Can we make collections great again?

[bailey]

The Live missions were great, a brilliant design, no doubt about it.

Since then, most of the collections have been teeny weeny types where the reward does not justify the cost. One example,

Perfection: You need 12 cards, including 3 historical diamonds and your reward --- ONE gold card and ONE gold pack. 12K minimum quick sell value for a 3K gold pack and a gold card you can buy right now for 4200. You don't see David Cone offered very often because why would anyone complete this collection?

Another issue is the inability in most cases to search by collection. Maybe, this is a forthcoming feature? In the live mission, you could search by team abbreviation and spot the cheapest cards easily (if for example you don't need ALL the silvers).

My suggestion at this point is to come out with an Historical mission set designed exactly like the live missions. 26 cheapest historical cards for 30 teams for 6 divisions for 2 leagues and for completion. Don't forget to add the new content to each mission as it is released, like would have been done to live missions if playing baseball had not been stopped.

I know you guys like to drag all this out with new "content" each week and it is funny to listen to Kris on his show get excited about the most mundane card ever, but these little missions every two weeks are a lot like the live mission of PT20 which even you admitted were ignored by most. It's not "content" if it's being ignored.

[Marleigh]

Team of the decade could have easily been like this, none of those players warrant the cost of the collections, make the reward for each team that teams player of the decade.

I would say though I do believe that the players for the divisions should have locked the players from the teams that were included in those divisions, i feel that would have made people think a little more about with collections to do rather than simply doing them all on every team because its the best way to build a team

[obseen]

Good suggestion

And how about some pack missions with better rewards than a standard pack. I'm not going to hunt the auction house and pay 2,000pp to get that one card for a reward of a standard pack worth 1,000pp

[AdmiralTrey]

The particularly perplexing collection missions are the Cuban Iron, Venezuelan Iron, and Dominican Iron... While some of these cards are fairly cheap, some literally cost more than the reward, a 1,000pp regular pack, all on their own. It seems kind of silly to spent 1,200pp on one card (plus multiple other cards) for a reward worth less than that one card. It annoys me seeing all three of those missions 1 or 2 cards away from completion, but there's absolutely zero incentive to buy the final card and complete the mission when the final card costs more than the reward.

[Tinkerman]

The non live collections are great... insofar as, without the PP Mount Hawke have made from selling collection cards, their pack luck would resemble some kind of sick joke . Seriously though, it'll be nice when completing some more missions actually makes sense to me.

[bailey]

To be fair, you can't fault the designers of the mission if people are willing to pay far above reward card value. The pack missions are particularly vulnerable to this and I don't want to see the discussion derailed by the fact that people are willing to overpay. These missions are useful for those clever folks who sell their cards on day 1.....

Some of the mission are flat out undoable because the quick sell value of the cards exceeds the reward. So, even if by pure luck you got all the cards needed from packs, it would not make sense to complete the collection.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by obseen

Good suggestion

And how about some pack missions with better rewards than a standard pack. I'm not going to hunt the auction house and pay 2,000pp to get that one card for a reward of a standard pack worth 1,000pp

anyone who would complete a mission and lock those cards just for a standard pack is out of their box. Now, I did it a few times in 20. But that was then..

[Kris Jardine]

Originally Posted by bailey

I know you guys like to drag all this out with new "content" each week and it is funny to listen to Kris on his show get excited about the most mundane card ever, but these little missions every two weeks are a lot like the live mission of PT20 which even you admitted were ignored by most. It's not "content" if it's being ignored.

Sorry for showing enthusiasm for doing my job, which is to promote the game.

[abangs]

The first of my three FTP teams has just completed all of the Live Missions. At this point, I'm having a hard time figuring out which of the other missions are even worth the effort and cost of completing.

I almost feel like I should ignore the missions entirely and just grind tournaments for packs.

[Torgonius]

I completed some of the smaller ones just through ripping packs, then getting the last one from the AH if the price isn't stupid. The Dead Ball Bronze mission had some pieces that are really good for bronze tournies.

What I would like to see, though, is that after finishing the live missions, your packs providing more historical cards than live. Not sure if that's possible, and it doesn't have to be a huge shift. Although live bronzes and silvers are making me some decent income.

[scannon755]

Speaking as a new user, I loved doing the Live collections with my "main" team, because it made them competitive much more quickly than just trying to get there with in-game achievement points and working the auction house. However, now that that team is in Gold, every team has the same players. The All-Star game voting is both funny and sad ... all 3 C are Berra, all 3 1B are Bagwell, all 3 2B are Cano, etc (for Yaz and Ichiro also).

What I'd like to see next time is that if you complete a Live Collection, instead of getting a player, you get a "team pack", for lack of a better word ... a random non-live gold player from that franchise. It could be any player (although probably a curated list would be better, something like one player from each position, 5 SP and a reliever or something. Iconic players associated with the franchise). If you complete the whole division, you get a random diamond player from one of the teams in that division (same deal with a curated list).

That way, you still get some quality guys, but not overwhelmingly powerful. You also see variety ... not everybody would have the same players. Since the team level guys would be golds, they would be upgraded at some point in all likelihood, so the mid-upper levels don't look like 30 clone teams. The key to it is that each of the curated players would have to be relatively similar in quality. For the completists out there, obviously these guys would end up in the Auction House at some point, so you can still buy all of them if you want.

Just a thought. Love the idea of collections, but the execution of them seem to make the game less interesting.

For the other collections, I think the pack winning collections should need a small number of players from a large group (something like 10 of 50 or something) to avoid the ridiculous pricing issues going on right now. The other non-pack, non-Live collections seem more geared toward money spending players, of which I'm not one, so I won't comment on those.

[mayday10]

I like the idea of a different franchise great depending on what % you get of that live team. It would add variance, and you could either lock in with 26, or go for the glory for 30 or all 34 or whatever.

There is a point where many teams have the same players and it's not the greatest. But I did really like the live collection experience.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

Sorry for showing enthusiasm for doing my job, which is to promote the game.

I'm sorry you took my remark the wrong way. Your show is entertaining precisely because of your enthusiasm which is why I find it can be funny, too.

Dead ball bronzes is an example of a great collection idea ruined by requiring ALL of them. This gives sellers enormous leverage and makes the collection impossible to complete profitably. If only half of these were required it would have been interesting to go for it. Historical cards are rarer (30% drop) and more of them making it really hard to get specific cards. So, larger pools of cards and requiring not so many would improve collections, I think. Negro League collection is a good collection, but the reward is so valuable it is very expensive, which is not a complaint about the expense, but an example of a large pool, yet and only requiring 30 out of 50.

[deejqu1k]

Originally Posted by scannon755

Speaking as a new user, I loved doing the Live collections with my "main" team, because it made them competitive much more quickly than just trying to get there with in-game achievement points and working the auction house. However, now that that team is in Gold, every team has the same players. The All-Star game voting is both funny and sad ... all 3 C are Berra, all 3 1B are Bagwell, all 3 2B are Cano, etc (for Yaz and Ichiro also).

What I'd like to see next time is that if you complete a Live Collection, instead of getting a player, you get a "team pack", for lack of a better word ... a random non-live gold player from that franchise. It could be any player (although probably a curated list would be better, something like one player from each position, 5 SP and a reliever or something. Iconic players associated with the franchise). If you complete the whole division, you get a random diamond player from one of the teams in that division (same deal with a curated list).

This is idea f'ssssssss! Great work, I think this is a perfect solution.

[Tinkerman]

I don't want to be negative, but I don't like the affect of the live collections. The rewards are generally just a little bit over powered. HR's are king and you simply can't replace their HR's for a similar price, so they're everywhere and not going away in a hurry! I made it my priority to replace them as quickly as possible, but am now fighting the urge to buy some back.

Especially in the earlier stages of the game, it would be more enjoyable to be playing with and against more unique teams.

[dbqs]

Yep, I'm sorry to say I've been very disappointed by the collections besides the live missions. I was very optimistic when I saw how that had been overhauled for this year, since the live missions were fairly useless and not worth it til the end of PT20. But there is really not a single one of these other missions that is actually worth it. It doesn't make any sense to require buying multiple diamond cards to get a gold card, or gold cards for a silver SE, etc... I am all for the fun of collecting and completion, but it seems like it actively takes away from the other parts of the game that are fun (i.e. actually having good cards and winning!)

The one thing that has been redeemable so far is some of the reward cards are really good for tournaments (I think Strasburg and Rose are great in Gold, Zobrist is usable in Silver, etc.) so that is a cool trend to continue. But the cost is still too high, and it's not even totally the fault of people just trying to game the AH (though this is of course a factor in some of the complaints I see above)

It would be cool to see some "easier" collections for really good iron/bronze cards that could be interesting tournament plays. There were very few missions like that in 20.

The way the historical team missions in PT20 were definitely uneven (since some ended up being huge bottlenecks like Detroit and the Dodgers) but overall there were some that were a great balance of "worth it" and "challenging", and I thought it was super fun - especially for anyone who is a fan of one team in particular, being able to get at least one or two really great players from that team...

[daves]

Originally Posted by obseen

Good suggestion

And how about some pack missions with better rewards than a standard pack. I'm not going to hunt the auction house and pay 2,000pp to get that one card for a reward of a standard pack worth 1,000pp

I agree that buying an iron card for over 1,000 points to get a one standard pack you can buy for 1,000 points and then open the pack to get maybe 200 points worth of cards if your lucky?

[Kleinman44]

Originally Posted by scannon755

Speaking as a new user, I loved doing the Live collections with my "main" team, because it made them competitive much more quickly than just trying to get there with in-game achievement points and working the auction house. However, now that that team is in Gold, every team has the same players. The All-Star game voting is both funny and sad ... all 3 C are Berra, all 3 1B are Bagwell, all 3 2B are Cano, etc (for Yaz and Ichiro also).

What I'd like to see next time is that if you complete a Live Collection, instead of getting a player, you get a "team pack", for lack of a better word ... a random non-live gold player from that franchise. It could be any player (although probably a curated list would be better, something like one player from each position, 5 SP and a reliever or something. Iconic players associated with the franchise). If you complete the whole division, you get a random diamond player from one of the teams in that division (same deal with a curated list).

That way, you still get some quality guys, but not overwhelmingly powerful. You also see variety ... not everybody would have the same players. Since the team level guys would be golds, they would be upgraded at some point in all likelihood, so the mid-upper levels don't look like 30 clone teams. The key to it is that each of the curated players would have to be relatively similar in quality. For the completists out there, obviously these guys would end up in the Auction House at some point, so you can still buy all of them if you want.

Just a thought. Love the idea of collections, but the execution of them seem to make the game less interesting.

For the other collections, I think the pack winning collections should need a small number of players from a large group (something like 10 of 50 or something) to avoid the ridiculous pricing issues going on right now. The other non-pack, non-Live collections seem more geared toward money spending players, of which I'm not one, so I won't comment on those.

This is the idea II put out a month ago. I think this would be the best honestly and it would even the field a little.

[Leo_The_Lip]

My tuppence on collections:

1) I enjoy them, mostly. The deadball bronze was by far the most enjoyable. Good reward (especially relative to the bronze players required for completion), interesting players.

2) I was relatively late to the Live collections and found the easy completion rewards disappointing. I'm looking at you Saberhagen, Fielder and Baines. These three did not improve my teams much, if at all. Basically those were three quick sales for 1000 pp since the time and poor chance of sale over 1200 pp is now negligible. Giving me the option of collecting, say, 1300 PP or these dudes would be a minor improvement.

3) The overall structure of the LIVE rewards need improvement. Making them tiered would be a good start. By that I mean ALL first round team collections would be gold players. I think that would go a long way to reducing the market prices for 'bad' players needed to get Snider, Lyons and a few others. Basically no Diamonds for LIVE team completions is definitely the way to go.

4) Make the Divisional reward players a step-up from the LIVE team rewards. And don't duplicate the positions! Here I refer to the NL West where you need RF Winfield, CF Snider (who really you don't want in CF) and get RF Mel Ott who is rated 93 to Snider's 94 (probably position related, but nontheless!).

Doing this would make the pyramid more fair for everyone and provide a decent incentive to keep collecting and moving up.

[Spieler]

I like most of the collections. I think plenty are "profitable" enough, if not too much (e.g. leagues at higher levels with identical teams of Live SE rewards). The "pack reward" (or variable theme award) for live missions would probably help there a lot, I like the idea.

I do not see the need for all of them to be "profitable". Some obviously are geared towards themes or theme teams (e.g. Deadball Bronzes) and that is good, too. So make some hard. Some will profit, just not all of those looking to strictly profit.