Face of the Franchise is a disaster

[waittilnextyear]

Originally Posted by MaroonAlberich

(1) Exactly which % of the top 1% of the top 1% are they looking to benefit here? Could be wrong, but I don't think we'll see more than a handful of players complete all FotF missions through the divisions and both leagues. At that point, why not just ship the cards to their favorite whales as a "thank you" and not upend the AH for so many. Which brings me to point 2...

(2) Can't think of other ways to pop the AH a bit? Release diamond packs. Release Negro League packs. (Because FFS, after opening over 1000 packs across all teams, I have scored a grand total of 3 Negro League cards. I get that the mission is hard, but it shouldn't require godlike luck or a massive wallet to complete.) Allow packs to be combined to grant the next pack up. Got four SPs? Make a silver pack. Ten silvers? A gold pack. Four golds? A diamond pack. There is a metric ton of other options aside from pricing a decent proportion of the user base out of rounding out tourney teams.

Actually, back to (1) for a minute. Exactly how much "grind-y work" do you imagine some poor FTP has to put in before you would allow him to aspire to be near the top of the heap, much less on top of it?

(1) Most players will not complete the FOTF series of missions right as they come out, but there are a few that will. Personally, I just completed the Padres for 100 Gwynn and that cost me a bit over 200k on top of the assets I already had. I probably won't do the other FOTFs, at least not right away. But, let's not mistake completing something the week it comes out with not completing it all fall/winter etc. I think it's good to have an aspirational set of missions that can be done over time. People can chip away as they grumble about whales and about how the game is a disaster. With the new pyramid structure, most of these teams that are complaining or can't afford the new FOTF (at least initially) probably aren't in position to compete with those that do anyway.

(2) I don't think juicing the pack odds is a bad idea, but I'm not even sure if they can change that mid-cycle. I also think releasing the hounds with supply undercuts people that have valuable supplies and I know people with a scarce 300-400k Roger Connor aren't going to want to see that price get halved because the pull rates have gone out of control. I think FOTF is the best and most straightforward way to prop up the entire marketplace through increasing demand. It also builds in more opportunities for speculation income, and that has been a staple of F2P teams since the inception of this mode. Maybe if the balance is off, gone too far toward demand, then they hit us with another pack/PP sale sometime soon. They did this type of thing in PT20, my speculation is they did this to ease the bottleneck problem for certain missions.

(1, again) I'm not sure. But most games have gone the way of the microtransaction. People know what this game/mode is and know that you can either spend or work at it, or do both. Those that spend and work will always have an edge. These are the teams that will do FOTF quickly. Those that work can make up for much of their disadvantage at choosing not to spend. Those that spend and don't work can also be dumb money and can get beaten to the punch by better F2P teams. Everyone might be able to do some/all of FOTF over time. Problem is people can't have it all. And especially not for free. If people are just now realizing that, then they can always hop over to another title. If they've invested $0, there's not much sunk cost.

[Lemandria]

But who will you predate once the prey has fled?

[RoteLaterne]

There is absolutely no need to complete missions.

If you don't want to, let it be.

I have never done one single mission since PT was introduced and as a F2P player I am fine.
The rewards (for me) are very affordable in the AH w/o doing the mission itself.

[Lemandria]

Nothing to do with the completion of the missions, but the health of the game.

Robber-baron unrestricted capitalism requires a plentiful supply of fresh victims.

Once word gets around on Steam (do you imagine it won't?) who the developers support and don't support as customers, the supply of fresh victims dries up and the wolves begin to starve.

Followed by the developers.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

If they've invested $0, there's not much sunk cost.

There isn't a single person playing the game that has invested nothing. The game has a box cost, and many people ONLY buy the game to play PT

[justpatrick]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

There isn't a single person playing the game that has invested nothing. The game has a box cost, and many people ONLY buy the game to play PT

That´s very true. I used to buy the game every other year, and only after it was discounted. Since 19 I´ve pre-ordered it every year just because of PT, but next year I´m pretty sure I will wait if I buy it at all.

[mayday10]

Im not against spending money at all. I spent on one of my teams pretty early to give it a nice boost to catch up out of the gate.

The problem is now, 200k pp is talked about like no big deal (like to get the Gwynn FOTF card). That is more than a $100 real investment that gets you 175K. Spending $100 would be throwing money into an ocean. Even if I wanted to try to split it up into a bunch of other player purchases, it would be gone in 10 minutes. I could never justify spending more money at this point. There is no other way to generate pp, really, unless I just wait for a few months. Spending money on games like this is supposed to inject life into your fun for awhile. Points to play with and 'gamble' with.

You could buy packs with the pp I guess, but those yield nothing too. I had 30-40 packs pile up through the week from tournaments. I finally opened them last night. Got 1 historical silver of small value and also 3 live golds. That gets me nowhere. Quicksell the golds for 3000pp (which is a drop in the ocean) and hope to grind my way to 40 more packs this week, and watch my pp go from about 24K to maybe in the low-30s range.

Part of it is my fault too. I do have a large pile of doubles through my 3 teams. It is daunting to go through 100s of cards, deactivating a player, activating them, searching for them in the auction house, navigating back to the player, then setting the auction (or quick selling). Then all over again for the next player. I have also been grinding much less in tournaments because the pack payout is nonsense. I mentioned it upthread, but Im over 350 packs in a row now without seeing anything better than a couple live diamonds.

The exchange system would give a much better feel that you are making progress as you grind. In my packs, I got 3 golds which do very little for me. If I could exchange 5 live golds for an historical gold (no idea what the rate would be), those 3 golds get me 60% toward an historical gold which is much more intriguing and I would feel like I got some value. Historical Golds could become Live or Historical Diamonds, and so-on, from Live Iron to Perfect. Common cards could be exchanged for packs too probably. Right now you kind of have that I guess, you could technically exchange 200 Iron Cards for a pack, but why not make it 50 or 100? 40 Bronze cards get you a pack now, maybe 20 could in an exchange. This would also have to be done to not tank the auction house too.

[Thundercrack]

To add to the chorus, FOTF has ruined the auction house for the mid-level player. Historical diamonds that were obtainable before with some effort have now been mostly priced out of reach. And packs are just throwing points away. May be time to shut it down and go back to the base game for me

[emilempenza]

Put it this way, the game already had a massive imbalance in the cost of the live SE cards and the cost of comparable cards to have a less dull, cookie cutter team. These missions have essentially doubled the price of all those other cards (if not more). All that means is it's crippling expensive to run a competitive team that isn't just the standard Berra/Bagwell/Cano etc etc etc.

They already had a problem with lack of lineup diversity and this has just made it a lot worse.

[doublezero]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

(1) Most players will not complete the FOTF series of missions right as they come out, but there are a few that will. Personally, I just completed the Padres for 100 Gwynn and that cost me a bit over 200k on top of the assets I already had. I probably won't do the other FOTFs, at least not right away. But, let's not mistake completing something the week it comes out with not completing it all fall/winter etc. I think it's good to have an aspirational set of missions that can be done over time. People can chip away as they grumble about whales and about how the game is a disaster. With the new pyramid structure, most of these teams that are complaining or can't afford the new FOTF (at least initially) probably aren't in position to compete with those that do anyway.

(2) I don't think juicing the pack odds is a bad idea, but I'm not even sure if they can change that mid-cycle. I also think releasing the hounds with supply undercuts people that have valuable supplies and I know people with a scarce 300-400k Roger Connor aren't going to want to see that price get halved because the pull rates have gone out of control. I think FOTF is the best and most straightforward way to prop up the entire marketplace through increasing demand. It also builds in more opportunities for speculation income, and that has been a staple of F2P teams since the inception of this mode. Maybe if the balance is off, gone too far toward demand, then they hit us with another pack/PP sale sometime soon. They did this type of thing in PT20, my speculation is they did this to ease the bottleneck problem for certain missions.

(1, again) I'm not sure. But most games have gone the way of the microtransaction. People know what this game/mode is and know that you can either spend or work at it, or do both. Those that spend and work will always have an edge. These are the teams that will do FOTF quickly. Those that work can make up for much of their disadvantage at choosing not to spend. Those that spend and don't work can also be dumb money and can get beaten to the punch by better F2P teams. Everyone might be able to do some/all of FOTF over time. Problem is people can't have it all. And especially not for free. If people are just now realizing that, then they can always hop over to another title. If they've invested $0, there's not much sunk cost.

There's greedy then there's this game, which is the very definition of a money sinkhole meant for whales and privileged individuals. I was actually okay with it until they went over the edge this year with missions that lead to other missions, which meant one single mission wasn't enough to be competitive and get a decent return. Now it takes 4 missions to get a decent reward. And because they've increased the curve, now it's hard to be competitive without spending at least 50 dollars once, which is what I did a few months ago. So the balance is way off in my opinion and I don't feel I was getting a new game or a brand new experience for 50 dollars. Even with that investment, I don't think it would be possible to complete the FOTF missions anyways, so the cost has just gotten too extreme for the return. The next thing you know they'll have 10 mission ultimate combos for some ridiculous reward. I get that this is the perfect vehicle to get plenty of money via the rich %10 but I don't think it's very ethical as a viable "game". I'm sure I'll get told not to play if I don't like it, which is passive aggressive BS. The amount of missions has now skewed the auction house and the curve about as far to the extreme as I've ever seen it. I'm perfectly fine contributing money but missions leading to missions leading to missions is too much. I'm not contributing another 50 dollars. It's not going to happen.

[Marleigh]

and piggybacking on the FOTF someone looks like they are trying to manipulate the Live SE market, lots of Nathans etc listed at 25k (no one in their right mind would actually pay that for him)

[BigRed75]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

this is the thing that grinds my gears most of all, at the start of the year they said they had a full content plan laid out.

Not only did they say they had a full content plan laid out, but Kris got on that first podcast and said that team-based missions had gone away.

I had a whole plan laid out for my teams, and what I was going to do with them. I had a lot of success and fun with the Redlegs, South Side Lumber Co., Forest City Tribe, DMV Beltways and the Froggies (Mariners theme) and used the offseason to figure out how to do it even better in 21. Then when Kris said no more team missions, I had to scramble and figure out what to do with era-based themes (which I haven't enjoyed near as much).

Four months later, here's FOTF...

#baitandswitch

[BigRed75]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

For me its not about being top of the heap, its about making teams that i find fun. I currently have 5 teams so I have 2 licenses, I'm not a free to play player (but that is another argument) I have spent a bit on one team. But the fact that I have several teams means alongside the fact I live in Europe makes playing the market almost impossible as there are nowhere near as many cards posted in EU times and never any deals. Having 5 teams makes tournaments an endless task, so i only do those on one team, so i rely on passive generation of PP as my main source of income on most teams, one of the joys (for me) of OOTP was finding those sub 10k historical diamonds that seemed to do a job for the team i was using it on. Those players have at least doubled in price and are just going to be hoarded then locked in teams and never be used now.

This, except replace "Europe" with "Australia"

[BigRed75]

Originally Posted by JKap

Hoarding will only occur until the collection is opened and then the supply of hoarded cards will hit the market. After that there will no longer be a reason to hoard cards for available collections.

All the more reason why I'm leaning toward Bailey's model and shelving it until November.

However then, the supply will probably also be short because there won't be as many sellers, due to not as many people playing.

Which brings me back to my original point, that the AH was farked by FOTF...

[getalife1798]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

(1) Most players will not complete the FOTF series of missions right as they come out, but there are a few that will. Personally, I just completed the Padres for 100 Gwynn and that cost me a bit over 200k on top of the assets I already had. I probably won't do the other FOTFs, at least not right away. But, let's not mistake completing something the week it comes out with not completing it all fall/winter etc. I think it's good to have an aspirational set of missions that can be done over time. People can chip away as they grumble about whales and about how the game is a disaster. With the new pyramid structure, most of these teams that are complaining or can't afford the new FOTF (at least initially) probably aren't in position to compete with those that do anyway.

So basically, your telling me that I have no shot at winning a perfect league or have any hope of cracking the top 1% until year 2021? Why hype up, in a stream, a trophy that one person can obtain by winning a perfect league if 99% of the player base has no shot at getting? Why hype up this FOTF missions/sets...release a video on the new format of it....if 99% of the player base can't achieve it until later in the year or in 2021 or not at all? I hope someone will get the idea of the mission format when it's time to hit the submit button.

I have watched just about every stream OOTP has put out there, but I am thinking I am done. Hyping up something that I cannot achieve until year 2021 is a waste of my time according your post. I will just get the cliff notes from the discord.

Lastly - "I think it's good to have an aspirational set of missions that can be done over time." - I have played PT20 since it started, all the way up until earlier this month....I usually win one or two tournaments a day (if not more) that give me regular packs. I still haven't completed a bunch of missions there and have just given up. What ended up happening....the player base started to dwindle when we got into the winter and when OOTP 21 came out, the auction house got real quiet, real expensive. Players I needed to complete missions were never available and if they were, the cost of them slowed down the process of completing that mission. "Supply and demand". Now in OOTP 21, releasing missions that you need every player to obtain and then add in the fact that they are non-live so they won't show up in packs as often as live cards...will make it harder and more expensive to complete as time rolls on. It is just simple facts unless you scout the market every day, hoping for a player you need gets put on the auction house at a discount or you get lucky that a certain player comes in a pack.

This post might sound harsh, but I still love the game mode and the team at OOTP. Just really frustrated by a few of the decisions this year.

[getalife1798]

Originally Posted by BigRed75

Not only did they say they had a full content plan laid out, but Kris got on that first podcast and said that team-based missions had gone away.

I remember hearing about this comment too. I think he said it when the collection featuring the Special Edition Edgar Martinez came out. People made a comment in chat that he replied too (could be wrong) about starting to collect Mariners to obtain Edgar...little did we know we should have been collecting M's all this time.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by getalife1798

So basically, your telling me that I have no shot at winning a perfect league or have any hope of cracking the top 1% until year 2021? Why hype up, in a stream, a trophy that one person can obtain by winning a perfect league if 99% of the player base has no shot at getting? Why hype up this FOTF missions/sets...release a video on the new format of it....if 99% of the player base can't achieve it until later in the year or in 2021 or not at all? I hope someone will get the idea of the mission format when it's time to hit the submit button.

I have watched just about every stream OOTP has put out there, but I am thinking I am done. Hyping up something that I cannot achieve until year 2021 is a waste of my time according your post. I will just get the cliff notes from the discord.

Lastly - "I think it's good to have an aspirational set of missions that can be done over time." - I have played PT20 since it started, all the way up until earlier this month....I usually win one or two tournaments a day (if not more) that give me regular packs. I still haven't completed a bunch of missions there and have just given up. What ended up happening....the player base started to dwindle when we got into the winter and when OOTP 21 came out, the auction house got real quiet, real expensive. Players I needed to complete missions were never available and if they were, the cost of them slowed down the process of completing that mission. "Supply and demand". Now in OOTP 21, releasing missions that you need every player to obtain and then add in the fact that they are non-live so they won't show up in packs as often as live cards...will make it harder and more expensive to complete as time rolls on. It is just simple facts unless you scout the market every day, hoping for a player you need gets put on the auction house at a discount or you get lucky that a certain player comes in a pack.

This post might sound harsh, but I still love the game mode and the team at OOTP. Just really frustrated by a few of the decisions this year.

Same place I'm at. IMO, the game started out with collections and tournaments intended to help non-whales to compete at a higher level without taking away the "thrill" for the whales. PT20 more or less did that, but the lack of a pyramid caused some other problems.


PT21 went full-bull on never ending collections and "superman" reward cards which drove the Auction House through the roof... to a point your more likely to pull a good card buying packs instead of the AH.


I saw this happen because I self-limited my teams this year; (1) LIVE only, (2) Historical only, and (3) a team limited to only 7 source teams. The inflated AH pretty much killed any chance these limited teams could improve by mid-June. The teams that are still "possibly" able to improve without $$ are those that leave themselves open to use any card they can get - which again puts 99% of the success rate with the whales.

[PlayBall2020]

for the small wallet/F2P player to best option is to focus on very specific theme teams of your own creating. General ones like "All Braves" just presents the same problem discussed because youll still be wanting too many Perfects and Diamonds. Better off with something like All-Stars from the 50s, or just gold yankees and below, or NL HoFers from the a specific era. This way you have limited yourself and will be realistic to play and compete in the silver leagues and below. And even be able to play tournaments and have a chance. Do not expect to be able to reach DL and PL levels. And why would you want to because you will have no chance to win. Without major capital investment, youll need loto level luck very often and have to use the limited PP you get from achieves on packs because the OP cards will cost more than youll ever earn. Im very happy the 60 game Quick Start is coming out soon as that will be fun

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

Personally, I just completed the Padres for 100 Gwynn and that cost me a bit over 200k on top of the assets I already had. I

you have illustrated the problem perfectly.


it's all about your "assets" now. not your team on the field. that's the problem

[professor ape]

As a preface, don’t take what I am saying here as acceptance of the status quo. There is clear need for improvement.

That being said, it is going to be a near impossible task to satisfy us as a group. Let’s just suppose that the ability to purchase points was removed. It’s not going to happen but for this exercise let’s say that the crew came out and said that PT is now FTP only. Within a matter of days we would be up in arms about how lucky you need to get with packs to build a top team and how unfair it is that some people have the time available to stay active in tournaments all day. There would be a downward price pressure without the flood of points from those who have been willing to drop serious coin but that would be countered by a much lower supply as well as many of those people spend points on the packs which are needed to stock the AH.

The frustration is also fueled by the fact that PT has a clear pinnacle and visibility into every league at all levels. Most games operate in a relative fog where all you know is that you want to progress more than you have. I think it hurts PT that we all know there is a single Perfect League at the top of the heap which is out or reach for all but a few.

I have no doubt that Markus and team are working to figure out the best balance to maintain interest. I just don’t envy their task.