[Findest2001]

Originally Posted by SpacePope

I must be a group 4 then - spends money, time, analysis, but is kind of just holding out for tournaments because the league system isn't well built.

The main reason I think the league system isn't well built is that at its pinnacle (competitive Perfect teams), the leagues are a solved game. There is a best starting 5, best catcher, best shortstop, etc. The best teams are all going to look pretty similar, which is incredibly boring. If you want to build something different (and we almost all do because we get excited about a team idea or just can't afford a rotation that costs 1.5M PP), that's great! You just aren't incentivized to do so and if you do it really well and get a scrappy team to Perfect then you'll just spend most weeks whale watching.

The related, but lesser, reason I think the leagues aren't well built is the lack of awards for putting money, time, and analysis into doing well in the leagues.

Tangentially, I really don't think the tanking the OP describes is scummy. Nobody is getting rich off tanking. The PP awards are so small compared to what it takes to build a team that can tank in the first place that I assume people are doing it more out of frustration that there is no reason for them to seek promotion than some sinister calculus to cheat the system. The team the OP describes sounds fairly expensive - too expensive to have been built by averaging a few extra PP a week from avoiding the playoffs.

Without going into too much more detail all I can say is that the person in question "claims" that this team is free to play. Meaning he/she been doing this for some time. At least since the game came out.