OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - I just took a F2P team from nothing to PeL winners in 8 seasons. Here's my story

almightytdawg · 12-09-2019, 02:19 PM

One of my favorite quotes from Moneyball is "There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening... and this leads people who run major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams." Reading this thread made me think of that quote.

The BFF league has been a fun experiment and it is difficult to overstate QuantaCondor's achievement here. Yeah, the eight seasons timing has an unreal amount of luck involved (my team has lost multiple seasons, by sweeps no less, in the divisional playoff round to teams that were on paper weaker). But whether it was eight or ten or fifteen seasons, this experience is a data point, combined with ElementalKnight's earlier post, to show that while paying players will always have a fundamental structural advantage, the wallet is not a necessary condition to a title.

There are some incredibly talented, active, and well-known players in that league and QuC devised and executed a strategy well beyond what the rest of the league pulled off. To be fair, I don't count myself one of the better players in the league but I'm a darned sight better than I was before I started. At each and every step, QuC was out in front of what other players in the league were doing. I think I was the third to sixth player in our league to complete Heilman, Dykstra and/or Plank collections. QuC had long moved on to other collections. Because of the unique nature of the BFF league, there was a lot of competition for the same cards on the auction house but he was already two steps past the fray. He got key collections done before market collapses and earned top dollar from them while the rest of us are holding Suzukis and Vidas that may be at best break-even compared to what we put into them.

One thing that's a little unfortunate about the PT universe/structure is that it's tough to see what someone else is doing unless you're in a league with them. And an earlier poster is correct that a new player can't do this. Understanding the systems, what works, and why certain stats/players are better than others takes time. Understanding what collections are profitable and which aren't (at least in the absence of a tool to figure out market prices unless a specific card is presently on the AH) would be a monumental undertaking for a new player.

The BFF league setup is not just Free-to-Play, but F2P with substantial constraints on in-game wealth management. In about eighty packs so far, my team has packed four historical diamonds and quicksold three of them, because they didn't have in-game value, weren't part of good collections, and would have ruined the value of those collections even if I had tried them. So QuC's run is a detailed look into where Perfect Team "wealth" comes from. And it's also a "who's who" into quality-of-life adjustments you've seen out of the Dev Team over the past few weeks, including restructuring tournament rewards (the 2k 16-mans in beta, the 500 8-mans), and apparently fixing the Last-7 bug that has been around for awhile. So QuC probably couldn't do what he previously did, in-game time notwithstanding, as quickly as the first time.

Leaving that aside, QuC has avoided the steps of other players in the league that would slow them down (not doing collections, paying for "right now" players, having a balance too low to take advantage of opportunities). He executed an in-game strategy that burns a lot of the pre-Perfect meta to advance quickly. He cut through the BS, saw what made the game tick, and Moneyballed his way to a speedrun PL title.

I think the community is the better for it.

12-09-2019, 02:19 PM	#14
almightytdawg Bat Boy Join Date: Dec 2019 Posts: 7	One of my favorite quotes from Moneyball is "There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening... and this leads people who run major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams." Reading this thread made me think of that quote. The BFF league has been a fun experiment and it is difficult to overstate QuantaCondor's achievement here. Yeah, the eight seasons timing has an unreal amount of luck involved (my team has lost multiple seasons, by sweeps no less, in the divisional playoff round to teams that were on paper weaker). But whether it was eight or ten or fifteen seasons, this experience is a data point, combined with ElementalKnight's earlier post, to show that while paying players will always have a fundamental structural advantage, the wallet is not a necessary condition to a title. There are some incredibly talented, active, and well-known players in that league and QuC devised and executed a strategy well beyond what the rest of the league pulled off. To be fair, I don't count myself one of the better players in the league but I'm a darned sight better than I was before I started. At each and every step, QuC was out in front of what other players in the league were doing. I think I was the third to sixth player in our league to complete Heilman, Dykstra and/or Plank collections. QuC had long moved on to other collections. Because of the unique nature of the BFF league, there was a lot of competition for the same cards on the auction house but he was already two steps past the fray. He got key collections done before market collapses and earned top dollar from them while the rest of us are holding Suzukis and Vidas that may be at best break-even compared to what we put into them. One thing that's a little unfortunate about the PT universe/structure is that it's tough to see what someone else is doing unless you're in a league with them. And an earlier poster is correct that a new player can't do this. Understanding the systems, what works, and why certain stats/players are better than others takes time. Understanding what collections are profitable and which aren't (at least in the absence of a tool to figure out market prices unless a specific card is presently on the AH) would be a monumental undertaking for a new player. The BFF league setup is not just Free-to-Play, but F2P with substantial constraints on in-game wealth management. In about eighty packs so far, my team has packed four historical diamonds and quicksold three of them, because they didn't have in-game value, weren't part of good collections, and would have ruined the value of those collections even if I had tried them. So QuC's run is a detailed look into where Perfect Team "wealth" comes from. And it's also a "who's who" into quality-of-life adjustments you've seen out of the Dev Team over the past few weeks, including restructuring tournament rewards (the 2k 16-mans in beta, the 500 8-mans), and apparently fixing the Last-7 bug that has been around for awhile. So QuC probably couldn't do what he previously did, in-game time notwithstanding, as quickly as the first time. Leaving that aside, QuC has avoided the steps of other players in the league that would slow them down (not doing collections, paying for "right now" players, having a balance too low to take advantage of opportunities). He executed an in-game strategy that burns a lot of the pre-Perfect meta to advance quickly. He cut through the BS, saw what made the game tick, and Moneyballed his way to a speedrun PL title. I think the community is the better for it.