[trman73]

I never post on these “why am I not winning” threads but this one bugs me.

First, when you write...

I guess I didn’t realize how P2W this game is. Was I wrong to expect more from something I had to shell out 40 bucks for?

...that’s absolutely whining. So don’t be offended when someone calls you out on it. Express frustration? Sure. Ask for tips? Absolutely. The forums are filled with dozens of threads with tips for developing a strong team. State that the cost of the core game somehow entitles you to success in PT? Nope.

I’m only one player, but you can see from my signature that I’ve got two teams in Diamond and another and one in Gold. I’ve spent 15 bucks thus far and blew it on packs for my packs-only team, so my two Diamond teams have been entirely FTP. I’m not succeeding in Diamond right now and don’t expect to. It’s also Week 11 of the game.

I'm a typical team. I have ichiro leading off, then Snyder, Bonds (the 100) and bagwell.

You’re a typical team with a Perfect Bonds. He’s better than any player I have on any of my teams. So you have an opportunity to sell that card and separate yourself from the Ichiro-Bagwell-Snider-Piazza-Maddux-Carlton-etc.-etc. logjam that we see in every Gold league. You can build an excellent Gold team by selling that card, first by completing the Yankees mission then selecting the mission players you want to keep and dumping the rest for upgrades. At this point the Live Mission players are the baseline for all good teams.

Scout your leagues. Make a list of guys you like then see how they perform for other teams in your leagues and determine if they’re worth the investment. That takes five minutes.

In any event yeah, not too fun. I've found you're just at the mercy of what the game has pre-programed for your team that year. I had a game where I believe we matched up at every position card for card except for catcher..even the starters were the same (RJ SE) I lost 11-1..hmmmm

So the only acceptable result would have been a tie? Sometimes Ted Williams went 0-5 in real life. Sometimes Greg Maddux got shelled. There’s no hmmmmm. It’s one game.

This comment is the best...

It seems to me that if you don't spend any $ or vast amounts of time grinding tournaments, you're pretty much doomed to be fodder for the teams that do. If you say something like this, you will probably be called a whiner and shamed by the people that run the teams that need you around to beat up on.

If you don’t spend money, and also don’t do the things that players do to improve their teams, you will be called a whiner???? Yeah, you will, if you say that the $40 investment in the game means you shouldn’t have to do those things to be successful.

It’s money, it’s time, it’s strategy, and it’s luck. You can win with the first one, or the last three. If you don’t put in either of the first two, you’ll fail.

At the end of the day it is simply not true that FTP players can’t succeed at the higher levels of this game. It’s Week 11. There are fortune-changing, miracle pack pulls out there over the next 41 weeks. There are guys who will dump 25 Historical Diamond players into the AH all at once on a Friday for 4,001 PP minimum and no buy-now price, and you can get a 60,000 player for 28,000. There are also people who are willing to share tips and strategies all over these forums.

And yeah, there are whales, and they will crush you 95% of the time. But not 100% of the time. That’s life.