Face of the Franchise is a disaster

[bailey]

Not only is it mind-boggling expensive to complete, Every historical card not in a released mission is marked up hugely, or is a brand new posting by someone unaware. Speculators are out in force scooping up these cards. The cheapest historical diamond that is not a special edition card is 15K. Because, we all know, SE cards are not parts of missions.

Good luck, if you are just starting out!

Collections really need to be made of all brand new cards, like the Negro League collection.

[Kushiel]

I agree! It seems almost every mission release becomes more expensive to complete. Fixed income people or any anybody else without really deep pockets has no chance. I do not even try anymore.

[HRBaker]

I'm beginning to think the few big money spenders are driving Perfect Team profits. These type of card releases are targeted to the big spenders, and there must be enough of them to make a nice profit margin for OOTP.


That said, I certainly understand why they cater to the big spenders - I would probably do the same thing, BUT - I hope they reinvest some of their profits into the classic game where I will be finding myself more often than not.

[abangs]

As a FTP player in the middle of building three Gold tournament teams, this has been a pretty rough couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, I had added Deacon White to two of my teams and had earned through tournaments and achievements almost enough PP to buy one for my third team, when the Team of the Decade - 1800's Hitters mission went live and his AH price tripled from his previous L7.

This week, I was saving up for John Franco, whose L7 price was about 9000 PP. With the addition of the FOTF - New York Mets - Gold mission, auction prices for Franco are now in the 14000-25000 PP range.

Now I'm looking at my other Gold team targets and hoping that I have enough time to earn enough PP and pick them up before the next set of FOTF missions are released.

As for Franco, he'll have to wait. My hope is that the passage of time will lead to a gradual settling of prices--maybe not to their previous levels, but at least to something less than the 50%-200% increases we see immediately after the missions drop.

[chazzycat]

it's great for those players who have been stockpiling every single card in the game the past several months

pretty awful for the rest of us

that Gwynn card looks amazing but current cost is something like half a million points....cool cool cool, I'll just keep grinding tourneys for....6 months? for one card.

basically a massive giveaway to those who were already ahead

[sportsbamer]

I am a FTP player and I am kicking myself for starting these missions last night. I spent just over 30K PP completing missions and starting a few others and I have nothing to show for it and realize now that it is pointless to try to complete any more because I'll never have enough PP to unlock even one of the face of the franchise cards.

[Westheim]

This might all still work out somehow if the requirements weren't so back-breaking. All the bronze cards for a FOTF bronze mission? (X - 1) out of X cards for a FOTF silver mission? At this point OOTPD should have known that they were going to explode the market for those five teams completely. They either didn't care, or that was the plan all along. The Padres Gold mission being split in two makes me think it's the latter one.

There's three silver cards that I have been eyeing from various angles for a while: Ken Singleton, Bud Harrelson (both Mets), Richie Scheinblum (KC). They were *already* costing an arm and a leg before this absolute nightmare of a collection came out (while being part of dismal single-pack missions). Now it looks like Scheinblum is gonna go for 6k.

Requiring X of X, or (X - 1) of X, or (X - 2) or X cards, even at the lower levels, forcefully kicks open the door for the price gougers. OOTPD had to know that and did it anyway.

I haven't looked at all the other teams in detail, but my Mets theme team, which should have been in a decent spot for this massacre of a mission, still is four diamonds (and at least one between Singleton and Harrison...) short of Seaver. With the lone exception of a One Hit Wonder Matt Harvey, where looking at the card itself hurts my heart more than words can say, every single ****ing Mets historical diamond on the market right now goes for 45k and up. Good luck whiffing those 180-200k together, son. You know what the (91) Jon Matlack went for just last week when I last updated my Excel sheet?

6,810.

It's about 10 times that now.

Not a fan.

Absolutely not a fan.

Actually pretty pissed right now, to be bloody honest.

[dkgo]

Sounds like people should just start opening packs then...

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Sounds like people should just start opening packs then...

Turning my 33k on the Raccoons into packs *right now*.

Because **** it.

[getalife1798]

Couldn't agree more now that we see what the market has done to these cards and other teams cards.

Good luck trying to complete any other collections.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Westheim

Turning my 33k on the Raccoons into packs *right now*.

One perfect, two diamond. All live.

One historical gold card. - Not part of a collection as of now.

That was all the ideas I had. I will now play a chill game.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Westheim

You know what the (91) Jon Matlack went for just last week when I last updated my Excel sheet?

6,810.

It's about 10 times that now.

Not a fan.

Absolutely not a fan.

Actually pretty pissed right now, to be bloody honest.

The sad part is that any minute now someone from the company is going to pipe in and say "It's the user community that drives the market!" or "People are paying these prices--it's not our fault"

[steamrollers]

Originally Posted by bailey

Not only is it mind-boggling expensive to complete, Every historical card not in a released mission is marked up hugely, or is a brand new posting by someone unaware. Speculators are out in force scooping up these cards. The cheapest historical diamond that is not a special edition card is 15K. Because, we all know, SE cards are not parts of missions.

Good luck, if you are just starting out!

Collections really need to be made of all brand new cards, like the Negro League collection.

You are pretty much spot on. I said last night in chat all it will do is widen the gap between whales and regular players. That was before we really got to see how the AH would react but it turns out I nailed it. It’s an interesting direction they have taken but it’s hard to fault a company for catering more to the people who pay their bills no matter how frustrating it can be for the rest of us.

[trman73]

Not much to add other than including my voice as a disappointed FTP player who has devoted far too much free time to PT21 since its release (including 130+ posts in the Dynasty forum) and am now really regretting it.

As FOTF teams continue to roll out, the number of viable players that I can afford in the AH will basically dwindle down to zero. So it’s cross your fingers and rip packs, which is not fun at all.

There’s a 91 Joakim Soria card in the AH right now going for 50,000. Enough said.

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by steamrollers

You are pretty much spot on. I said last night in chat all it will do is widen the gap between whales and regular players. That was before we really got to see how the AH would react but it turns out I nailed it. It’s an interesting direction they have taken but it’s hard to fault a company for catering more to the people who pay their bills no matter how frustrating it can be for the rest of us.

It may get frustrating to them if they end up with a Perfect League and a few Diamond Leagues of actual live players.

[Marleigh]

A few perfect level players are getting fed up of the constant power creep as Gwynn and Seaver become almost must haves.

The market for historical cards now is currently lots of overpriced FOTF cards and a very few random golds and diamonds as the hoarding begins.

I feel like selling off my theme teams and just buying back live se cards. Ive gradually been adding to my 70s team but its pretty much dead now as everything has skyrocketed.

Its been made even more difficult to progress from live se cards meaning more cookie cutter teams for longer.

The market/playerbase isnt big enough for this sort of thing, a few people can easily manipulate the market.

On the plus side alomar is really cheap so i bought him

[Marinersfan51]

I like that now every single card that isn't a mission reward is part of a mission in some capacity. Though I do think this should come with an adjustment to have more historical cards in regular packs or bringing back historical packs as always available for purchase for significantly cheaper ($5K?).

Maybe once all of them are released and the "whales" have completed the missions the inflation in the AH will drop. I can't imagine that it is possible that every card will have it's price inflated by being part of these missions with relatively low rewards.

[dkgo]

The market is always kept in check by packs. If any random historical is actually selling for 10x the previous price then packs are insanely profitable to open. Or it is just a matter of people flooding the market with new collection cards like what happened last year for each mission set before things got back to normal in a week.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by Marinersfan51

Maybe once all of them are released and the "whales" have completed the missions the inflation in the AH will drop. I can't imagine that it is possible that every card will have it's price inflated by being part of these missions with relatively low rewards.

Thats three months away, I doubt people will be happy with this situation for that long

There will be rewards from completing divisions and the whole thing, which is the golden egg a lot of whales will be chasing

[emilempenza]

Honestly, all year it's been a bit of a disaster from a missions stand point. The balance has been wrong from the start, the live missions were too rewarding for how easy they were and everything else wasn't rewarding enough, so as a result the vast, vast majority of players can only realistically afford to go with the cheap live mission SE cards as they are just so much better value than all the other cards.

These missions just make that even worse, as all the non-live, non-SE cards have just gotten even more expensive, so those live series SE rewards just become better value.

Honestly, it's boring. If you are willing to pump thousands into the game then there is a nice variety of top cards to go for, for everyone else you have either the exact same team as everyone else, or have deliberately hindered yourself buying worse cards at a higher cost.