 10. Asheboro, Cedar Rapids, and HelthWyzer all have just a single series to go, but the Crakes could post a gaudy winning percentage with a sweep of the Tornadoes. Although they are eliminated, New York can have a major effect on the outcome, given their busy, 13 game, schedule.

[Stanley Kuppchaser]

It would be disappointing to continue our lost standings streak into a third week, considering that we had none for more than three years. If someone can't do the iron standings, screen shots of the team vs. team for the five OL teams here, or e-mailed to kidheckett@gmail.com, would be nice.

[stl jason]

Diamond league:

Annandale extends their OL lead heading into the final month of the regular season.

Relegation watch:

still four OL in the drop-zone, with the Mad Brewers knocking on the door

[revmcgator]

Gear Terrace currently a prime example of "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you." Despite being near the bottom of every statistical category, the Warriors are currently leading their division by 7 games.

[revmcgator]

Bluffton is back in front. They have 10 OL games remaining. Gettysburg has seven remaining, all against Sugar Hill.

West Burlington is the only OL team in the relegation zone at the moment.

[Magus978]

I'm done with PT for the year. I was hanging on mainly because my BFF team is in the PTCS bronze main event in August, as well as the Franchise Heroes campaign, but I honestly can't hang on any longer. This <censored> ain't fun for me no more. Every version of PT I play, I'm finding out more and more that being an also-ran just ain't for me. I need to be winning, and if I'm not winning, I need to be playing something else that will scratch that itch. It's time to finally learn that lesson the right way and stay away from this gamemode.

That said, New York and Kaipo will remain in OL as dormant gatekeepers wherever they settle in. I will, however, be selling some of my higher value players across my teams, non-playoff teams starting tonight after game 162, and playoff teams on Sunday night after playoffs. I will be available on Sunday nights in case any level that my teams are at need someone to post final standings to save the day.