[Syd Thrift]

Pants is right up there with hobbit leagues and setting up teams based in Ghana on the "I don't care about this feature, therefore it doesn't exist" things that people have complained about over the years. Like, I get it. It's a relatively minor looking add. The actual add was that they're transitioning from basing the uniforms on FaceGen to basing them on the 3D model, and pants was a fairly vital and relatively simple aspect of that, but it is pants and that's easier to complain about I guess than an actual evolution of the game that may make some things a little harder for you.

TBH I didn't think 3D would be anywhere near a big deal but at least for me it's become a vital aspect of the game. It's basically a far, far more sophisticated version of Microleague or Earl Weaver now in terms of day to day gameplay. There have been some pretty big hiccups this year, although those, too, were due to OOTPD adding new features and performing some big-time technical debt, not them allowing the entire game to lie unchanged a la Madden.

Should we be worried about PT? I've got to be honest; this feels like a moral hazard right now. We're worrying about a potential degradation in quality with PT taking focus over the base game with very little evidence that this is actually happening (essentially the evidence seems to be that PT exists and the base game was buggy this year... even that's ignoring how PT was pushed back several weeks from the release of the base game, which certainly seems to imply that the studio as a whole was prioritizing the former over the latter).

Could it happen? Sure. Is it a thing to worry about? Honestly, I think no. If <version> isn't to your liking, you'll always be able to boot up <version - 1>. The thing with Madden in particular is that <version - 10> even is essentially the exactly same game as <version> and there's just plain zero evidence that OOTP is going on that route and tons of evidence to disprove the notion that it's already done so.

From a further-out level, OOTP will not continue forever. Eventually something will happen - Markus leaving, perhaps - that will make the game go into decline. Change happens. There's no point that I see about worrying about these scenarios. It's not climate change. We're not talking about a thing that we as consumers can do much of anything about other than finding or creating competition. If the devs stop listening and stop making changes, the decline will happen and no amount of worrying about it in advance will have any kind of effect.