[xekyn92]

The mode as it exists in OOTP19 is undeniably pay-to-win and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that (I myself have spent a good amount of money to support the developers).

The issue is the lack of variety, your team is stuck in one league and there’s virtually no skill involved at the higher levels, it’s simply a contest of who spent the most money. The developers aren’t going to hurt their bottom line, nor should they be expected to, but I think they need to find ways to make the game mode more engaging for F2P players so they don’t get stuck in a state of purgatory.

First and foremost we need to be able to enter leagues with our friends, the game right now feels incredibly isolated and the ‘community’ aspect of it is sorely lacking. Even being able to directly challenge my friends teams to an exhibition/showmatch that doesn’t reward any PP would be a nice addition.

Secondly, they need some alternate league/tournament structures that actually involve some strategy/skill and put players on a relatively equal footing, even if the main league system remains the same as it is now. There’s a lot of fun/gimmicky things they could do in this regard:

1) Leagues that only allow you to use iron, bronze, silver, gold etc cards or combinations/limitations of these, restricting the amount of diamond/perfect cards that can be used in order to make it more strategy based as opposed to who can assemble the most overwhelmingly talented set of cards. If i’m only allowed to use 1 perfect card, do I value having an ace more or should it be a position player? This would have the secondary effect of also encouraging players to retain/collect lesser rated cards instead of just autoselling everything that isn’t gold or above, they’ve put so much work into creating all of these interesting historical cards, why not give us opportunities to use them? Card collecting definitely needs more emphasis in PT, maybe give small PP rewards for completing certain historical team collections etc.

2) What about a game mode where we pay varying PP entry fees (like 1k/5k/10k to encourage people to buy PP still) and compete for the entire pot (with a tax skimmed off the top similar to the AH). To make it even funnier, make it entirely random, you don’t enter with your own cards, each participant gets 10-20 regular packs and you have to build the best roster you can with what you unpack (with all of the cards deleted at the end, perhaps the top 3 finishers get to keep one card or something). You could also have free entry versions of this that reward packs / modest amounts of PP as well, obviously you would have a limit on how many you can enter at once.

3) Draft leagues. Again have an entry fee perhaps so OOTP can still make a little money (in addition to prize payouts). Have it so the game randomly generates a random pool of cards from standard packs (like 10 packs for each player in the league) after which the players draft in a randomly determined reverse snake order until their rosters are built. It’ll challenge players to identify good late round card choices and make it so noone has an unfair advantage. Have us compete for a share of the PP, reward packs or maybe the opportunity to keep a card from our roster to be used in the main league.

There’s a ton of creative ways they can make the game more engaging for F2P players and provide opportunities to earn PP/packs/cards without outright ruining the pay-to-win model they’re using in the main game. They just need to provide people with alternatives to keep things fresh and exciting.