Competitive balance discussion

[Northernsky]

I think this discussion is run its course. It's a dead horse.

[Kem]

It's a dead horse that will be continuously beaten as long as people play perfect team.

[ThrownOutAtHome]

Okay, listen, if you can with the yelling and all. You can either outspend them, or you can shut up and play it at your pace, or you can play something else entirely. These are your options. Spend $200, or $2,000, or zip, I don't give a spoonful.

I completely agree with your comment. I will take that 200 somewhere else and also take the money for the 4+ OOTP games I buy for myself and others each year..

That was the best advice I heard....

I'll take the money to ActionPc Baseball and at least they have HONEST head to head play. The single player is nowhere near as good as OOTP but at least I'm not getting @#$%## in the ass..

That is my last post and thank you for your advice.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by ThrownOutAtHome

Children should not be allowed to play this game.

I agree. I am a child at heart. Children enjoy games and a challenge. Suckers get suckered into playing microtransaction games of which they can and will never EVER compete.

Have a nice day sucker boy.

Children cry when they don't win.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by ThrownOutAtHome

Spleen:

And obviously you are a still a douche bag IRL. BTW maybe you should clean your cookies once in a while and stop looking at so much kinky porn.

Have a nice day douche bag!

I can let a lot of things go, but when you insult a man for his kinky porn you’ve crossed the line

[Maddox]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

I can let a lot of things go, but when you insult a man for his kinky porn you’ve crossed the line

Okay, that made me chuckle!

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by ThrownOutAtHome

Spleen:

And obviously you are a still a douche bag IRL. BTW maybe you should clean your cookies once in a while and stop looking at so much kinky porn.

Have a nice day douche bag!

You say that like porn is bad?

I would say I'm sorry you're so upset over this, but that would be a lie.

[Zephaerus]

Hey all, I had a talk with TJ on the OOTP Discord about the potentially problematic nature of teams that field all position players (no pitching) and surrender many, many runs. He encouraged me to make a post on the OOTP forums to allow for further, more in-depth discussion, so I'm going to try to outline what the teams are, what they accomplish, and what problems they may cause. The TOS states that intentionally losing is against the rules... and I think there's a compelling argument that this both is and is not about intentionally losing.

As a disclaimer, my team is the Position Players Lobbing Meatballs, which is managed exactly as your might expect. I'm going to be coming at this with a biased perspective, though I'll be trying my best to cover what I view as the strongest objections.

----

What's the big idea?

Let's throw pitching and defense out the window. Let's make the park factors as hitter-friendly as possible. Put first basemen at every position - why not? It's wonky, odd, and maybe a little funny to look at. There's some entertainment value in looking at a month of games and seeing the average run totals in the mid-40s.

The idea is a continuation of something I tried in the public beta. Originally, I had a roster composed solely of relievers and 1B/DH types. The idea was to prioritize offense and maximize strikeouts, care less about winning, and see what would happen. What happened was a lot of achievements. Nearly all came from the offensive side. The team was pretty bad, though it won games now and again. What I noticed was that I scored more runs in big blowout losses, and that sparked the idea to take things one step further.

Enter the all position player team, with big bats at every position and utility players on the mound. The idea was simple: by creating low-leverage situations, I could create an environment where my opponents would be:

A.) Throwing out their long relievers, traditionally the worst pitchers on a roster, giving me the best opportunity to score runs.
B.) Giving all of their pitchers very long hooks, because you don't need to sweat it when you've got a 25 run lead.

Run scoring did go up even more. A friend of mine has a hunch that time between innings also has an effect on a pitcher's performance, though I'm not necessarily sure of that. In any case, my offense, despite being composed of some pretty weak cards, managed to stay well above average. I earned a good number of offensive achievements, even while losing a lot and giving up tons of runs. The goal was to earn more PP, and that goal was accomplished. It does cause a lot of losing, though I'd argue that losing is a consequence, not an intention. If you don't care about intentions, then you obviously don't buy into that argument.

Since then, I know a few other teams have copied the idea.

----

The Consequences

Obviously, this has an effect beyond the scope of the team utilizing the strategy. On the most basic level, fielding a team of all position players gives opponents a lot of achievements. Offenses facing my team regularly have record-setting games, earning anywhere between 1-15K PP from a single game.

Some people think it's pointless and a waste of time. They want to play against serious competition, and they don't want to square up against teams who are prioritizing anything other than winning. The argument against this stance is that the promotion/relegation system will quickly take care of things, with the competitive teams rising up and the less-competitive staying at the bottom, but it is true that even the most serious of competitors can not always avoid teams employing the meatball strategy in an entry pool or rookie league when starting out. It might make the process of starting to play Perfect Team less than ideal.

PP entering the market at an unintended rate will change things. Depending on how many or how few people end up copying the strategy, the effects will be more or less pronounced. In any case, more achievements means more currency, and more currency means that more packs will be opened and people will have more to bid in the auction house.

Some people will argue this will devalue cards - as more and more packs get opened, the market will get flooded with cards, and those cards will eventually become very cheap as we gradually run out of potential buyers. If cards are de-valued, it probably helps the developers' bottom line, though at the cost of the player experience - it will be frustrating it if becomes difficult to acquire currency from selling cards. Either you get lucky and face a meatball team in your division, you buy PP, or you're out of luck.

Others will argue that this will increase the value of cards - as more currency is handed out, people will be able to bid higher and even potentially unreasonable amounts for the select few cards they want. If we see inflation and cards balloon in value, then it becomes progressively less reasonable to purchase PP. Opening packs could potentially net consistent profits. In my opinion, this is a better playing experience, but it does come at the cost of PP sales.

My genuine best guess is that we will see market stratification - the rarest cards will likely increase in value significantly, as they're uncommon enough and desirable enough that they simply cannot flood the market; the more common cards will likely drop in price, becoming cheaper than they already are as dozens and dozens of unneeded copies get opened from the increasing quantity of packs being purchased. Am I right? Maybe. I don't know. If I am right, is stratification necessarily a good or bad thing? Maybe. I'd argue it isn't problematic, but I can definitely see that being a point of contention.

What the meatball teams will do for sure is accelerate Perfect Team to whatever its "endgame" state is. Whether that be an inflated, deflated, or stratified market, we're already on that course without meatball teams present. If everyone earns 200 PP a day, the market in 100 days should look identical to the market that comes from everyone earning 20k PP in a single day.

But getting back to the basics, I enjoy it, and I think it's goofy and fun. I really enjoy checking in on my team and seeing the game results. Improbable and impossible box scores are fun to pick apart. Most community members I've talked to think it's pretty great, too. There's a post on /r/OOTP celebrating the idea. I really do think it increases enjoyment of the game, for both myself and for others. It's unorthodox, but it's not cheating. I am (and hopefully other teams utilizing the strategy are) not doing this to feed other accounts. The PP spreads out to everyone, and so does the love.

----

Thoughts?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by ThrownOutAtHome

That is my last post.

I hope so.

[Dairy]

I have to agree. It's also fun to watch your team try and get wins. The first time I tried the "meatball" strategy my team won the 1st game, with Fat Adams getting a save. This strategy seems to help everyone, you build your PP, the teams that play you get a GREAT boost and allows them to compete with the P2W teams.

[One Post Wonder]

Yikes! Where is this stuff heading? Is someone going to end up in jail because they got a little too worked up over Perfect Team rules discussion? Even the mods seem frightened to come here.

These merges are surely more about creating a quarantined area where they can dump all of the controversial/argumentative stuff. Those of us who want our discussions with a 'Mad Max' flavor can gun up and come here.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Meatball teams clearly violate our ToS and will be shut down by us in the future. They are bad for the PT economy as a whole and hence are definitely not wanted. Case closed

[Zephaerus]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Meatball teams clearly violate our ToS and will be shut down by us in the future. They are bad for the PT economy as a whole and hence are definitely not wanted. Case closed

I'd really appreciate hearing your reasoning on this.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by Dairy

I have to agree. It's also fun to watch your team try and get wins. The first time I tried the "meatball" strategy my team won the 1st game, with Fat Adams getting a save. This strategy seems to help everyone, you build your PP, the teams that play you get a GREAT boost and allows them to compete with the P2W teams.

In no way am I making a judgement either way on this type of play, just curious about something you said. How does it help the teams (potentially the F2W or minnows) against the P2W guys if the P2W guys are getting more PP as well (and probably more than the others since their players are so good). Are you referring to the F2W in your league getting more points so they can later compete against a P2W in another league? Anyway, seems it would at minimum help every equally, at least those in your league, and probably the better teams even more than lesser teams.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Zephaerus

I'd really appreciate hearing your reasoning on this.

I'm pretty sure you can come up with my reasoning with a little bit of common sense

So, I would suggest you turn your Meatballs into a normal team now. Thanks for your cooperation.

[BoofBonser26]

All I'll say is, there's going to need to be a line drawn somewhere, and I don't envy the job of deciding where it goes.

People running teams composed only of players from their favorite real-life team aren't putting their "best" team on the field, but they're having way more fun, and if that weren't allowed, it'd be a loss large enough to render PT somewhat inaccessible and pointless to many.

This strategy, one team, in isolation, seems fine. If it's maximizing your enjoyment of the mode, I see no issue.

I also see the issue if a significant percentage of teams in a division/league are doing this (and it may only take 1-2 to significantly affect PP payout for that league).

I'd considered making an "all-pitcher" team (or as close as one could get) where basically everyone is a two-way player and they just trade off who starts (like many kids leagues in real life). It'd probably be pretty bad, because outside of Ohtani and some historical guys, you'd have to roster guys like...Matt Davidson? Chris Gimenez to catch? That team would be trying to win, but it'd be bad at it.

I'd also like to thank the OP for a reasonable and constructive introduction to the topic.

EDIT: And a line has been drawn already. Easy enough!

[NarWil]

What exactly would define a "Meatball team," if you're shutting them down?

[bobfrig]

Originally Posted by Zephaerus

I'd really appreciate hearing your reasoning on this.

Because you lose every game you play

[One Post Wonder]

The obvious problem with this, and it touches on stuff I've brought up more than once, is that one team might have 10 'meatball' teams in its league whereas someone else has none.

So that first team will have just as much pp at the end of a season as some guy who has spent a fair amount of real money. Not through investing time or coming up with strategy but purely through the luck of the draw. Those kinds of lucky breaks are fine when the game is some sort of casual thing, but not when you've got money involved IMO.

OOTP has said that they'll be policing teams that are playing in this kind of fashion, but I believe that's going to be really, really hard to enforce.

You've unknowingly hit on a touchy topic, and my bet is that this will end up locked.

[Zephaerus]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I'm pretty sure you can come up with my reasoning with a little bit of common sense

My man, I basically just wrote a 1200-word essay about how it's fun and what its possible consequences are. I can see where the problems might be, but I don't think they're certain, objectively bad, or can easily be worked out with common sense. I'm not trying to be cheeky here. I get that I'm not going to convince you otherwise, and I can tell that you've got some serious conviction in your decision. But I think the topic is worth more than a two-sentence reply saying no and a condescending follow-up telling me to use common sense, and I'd feel a lot better if I understood your reasoning.