Development Update (Tournaments etc.)
 

August 28 Update: Despite some illness-related setbacks (me included), we're making steady progress with tournaments and we hope we will be able to start a public beta in September. I will be posting a few screenshots and some more info on how tournaments will work next week. Thanks for your patience guys! :)

July 31 Update: Unfortunately, a vital part of the PT development team has been out sick for an extended time now and still will be for a week, so tournaments will most likely not be ready for launch in August, we're very sorry. We're doing the best we can to get them done as soon as humanly possible though. Once we get close, we will have a public beta of the tournaments to iron out the last kinks, that should take about a week or two, and then the feature will launch officially. In the meantime, we are making good progress with OOTP Go!, we'll have a more detailed development update soon. It already runs on Android, including full PT & 3D support. Next steps are polishing and improving the interface (so that some screens on tablets show more info than on a cell phones) and getting it to run on iOS.

June 29 Update: After the launch of missions the PT development team needed a bit of a break, hence development on tournaments has stalled. We'll pick it up next week, and with a bit of luck they will be done in August, at least that's what my gut tells me. Regarding OOTP Go, development is ongoing, no timetable for release yet. This project is a massive undertaking and I really cannot say for sure when it will be ready. But we won't stress ourselves, it'll be released when it's done :)

June 5 Update: The new missions feature will launch alongside the next patch on June 17! This will be a mandatory update for PT users, you will need to install it to play PT moving forward.

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Hey guys,

First, let me thank you all for your incredible support! :) We are very happy with the performance of Perfect Team, both in terms of the feedback we've gotten and the overall system's stability and balance. Of course there's a hiccup every once in a while, but considering the size of our team & budget and the fact that even the best backend and server providers cannot guarantee more than 98% uptime, we think we are doing exceptionally well.

Having said that, the past few weeks have turned out to be different than planned in terms of how we had to allocate development resources. We focused on system's stability and development of admin tools, which are needed to properly monitor the whole thing. Also, we had to improve and fine-tune existing features, for example the Live Card updates. That however took more time than we anticipated, and it's not quite completed yet, so the development of announced feature additions has to be pushed back a bit unfortunately. That means we will not be able to release the Tournament feature in April as we had hoped. I know many of you are really looking forward to this feature, but the targeted timeframe for it was too ambitious, I am very sorry about that. :o We will resume work on them shortly, but right now I cannot really say when we'll be able to launch the public beta, it depends on whether we hit any roadblocks in the coming weeks (the whole system is quite complex) or if we're lucky and things go smoothly. But I'll keep you posted! :)

Of course, this also means Collection Missions may be pushed back. However, we are still debating whether to focus on getting them ready before tournaments, as they are less complex, or to keep our focus on getting tournaments ready first. Your input on that would be appreciated, as we finalize our priorities for the coming months.

While we are providing an update, we thought we should also update you on the status of OOTP GO. The team dedicated to that project are hard at work, yet we are still not close to announce a target date for that. It's a brand new project which has almost nothing in common with MLB Manager, which makes for a challenge. However we will make sure it contains the most important OOTP and PT features and is stable on as many modern mobile devices as possible. We're making good progress and I will keep you posted. :)

By the way, we will be hiring two more developers shortly (I'll post about this on the forums, too), but it will take some time to teach them our code base etc. As promised, we are investing the money PT makes back into the company, we will grow and make OOTP and PT better and more fun for everybody involved. It will take us time to get everything up to speed, but we have only just started, after all PT launched only 5 months ago. :)

Again, let me thank you so much for your support and your patience. We are working our butts off to get you the features we have promised to you as quickly as possible and in as good shape as we can. :flowers:

Markus

I vote collection missions first! I eagerly await both new features, but this has me more excited. Plus I think getting something new quicker would be a nice appetizer for even those really looking forward to tournaments.

Also, a sneak peak at either of these would go a long way for morale around here. ;)

Thanks for the update. I am really looking forward to the collection missions and would vote for that to be a priority over tournaments since it sounds like tournaments are a ways off.

I appreciate the work you guys are putting in and understand that things happen which may cause things to be pushed back more than expected. I just think there's been a consistent pattern of needing to push back announced timeframes. If tournaments will not be ready till May (or later, it sounds like), it would have been better to announce an initial estimate of June instead of April. Better to underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around.

I honestly don't know what I'd prefer you guys to work on because we have so few details on what the tournaments will involve other than the extremely basic framework that there will be themed tournaments with prizes at the end. Will the tournaments take hours, days, or weeks? Simmed every half hour like regular leagues or more spaced out? Single-elimination or WBC style pool play or similar to playoff series?

I really just want some details of what we can expect when the product is finished, because I don't know if it's worth the anticipation at this point.

I completely agree. However, back in early February we were very confident we could get it done until the end of April. But, software development is unfortunately not very predictable, and in this case we were off with our estimate. :) I do think we do have a good track record though, after all we have not delayed a OOTP release in over a decade. But PT is something new where unexpected things happen more often apparently, so I guess we should no longer mention any dates when we announce new features for it... ;)

Tournaments will be pretty huge, there will be plenty of different sizes / rule sets / play modes etc.and we can always add more, the system is flexible. Same for the simulation timetable, some will be faster, some slower, we'll need to figure out which ones are more popular... it'll be interesting to see!

Yes, I was just referring to PT deadlines... you guys have done great with getting the core game released on schedule year in and year out!

I don't think you need to avoid mentioning dates altogether, but maybe give yourselves a wider window, kind of like with OOTP GO where you give a season (e.g. late summer) that gives us a general idea without locking yourselves in too much.

I second what Chico is saying. Even though I'm personally looking forward to Tournaments the most, it seems more practical to do Collections first if they are the lower-hanging fruit. Also, having the Collections in place gives us a better idea of what cards to have or keep around for Tournaments. And indeed a sneak peek or 10,000 foot overview of Tournaments could be helpful since they are larger in scope.

OK, I will write up something about tournaments early next week, after the Easter Holidays (yup, that's a thing over here :)).

That is FANTASTIC news ty :-) I'm looking forward to both so it's will def help knowing WHAT is going on with both :-p

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

My vote goes to tournaments and really looking forward to "Go" thanks for the update

I vote for collection missions first because I would rather see any new feature faster.

I'm in for tournaments because I'm *really* into tournaments and beating the crap out of everybody and winning all the prettiest rewards!

Mixed feelings, but in the end I would prefer whatever could come first. That way, there's something new to learn while passing the time waiting for the new addon :)

2 of my 3 teams are based on collecting cards (Expos remake, and Historical all-Star) so, the collections missions, for me, will be another thing that make me even more addicted to PT... Thanks for the great work to all OOTP dev team!

Thanks for the update! Personally I’m holding onto cards waiting for info on collections. I’m excited for the tournaments, but the collection info is actively impacting cards that I list for sale.

I much prefer tournaments first to give us more playing options... collections is a collateral of anything we do anyways. My 2c.

I'd vote for tournaments. It'd be better for the game economy. More PP opportunities for the smaller fishes means more people are able to buy cards(and sell) to add to their collection for when missions do go live.

I vote Collection Missions 100%. As others have stated, going after the low hanging fruit gives us something new to play around with while we wait for tournaments. Having new tasks to work on will make the wait go faster. I think the appetizer metaphor Chico used was perfect for this situation!!

Thanks for all that y'all are doing Markus, any frustration you see from the community only stems from excitement about these new features, and a desire to be able to use them as soon as possible :)

I would vote collections as well! I think having a new feature coming out fairly soon would hold people over who are really forward to tournaments. If collections can be implemented in the next few weeks and tournaments by beginning of June, I think that would make a lot of people happy. I'm interested to see what collections are out there. However, I know there is a discrepancy between what we have listed on our games and what is actually out there in terms of cards available. For example the game says there are 1066 MLB LIVE Cards but in reality there are 1073 MLB LIVE cards that were confirmed to me. My collection on that actually says I have 1067/1066 cards so there is some kind of disconnect with the server and what we see. Does this disconnect apply to other card groups or just MLB LIVE ones? I would love to see an option on AH to search only cards that I do not own. Having to go through 100's of pages of MLB live cards to see who is out there that I don't have is getting tough. I am apparently missing 6 cards of the MLB Lives and only know 1 that I don't have (secretly hoping there is a prize for completing that massive set).

As a programmer, I like to go after the low hanging fruit when it makes sense, so Collections would be first on my list.