The problem with missions these days:

Kushiel · 01-25-2024, 10:24 AM

Too many missions have bottlenecks and roadblocks that are released in a manner that completely blocks out most players. And we wonder why the player numbers continue to dwindle. It is like people fleeing high tax states and will continue. This one will reward you with two Eras packs for your approximately 900K to complete this morning. This is the crap driving away the base. When people that can afford this are the only ones left, then these cards will not even be on Card Shop. There will not be enough people left to support the Card Shop in cards.

Hwilensky · 01-25-2024, 12:07 PM

Amen...But your preaching to the choir...I'm sure the thought process in creating these bottlenecks is the hope that people will spend money to buy PP to buy the cards. I assume that it's working otherwise they wouldn't do it. However, like you said, a majority of the smaller fish are getting turned off by this, and either not as active as they once were or leaving the game altogether. The number's have decreased year over year, and it seems like they just don't care.

bailey · 01-25-2024, 12:21 PM

2% of the teams have acquired most of the meta cards. 2% of the teams have completed most of the missions. 2% of the teams show up for official streams and collect 6 drops. I see a pattern here. The developers provide the water, but only 2% drink it. What more can they do and still make a profit?

Besides, this mission leads to Acuna, one of the best cards in the game. It's misleading to say this mission is just worth 2 packs.

Kushiel · 01-25-2024, 12:23 PM

I keep hoping that somebody up in the clouds of com2us looks down upon us little people posting on the supposedly official forums.

Maybe when it gets down to only 60 players vying for 40 PT Level slots and no plankton left in the ocean they will say, "Oh my!"

HRBaker · 01-25-2024, 12:26 PM

Another thing that's frustrating; there is no "diagram/table" that explains what missions are related - which ones are dead ends - which are specific to a certain card... everything is simply thrown into the list for the players to figure out or spend hours on Discord or Twitch TV to sort out all the questions.

If you haven't noticed 1,000 people on Twitch is a good but rare night, but you have 22,000 teams in the Universe. Even if every OOTP player has 3 teams, that's still 7,300 players and Twitch is only reaching about 14% of the audience on a good night. You need more interaction with the other 6,300 players.

It would be nice if the missions were introduced with an explanation of what leads to what, categorizing missions that lead to what level cards, etc. The P2P players will spend money and time to figure all that out for themselves, but as said above, the vast majority of players simply move on once it gets too complex.

"Keep the lower 2/3rds of the game players involved and the game thrives for longer than 6 months."

Kushiel · 01-25-2024, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bailey

2% of the teams have acquired most of the meta cards. 2% of the teams have completed most of the missions. 2% of the teams show up for official streams and collect 6 drops. I see a pattern here. The developers provide the water, but only 2% drink it. What more can they do and still make a profit?

Besides, this mission leads to Acuna, one of the best cards in the game. It's misleading to say this mission is just worth 2 packs.

It is a good card if you complete it. And, to get it you have to complete 3 other Missions. And it is not misleading to point to 2 packs. If you have not done the other 3 Missions, then you have only 2 packs. Those are the facts.

We all want them to make a profit. But Missions have gone to the point of ridiculous. The point is, what are those 2% going to do when stuff like this has driven out most of the other 98%?

Hwilensky · 01-25-2024, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bailey

2% of the teams have acquired most of the meta cards. 2% of the teams have completed most of the missions. 2% of the teams show up for official streams and collect 6 drops. I see a pattern here. The developers provide the water, but only 2% drink it. What more can they do and still make a profit?

Besides, this mission leads to Acuna, one of the best cards in the game. It's misleading to say this mission is just worth 2 packs.

2% does not sounds like a viable business plan if you ask me...just saying..

bailey · 01-25-2024, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kushiel

It is a good card if you complete it. And, to get it you have to complete 3 other Missions. And it is not misleading to point to 2 packs. If you have not done the other 3 Missions, then you have only 2 packs. Those are the facts.

We all want them to make a profit. But Missions have gone to the point of ridiculous. The point is, what are those 2% going to do when stuff like this has driven out most of the other 98%?

I agree if you can't do them all, you should not be doing any of them, but you did have, (I think), several weeks to complete those other 3 which were not terribly difficult. In PT23, I completed 39% of missions, but this year it is 85% completed, so I think they did make missions easier, even if you can't do every last one.

Turnover in all games is extremely high. The 98% will never go away, but they will be different players. Making the whole game easy as pie might make the 98% stay but drive away the 2% who pay. 2% with meta teams is several hundred players with only 40 spots in perfect league makes me think the game is already too easy.

bailey · 01-25-2024, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hwilensky

2% does not sounds like a viable business plan if you ask me...just saying..

Well, if it is not, then the game goes belly up. I won't lose any sleep over it, in fact, I might sleep better.

Kushiel · 01-25-2024, 02:45 PM

My one question is, if the 98% will always be there, why does it get smaller every year?

bailey · 01-25-2024, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kushiel

My one question is, if the 98% will always be there, why does it get smaller every year?

Because they are falling from an aberrantly high base because of the pandemic. Eventually, it will level off and begin to grow again.

rburgh · 01-25-2024, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Because they are falling from an aberrantly high base because of the pandemic. Eventually, it will level off and begin to grow again.

Not all businesses suffered during the pandemic.

LeeD · 01-25-2024, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rburgh

Not all businesses suffered during the pandemic.

Online gaming boomed during the pandemic, so it's evidence that maybe OOTP's numbers two years ago were inflated and not a true indicator of its appeal to the public at large. The drop-off since then might be due as much to people spending less time gaming as it is to OOTP's evolving market strategy.

Do I believe that this is the case? Not entirely. I don't think that the drop-off can be fully explained by our "return to normal" post-pandemic. Some of it is tied up in the mission logjams and expense in time and/or money that the game requires.Still, that's more or less industry standard in computer gaming.

Like chess, you don't get to the top rungs in Perfect Team unless you're obsessive...with the caveat that, unlike chess, you can just buy yourself a winning team if you're willing to fork over a few thousand dollars every year (which is my estimate of how much it takes if you just want pay to win without any additional effort).

Hwilensky · 01-25-2024, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeeD

Like chess, you don't get to the top rungs in Perfect Team unless you're obsessive...with the caveat that, unlike chess, you can just buy yourself a winning team if you're willing to fork over a few thousand dollars every year (which is my estimate of how much it takes if you just want pay to win without any additional effort).

And spending that kind of money doesn't guarantee anything. The guy who on discord said he spent 50K on perfect team, has only made one trip to Perfect League.

I just think that creating these bottlenecked mission's will just drive people away from the game, especially this late in the cycle, instead of keeping people around. The market for this game was small to begin with, why drive them away. There are many ways to drive revenue, so that they get not only the big fish, but us minnows too!

bdawg · 01-25-2024, 07:53 PM

Crazy what difference a day makes. Down to about 380k now.

I think there are quite a few of us who will never compete at PeL in late game because of this. It is disheartening to think that I can do everything right, put my team together in the best way, use the best strategy, etc and I can't compete there because I didn't buy in. I think that's the tough thing - skill doesn't really matter at high levels, which is very different from chess.

rburgh · 01-25-2024, 09:56 PM

Because only a certain percentage of players actively chase most missions.

There are multiple ways to earn PP's.

1. Buy them - simple and effective, but not everyone has the wallet or the inclination to do so.

2. Use your login packs to complete missions. If this is your only strategy, you're crazy to not be a PT+ member. The cost is a couple of six-packs or cigarette packs a month. And you know you should be cutting down on your drinking and/or smoking.

3. Take advantage of twitch drops. 50+ packs a week are available, and all you have to do is log in and come back in an hour and a half to claim the drops. You can play with the kids or the dog, mow the lawn, watch a movie, whatever. 50+ packs a week x 52 weeks is 2600 packs. Figuring the average value of a standard pack is about 400 PP's, that's an extra million PP's for you over the year. And 400 PP's is probably low (although it's not 1000).

4. Play the revaluation game. Some people put a lot of effort into it. But it doesn't have to be that tough. Just hoard low value live cards for players who are doing well. You can only BUY up to ten of them, but after that you can still get them in packs. Irons are the best for this, but Bronzes are good bets and Silvers can be good bets if you pick and choose wisely.

5. Spam the quick tournaments to earn extra packs. If you get halfway decent at it, you can win 10 packs a day, which comes up to 70 packs a week, or about 1.5 million PP's or so over the course of the year.

6. Play PT live. If you follow baseball reasonably well, you ought to be able to pick up some extra packs every week during baseball season. And some of you probably bet baseball - consider PT Live as a less risky way to bet. Or you could be like my nephew, and make your living on DFS. In that case, you will KILL PT Live.

7. Get good at the daily and weekly tournaments. They take a lot of attention and work, but you can win some spectacular cards from them.

8. You can pay rapt attention to the price fluctuations of cards and make money buying and selling them. But there's an easier way. You often see a 101 bid for a silver card, 1001 for a gold, 4001 for a diamond, and 20,001 for a perfect. These guys aren't collecting them, they're reselling them for tidy profits. You can move in on their action with very little effort. Just make sure the card you're bidding on is part of a mission and the L10 price allows you to make a nice profit if you sell the card for 90% of L10.

Or you can just sit in your easy chair and collect login rewards. Over the course of a year, you will get 348 standard packs, 60 Silver packs, and 12 each gold, Historical Gold, and Diamond packs. But so will all the other causal players. So you've just chosen to be a part of the lowest tier of members here. Why should you expect to get to the top level?

HRBaker · 01-25-2024, 10:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rburgh

So you've just chosen to be a part of the lowest tier of members here. Why should you expect to get to the top level?

It's not about "expecting" to get to the "top level". I don't think many - if any - casual players expect to see the top 20% of the Pyramid. They simply want something to strive for AFTER they were passed by.

Although I enjoyed my quick rise to Diamond by week 6, I certainly knew I wasn't going to stay there for long (out by week 10) - but that is the issue for most F2P players; you make a sprint to the top, and then fight for a couple months to stay in Gold. Interest wains because at the 6 month point, an F2P player is treading water.

I was in Diamond 3 weeks, Gold 16 weeks, Silver 19 weeks, and Bronze 5 weeks (where I currently am). If PT was restructured in some way to allow F2P players to compete and succeed in leveled leagues (even if they were weekly tournament seasons), then where they were in the Pyramid wouldn't be their primary goal.

Kushiel · 01-26-2024, 09:46 AM

@rburgh, Thanks for totally making our point.

Your very detailed list that everybody here already knows but shows exactly the problem. And, thanks to you, I am going to keep kicking this back up to the top of the forum. That way all the new players that come to the official forums to learn about the game will read the cost in time and/or money in one post. They will also get to see how you and the team feel about all the little people.

Again, I thank you.

rburgh · 01-26-2024, 05:44 PM

I'm going to try to get my FTP teams to complete all the Elite missions before March 2025. I expect some will succeed.

Some of the things I have outlined take very little time - getting twitch drops, playing the reval game, waiting to do missions until the value of the reward you get is more than the cost in PP's to do the mission.

It's a common mistake to try to advance your team up the pyramid quickly. There's a reason the moderators come down hard on teams that are "dumping," - the PP's you can earn in Rookie or Stone leagues dwarf what you can earn at higher levels unless you have a team that absolutely dominates there.

It's even a sensible strategy to save up all your packs until a big mission st is announced, That way, you will have a big inventory of cards to sell when "everybody" is in a buying frenzy. There's an old Wall Street saying that the time to buy is when there is blood running in the streets, meaning when everybody is selling all their stocks. It's true here too.

rburgh · 01-27-2024, 09:00 AM

I don't think badly of any of you. But I'm a widower in my 70's who lives alone with two dogs. I still work, because engineering jobs pay well and I have nothing better to do with my time. In other words, I have no life.

Oh, I play tournament bridge, but that's a moderately expensive hobby that requires a lot of travel. So I spend a LOT of time with PT. Most of you have lives, and I can relate to that.

01-25-2024, 10:24 AM	#1
Kushiel All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Deep in the Heart of Texas Posts: 1,809	The problem with missions these days: Too many missions have bottlenecks and roadblocks that are released in a manner that completely blocks out most players. And we wonder why the player numbers continue to dwindle. It is like people fleeing high tax states and will continue. This one will reward you with two Eras packs for your approximately 900K to complete this morning. This is the crap driving away the base. When people that can afford this are the only ones left, then these cards will not even be on Card Shop. There will not be enough people left to support the Card Shop in cards. __________________ *Favente Deo supero*

01-25-2024, 12:21 PM	#3
bailey Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 3,282	2% of the teams have acquired most of the meta cards. 2% of the teams have completed most of the missions. 2% of the teams show up for official streams and collect 6 drops. I see a pattern here. The developers provide the water, but only 2% drink it. What more can they do and still make a profit? Besides, this mission leads to Acuna, one of the best cards in the game. It's misleading to say this mission is just worth 2 packs. __________________

01-25-2024, 12:23 PM	#4
Kushiel All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Deep in the Heart of Texas Posts: 1,809	I keep hoping that somebody up in the clouds of com2us looks down upon us little people posting on the supposedly official forums. Maybe when it gets down to only 60 players vying for 40 PT Level slots and no plankton left in the ocean they will say, "Oh my!" __________________ *Favente Deo supero*

01-25-2024, 02:45 PM	#10
Kushiel All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Deep in the Heart of Texas Posts: 1,809	My one question is, if the 98% will always be there, why does it get smaller every year? __________________ *Favente Deo supero*

01-25-2024, 09:56 PM	#16
rburgh All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 789	Mission prices always decline with time Because only a certain percentage of players actively chase most missions. There are multiple ways to earn PP's. 1. Buy them - simple and effective, but not everyone has the wallet or the inclination to do so. 2. Use your login packs to complete missions. If this is your only strategy, you're crazy to not be a PT+ member. The cost is a couple of six-packs or cigarette packs a month. And you know you should be cutting down on your drinking and/or smoking. 3. Take advantage of twitch drops. 50+ packs a week are available, and all you have to do is log in and come back in an hour and a half to claim the drops. You can play with the kids or the dog, mow the lawn, watch a movie, whatever. 50+ packs a week x 52 weeks is 2600 packs. Figuring the average value of a standard pack is about 400 PP's, that's an extra million PP's for you over the year. And 400 PP's is probably low (although it's not 1000). 4. Play the revaluation game. Some people put a lot of effort into it. But it doesn't have to be that tough. Just hoard low value live cards for players who are doing well. You can only BUY up to ten of them, but after that you can still get them in packs. Irons are the best for this, but Bronzes are good bets and Silvers can be good bets if you pick and choose wisely. 5. Spam the quick tournaments to earn extra packs. If you get halfway decent at it, you can win 10 packs a day, which comes up to 70 packs a week, or about 1.5 million PP's or so over the course of the year. 6. Play PT live. If you follow baseball reasonably well, you ought to be able to pick up some extra packs every week during baseball season. And some of you probably bet baseball - consider PT Live as a less risky way to bet. Or you could be like my nephew, and make your living on DFS. In that case, you will KILL PT Live. 7. Get good at the daily and weekly tournaments. They take a lot of attention and work, but you can win some spectacular cards from them. 8. You can pay rapt attention to the price fluctuations of cards and make money buying and selling them. But there's an easier way. You often see a 101 bid for a silver card, 1001 for a gold, 4001 for a diamond, and 20,001 for a perfect. These guys aren't collecting them, they're reselling them for tidy profits. You can move in on their action with very little effort. Just make sure the card you're bidding on is part of a mission and the L10 price allows you to make a nice profit if you sell the card for 90% of L10. Or you can just sit in your easy chair and collect login rewards. Over the course of a year, you will get 348 standard packs, 60 Silver packs, and 12 each gold, Historical Gold, and Diamond packs. But so will all the other causal players. So you've just chosen to be a part of the lowest tier of members here. Why should you expect to get to the top level?

01-25-2024, 12:07 PM	#2
Hwilensky All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 629	Amen...But your preaching to the choir...I'm sure the thought process in creating these bottlenecks is the hope that people will spend money to buy PP to buy the cards. I assume that it's working otherwise they wouldn't do it. However, like you said, a majority of the smaller fish are getting turned off by this, and either not as active as they once were or leaving the game altogether. The number's have decreased year over year, and it seems like they just don't care.

01-25-2024, 12:26 PM	#5
HRBaker Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 2,248	Another thing that's frustrating; there is no "diagram/table" that explains what missions are related - which ones are dead ends - which are specific to a certain card... everything is simply thrown into the list for the players to figure out or spend hours on Discord or Twitch TV to sort out all the questions. If you haven't noticed 1,000 people on Twitch is a good but rare night, but you have 22,000 teams in the Universe. Even if every OOTP player has 3 teams, that's still 7,300 players and Twitch is only reaching about 14% of the audience on a good night. You need more interaction with the other 6,300 players. It would be nice if the missions were introduced with an explanation of what leads to what, categorizing missions that lead to what level cards, etc. The P2P players will spend money and time to figure all that out for themselves, but as said above, the vast majority of players simply move on once it gets too complex. "Keep the lower 2/3rds of the game players involved and the game thrives for longer than 6 months."

01-25-2024, 07:53 PM	#15
bdawg Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 59	Crazy what difference a day makes. Down to about 380k now. I think there are quite a few of us who will never compete at PeL in late game because of this. It is disheartening to think that I can do everything right, put my team together in the best way, use the best strategy, etc and I can't compete there because I didn't buy in. I think that's the tough thing - skill doesn't really matter at high levels, which is very different from chess.

01-26-2024, 09:46 AM	#18
Kushiel All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Deep in the Heart of Texas Posts: 1,809	@rburgh, Thanks for totally making our point. Your very detailed list that everybody here already knows but shows exactly the problem. And, thanks to you, I am going to keep kicking this back up to the top of the forum. That way all the new players that come to the official forums to learn about the game will read the cost in time and/or money in one post. They will also get to see how you and the team feel about all the little people. Again, I thank you. __________________ *Favente Deo supero*

01-26-2024, 05:44 PM	#19
rburgh All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 789	There are other things to do with this game I'm going to try to get my FTP teams to complete all the Elite missions before March 2025. I expect some will succeed. Some of the things I have outlined take very little time - getting twitch drops, playing the reval game, waiting to do missions until the value of the reward you get is more than the cost in PP's to do the mission. It's a common mistake to try to advance your team up the pyramid quickly. There's a reason the moderators come down hard on teams that are "dumping," - the PP's you can earn in Rookie or Stone leagues dwarf what you can earn at higher levels unless you have a team that absolutely dominates there. It's even a sensible strategy to save up all your packs until a big mission st is announced, That way, you will have a big inventory of cards to sell when "everybody" is in a buying frenzy. There's an old Wall Street saying that the time to buy is when there is blood running in the streets, meaning when everybody is selling all their stocks. It's true here too.

01-27-2024, 09:00 AM	#20
rburgh All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 789	@Kushiel I don't think badly of any of you. But I'm a widower in my 70's who lives alone with two dogs. I still work, because engineering jobs pay well and I have nothing better to do with my time. In other words, I have no life. Oh, I play tournament bridge, but that's a moderately expensive hobby that requires a lot of travel. So I spend a LOT of time with PT. Most of you have lives, and I can relate to that.