[HRBaker]

Let me start by saying I continue posting only because the OOTP folks seem to be open to our experiences and comments. I've been here a long time, and they always pay attention. On the other hand, I fully realize what we are playing here is their income, and PT has significantly improved that income, which would be a significant variable when considering changes.

That said; I really do think they traveled down a road this year that actually hurt the game.

PT19 and PT 20 both gave us (all of us) a platform that we could challenge ourselves in for many months, whether it be competition, card collecting, or tournaments. Opening packs, although like playing the Slots in Vegas, was the poorman's way of maybe landing a "Babe Ruth" or "King Kelly" that would finance a "franchise upgrade". After all, rich teams don't need to open packs - they have the money to buy what they want/need.

I said before that the cancellation of the MLB season - thus delaying the variation of Live cards, took away an interesting variable from the game. It very well might be that the OOTP team tried a bit too hard to make up that lost path by creating too many "super-cards". The game is slowly filling up the market with these cards, inflating the Auction House, and leaving us F2P folks out to dry.

In the previous 2 versions, a lucky pack-card was possible, and close attention to the AH could land a "deal". If you played tournaments you could land a little "side-PP" as well.

In the 6 level world, it was possible for F2P teams to reach the Gold/Diamond plateau before finding themselves struggling. Getting into Perfect was a lost cause.

In the 8 level world, with a severely limited population of Perfect teams, F2P teams find themselves forever bouncing around in the bottom 4 levels. And this happened within 4 months with no solution in sight.

In addition to the damage the "super-cards" have caused, I firmly believe the limited Perfect League population created a "bottleneck". In short, there's no place for all the Super-teams to go! They accumulate in Diamond and Gold, instigating the issue by pushing some decently good teams into Silver and below.

I'm NOT suggesting we do away with the pyramid. I think that was a significant improvement to the game...

But choking off the normal size of the Perfect league level forced very good teams into a lower level. Right now there are 40 teams in Perfect, and there could be as many as 500 more. The pyramid squeezed down to fast and far at the upper end.

Stop the production of "pretend cards" and widen the upper levels of the pyramid, and I think we would return to a more flexible Pro/Rel process.

One more thing. I mentioned this earlier too but it didn't gain much traction...

Waiting 8 weeks to fill the pyramid is, in my opinion, an unnecessary endeavor. In the very first week, all teams should be divided into 8 levels and play forward from there. This would immediately separate the whales from everyone else and even out the competition right away.

Ok, done. If your still here, thanks for reading.