Special Edition Cards Are Killing Perfect Team

[Green_Wolf]

I enjoy this game, and continue to purchase it year after year. What Markus and the crew have accomplished with Perfect Team, especially, is to be commended.

I must voice my frustration, however, over the:...

22 Special Edition Greg Madduxes
20 SE Carl Yastzemskis
20 SE Ichiros
20 SE Yogi Berras
19 SE Jeff Bagwells
19 SE Steve Carltons
18 SE Bert Blylevens
17 SE Robinson Canos
16 SE Joe Nathans
16 SE Ted Lyons
15 SE Mike Mussinas
15 SE Randy Johnsons
13 SE Eddie Planks
13 SE Mike Piazzas
12 SE Duke Sniders
12 SE Bucky Walters
13 SE Troy Tulowitzkis
10 SE Billy Williams
10 SE Eddie Matthews
10 SE Chuck Kleins
9 SE Ralph Kiners
8 SE Dave Winfields
8 SE Evan Longorias
8 SE Adam Wainwrights

...in my league.

It's been like this for weeks in Gold League, the level amid which I've been treading water for 9 of the last 10 weeks. And this Special Edition mayhem is just getting worse with each new season.

I'm facing the same cheap Diamond-level players (and Perfect-level Yogis) over and over and over again. Although somewhat hilarious, it is incredibly boring, and it must be skewing the generated stats of all the "normal" players. I even wonder if all those "extreme groundball" Greg Madduxi are a large reason power hitters can't hit home runs.

I eschewed SE players months ago, when I saw this happening - because I want a unique and interesting experience while playing Perfect Team.

Is there a way to terminate the Special Missions that are flooding the marketplace with the most powerful SE players as rewards, such as Ichiro, Bagwell, and Maddux? Or perhaps keep those missions and give Diamond packs as the reward instead of these over produced SE players.

Could you create Special-Edition-Free Leagues?

This reminds me of the baseball card hobby in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the market was flooded with so much product, that the glut killed much of the fun and value to be had.

In the least, I hope there is a fix for OOTP 22.

Please do believe that I still get a lot of enjoyment out of Perfect League - but it becomes less so with each week and with each new Ichiro dominating the leaderboards.

Thank you for your time and effort with this great game - and for giving us baseball in these dark times.

Be Well,
Justin Behan

East Camelot Pythians
Gold League G325

[Orcin]

No, there is no way to change this for OOTP21 that would be even remotely fair. However, your suggestion to address this problem with diamond pack rewards instead of SE cards in next year's version is a good one. I hope it is adopted.

[stl jason]

heh... I feel your pain.

I've been tracking my opponent's starting pitcher each game this season... so far in 89 games, I've only faced 21 different pitchers (and 64 of those games have been just 5 pitchers: Randy Johnson, Bert Blyleven, Ted Lyons, Greg Maddux and Steve Carlton)... though I won't complain too much as I'm 27-17 (with 20 no decisions/bullpen win or loss) against them.


I definitely understand people using all those SE players, cause they are fairly easy to get and hard to improve upon (though you can sell most of them and make a pretty nice squad from the proceeds)... I kept Berra, Lyons and Klein since they fit my old-time theme and sold the rest...


to give kudos to the dev team, this was a great way for everyone/anyone to put together a solid squad whether you spend $$ or not... the downside, as already mentioned, is that everyone ends up having the same cookie-cutter team as they try to gather points for upgrades to replace them...

perhaps next version, the live missions should have pack rewards with combos of gold/diamond/historical packs based off the difficulty... that way everyone still gets a chance at a solid card, but the randomness will provide a more unique build across the board

[steamrollers]

The SE cards have been discussed a lot here and discord. It’s clearly a problem they didn’t see coming. I stated very early on when we all saw the live mission rewards that this exact problem would come up. As mentioned there isn’t a whole lot they can do for this years version. However they have done a phenomenal job in the past at fixing issues It would be a huge surprise to most if they had a path to easy cookie cutter diamond teams right out of the gates next season. If they have easy missions the diamond packs reward would be a cool idea. And that way there wouldn’t be thousands of clone teams out there. I imagine they will also tone down the steroid level hitting as well. Somewhere between 20 and 21 would be great.

[Hoover36]

As a late coming, new to PT (not new to OOTP though), F2P player it didn't take me long to see the "value" of completing the Live Missions. Now my team is (virtually) entirely made up of reward players (bad pack luck has a lot to do with that as well). It was the only way to compete against teams that have been around for 15 seasons.

That said, I would 100% agree that it is extremely unsettling to see every team made up of the same players, with winning teams being separated by the one or two upgraded positions (Appling over Tulo or Mays over Snider).

I do love the live missions being used as a means to break the entry barrier to the game. What I would suggest is that instead of the randomness of a diamond pack as the reward...why not give 5-6 options of players from that team to be selected by those completing that mission. That would add a ton of variability to the player base and allow us to build the type of team we want.

That's my 2c for better or worse.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Hoover36

What I would suggest is that instead of the randomness of a diamond pack as the reward...why not give 5-6 options of players from that team to be selected by those completing that mission. That would add a ton of variability to the player base and allow us to build the type of team we want.

There would very quickly become a "correct" choice and every team would still have the same players.

[stl jason]

Originally Posted by Orcin

There would very quickly become a "correct" choice and every team would still have the same players.

agreed.... it would take all of 5 minutes for someone to evaluate all the options, figure the best choice and let everyone else know...


added benefits to offering packs (along with the randomness of it).... there will be an incentive to *not* rush to complete those missions (or at least not to open the packs immediately), because as new cards are released throughout the weeks/months of the year, those new cards will become possibilities to pull from those packs (and add even more to the random options)

[Hoover36]

If you fixed the engine and the ratings issues, it actually wouldn't be a "correct" choice. Even now, you see teams that want to go defense and contact heavy, or OBP and power heavy or pitching and defense. That was my point.

The problem with the system right now is that Babe Ruth's, Barry Bond's and Mie Trout's are being punished, while George Sisler's, Jackie Robinson's and King Kelly's are being rewarded.

[Lemandria]

They fixed the necessity of a viable path forward for ftp players.

A single path. But it is never the fault of a game's players for finding and using the path of least resistance.

That must be expected to happen.

[Charlatan]

I wrote down some thoughts about this in the “our league” thread that I participate in. Reposting them here so maybe they get a little wider distribution.

————

There’s no question that the live missions have changed the face of the game this year. Overall for the better, but there are definitely some unintended negative side effects for instance the fact that everyone in the league is playing the same 20 players!

As a result, I’ve been thinking about what the rewards for these missions should be. I have thought about lots of possibilities and come to the following conclusions:

What can the rewards be? I don’t think they can award raw PP because people will instantly inflate the price of the collection cards to equal to the amount of the reward you get. Then I thought maybe they should offer a choice where you have three different reward cards and you choose the one you want. But I’m pretty sure once people figure out which card is worth the most people will gravitate toward picking the “best” reward and if they don’t wanna use It they’ll sell it and buy something else, so I don’t think that would work either. And as we see With this year’s results, the issue with giving specific players is that if they’re really good everyone will use them and if they’re not that good nobody will use them.

You need an award that’s good enough to incentivize people to collect the cards, but not a reward that is so good that it’s overpowering.

One idea that makes sense to me would be to award packs as rewards for completing the missions. The issue with packs is that the contents are so variable... often they are pretty bad but once in a while you hit the jackpot! However, they could improve things by doing things like award gold packs or diamond packs so you know you’re getting a card you can use (Uh... maybe!). They could even create packs that they don’t sell for rewards... The possibilities are endless... maybe gold/diamond historical packs for people who like those historical cards! Or some combination thereof... say one gold pack and three regular packs for completing a low level collection. What about a historical pack that guarantees an 85 or higher gold card in it (they do this when you’re creating a team, you get specialized packs that aren’t the same as the ones they sell). Or how about a historical pack that’s guaranteed to have a gold or better shortstop? Or maybe you could have a choice between two gold packs with a 2B and a SS or one diamond pack with a CF! What about a guaranteed Negro League card pack? There’s a lot they can do in this regard to add decent rewards without going the route of giving everyone the same cards. If I were in charge of this that’s the direction in which I would go. I would try to make it so there is an absolute floor on the value that you get from completing the collection so that people wouldn’t complete something and get a gold 80 live card that sells for 1000. But also add some variability so the teams have a mix of players.

———-

[Tinkerman]

When you get down to the details, it's complicated. The simplest 'solution' would be to just have less powerful versions of cards as rewards. I would have been quite happy with rookie Ichiro instead of peak, for example. Same with Yogi, Bagwell etc. Then there would be more reasons for people to want to upgrade.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Tinkerman

When you get down to the details, it's complicated. The simplest 'solution' would be to just have less powerful versions of cards as rewards. I would have been quite happy with rookie Ichiro instead of peak, for example. Same with Yogi, Bagwell etc. Then there would be more reasons for people to want to upgrade.

The live missions rewards were like that in PT 20 and they were completely tragic and almost all of them were completely useless, also because collection missions didn't get introduced until roughly around now in the game cycle.

[professor ape]

I am liking the idea of having pack rewards for the live missions but it needs to feel special and kept simple. You could do this by having Special Edition packs and PEAK packs which guarantee one of the type of card with the rest of the pack being random like other packs. As example the rewards for the live missions could be:

1 Star Missions: 1 Gold SE Pack
2 Star Missions: 1 Gold PEAK Pack
3 Star Missions: 1 Diamond SE Pack
4 Star Missions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack
5 Star Missions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack + 1 Historic Pack
Completing Divisions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack + 1 Diamond SE Pack
Completing Leagues: 1 Perfect SE Pack + 1 Historic Pack
Completing All Live Missions: 1 Perfect PEAK Pack + 3 Historic Packs

[Tinkerman]

Originally Posted by Westheim

The live missions rewards were like that in PT 20 and they were completely tragic and almost all of them were completely useless, also because collection missions didn't get introduced until roughly around now in the game cycle.

The rewards in 20 were mostly useless. The lesser Ichiro, Berra and Bagwell cards, as examples, would still be excellent rewards in 21.

The problem I have with the idea of pack rewards, is they'd introduce yet more luck factor, which I think there's enough of already!

[bailey]

I'd rather play with the same 20 players as everyone else, if it makes for a good team. I don't really look at other teams and even when I do, I don't care. Doing the live collections was fun for a guaranteed return, but offering packs is considerably less interesting. It would be like buying diamond packs which we all know is a poor return vs. regular packs which are also poor when buying them. . The smart play then would be to NOT complete the collections, but sell the cards to those who do.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by professor ape

I am liking the idea of having pack rewards for the live missions but it needs to feel special and kept simple. You could do this by having Special Edition packs and PEAK packs which guarantee one of the type of card with the rest of the pack being random like other packs. As example the rewards for the live missions could be:

1 Star Missions: 1 Gold SE Pack
2 Star Missions: 1 Gold PEAK Pack
3 Star Missions: 1 Diamond SE Pack
4 Star Missions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack
5 Star Missions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack + 1 Historic Pack
Completing Divisions: 1 Diamond PEAK Pack + 1 Diamond SE Pack
Completing Leagues: 1 Perfect SE Pack + 1 Historic Pack
Completing All Live Missions: 1 Perfect PEAK Pack + 3 Historic Packs

I like the idea on principle, but most of those packs don't even exist yet.
Honestly I think you can make an idea like this work with what's available with increasing rewards as you go up the chain, with the final reward for all players guaranteeing a mid level, non live diamond.
If that card is the ultimate reward, everything else prior needs to be less (unless getting lucky through pack pulls).
It would keep FTP players honest and have them build their team slower, but would give them enough rewards along the way to build it as they see fit instead of just going with the cookie cutter team.
People who buy points will always have the AH to tinker with their lineup.
With how easy it is to complete the live missions, I think getting ONE mid level diamond at the end of it all (+ several shots at more along the way in the form of packs) is plenty.
Don't forget there are plenty of other missions to work on as well.

[furnaceguy85]

For the live missions an option would be to award a team pack for the team mission completed. Depending on the difficulty could have golds or diamonds in it. Maybe limit it to 3 cards in that special pack and you get a random special edition team cards. Maybe have 20 possible cards created per mission but you only get 3 of them. That would create more diverse teams


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by eldur00

I like the idea on principle, but most of those packs don't even exist yet.
Honestly I think you can make an idea like this work with what's available with increasing rewards as you go up the chain, with the final reward for all players guaranteeing a mid level, non live diamond.
If that card is the ultimate reward, everything else prior needs to be less (unless getting lucky through pack pulls).
It would keep FTP players honest and have them build their team slower, but would give them enough rewards along the way to build it as they see fit instead of just going with the cookie cutter team.
People who buy points will always have the AH to tinker with their lineup.
With how easy it is to complete the live missions, I think getting ONE mid level diamond at the end of it all (+ several shots at more along the way in the form of packs) is plenty.
Don't forget there are plenty of other missions to work on as well.

I don’t think it would be a big challenge to create these pack types. Part of the deal would be that the SE and PEAK packs would only be available in missions and maybe some larger tournaments. I like the idea of them not being available for purchase with PP so that you have to do some work to get them.

[SPBJT]

I went the route of selling ALL of my SE Cards and netted about 250K PP. It was painful to get rid of Bagwell and Ichiro, but I did not want the same cookie cutter team. I turned that into the roster attached. I think had enough leftover and won enough PP while in Stone level to replace my Catcher with 100 Cochrane and Ozzie with Arky Vaughn. I used the pitching formula in one of the other threads to ensure all the pitchers I bought had a 400 score or higher. I'm now 85-26 in Stone and this team should be competitive through at least GOLD level with some other upgrades along the way.

[Westheim]

I am not sure I understand the saved column. At all.