[fhomess]

Bru, for me the short answer is that it's a lot of work to make templates and that I don't personally care if I have all the different versions because I care mostly just about the base cards. That said, I probably use the feature a lot less than some despite creating and supporting mods for it.

The long answer is...

There are a number of different reasons for each of us, so I can only reply for myself.

Personally, I make the cards because I enjoy the creative process or recreating the designs within the confines of OOTP's model. To me, its a bit like a puzzle to be solved. I have been a baseball card fan for a very long time, so I enjoy the feature. As such, there is quite a lot of work that goes into each card I create. A relatively simple looking design typically has 20 different layers of artwork in a single image. Anything with shading and transparency requires a fair amount of trial and error to get to a point I'm happy with, since OOTP's graphic engine isn't particularly robust in this are. Beyond the artwork, the text content on the cards takes a lot of iterations to line things up acceptably, too. It's not a complicated process, but it's time consuming. You'll notice that the base cards and the Star Attractions, while from the same set, don't have any graphic elements in common. This results in essentially doing to two different card templates for a single set.

Beyond the time it takes to do them, I generally stick with what was actually made of a particular card set. If there's nothing that inspires me to make an alternate version for one of the OOTP categories, then often I don't. I do like to work of scans of real cards when I can, and quality ones are not always easy to find, either.

As TribeFan said, one of the things to remember is that for a long time we didn't have all these different categories of cards generated by the game. The fact that they're there now adds a lot of work. It's also worth noting that OOTP doesn't support baseball card modders very well. For example, as far as I know, OOTP doesn't provide a token to access the league specific name of end of season awards. Another example is the fact that OOTP doesn't permit custom fonts and got rid of the only cursive font we had. Cards like 1952 Topps and 1993 Upper Deck have cursive fonts as a key component and are now broken in the current version (it's been at least 4 versions now).

Now, whether or not this breaks the utility of making these templates available in the first place is really in the perspective of whoever is using them. Not everyone who uses the cards bothers to look at all of the different variants. I don't even generate cards that much because I mostly play online leagues. To be fair, it's only in OOTP 17 that you can even see a player's cards all together on the same screen for the first time. So maybe it's never been all that noticeable until now. This is actually the first time I've heard anyone voice this concern in this way. It's far more common to hear people ask for cards that haven't been made than to hear them ask for a set to be completed. Again, I think that may be due to the lack of visibility in the past. No one has ever asked me for an All-Star card or award winner card for 1955 Topps. I have seen countless requests for a 2008 set.

So I hope this response helps people to understand, at the least, where I come from on the topic. It likely sounds more defensive than intended in the same way that your question probably sounds more ungrateful than intended (I do take you at your word on that aspect).

As a final word, I suggest that anyone who is disappointed that certain things are not available is more than welcome to fill in the gaps, as Rgarz did for 1968 Topps recently. In lieu of that... if there are specific sets that need fleshing out that you would like to see completed, a thread indicating the gaps you would most like to see filled might encourage modders like myself to address that need.