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Perfect Team Discover the new amazing online league competition & card collecting mode of OOTP! |
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10-16-2018, 02:51 PM | #1 |
Bat Boy
Join Date: Oct 2018
Posts: 4
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Concern about Perfect Team's Monetization
Preface
I have played OOTP since OOTP 16. I have played video games since the age of 4. Much of this post is my opinion based on my experiences as a consumer in this industry and based on my definition of what is right. Many of you will disagree with me, and that is fine. Perfect Team and the Issue of Paid Card Packs Perfect Team is an exciting new concept for OOTP, and I am sure many of you guys have played other sports games with Ultimate Team and similar modes. However, I have a major problem with monetizing the points used to buy players and card packs. Firstly, there is an issue of being able to buy players with real money. This provides an unfair advantage to players that spend money rather than earn the points. Obviously the game still requires some skill and some luck, but they will have an advantage nonetheless. The second issue I have is the ability to spend these purchased points on card packs, which are a type of loot box. I do commend OOTP Developments for taking the initiative to show the percentage chances of each type of card. However, this system is still gambling. There is a growing controversy around loot boxes. A few European countries such as Belgium have already legally declared them as gambling and forced their removal from all video games sold in that country. They are even taking EA to court over the issue. Several other countries in the EU are also coming together to form a commission to investigate the predatory nature of loot boxes and to discuss legislation against them. It has even spread to the US, where many officials, such as Hawaiian Representative Chris Lee are demanding that the government take action. It disappoints me greatly that OOTP Developments would want to implement a system like this when there is no way they aren't at least aware of the stigma surrounding it. Yes, OOTP Developments is a small studio that makes games for niche markets. Yes, they need to make money. However, that is no excuse to stoop to this level of predatory monetization that plagues this industry. TLDR Loot Boxes are gambling, they should not be in an E-rated sports video game. Suggestions Charge 5-10 bucks for Perfect Team as a DLC-type add-on instead. The hype for this mode is crazy and I guarantee that most people excited for this mode would happily pay that. I know I would. Conclusion Studios should strive to be the next CD Projekt Red, not the next EA. Strive to make great games that people love, not to put as much money in your pockets as possible. Thank you for reading my post; any response is welcomed, whether it be an agreement or a rebuttal. |
10-16-2018, 10:44 PM | #2 |
Minors (Rookie Ball)
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: Michigan
Posts: 47
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I understand your points but I don't agree. I am very excited for the release of Perfect Team even though I don't plan on spending a dime on it. I've played FIFA, NCAA 14, and Madden's Ultimate Team's and I do enjoy these types of game modes. Markus has talked about the different divisions, so I'd have to assume the people who drop money into the game will be at the higher levels early on until people catch up. This isn't as bad as say the EA Stars Wars series were you have to get so many parts of Darth Vader to use him, and you can either drop money or grind an incredible amount of hours trying to get enough xp to earn the loot boxes. Spending money doesn't even grant you a certain card it just gives you better chances of getting good cards. The biggest problem with the predatory nature of the loot boxes is because of the games they are in are played by kids ie Madden, FIFA, Star Wars, I don't know the different demographics that play OOTP but I'd assume most of us are adults that know what to expect if they choose to buy packs with money. All in all I'm excited for the beta and the release, and I'd give it a chance 1st to see what it's like.
Last edited by JaytheGreat; 10-16-2018 at 10:52 PM. |
10-17-2018, 12:57 AM | #3 | |
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Yet this is your first forum post.
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Using your model, everyone has to pay an additional fee. Using their model, people choose what they want to pay. That seems more fair to me. |
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10-17-2018, 01:10 AM | #4 |
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Customers seem to like Skinner boxes over linear rewards.
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10-17-2018, 06:07 PM | #5 |
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Some people like baseball.
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10-17-2018, 06:38 PM | #6 | |
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I have worked almost 30 years in a business that involves long term relationships and trust. I feel about OOTPD the way I hope my many long time customers feel about me.
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10-17-2018, 08:38 PM | #7 |
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old retired on limited income. doesn't mean i won't play PT. (doesn't mean i will) it does mean i won't buy card packs. so if i decide to play - it means i'll be in a lower bracket. maybe a more even bracket than the people who will buy top packets. i understand the choices to be made by consumers on how they will play the game, understand the company's plan and effort to make this fair and interesting at the same time. it's not out yet. it's in beta testing. How it rolls out and exactly what it will and will not be viewed as by the buying audience remains to be seen. But i would not pay extra for this feature, just to try it. i think Markus and team has thus far made some good choices on presentation and development, once they decided they wanted to develop this feature.
so basically, i disagree with the premise of the OP.
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10-18-2018, 02:37 PM | #8 |
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: NW Arkansas
Posts: 221
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I agree with the OP that there ARE legitimate concerns about "loot boxes" in gaming, including games aimed at children. But I don't think OOTP's Perfect Team has a "predatory nature" in the way "loot boxes" incorporated into some bigger-name video games may be.
For one, I can completely ignore Perfect Team and still experience the main game just fine with no drawbacks or restrictions. It also looks like the OOTP team has a goal of making sure owners who don't pay are competitive and have a realistic chance of winning games. (Unlike say, MLB The Show 18) I have no problem with OOTP trying to put as much money in their pockets as possible, as long as they do it ethically and don't break the game I already have and love. I think that's their goal too. FWIW, there were lawsuits filed against the makers of physical baseball cards a couple decades ago, liking them to gambling. The lawsuits failed. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1097140.html http://www.metnews.com/articles/duma120601.htm
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10-18-2018, 03:11 PM | #9 |
Developer OOTP
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Of course there are concerns about the issue of "loot boxes" and many games out there are simply designed to push users to spend as much money as possible. Our goal is to design Perfect Team in a way that you can have a lot of fun and be very competitive without spending a dime. Hence the opening post and its concerns does not apply to Perfect Team.
But, I know some people may think different, and feel PT is "pay to win". No matter what I say, I would not be able to convince them otherwise, so I won't waste time in even trying. Will you be able to spend money in PT? Yes. Do you have to? No. Will you be able to field a competitive team without spending money? Yes. That's all what's relevant, from my point of view
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10-18-2018, 05:52 PM | #10 | |||||
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Jan 2017
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Another concern, which has been more of a focus of lawsuits as I understand it, is preying on those with actual gambling addictions and/or those who don't know better (children, etc.). I'm sure OOTP has done all the legal and ethical due diligence on this, and has a plan to deal with transactions that seem to indicate this sort of behavior might be occurring. They have far too much to lose by ignoring the importance of all of that. Quote:
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It's been pretty clear from the outset that there's only one Nash equilibrium here, and I have yet to see evidence to the contrary in the beta. The whales are probably going to win every top-league World Series except maybe one or two crazy flukey ones every once in a blue moon. They will likely dominate the top several leagues almost entirely, not just the top league. It's probably not going to be a F2P player winning the top prize in 5-10% of seasons (like small market teams do in real life; I don't know the actual stats for MLB, but I'm quite sure it's much higher than what we will see with PT), and it certainly won't be anywhere near half of the time. This is great in most regards, because it means there will be tons of high-spending players having fun duking it out for the top spot and generating revenue, and the multi-league structure should mean that most F2P players won't be bothered being confined to the lower leagues, as those will still feel fun and satisfying to mess around in (even if being F2P effectively has an upper competitive bound). But, it's simply not going to feel 'very competitive,' really, for some F2P players. You'll be able to mess around a bit and have fun collecting your favorite low-to-mid tier players and a couple of great superstars, but you'll most likely get bounced down by super-teams pretty quickly once you win a championship or two and get out of the basement leagues. Realistically, the odds you'll ever 'win it all' are almost lottery-slim. The PP accumulation rate won't be sufficient to catch up to the whales no matter what you do (esp. with better players getting better PP returns), as there's no way to get PP other than waiting and spending money. If you could earn PP consistently by playing the game, more F2P players would think it felt 'very competitive,' but this would decrease the incentive to purchase PP. If you set up two separate servers/league setups - one F2P and one for all the paying customers - each of the two would definitely feel 'very competitive' to all players, but this second server would decrease revenue and increase costs, not to mention the technical headaches and requirements in time, equipment, etc. As it is, if just won't feel 'competitive' to some portion of players. And that's fine. Most people are having a ton of fun playing 'F2P' in the beta, and I think the mode will probably be a big hit with almost everyone who plays it - just not to those particularly craving a truly competitive, fair game mode. They can play OOTP as they always have (online leagues, solo leagues, etc.) and ignore PT. Sure, it's potentially lost PT user-base, but that'll happen no matter what. If you couldn't stomp F2P teams and other super-teams with your own personal super-team, you'd have fewer whales. The long-term player retention and revenue metrics will guide the devs, obviously. For now, we are all just speculating on how this will work in a live environment. This is indeed the all-relevant crux of the question, and we'll see soon enough. If it doesn't prove true enough, and the player metrics aren't what the devs need to be seeing, they'll figure out what to do about it, whether it be one of the possible remedies mentioned above or some other solution. Last edited by el_gringo; 10-18-2018 at 05:55 PM. |
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10-18-2018, 09:15 PM | #11 |
Major Leagues
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 332
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I'm with the OP, I'd vastly prefer a flat rate rather than in-app purchases, but I mean that's just my opinion.
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10-19-2018, 07:44 AM | #12 | |
Developer OOTP
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Location: Germany
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10-19-2018, 12:32 PM | #13 |
All Star Reserve
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I just don't see card packs in sports games as gambling. To me gambling has always had possibility of losing all of your investment and getting nothing in return. In these games you are getting something in return for your money, even if it is a pack full of the lowest level cards. In this case I very much equate them with real collectible card packs, be they sports cards or Magic the Gathering cards.
In regards to splitting the game up between free to play players and paying players that does not seem feasible at all. If I decide to buy a single pack I don't think I should automatically have to go up against people who have purchased hundreds of them. Lastly, for me, the mode will be about collecting cards, building a team and trying to set a strategy for the team I have to be as successful as it can be. I don't care what division I am in as long as my odds of winning perfect points and reward packs in that division are the same as for the person in the highest divisions. That way I can continue to build my team as I go. Last edited by Maddox; 10-19-2018 at 12:34 PM. |
10-19-2018, 09:50 PM | #14 | |||||
Bat Boy
Join Date: Oct 2018
Posts: 4
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Hi again everyone, I appreciate everyone's replies and the discussion this thread has started. I will now reply to some of you directly.
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My problem with the card packs is not just the potential for pay2win; my main concern is how similar these systems are to gambling. A previous poster expressed the age difference between people that play OOTP vs people that play Battlefront and other games with loot boxes. I don't believe that age is relevant. There are people that are just psychologically wired to gamble. It's an addiction. While they do have some responsibility to avoid this, many of them use video games as an escape. You may not consider this system to be gambling in legal terms, but it invokes the same psychological response. Whether or not your implementation of card packs is an intentional attempt to prey on these people, it is my sincere opinion that the nature of a system like this is unethical and predatory. Last edited by nop990; 10-19-2018 at 09:51 PM. |
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10-20-2018, 03:34 AM | #15 | |
Developer OOTP
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Buy Out of the Park Baseball 25 now! Last edited by Markus Heinsohn; 10-20-2018 at 03:36 AM. |
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10-20-2018, 06:46 PM | #16 | |
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 275
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I think, regardless, the cascading and ever-expanding league structure will keep very nearly everyone happy. I also very much appreciate how much transparency has gone into contextualizing and clarifying the more subjective marketing phrases used. Even if we disagree about word choice, we're all clear and on the same page about what the model is, what the statistics are, etc. Informed customers are happy customers! |
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10-20-2018, 09:31 PM | #17 | |
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Sadly, this version of 19 is probably my last and I’ve had literally every one.
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10-21-2018, 05:48 AM | #18 |
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Two points; there is a big (huge actually) difference between Perfect Team and Draft Kings and consorts as I see it. It does not appear to me that you can ever sell all cards you have for PP and cash out. Thus, you can never win in a financial sense. Every dime you ever invest into the game is always going to be lost in terms of money. I thus can not see where the game constitutes gambling or anything like that.
Yes there are people that don't know where their limits. But it is the same with alcohol, some people don't know when to stop. Does that stop anybody "normal" from buying from Coors and Budweiser? If you don't have the ability to contain yourself as much that you have to spend a thousand bucks just to get all the Yankee Historical All-Stars in an online version of a computer game that will bring out a new version every year, and you will have to repeat this feat every year for another thousand bucks, I don't think it is the game developers' fault. Get help, damnit. Secondly, on a more personal level, never having been able to collect baseball cards because there simply are none over here (there are soccer player cards, and probably more, but that is just not the same...), I remain very interested in this feature, I bought 19 yesterday at discount, and I might drop the odd buck into new packs from time to time in desperate attempts to get the card-based Raccoons out of Rookie League, which will never ever work.
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Portland Raccoons, 83 years of excell-.... of baseball: Furballs here! 1983 * 1989 * 1991 * 1992 * 1993 * 1995 * 1996 * 2010 * 2017 * 2018 * 2019 * 2026 * 2028 * 2035 * 2037 * 2044 * 2045 * 2046 * 2047 * 2048 * 2051 * 2054 * 2055 1 OSANAI : 2 POWELL : 7 NOMURA | RAMOS : 8 REECE : 10 BROWN : 15 HALL : 27 FERNANDEZ : 28 CASAS : 31 CARMONA : 32 WEST : 39 TONER : 46 SAITO Resident Mets Cynic - The Mets from 1962 onwards, here. |
10-21-2018, 11:57 AM | #19 |
Minors (Triple A)
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I confess that when I heard about the ptp it was a bit of a turnoff. My major involvement with ptp was in Hearthstone, where getting into it you're pretty much told, "this game is technically free, but understand that playing free basically means that you need to become fantastic at this game to even have a prayer at the top ranks, and get ready to get stomped a lot while you slowly build up your card collection." Knowing that I wasn't willing to pay anything, it definitely killed a lot of my enthusiasm.
Now this is a different game. Developed by a different company. And it's not fair to hold one company's practice against another. I'm not excited about Perfect Team so that I can win it all. It's baseball, it's heavily random anyways. I love the challenge of making the best possible team from my component pieces. The idea that I'm going to be doing that with a massive collection of historical and modern players, all of whom are theoretically starters . . . it's a challenge that I can't resist and am having a difficult time waiting for. I do worry about the ptp mechanic. I do worry that sufficient exposure to the income stream that will be a corrupting influence. That once the company sees how much money is at stake, and what could be accomplished with it, they will slowly become biased in favor of the 'whales' and against the interests of everyone else. This is possible. I don't believe that it will happen. Markus has built this baby up from nothing. Over many, many years. And I'd guess that if he wanted to walk away from the hassle of growing the best baseball simulation ever for the rest of us, he could have done so with a pretty decent chunk of change instead of turning around and reinvesting it (as he has clearly done at least in part) on the development and improvement of the game. I mean, come on, how many Head Devs spend this much time on their forums, openly allowing people to call them out, interacting with them, accepting if not embracing the criticism? Ultimately, I have faith in Markus. I think that he genuinely believes that this ptp mechanic will not harm the experience of the normal players. I mean, maybe the rest of us will be the Padres against the whales' Yankees. That's fine; I love a good challenge. But if it gets worse than that? I expect that Markus has already anticipated this and has contingency plans in place if need be. He and the team have put a ton of thought and time into this project and I'm sure they have anticipated possible downsides. I'm not saying this will transition easily; this is a completely new thing. It'll be a bumpy ride. But I trust our driver. This game we play and all too often take for granted is the product of nineteen iterations. Those initial customers were wise to bet that Markus would stick with it and build something great. I hope to do the same. tl;dr All of the above concerns are completely fair. But I think there's more than enough evidence to suggest that Markus and co. deserve the benefit of the doubt. Cheers! |
10-21-2018, 12:38 PM | #20 | |
Developer OOTP
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Germany
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Perfect Team will be a journey. I want this mode to be as fun as possible for as many users as possible, while still generating extra revenue for the company which we then can invest back into the different game modes (core game + Perfect Team). Along the way we will probably have to make adjustments from version to version, but I think the base concept of PT is very sound and will be competitive right out of the gate. We'll see where it goes from there, and we will learn our lessons along the way and apply the conclusions during development of future versions.
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