Just a 2025 Summary...

[HRBaker]

Since March I've been rather critical of PT26 and back in August decided to minimize my involvement since F2P/Casual players (of which I am one) really don't have much opportunity to stay competitive after the "whales" (not meant to be insulting) take over the upper levels.

Since August I only stopped in to collect achievement points and open packs, converting what I could to players that could help. Eventually I had rosters full of 95+ OVR cards - but obviously were missing the card types that could really make a difference.

A couple things I've come to terms with; (1) PT is designed primarily to make money, and those willing and able to purchase success keep them in business. I truly have no issues with that. (2) Those who either can't afford an investment to purchase success must invest a significant amount of time and effort to accomplish something similar - and I also have no issue with those persons either.

So where am I headed?

That FTP/Casual players MUST find an alternative angle to enjoy PT. It obviously isn't going to be competing with the whales or spreadsheet gurus, but it CAN be about team success not directly related to the Pyramid. One has to be aware of the "less noticeable" awards in tracking your team.

In my case, as we enter December, I took a look at the six teams I started back in March. The attachment summarizes those teams from the best initial pull to the worst (left to right). Surprisingly, my worst initial pull team did the best... .525 winning percentage, 21 playoff appearances, and 4 World Series wins. If anything, that suggests your luck in pack pulls and mission completion is something that can make a significant difference that your really not in control of.

My best initial pull jumped into Diamond almost immediately, but the slow grind and bad luck caught up to it as the year progressed.

All in all I enjoyed the game a lot up to about the All Star break, then backed off because the rewards didn't balance out the effort to run six teams. I'm pretty sure I will only run one team this coming year in the hopes my interest/time investment will balance out more favorably.

Anyway... yes, there are a lot of things I wish were different with PT, but I have come to terms with those issues and will try to enjoy those things I do like.

My attachment is only to summarize my experience with PT25 as a casual player, so don't be too critical

[rburgh]

to flood login reward packs with the "bottleneck" cards for the premium missions after about 6-8 weeks. This would allow maintaining a single pyramid, and would simultaneously reduce hoarding of those cards and supply the FTP players with the wherewithal to have some of the best cards while they still have some playability left.

Some examples:

Brett Lawrie for the initial Launch Deck Nolan Ryan mission. There would have been no cataclysm if Brett had become readily available in historical diamond packs after Memorial Day.

FL Starlyn Caba and Gold Fred McGriff - I have several FTP teams waiting for them and a couple of the relatively noncompetitive perfects to complete the Madison Bumgarner mission.- that card has pitched an average of about 10 innings per team in the current PeL after 3 league months, and only two teams have allowed him to start (one team started him 9 times and another 17). What harm would it do to make it easy for teams to complete all those missions and get Bumgarner now?

There are many other examples. The devs can easily track usage of some of the former meta cards and scale up the frequency of occurrence of their bottleneck cards in packs - say triple their appearance frequency in packs when the big guy becomes bottom of the barrel in Pel, and triple them again when he stops being used regularly in HD.

Releasing these cards to guys who play their favorite franchise, or EVC's theme teams, or just casual players can only help keep the total number of players growing, which may eventually lead to some of them starting to occasionally buy points when that elusive FL Gold SS becomes available for 15K instead of 75K. Or the ridiculous Immortal missions for Nap Lajoie and Aroldis Chapman where you have to buy a total of four perfect cards (who are rarely used) to get two mission rewards (who are also rarely used). Yes, I get it, this would result in a lot of casual players to also get a lot of high-end packs, but again, what harm will that do? So one of them pulls Cobb - they may well sell him off for points rather than keep him for the fun of it. But that's a decision that has no real downside for the "whales." In fact, it will help some of them to buy the top end cards for 350K instead of 750 K, which will open up opportunities for some of the better players who spend sparingly to get to PeL, which will keep them from giving up entirely.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by rburgh

to flood login reward packs with the "bottleneck" cards for the premium missions after about 6-8 weeks. .

I think it would be simpler to just add more cards to non-live missions after 6-8 weeks.

There is plenty of room at the upper levels as late as November. I did not start my team until 2049, so only about 15 weeks of play, but had no trouble sneaking into Perfect League 1 time. I'm surprised I hung onto High Diamond as long as I did because I quit playing hard a month ago.

[daves]

For some of your reasons from your initial post is why I prefer the theme team approach (TTC) run by EVCinNYC. I am spending less on PT and only obtaining players within the criteria I created. I am enjoying the game without worrying about chasing the big spending whales.