Missions - drip...drip...drip...

[Thundercrack]

drip...drip...etc ad infinitum

[usa_hank]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

drip...drip...etc ad infinitum

It's been a dull season of PT, if I'm honest.

[cwhitman]

there is confirmed to be a large mission program next week

we also had four straight weeks of missions up before last week

[usa_hank]

This is the first season of PT where I'm sitting with 400K PP and 1000 CS, and the missions I have left are not advantageous to pay to complete, nor do the Clubhouse cards feel like they give me more than a 2-3% gain over my current cards.

Looking forward to new missions, hoping to see some worthwhile rewards.

[Thundercrack]

It is very dull, lack of missions is a drag

[stevezog1]

I wish I could get 1000 CS points. That's like a legend to me, can't be real, but I can't win a tournament or draft to save my life. I guess I'm always terrible at picking players in the drafts and my roster selection in the tournaments are awful.

The best I've finished in a tournament is final 4 and I play 4 a day like it's my job. I only do weekly drafts but if I get to the sweet 16, it's a miracle. I'm always out 1st or 2nd round and if I go further, someone in high diamond or perfect knocks me out. They're just better at the game than I am I guess.

[stevezog1]

But yeah, we need more missions. I have 3 open missions, Satch and Perfect Contemporaries leading to Frank Robinson.... so nothing to do but wait until next week for some missions

[rwd59]

Originally Posted by stevezog1

But yeah, we need more missions. I have 3 open missions, Satch and Perfect Contemporaries leading to Frank Robinson.... so nothing to do but wait until next week for some missions

That's where I sit as well. At least I only lack one more perfect to complete that and Robinson. I was doing fairly well in tournaments until the last couple of weeks. Doing nothing at all now.

[rwd59]

My bad.

[LeeD]

Yeah, been saying for a while now that missions as we knew them are dead. We used to be able to build a solid team from keeping up with missions. Now they're a disorganized afterthought. The real juice is in new, missionless Perfects that cost 300K plus or 500 Clubhouse Stars. Without them, it's Silver and Gold league only.

Last three weeks' missions were just a mishmash. Father's Day for a mediocre Griffey Sr. card, some Gold packs, and one Perfect pack in a stand-alone. Week before was a Gold Dock Ellis card. Week before was pack rewards.

Week before that was Robinson, which is another of those mission sets where you have to spend many times what the topper is worth in order to get the topper. Reminds me of the Mad Bum mission from last year, where we needed hundreds of thousands for several overpriced Perfects to get a card that was selling for 75K a month after the mission dropped. Short shelf life indeed, accompanied by the need to acquire lots of component cards that weren't league-worthy the day the mission dropped.

Not holding my breath on this major mission drop next week.

[cwhitman]

it's now confirmed it's tomorrow. my expectation is that it's going to be like the launch deck missions from last year, which happened around this time.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by cwhitman

it's now confirmed it's tomorrow. my expectation is that it's going to be like the launch deck missions from last year, which happened around this time.

Would be nice, as I'm done with practically all missions and will have the cards from Live, Launch, and Negro Leagues. I would guess BBRef, though. That was the fourth leg on the stool for the souped-up Launch Plus missions.

[usa_hank]

Appreciate the new missions, but pretty much all pack rewards except a variant Roy Campanella (pretty mid) and a variant Tris Speaker (great card) . The mission drop is kind of underwhelming. Appreciate the effort but I think you deserve some honesty from the fans.

There's clearly been a drive to make folks buy PP this season rather than having people build LD competitive teams with missions. And we are noticing.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by usa_hank

Appreciate the new missions, but pretty much all pack rewards except a variant Roy Campanella (pretty mid) and a variant Tris Speaker (great card) . The mission drop is kind of underwhelming. Appreciate the effort but I think you deserve some honesty from the fans.

There's clearly been a drive to make folks buy PP this season rather than having people build LD competitive teams with missions. And we are noticing.

100# this. Don’t want to seem cranky, but there’s no way to complete these missions without spending points most of us don’t have. Bottlenecks will be crazy. This has really become a game for the one percenters

[dishnet34]

So, praytell, how do you make missions that don't require spending points but also aren't autocomplete missions that people will also complain about? Reducing the number of cards/points required will likely make those missions autocompletes, so I think that wouldn't help. Plus, when new missions drop, prices for the cards in those missions also goes up - that's taking advantage of the demand and people wanting to get the missions done right away, and that's a reality of the market and how the players choose to utilize it.

So, I'd like to hear your take on how we can missions not autocomplete but also not making people spend money.

[cwhitman]

these missions are all launch cards that people should mostly all have by now, and there are no bottlenecks. almost every card outside of the perfects in the missions is QS today

[LeeD]

A solid mission set. Nothing to jump up and down about, but there's something for everyone here. Pack rewards for players who don't have the Perfect cards, upgrades for those of us who managed to collect all or nearly all of the component cards, which have been available since launch. Overall, nice work.

[HRBaker]

It's a result of the algorithm; Whales drive the economy and create the profit that keeps the game solvent. Without them the game folds. But once the whales learn to extract every known leverage point in the system, they effectively block all the easier paths for the remaining game population. This is the experience of being blocked in both tournaments and missions.

Any solution that makes whales equal to F2P'rs destroys the algorithm.

Add to that the pyramid design of promotion and regulation and Perfect/Diamond levels become "reserved parking spaces" for the whales and HG/LG Level is the best the bottom 2/3rds of the game player base is usually going to get. The only event that breaks that process is the lucky pack pull of a top end card - and waiting 6 months for that to happen is questionable at best - so the most tempting option is to quit at that point if you have managed to get to HG/LD. That is the top 10% of the ladder.

Thus why I play to the all-star break... if I've gotten to the HG/DL border as an F2P I've been successful, and further involvement is simply waiting to win the lottery of a powerhouse new card. At that point I leave PT and return to the Classic game.

I wish there was a mid-season "fork in the road" option (at cost of course), where non-whales could start over with a new team and experience the initial build porcess over again - simply re-experiencing the March through July build scenario, but I suspect that's a "bridge to far" for the designers to get their teeth into. The design and testing process would be huge, but I do suspect it would create a second income source.

In any case, off to the Classic game for me until V27.

[stevezog1]

Tournament that whales can't play in might even things out a bit for the rest of us.

[usa_hank]

Originally Posted by cwhitman

these missions are all launch cards that people should mostly all have by now, and there are no bottlenecks. almost every card outside of the perfects in the missions is QS today

I think this statement is misleading and makes it seem like people can easily finish these missions. I've opened 1000+ packs (gotten as many free drops as I can) and not sold anything but dups, and I had to spend a decent amount of PP to finish these missions on one or two cards each to get variant Tris. I had a couple that autocompleted. Most players don't have a stash of PP sitting around though.