The Phil Garner Conundrum

[Mizzery]

Opening a pack earned in a recent mission, and out pops a 60 Phil Garner. Wait a second, I say to myself, haven't already seen this card before?

Actually, no. This 60 rated Phil Garner is an Unsung Hero 3B card from 1983. My other 60 Garner is an All-Star 2B from 1976, and both of those cards are distinct from the 73 rated snapshot card from 1979.

There is the 59 and 56 rated versions of Billy Hatcher, and the 58 and 56 rated versions of Edgar Renteria. Tom Brookens has two Iron cards. Orlando Merced, Ken Singleton, Rick Dempsey, Roger Maris, Rollie Fingers and Mule Haas all have two cards with 5 or less rating points between them. Mariano Duncan has 3 cards, two of them are a 68 and a 71. Does the game need three versions of Denis Menke or Tom Burgmeier?

Many of these extra cards are not part of collections, and most are not playable, even in tournaments for that level. One of the issues in 21 is the inflation in cards, with 1500 more cards in the universe in 21 vs. 20, but these aren't even the mega, overpowered cards everyone complains about. What am I missing here?

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by Mizzery

Opening a pack earned in a recent mission, and out pops a 60 Phil Garner. Wait a second, I say to myself, haven't already seen this card before?

Actually, no. This 60 rated Phil Garner is an Unsung Hero 3B card from 1983. My other 60 Garner is an All-Star 2B from 1976, and both of those cards are distinct from the 73 rated snapshot card from 1979.

There is the 59 and 56 rated versions of Billy Hatcher, and the 58 and 56 rated versions of Edgar Renteria. Tom Brookens has two Iron cards. Orlando Merced, Ken Singleton, Rick Dempsey, Roger Maris, Rollie Fingers and Mule Haas all have two cards with 5 or less rating points between them. Mariano Duncan has 3 cards, two of them are a 68 and a 71. Does the game need three versions of Denis Menke or Tom Burgmeier?

Many of these extra cards are not part of collections, and most are not playable, even in tournaments for that level. One of the issues in 21 is the inflation in cards, with 1500 more cards in the universe in 21 vs. 20, but these aren't even the mega, overpowered cards everyone complains about. What am I missing here?

"Card Bloat". Roughly speaking, there's been about 100,000 baseball players at the major league level over the past 120 years - about 25,000 of them considered "1st string". (PS: Nothing scientific about this estimate - just a quick calculation).


That means you could have 100,000 players in PT (peak stats value) and never have a duplicate - yet - some players in PT (as you've noticed) have 3 cards or more. Instead, we have multiple cards of the same players, ALL of which are basically not playable after the first 4 months or so.


Yep, plugging my idea AGAIN for only two cards per player; a "career card" and a "peak season card". Maybe even a rookie card for the hell of it.


And PLEASE get rid of the cards that represent players that never existed. I simply don't see how the OOTP team could have missed the fact that the "super cards" would eventually make up the rosters of the top of the pyramid - and they aren't even real for the most part.


Ok, off my soap box. No one is likely listening anyway.

[Sipimi]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

"Card Bloat". Roughly speaking, there's been about 100,000 baseball players at the major league level over the past 120 years - about 25,000 of them considered "1st string". (PS: Nothing scientific about this estimate - just a quick calculation).


That means you could have 100,000 players in PT (peak stats value) and never have a duplicate - yet - some players in PT (as you've noticed) have 3 cards or more. Instead, we have multiple cards of the same players, ALL of which are basically not playable after the first 4 months or so.


Yep, plugging my idea AGAIN for only two cards per player; a "career card" and a "peak season card". Maybe even a rookie card for the hell of it.


And PLEASE get rid of the cards that represent players that never existed. I simply don't see how the OOTP team could have missed the fact that the "super cards" would eventually make up the rosters of the top of the pyramid - and they aren't even real for the most part.


Ok, off my soap box. No one is likely listening anyway.

I'm listening!

Personally I like the idea of having multiple cards of the same player if and only if one or two conditions are met :

- The player is playing with a different team (ie. not having 2 cards with the same team with the exception of PEAK and SE cards);
- The card is not of the same overall range (ie. Iron, Bronze, Silver, etc.)

IMHO diversity is great, especially for tournaments with overall limitations or cap.

[Lukas Berger]

A bunch of these are cards that we never really planned to release, so were not specifically collated.

But we had hundreds of unreleased lower tier cards sitting around and we figured the community would like to have them available to freshen up tournaments, so released them all in a big batch a month or so ago.

Generally that release was super well received, but the one "downside" is that there was a handful of fairly redundant cards there, like you mention. It's a pretty minor downside though, compared to the advantage of the large amount of new and fresh and non-redundant cards made available.

[Mizzery]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

A bunch of these are cards that we never really planned to release, so were not specifically collated.

But we had hundreds of unreleased lower tier cards sitting around and we figured the community would like to have them available to freshen up tournaments, so released them all in a big batch a month or so ago.

Generally that release was super well received, but the one "downside" is that there was a handful of fairly redundant cards there, like you mention. It's a pretty minor downside though, compared to the advantage of the large amount of new and fresh and non-redundant cards made available.

Thanks for the response. The problem with releasing those redundant cards is that they displace other previously released Bronze cards when opening packs. For a team that has already completed all of its missions, or is not working on missions as part of their strategy, that's fine. Otherwise it serves to make it much more difficult to pull historical Bronze cards that are needed to complete challenges since those cards are now far rarer in pack distribution.

The second point, which is more minor, is that these last round of bronze release cards are generally nowhere near strong enough to crack my established bronze tournament teams and either collect dust as inactive cards or get autosold off.

When a card doesn't have mission value, and can't be used on your active roster, and isn't usable in tournaments, it has curiosity value only. I pulled a 69 BJ Surhoff today, already had a 69 BJ Surhoff- they play different positions and represent different times in his career, but I would rate that appeal fairly low for me.

[vapodge]

Not refuting you, but keep in mind everyone plays differently. I have three teams, but one has strict rules. It's only Padres, and that's significant because there aren't all that many cards. So, if there's a player that has two different primary positions, I may play the lesser one if there's a better equivalent from another player at the other position. I can see this happening a lot with other squads that impose restrictions.
Your point is completely valid for my other two teams.
It may be annoying at times, but I welcome new cards on the whole, no matter the level.