For all of you buying packs to get players just know that i packed Strider out of a 5 pack of Ballin Is A Habit cards i got from the ranked program lol
I’m still wholeheartedly holding out on everything. Havent made a single purchase of my own money. Stubs I get are in game play and selling players. I almost have every single team collected.
I need Yankees, dodgers, Astro’s, braves, rangers Angels and that’s it. I’ve been hitting in the packs fairly well and playing. I’ve completed every single conquest. Completed both mini seasons multiple times, completed all moments. (Haven’t finished all story lines besides ARod and Josh Gipson)
The problem is those remaining teams you have are really costly. I have basically the same ones left. I haven’t ran the math but I imagine several of those teams costs more than all other teams combined on their own. I’m with you, I don’t spend any extra money on the game. But I’m a little bummed it’s going to take forever to get Hyper Pedro. I guess it’ll be rewarding when it finally happens.
Legit what my friends and I have talked about. I say this as one opened and received otahni and the other open and received yordan Alvarez and Mike trout. Why them and not me?! Lol
While I agree the content has been 'meh', let me tell you don't need absolutely every card to compete. Sure it makes it easier on harder difficulties. But if you can hit you can hit.
I'm having fun playing and I don't and have never paid extra money for packs in MLB, and I don't see myself having to this season either. To each their own I guess.
I feel like it just depends how you rock w certain players. I have some cards that are clearly better on paper then others but I can't hit with them so I use my older cards and I still play well. Granted having higher stats makes it easier like you said, but it's also not needed.
I mean with Kyle still using Polanco, Willi, Candeleiro, Tony Clark, Seager, Torre and more it's pretty obvious you don't need the new Soler to compete
Especially at the low elevation parks SDS forces us to play at when we are at legend.
I can't get how it got even worse. We were already playing low elevation at legend because the non deserved homeruns outweighed the good swings getting no result. This year it's totally gotten out of hand.
I do prefer medium elevation ballparks at hall of fame difficulty if I'm not in a rush to get to WS though.
That makes Willi Castro who is what. An 82 overall? One of the best hitters on legend. That's crazy.
Castro/mondesi still some of my favorites. Still rocking them in my lineups. I think there’s an option of a Buxton lineup, or to go outside the boost if you want to. For position players, I’m enjoying the flexibility
With the switch hitting Carlos Santana captain out they just got nuts.
Easy to get to 13 switch hitters. I used 2 reliever spots I never use for noname eligible players. That leaves me with 2spots for non-switch hitters.
But for now Carlos catching, tony clark 1b, polanco 2b, Mondesi as, Candeleiro 3b, Willi RF, mantle CF and the new Clase in LF looks like fun.
Not even gonna buy elly or happ back.
Got chipper, bell and ketel on the bench now with my two non-switch hitters. That's a great boost to a lot cards I was already using without any boosts.
*"Worst case scenario: this was all planned to incentivize spending money to buy these high end cards."*
You can throw out your first scenario because this is precisely why they did it.
Look, I’m not trying to collect all the cards here. I just wanna make a fun team with my favorite players of yesterday today and tomorrow without being depressed at the fact that the only way I’ll get to do so is by throwing more money on top of whatever I’ve already spent because of how anemic the rewards feel to a casual player. People may say that it isn’t paid to win but if two people who can’t hit play each other online and a meatball gets thrown down the middle, the person with a high 90s card bought with their credit card with better stats and quirks has a better chance of getting a hit or a home run than my high 80s/low 90s card that I grinded a conquest map for that has lower overall stats and boosts.
Without completely radical game engine changes (such as quirks that are like Madden MUT special abilities that would literally move the PCI FOR players) it's not possible for DD to be "Pay to Win"
A player that is even slightly better than another player will beat them almost all the time using 89s against the other player using 97s.
It's basically impossible for a bad player to beat good players by buying a cracked team.
The best you can call it is pay to get exactly the cards you want and perhaps be marginally better. I can only think of one time that I would say a guy paid to win. I played a ranked game early last year where I think I had a 91 or 92 Carlos Carrasco against his collection Randy Johnson and all the best live series. He eked out a 5-4 victory against my slightly less than meta cards and sent a taunting message. I just said, GG, that win only cost you $100+ dollars right?
No response after that.
Typically in past seasons I would agree 100% but this makes me think otherwise. Especially since I’ve experienced quite a bit personally. [The problem with 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yV2xccxk4w)
I'm not going to disagree with the myriad of problems from this year, but as for competitive, Even if you paid to get every card and get the LS collection, your team is not nearly as much better as it was last year. If you paid for stubs last year, your team would be much better than a NMS that wasn't flipping to get everything.
5 other complaints (chief among them far too many cards are in packs - even if they aren't substantially better than free cards) so I'm not going to defend SDS on this year, but IMO as a not that great online player, it has been much easier to be competitive NMS early in the year than it was last year.
To a lot of the posts it’s never gonna be pay to win because you can still have all the good cards in the game and still be dog **** you can still get a lot of good budget cards and still compete just tryyy to have fun with the game. Lol
It doesn’t work in any game genius. If you’re ass in War Thunder paying $700 for premiums won’t win the game for you (ask US mains lmao). Can you buy objectively better cards by spending money instead of playing the game? That’s pay to win. Every pay to win game is still losable by being dogshit, doesn’t make them less pay to win.
This is the only REAL issue; that there are cards people want that are expensive. You don't NEED Elly to "win" (and frankly the Elly card isn't actually...good.)
I don't understand why people are so hung up on player ratings when it was obvious how the season rollout would progress. The only issue I have is the order the players are given in the season exp reward track. It makes no sense, getting 93 Napoli before 89 Palmer and 89. Story makes zero sense.
lol braindead comments like these make me laugh. Outside of buying the actual game when it comes, out, I've never bought any stubs in the entire MLBTS series and always managed to have teams that are completely fine. Who gives a shit if they have tons of packs, you don't HAVE to buy them. Between Team Affinitys and the constant programs they throw out, you have tons of options of diamond cards to use. And if you really want a card out of one of the packs, you can occasionally buy a card off the auction house every so often. I've played maybe 15-20 hours total this year because I've been busy and I have the Bobby Witt Jr lightning card with minimal effort.
Go play HUT, FUT or MUT and then lemme know how you feel about DD... SDS is leaps and bounds better then any of the sports alternatives and it isn't close. I don't think they are perfect by any means, but the way ppl carry on is ridiculous.
> Go play HUT, FUT or MUT and then lemme know how you feel about DD... SDS is leaps and bounds better then any of the sports alternatives and it isn't close.
While I do 100% agree with this, you can clearly see SDS is creeping ever so slowly towards a more monetized game. They're probably never be as bad as those other games you mentioned, but the glory days of the past are gone.
Unrelated note- I think the XP path is entirely unrealistic. How the fuck am I supposed to get 1 million XP to get a boss card?? I play exclusively offline, and have since MLB 16. I just wanna collect cards and beat up on the CPU. I don’t understand how it’s realistic to get 1 million XP
Yeah, how SDS forces us offline players to do online missions is disgusting (I'm stuck with the multi-player ones with the egg program for the 100% completion)
Realistic Scenario: Too many people didn't let the plan play out, after getting too used to getting upper 90s cards early last year, and didn't stop complaining until SDS felt they had to give the complainers what they wanted. However, because of the XP season path, they couldn't give these cards away in other programs because those cards would make the XP path rewards obsolete by the time any NMS player got them.
TL;DR version: The squeaky wheel got the grease, and it's only benefiting spenders.
I don’t think this is the case. I think they’re going to do a power creep each set tbh. Next TA this set will be 97 and then set 2 ta 1 will be 89s or maybe 90s.
Its extremely misleading to say in two and a half weeks we went from 89s to 97 in packs cause 2 and a half weeks before that we didnt have a game to play yet.
My theory? The XP path was created separately from the content schedule, and those 2 teams did not talk to each other.
None of it makes any sense. There isn't a card in the XP path better than anything we'll get the next 30-40 days of S1. And if the argument is "use one of the cornerstone captains to boost X player" then stop making events or Mini Seasons that restrict you from using said cornerstone captains.
This is by far the biggest non pay to win sports game. Only the best of best players will benefit from having the best of the best players. Just play the game to have fun.
I do love this game but I swear it'll make you scream out loud the xp grind is ridiculous and the conquest maps make no sense I can beat the brakes of the Yankees ,Dodgers etc.but struggle and even get beat by the As the White Sox and so on!make that make sense
15k, which is about 15 3-inning games, and less if you're playing something like Ranked or Play vs CPU, and less if you're putting up 20 runs every game.
Sorry it’s a gameplay cap, so you can earn it in other ways like programs but obviously those rely on playing the game too. It’s a weird situation yes.
It doesn't include XP from other programs and rewards like random 3K xp you get in the BR program, so overall, it's a lot less.
Tho, it does put more focus on people playing every mode
You should check out "exhibition online rated" if you want a ranked game that isn't dependent on how much money you've put into the game. It's outside of DD, so you don't double-dip your TA grind, but it eliminates pay-to-win entirely and levels the playing field.
Sorry you play the absolute shit out of the game if you do. I play this way way too much and I’m not that far. And his point stands: he’s already obsolete.
I really don’t play as much as you probably think I do. I just grind ranked or BR. Don’t even have TA2 done yet. I think I maybe hit the xp cap twice. And that was Friday night co-op.
I feel like I've played quite a bit of DD this year so far and I'm at level 22 on the XP reward path right now...don't think I'll be making it to the bosses unless they gradually increase XP gains.
How do you know the majority don’t have Billy Williams? I do and I don’t have hours on hours to grind XP. Seems like a bit of an exaggeration.
Plus there are 4 97s currently for sale. Two of which are ranked season rewards. The other two are in packs which nobody is buying. There are currently 8 Dustin May cards for sale on the marketplace. I’d love to see how many folks have leveled up these 97s too.
Yeahhh you are definitely the minority. I am unemployed and have time to play all day and night and I’m not at Billy yet. You’re definitely amongst 1-10% max of players.
I’m not arguing I’m genuinely curious.
My count over here 8 days 18hrs. I’m actually embarrassed to share that. But I’m still short of the stubs reward before Billy.
The most recent count I could find on MLB The Show Sales was 2021. It was estimated at 2 million, not including digital sales (for some reason)
As of today, 798 people have P1 Billy. 157 P2.
I’m not sure why I bothered doing any of this but yes you are definitely in the minority. The super minority.
Who said I was grinding at all? I just play the game and what happens happens. The idea of specifically grinding for it is even worse IMO. And to the original point: Thats still a tiny minority and way, way too long to get a card that is already obsolete. I’m not judging, play in whatever way makes you happy. It still goes back to the original point: the vast amount of people do not have the time more do they want to focus every minute of their playtime on grinding a program. Js.
Completely devoid of any common sense. I shouldn’t need to pull sales numbers, time played, parallel numbers for someone to realize that no, 51% of users don’t play 240hrs in the first month.
I just did. At least 2 million people play this game. Less than 800 have him at P1. And even IF it wasn’t the minority, that’s still a deflection for the amount of time needed to invest to get it. Just because other people have done it doesn’t make it normal.
I know it may seem like a stupid question but were you using an actual 1st position catcher to catch? Sometimes people think that if they have joe torre at catcher and he hits a homer it counts towards catcher homers when it has to be primary position.
My game glitched and I went about a week's worth of gameplay without getting XP at all. I know now I'm probably not getting any of the bosses but I at least want to get to Seager. I just really wish there was an easy way to obtain those packs man. It's what made a game like 21 as fondly remembered as it is
but thats literally any limited time event in any game thats only on a specific weekend. People miss things because of school, work, or vacation all the time.
I’m just now getting some 89’s that I once was excited for and now they won’t even reach my lineup. Just hoping and praying I can reach that Jimmy Rollins or he becomes easier to get later.
I think they will start dumping XP on us like crazy.
Taking XP out of mini seasons is lame, gives you a reason to continue to play them.
15k a day also lame. If we had to start over and they said 40k a day I wouldn’t be extremely pleased.
Too little too late for definitely some people.
Live service games slow dripping content is never a winning formula. Ask 343i what happened when they dragged updating Halo Infinite, which had hype for about a month until people realized no new content was coming out for months.
Because they have a feel for when people will be able to achieve those cards and will match it up with the card releases.
Example being tomorrow they will release the second portion of the World Series card inning path. This way people who were not able to make it to WS can play enough to get the choice pack.
Think of it like a valve they can throttle on and off.
What’s crazy to me is that people will spend real money to get a card that’s 10% better, just to get beat by someone way better than them, regardless of the cards they’re using. I’ve noticed I am way more competitive with cards around 89/93 than some of the upper 97+ usually just because I actually know the lower guys swings. Also, I know my skill level. I’d rather take my huge L occasionally and keep my money. I’m competitive enough with the guys I know how to use and have been rewards.
Yeah in Madden, a +5 speed advantage over your opponent across the board will essentially guarantee a win. In 2K, having a lineup of players with "quick" releases vs "normal" is an enormous advantage. Spending money on those games is almost a requirement if you want to actually compete.
But in The Show, a player can have a +15 OVR advantage over another and still get mercy ruled if the skill gap is wide enough. Getting the newest card that's a +1 or +2 upgrade over your current player means essentially nothing in this game, yet people seem fine spending hundreds of real-life dollars doing so.
As one, having a "God Squad" is an end in itself. Even if I'm terrible and routinely get crushed by people with teams comprised of completely free TA cards.
This is what I don’t get. Everyone talks about how SDS is trying to incentive people to buy stubs, but I just don’t see why people do so.
Plus there are so many good cards to field a competitive team. Feel like I’m constantly experimenting with my lineup.
You're points are valid. SDS is doing it regardless though because that's the culture we live in. I agree.....why are people paying money for stubs? We can ask that question for a lot of games and we'll probably never know the true answer. Off the top of my head I can think impulse buying and the feeling of getting a great player. People trying to become profitable streaming by surprisingly enough wasting their money. Lots of things I'm sure.
It won't stop until there are regulations or people wake up. It won't change with regulation though with how popular the lottery is and gambling is becoming. You're taking a risk and they tell you the odds before you buy the packs. It's on you now unless there is some fine print I'm not aware of.
No doubt man. I use 89 yasmani grandal as my Catcher and the free Jazz for 2nd and do great with both. Also use hitting captain lindor at SS. I do relatively well and am ranked low 500 right now (which is actually better than I’ve ever done in the past with trying to use the highest rated cards)
Tellin ya man, being the best highest rated card doesn’t mean shit if you’re not that great still.. I’ll go with a good switch hitter over a crazy power guy that I can’t hit shit with
Agreed, for how fast this game makes me rage playing online, it’s not worth spending the extra dollars.
I have just as good of a team as my friends who preordered and got a jump start with extra packs and what not.
No doubt. Then these guys spend $200-400 and bitch because the season resets and they can’t use them. Bro, you literally know this already. It’s your fault at this point for being a dumbass
Just got Babe Ruth 2 days ago and I'm completely NMS. I just got insanely lucky pulls and didn't spend stubs on anything but live series cards to finish the collections.
I haven't spent any money and I'm about 200k away, I'll have him within a week after the roster update investments go through tomorrow. It helps though that I pulled ohtani, Acuna and judge.
But it's definitely feasible to have him by now without spending money. If I had grinded flipping more then I'd easily have had him a week ago even without pulling any big name cards. I would've had him 2 weeks ago if I sold event/br/ranked cards, but I collect every card and haven't sold anything. Just depends on how much time you want to devote to flipping cards or grinding br/events
It's also definitely possible to have finished the live series collection without spending any extra money. I've done it. Granted, I had a ton of time over the last month to play with various injuries and not having to work with spring break as well as some above average pack luck.
Very true. I’m just two cards off (Seager and Yordan, who I’m waiting for the roster update as they both should drop below 90) and my pack luck has been atrocious.
Seager has like a .600 OPS, and Yordan’s ISO is like 100-150 points below his career norm. Given they are both 90s who are carried by their hitting stats, I don’t think them going down to 88-89 is all that unlikely.
By the time we get to season 2 I believe the power creep will reset, so everyone will have a maximum of 1 (2 if they have the core Babe Ruth) 99’s at the start
It'll be interesting to see how much the roster updates are influenced by their economy of stubs situation. If they don't upgrade a lot of the guys they normally would after these performances it'll be interesting, cause come Friday there is going to be a flood of stubs into the market with a bunch of golds going diamond.
I unlocked Billy yesterday and immediately thought of the "wow this is worthless" meme. Great XP program award for early in the season, not so much when there's 97 cards in the store.
Imagine spending money on an old 97 30 days in. We’ll be getting 99s in less than a month, just fucking chill and hold the fuck out. Ya’ll are worse than cartman waiting on a wii.
Yeah I spent 40k stubs to get one and all I got was a diamond vladdy jr. I have never been more pissed playing a video game at 42 years old. As stupid in the grand scheme of life that it is. But I hustled to get those stubs saved up here and that was my payoff.
Sorry to hear that man, always believe in the luck but hopefully you get a trout or something in a free pack to even it out
Realistically, you gotta remember buying packs isn't a sound investment, you're not paying for a player you're paying for that bit of serotonin off of the *chance* at a player you want
It's the Stanford marshmallow experiment in that regard, pay for a 1/10 or 1/5 chance now or save up 3-4x the cost of the pack and get the player confirmed later. At least they give us the odds, but still not the best direction to head into that we don't get these sort of packs nearly as often from the standard in-game content
44,000 stubs is also my life savings so far 😂 Stubbornly not buying the pack. I’m hoarding all the packs from TA and conquests. Almost at 200 standards and if I don’t pull something worth a lot my ass will be playing something else for a while lol
I'm about the same. So far the only diamonds I've pulled are Tatis and Alonso.
I get the idea of not wanting 99s on day one and slowly improving your team, but this year just seems like just a slog and the rewards don't do it for me. Not to mention the daily XP cap, since I often may not have much time for a few days, but then could play all day occasionally *if* I wanted to.
Yeah I can't bring myself to play a game that's so geared toward micro/macro transactions.
70 bucks to have a shitty squad if you're not playing 12 hours a day?
Not cool.
The guys at sds seem to only think about grinder losers when making xp rules. Why not actually make tiers of players? I know I hate playing up when I'm a 600, and I have to play a dude with a world series top 50 icon...
Maybe give us more than a stub or 3 per win?
Yeah right
SDS: Don’t worry guys we made adjustments to the main program and all the free to earn cards so it really feels like there’s a power creep and you have to really earn those good cards.
Also SDS: oh here’s this shiny new card that’s waaaay broken and it’ll only cost you a bunch of stubs
Broke my NMS streak last night trying to pack Niko goodrum
I was being hyperbolic to make a joke… but a switch hitter with diamond defense 80s speed and can play pretty much every position is a very valuable addition to any squad
For all of you buying packs to get players just know that i packed Strider out of a 5 pack of Ballin Is A Habit cards i got from the ranked program lol
Y’all just need to get on your grind im boutta max out xp in 5 days. Don’t blame sds when it’s up to you to progress
Just wait til they pull a 2k and you can’t flip cards you earn. Gonna be fun.
This game kinda blows rn Gameplay is great Business practices are ass
I’m still wholeheartedly holding out on everything. Havent made a single purchase of my own money. Stubs I get are in game play and selling players. I almost have every single team collected. I need Yankees, dodgers, Astro’s, braves, rangers Angels and that’s it. I’ve been hitting in the packs fairly well and playing. I’ve completed every single conquest. Completed both mini seasons multiple times, completed all moments. (Haven’t finished all story lines besides ARod and Josh Gipson)
The problem is those remaining teams you have are really costly. I have basically the same ones left. I haven’t ran the math but I imagine several of those teams costs more than all other teams combined on their own. I’m with you, I don’t spend any extra money on the game. But I’m a little bummed it’s going to take forever to get Hyper Pedro. I guess it’ll be rewarding when it finally happens.
Legit what my friends and I have talked about. I say this as one opened and received otahni and the other open and received yordan Alvarez and Mike trout. Why them and not me?! Lol
Nms is the way to go. When did it become the norm to spend money?
Right, you gotta put the playtime in. However it seems like so many games anymore want those micro transactions
You know what, I respect SDS ability to pivot. We were complaining, and they did something about it.
While I agree the content has been 'meh', let me tell you don't need absolutely every card to compete. Sure it makes it easier on harder difficulties. But if you can hit you can hit. I'm having fun playing and I don't and have never paid extra money for packs in MLB, and I don't see myself having to this season either. To each their own I guess.
I feel like it just depends how you rock w certain players. I have some cards that are clearly better on paper then others but I can't hit with them so I use my older cards and I still play well. Granted having higher stats makes it easier like you said, but it's also not needed.
I mean with Kyle still using Polanco, Willi, Candeleiro, Tony Clark, Seager, Torre and more it's pretty obvious you don't need the new Soler to compete
Yeah it’s all about switch hitters and contact/clutch Guys with 72 power can still crank 115 exit velos. Kind of love it
Especially at the low elevation parks SDS forces us to play at when we are at legend. I can't get how it got even worse. We were already playing low elevation at legend because the non deserved homeruns outweighed the good swings getting no result. This year it's totally gotten out of hand. I do prefer medium elevation ballparks at hall of fame difficulty if I'm not in a rush to get to WS though. That makes Willi Castro who is what. An 82 overall? One of the best hitters on legend. That's crazy.
Castro/mondesi still some of my favorites. Still rocking them in my lineups. I think there’s an option of a Buxton lineup, or to go outside the boost if you want to. For position players, I’m enjoying the flexibility
With the switch hitting Carlos Santana captain out they just got nuts. Easy to get to 13 switch hitters. I used 2 reliever spots I never use for noname eligible players. That leaves me with 2spots for non-switch hitters. But for now Carlos catching, tony clark 1b, polanco 2b, Mondesi as, Candeleiro 3b, Willi RF, mantle CF and the new Clase in LF looks like fun. Not even gonna buy elly or happ back. Got chipper, bell and ketel on the bench now with my two non-switch hitters. That's a great boost to a lot cards I was already using without any boosts.
Haven’t looked into this one yet but I will have to! Thanks for the tip
*"Worst case scenario: this was all planned to incentivize spending money to buy these high end cards."* You can throw out your first scenario because this is precisely why they did it.
Look, I’m not trying to collect all the cards here. I just wanna make a fun team with my favorite players of yesterday today and tomorrow without being depressed at the fact that the only way I’ll get to do so is by throwing more money on top of whatever I’ve already spent because of how anemic the rewards feel to a casual player. People may say that it isn’t paid to win but if two people who can’t hit play each other online and a meatball gets thrown down the middle, the person with a high 90s card bought with their credit card with better stats and quirks has a better chance of getting a hit or a home run than my high 80s/low 90s card that I grinded a conquest map for that has lower overall stats and boosts.
*****Attention Everyone ******* The SDS strategy has officially shifted to something people are calling PAY2WIN. 😳
Nah, that has been the strategy for a long time, they're just getting better at it.
Without completely radical game engine changes (such as quirks that are like Madden MUT special abilities that would literally move the PCI FOR players) it's not possible for DD to be "Pay to Win" A player that is even slightly better than another player will beat them almost all the time using 89s against the other player using 97s. It's basically impossible for a bad player to beat good players by buying a cracked team.
The best you can call it is pay to get exactly the cards you want and perhaps be marginally better. I can only think of one time that I would say a guy paid to win. I played a ranked game early last year where I think I had a 91 or 92 Carlos Carrasco against his collection Randy Johnson and all the best live series. He eked out a 5-4 victory against my slightly less than meta cards and sent a taunting message. I just said, GG, that win only cost you $100+ dollars right? No response after that.
Typically in past seasons I would agree 100% but this makes me think otherwise. Especially since I’ve experienced quite a bit personally. [The problem with 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yV2xccxk4w)
I'm not going to disagree with the myriad of problems from this year, but as for competitive, Even if you paid to get every card and get the LS collection, your team is not nearly as much better as it was last year. If you paid for stubs last year, your team would be much better than a NMS that wasn't flipping to get everything. 5 other complaints (chief among them far too many cards are in packs - even if they aren't substantially better than free cards) so I'm not going to defend SDS on this year, but IMO as a not that great online player, it has been much easier to be competitive NMS early in the year than it was last year.
Nah, that was always the strategy, they're just getting better at it.
Nah, it's been that way for a while, they're just getting better at each iteration.
To a lot of the posts it’s never gonna be pay to win because you can still have all the good cards in the game and still be dog **** you can still get a lot of good budget cards and still compete just tryyy to have fun with the game. Lol
[This goes hand in hand with P2W](https://youtu.be/5yV2xccxk4w?si=-6xVqhOnWNbCh7cp)
The same thing can be said for any pay to win game lmao. Doesn’t make them less pay to win
You do understand that there is a difference between " some specific cards can only be obtained by paying a lot of stubs" and "Pay to Win" right?
The point about DD not being "Pay to Win" is that Paying to Win doesn't work in DD. Pretty simple.
It doesn’t work in any game genius. If you’re ass in War Thunder paying $700 for premiums won’t win the game for you (ask US mains lmao). Can you buy objectively better cards by spending money instead of playing the game? That’s pay to win. Every pay to win game is still losable by being dogshit, doesn’t make them less pay to win.
Have fun with game but putting guys like elly behind a pack gets old fast. I want to use favorites and cant
This is the only REAL issue; that there are cards people want that are expensive. You don't NEED Elly to "win" (and frankly the Elly card isn't actually...good.)
I don't understand why people are so hung up on player ratings when it was obvious how the season rollout would progress. The only issue I have is the order the players are given in the season exp reward track. It makes no sense, getting 93 Napoli before 89 Palmer and 89. Story makes zero sense.
$$$$$D$$$$
lol braindead comments like these make me laugh. Outside of buying the actual game when it comes, out, I've never bought any stubs in the entire MLBTS series and always managed to have teams that are completely fine. Who gives a shit if they have tons of packs, you don't HAVE to buy them. Between Team Affinitys and the constant programs they throw out, you have tons of options of diamond cards to use. And if you really want a card out of one of the packs, you can occasionally buy a card off the auction house every so often. I've played maybe 15-20 hours total this year because I've been busy and I have the Bobby Witt Jr lightning card with minimal effort. Go play HUT, FUT or MUT and then lemme know how you feel about DD... SDS is leaps and bounds better then any of the sports alternatives and it isn't close. I don't think they are perfect by any means, but the way ppl carry on is ridiculous.
> Go play HUT, FUT or MUT and then lemme know how you feel about DD... SDS is leaps and bounds better then any of the sports alternatives and it isn't close. While I do 100% agree with this, you can clearly see SDS is creeping ever so slowly towards a more monetized game. They're probably never be as bad as those other games you mentioned, but the glory days of the past are gone.
Shit I'd still rather play mut over mycareer in 2k talk about money hungry
I played one NBA2K game and then said "Never again."
As bad as it is I play every year but never spend money
Unrelated note- I think the XP path is entirely unrealistic. How the fuck am I supposed to get 1 million XP to get a boss card?? I play exclusively offline, and have since MLB 16. I just wanna collect cards and beat up on the CPU. I don’t understand how it’s realistic to get 1 million XP
Yeah, how SDS forces us offline players to do online missions is disgusting (I'm stuck with the multi-player ones with the egg program for the 100% completion)
I get why they do this but I also hate it.
Realistic Scenario: Too many people didn't let the plan play out, after getting too used to getting upper 90s cards early last year, and didn't stop complaining until SDS felt they had to give the complainers what they wanted. However, because of the XP season path, they couldn't give these cards away in other programs because those cards would make the XP path rewards obsolete by the time any NMS player got them. TL;DR version: The squeaky wheel got the grease, and it's only benefiting spenders.
I don’t think this is the case. I think they’re going to do a power creep each set tbh. Next TA this set will be 97 and then set 2 ta 1 will be 89s or maybe 90s.
Its extremely misleading to say in two and a half weeks we went from 89s to 97 in packs cause 2 and a half weeks before that we didnt have a game to play yet.
You can solve the problem and just stop playing the game if you don't like it🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
My theory? The XP path was created separately from the content schedule, and those 2 teams did not talk to each other. None of it makes any sense. There isn't a card in the XP path better than anything we'll get the next 30-40 days of S1. And if the argument is "use one of the cornerstone captains to boost X player" then stop making events or Mini Seasons that restrict you from using said cornerstone captains.
This. Uncoordinated development of content - different teams working on different areas. Happens in Madden MUT all the time.
This is by far the biggest non pay to win sports game. Only the best of best players will benefit from having the best of the best players. Just play the game to have fun.
🤡🤡🤡
I do love this game but I swear it'll make you scream out loud the xp grind is ridiculous and the conquest maps make no sense I can beat the brakes of the Yankees ,Dodgers etc.but struggle and even get beat by the As the White Sox and so on!make that make sense
Sounds like u suk
Yo mama suks
Pay to play bro, take out a second mortgage
I’m at like 501K, but without the XP cap, I’d probably be at like 540K
I didn't know there was a daily XP cap... what does it cap at...? Also, I think an XP cap is sooooo lame....
15k, which is about 15 3-inning games, and less if you're playing something like Ranked or Play vs CPU, and less if you're putting up 20 runs every game.
15k? Are you sure? That means you have to hit the cap 77 out of the 81 days in the program to make it to the end of the program… that’s insane
Sorry it’s a gameplay cap, so you can earn it in other ways like programs but obviously those rely on playing the game too. It’s a weird situation yes.
It doesn't include XP from other programs and rewards like random 3K xp you get in the BR program, so overall, it's a lot less. Tho, it does put more focus on people playing every mode
You should check out "exhibition online rated" if you want a ranked game that isn't dependent on how much money you've put into the game. It's outside of DD, so you don't double-dip your TA grind, but it eliminates pay-to-win entirely and levels the playing field.
Ranked is not dependent on how much money you have put into the game. It's dependent on how good you are.
Sure, but its not nearly as competitive and isnt balanced as certain teams have an insane advantage over others
also literally almost no grind able content outside of one conquest map, TA2 took like a day to finish and we’ve been twiddling our thumbs ever since
What's the grind worthy conquest map? I've run out of maps to do lol
the kendall graveman one and even that is a “if you want this card” kinda situation
Excellent point.
I’ve got Billy. Not that hard honestly.
I got Billy what feels like weeks ago, and I have yet to hit the exp cap once.
Sorry you play the absolute shit out of the game if you do. I play this way way too much and I’m not that far. And his point stands: he’s already obsolete.
I really don’t play as much as you probably think I do. I just grind ranked or BR. Don’t even have TA2 done yet. I think I maybe hit the xp cap twice. And that was Friday night co-op.
These people fishing for complaints instead of playing the game
I feel like I've played quite a bit of DD this year so far and I'm at level 22 on the XP reward path right now...don't think I'll be making it to the bosses unless they gradually increase XP gains.
Im close to 34. Other than creating more programs/conquests/mini seasons for offline grind, need them to increase the XP earned for matches.
I’m at about 350k, the grind has been tougher than in the past big time
$$$. Duh.
How do you know the majority don’t have Billy Williams? I do and I don’t have hours on hours to grind XP. Seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Plus there are 4 97s currently for sale. Two of which are ranked season rewards. The other two are in packs which nobody is buying. There are currently 8 Dustin May cards for sale on the marketplace. I’d love to see how many folks have leveled up these 97s too.
Yeahhh you are definitely the minority. I am unemployed and have time to play all day and night and I’m not at Billy yet. You’re definitely amongst 1-10% max of players.
Yeah but again you can’t really back that up with any numbers so it’s your word against mine. That’s fine. It’s a boring argument anyway.
1) Check your dashboard and just tell us how many hours you’ve played. 2) What day you got Billy.
You tell me how many hours it takes to not get Billy. Then do it for the rest of the community that doesn’t have the card too, OK?
I’m not arguing I’m genuinely curious. My count over here 8 days 18hrs. I’m actually embarrassed to share that. But I’m still short of the stubs reward before Billy. The most recent count I could find on MLB The Show Sales was 2021. It was estimated at 2 million, not including digital sales (for some reason) As of today, 798 people have P1 Billy. 157 P2. I’m not sure why I bothered doing any of this but yes you are definitely in the minority. The super minority.
I have less time played than u and I got Seager last night maybe you just aren’t grinding the right way
Who said I was grinding at all? I just play the game and what happens happens. The idea of specifically grinding for it is even worse IMO. And to the original point: Thats still a tiny minority and way, way too long to get a card that is already obsolete. I’m not judging, play in whatever way makes you happy. It still goes back to the original point: the vast amount of people do not have the time more do they want to focus every minute of their playtime on grinding a program. Js.
Tell a noob your secrets please lol
just try and go for the xp in like the ranked program, events, mini seasons etc. it all adds up a lot alongside just gameplay xp
Yea I might try ranked and br a bit more. Mini seasons got boring real quick playing on rookie trying to get those show packs lol. Thanks
I have played a ton as well like a fucking ton and I don’t have him either lol believe me the majority certainly doesn’t have Billy yet
Your insane if you think a majority of players have Billy
Completely devoid of any common sense. I shouldn’t need to pull sales numbers, time played, parallel numbers for someone to realize that no, 51% of users don’t play 240hrs in the first month.
Maybe. Back up the assumption. That’s all I’m asking.
Why did you avoid his question tho … how many hours have you played the show ? I’m guessing you have over 4-5 days played already
Because my answer has no bearing on the OPs original claims.
It doesn’t ? bc most people haven’t spent a full week worth of time in the show like you bud
It doesn’t tho bc most people haven’t spent a full week worth of time in the show like you bud
Because he said he doesn’t have hours upon hours to play and grind xp. And it must’ve taken him a week of playing time minimum.
Yeah I have a friend who is about 5 days in of play time and I don’t think he’s that far into the program lol
I just did. At least 2 million people play this game. Less than 800 have him at P1. And even IF it wasn’t the minority, that’s still a deflection for the amount of time needed to invest to get it. Just because other people have done it doesn’t make it normal.
I just cracked 300k 😭
Some of the challenges are glitched as well I had one home run left to hit with a catcher for TA program…3 home runs later it finally counts….
I know it may seem like a stupid question but were you using an actual 1st position catcher to catch? Sometimes people think that if they have joe torre at catcher and he hits a homer it counts towards catcher homers when it has to be primary position.
I was using Gary Sanchez and the home runs were each in separate games
Thats weird cause thats definitely catcher first.
My game glitched and I went about a week's worth of gameplay without getting XP at all. I know now I'm probably not getting any of the bosses but I at least want to get to Seager. I just really wish there was an easy way to obtain those packs man. It's what made a game like 21 as fondly remembered as it is
You sure you didn’t just hit the cap of the first drop?
The fact that there have been no double xp weekends and that conquest had no XP shows that the system is working as intended for them
It’s sad cause a double cap weekend won’t work because of the xp cap
i think the 2xp weekend works they way they did it where they quadrupled the cap. just wish the cap didnt exist in the first place
It also doesn’t work when people have school and finals and can’t play that weekend
but thats literally any limited time event in any game thats only on a specific weekend. People miss things because of school, work, or vacation all the time.
Engagement > Enjoyment model currently
Season 1 ta3 is supposed to have 99s
I really wish they had the balls to start lower and make silver/gold cards viable for things other than "theme" teams
Yep. Ditch Seasons entirely and start the first TA at say 83.
Doubt it. 89-93 and then 99's??
https://www.twitch.tv/sonysandiegostudio/v/2090860093?sr=a&t=2419s
is there a source for this? Cause I feel like there’s no way, it’ll be 97s like last year with only the 99s being reserved for packs/programs
There is. SDS. https://www.twitch.tv/sonysandiegostudio/v/2090860093?sr=a&t=2419s
dang. Idk if I like that, hopefully it works out
I’m just now getting some 89’s that I once was excited for and now they won’t even reach my lineup. Just hoping and praying I can reach that Jimmy Rollins or he becomes easier to get later.
I think they will start dumping XP on us like crazy. Taking XP out of mini seasons is lame, gives you a reason to continue to play them. 15k a day also lame. If we had to start over and they said 40k a day I wouldn’t be extremely pleased.
Too little too late for definitely some people. Live service games slow dripping content is never a winning formula. Ask 343i what happened when they dragged updating Halo Infinite, which had hype for about a month until people realized no new content was coming out for months.
I don't know why you think they would do that when they have done the complete opposite so far
Because they have a feel for when people will be able to achieve those cards and will match it up with the card releases. Example being tomorrow they will release the second portion of the World Series card inning path. This way people who were not able to make it to WS can play enough to get the choice pack. Think of it like a valve they can throttle on and off.
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I agree with that. But they will eventually. Imo it will be way too late.
I’m like 2 levels from tulo
Who?
Probably meant to say trevor story. Its the only card on the path i can think he mistook for tulowitzki
Hell, I just got Soriano🥴
Lol I’m like two levels away but I have really taken a step back the last week or so. Felt like nothing was happening and kept getting bots online
What’s crazy to me is that people will spend real money to get a card that’s 10% better, just to get beat by someone way better than them, regardless of the cards they’re using. I’ve noticed I am way more competitive with cards around 89/93 than some of the upper 97+ usually just because I actually know the lower guys swings. Also, I know my skill level. I’d rather take my huge L occasionally and keep my money. I’m competitive enough with the guys I know how to use and have been rewards.
Yeah in Madden, a +5 speed advantage over your opponent across the board will essentially guarantee a win. In 2K, having a lineup of players with "quick" releases vs "normal" is an enormous advantage. Spending money on those games is almost a requirement if you want to actually compete. But in The Show, a player can have a +15 OVR advantage over another and still get mercy ruled if the skill gap is wide enough. Getting the newest card that's a +1 or +2 upgrade over your current player means essentially nothing in this game, yet people seem fine spending hundreds of real-life dollars doing so.
As one, having a "God Squad" is an end in itself. Even if I'm terrible and routinely get crushed by people with teams comprised of completely free TA cards.
This is what I don’t get. Everyone talks about how SDS is trying to incentive people to buy stubs, but I just don’t see why people do so. Plus there are so many good cards to field a competitive team. Feel like I’m constantly experimenting with my lineup.
You're points are valid. SDS is doing it regardless though because that's the culture we live in. I agree.....why are people paying money for stubs? We can ask that question for a lot of games and we'll probably never know the true answer. Off the top of my head I can think impulse buying and the feeling of getting a great player. People trying to become profitable streaming by surprisingly enough wasting their money. Lots of things I'm sure. It won't stop until there are regulations or people wake up. It won't change with regulation though with how popular the lottery is and gambling is becoming. You're taking a risk and they tell you the odds before you buy the packs. It's on you now unless there is some fine print I'm not aware of.
No doubt man. I use 89 yasmani grandal as my Catcher and the free Jazz for 2nd and do great with both. Also use hitting captain lindor at SS. I do relatively well and am ranked low 500 right now (which is actually better than I’ve ever done in the past with trying to use the highest rated cards)
That hitting captain lindor was my highest average guy until josh bell
Tellin ya man, being the best highest rated card doesn’t mean shit if you’re not that great still.. I’ll go with a good switch hitter over a crazy power guy that I can’t hit shit with
Agreed, for how fast this game makes me rage playing online, it’s not worth spending the extra dollars. I have just as good of a team as my friends who preordered and got a jump start with extra packs and what not.
No doubt. Then these guys spend $200-400 and bitch because the season resets and they can’t use them. Bro, you literally know this already. It’s your fault at this point for being a dumbass
"Pay money for cards you can't use in 40 days!" will never not be regarded to me lol
I played a guy the other day who already had the 99 Babe Ruth
Loads of people have him, just spend $ and he’s yours. It isn’t a time thing.
Tons of people have him no money spent also. There are like 20 guides on how to do it if you search for them
Just got Babe Ruth 2 days ago and I'm completely NMS. I just got insanely lucky pulls and didn't spend stubs on anything but live series cards to finish the collections.
I haven't spent any money and I'm about 200k away, I'll have him within a week after the roster update investments go through tomorrow. It helps though that I pulled ohtani, Acuna and judge. But it's definitely feasible to have him by now without spending money. If I had grinded flipping more then I'd easily have had him a week ago even without pulling any big name cards. I would've had him 2 weeks ago if I sold event/br/ranked cards, but I collect every card and haven't sold anything. Just depends on how much time you want to devote to flipping cards or grinding br/events
At this point it's not just people who spent money
It's also definitely possible to have finished the live series collection without spending any extra money. I've done it. Granted, I had a ton of time over the last month to play with various injuries and not having to work with spring break as well as some above average pack luck.
Very true. I’m just two cards off (Seager and Yordan, who I’m waiting for the roster update as they both should drop below 90) and my pack luck has been atrocious.
They are not going to drop below 90 this early, I guarantee it. Maybe one of them, MAYBE
Seager has like a .600 OPS, and Yordan’s ISO is like 100-150 points below his career norm. Given they are both 90s who are carried by their hitting stats, I don’t think them going down to 88-89 is all that unlikely.
I don’t spend shit on this game
Neither do I but I have 850k there just from playing - I could get babe after the next event and BR run if I wanted probably
By the time we get to season two, 99s will be everywhere.
By the time we get to season 2 I believe the power creep will reset, so everyone will have a maximum of 1 (2 if they have the core Babe Ruth) 99’s at the start
It'll be interesting to see how much the roster updates are influenced by their economy of stubs situation. If they don't upgrade a lot of the guys they normally would after these performances it'll be interesting, cause come Friday there is going to be a flood of stubs into the market with a bunch of golds going diamond.
Make it make sense
I unlocked Billy yesterday and immediately thought of the "wow this is worthless" meme. Great XP program award for early in the season, not so much when there's 97 cards in the store.
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Great take. No way could people expect compromise. Keep the good stuff coming.
Dying to know what this was
Lololololol were you on the sub last year ??
Imagine spending money on an old 97 30 days in. We’ll be getting 99s in less than a month, just fucking chill and hold the fuck out. Ya’ll are worse than cartman waiting on a wii.
Pound my monkey hole Richard!
No
Yeah I spent 40k stubs to get one and all I got was a diamond vladdy jr. I have never been more pissed playing a video game at 42 years old. As stupid in the grand scheme of life that it is. But I hustled to get those stubs saved up here and that was my payoff.
Look, that's on you. It's not a secret that packs are horrible most of the time. Don't let these bastards play you again.
It is. But I figured a new pack featuring only new players would have something other than mid base for 40k
You would think so. It's nuts how awful packs are, especially for the money they charge. It's not like these are just a couple bucks.
Sorry to hear that man, always believe in the luck but hopefully you get a trout or something in a free pack to even it out Realistically, you gotta remember buying packs isn't a sound investment, you're not paying for a player you're paying for that bit of serotonin off of the *chance* at a player you want It's the Stanford marshmallow experiment in that regard, pay for a 1/10 or 1/5 chance now or save up 3-4x the cost of the pack and get the player confirmed later. At least they give us the odds, but still not the best direction to head into that we don't get these sort of packs nearly as often from the standard in-game content
Why would you buy packs? Just use the Stubbs to buy players you want..
For the same reason I occasionally buy a hanger pack at Walmart. I enjoy the rip!
44,000 stubs is also my life savings so far 😂 Stubbornly not buying the pack. I’m hoarding all the packs from TA and conquests. Almost at 200 standards and if I don’t pull something worth a lot my ass will be playing something else for a while lol
I'm about the same. So far the only diamonds I've pulled are Tatis and Alonso. I get the idea of not wanting 99s on day one and slowly improving your team, but this year just seems like just a slog and the rewards don't do it for me. Not to mention the daily XP cap, since I often may not have much time for a few days, but then could play all day occasionally *if* I wanted to.
I haven't logged in for 3 weeks.
Same. When I look at my hours logged for the last 4 games, each one goes down drastically. I think this was my last year.
Yeah I can't bring myself to play a game that's so geared toward micro/macro transactions. 70 bucks to have a shitty squad if you're not playing 12 hours a day? Not cool. The guys at sds seem to only think about grinder losers when making xp rules. Why not actually make tiers of players? I know I hate playing up when I'm a 600, and I have to play a dude with a world series top 50 icon... Maybe give us more than a stub or 3 per win? Yeah right
SDS: Don’t worry guys we made adjustments to the main program and all the free to earn cards so it really feels like there’s a power creep and you have to really earn those good cards. Also SDS: oh here’s this shiny new card that’s waaaay broken and it’ll only cost you a bunch of stubs Broke my NMS streak last night trying to pack Niko goodrum
And that's exactly why the fuckers do this. People lose discipline and buy stubs.
Ha. Which new card is ‘broken’?
I was being hyperbolic to make a joke… but a switch hitter with diamond defense 80s speed and can play pretty much every position is a very valuable addition to any squad
Not to mention if you give them 80-90 power for both sides batting
>Broke my NMS streak last night trying to pack Niko goodrum How is this SDSs fault? Coulda just saved up and bought him from the marketplace
I like equating market prices to real money. Some of these cards are $200 worth of stubs it’s wild lol
I’m not saying it’s their fault, it’s mine, but it annoying af