Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.
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I've spent several days with the game now and have been doing alright but I am beginning to feel like my pre-release concerns were correct. I think they over corrected in adding the grind back into the game and that it may discourage the more casual players very quickly.
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Team Affinity - Getting the early cards is not bad but looking beyond that to the vouchers it appears to be a grind where I feel I should always be playing just with the team I want to advance, but I can't really do that most program missions require to play with different teams or players.
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The Spring Breakout Program - The showdown is no pushover. I have failed it 3 times already. Missions require stat grinds with 6 different teams. The more casual among us might have 4 or 5 common and bronze players per team at this early stage making these stat grinds painful.
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Pipeline program - The moments seem tailor made to send people over the edge. 3 hits with 1 extra base hit. Pitch one inning with 3 strikeouts. etc. I have not looked at the rest of the missions closely
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The Pipeline Diamond Quest I succeeded in over half the individual missions and uncovered every square and I would still need to play on Hall of Fame for even a 50/50 chance of receiving the epic reward and even on that difficulty I have a better than 25% chance of getting neither card. If you take it down to veteran then it becomes basically a coin flip for the rare and only a 40% chance of the Epic. Talk about leaving things up to RNG.
I know that this is what many people enjoy and more power to you but at this point I could see myself and many others burning out earlier in the year. Maybe when I get more cards for all of the teams the stat grind missions won't seem as intimidating as they do now.
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I’m already feeling it.
Before 24 (and even through S1 of 24), my goal was to get through the programs and the XP reward path.
Today, I went through and looked at all the stuff there is, tried to categorize in my head a way to tackle everything, and read posts to get ideas on what other’s strategies are to play. I ended up sitting back in my chair and letting out a long sigh.
I decided that I’ll just do what looks fun and forget the rest. I’m not worrying about the XP path or what cards I do or don’t have. I’ll play with what the game gives me.
If that doesn’t keep my interest, well, then, I can always just go back to prior years like I did last year and have some fun.
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@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
I've spent several days with the game now and have been doing alright but I am beginning to feel like my pre-release concerns were correct. I think they over corrected in adding the grind back into the game and that it may discourage the more casual players very quickly.
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Team Affinity - Getting the early cards is not bad but looking beyond that to the vouchers it appears to be a grind where I feel I should always be playing just with the team I want to advance, but I can't really do that most program missions require to play with different teams or players.
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The Spring Breakout Program - The showdown is no pushover. I have failed it 3 times already. Missions require stat grinds with 6 different teams. The more casual among us might have 4 or 5 common and bronze players per team at this early stage making these stat grinds painful.
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Pipeline program - The moments seem tailor made to send people over the edge. 3 hits with 1 extra base hit. Pitch one inning with 3 strikeouts. etc. I have not looked at the rest of the missions closely
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The Pipeline Diamond Quest I succeeded in over half the individual missions and uncovered every square and I would still need to play on Hall of Fame for even a 50/50 chance of receiving the epic reward and even on that difficulty I have a better than 25% chance of getting neither card. If you take it down to veteran then it becomes basically a coin flip for the rare and only a 40% chance of the Epic. Talk about leaving things up to RNG.
I know that this is what many people enjoy and more power to you but at this point I could see myself and many others burning out earlier in the year. Maybe when I get more cards for all of the teams the stat grind missions won't seem as intimidating as they do now.
1 Hasn't TA always been like it is now? Not being able to proceed in a team's path without using cards from said team?
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@x-814-x-MAFIA-x_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
I've spent several days with the game now and have been doing alright but I am beginning to feel like my pre-release concerns were correct. I think they over corrected in adding the grind back into the game and that it may discourage the more casual players very quickly.
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Team Affinity - Getting the early cards is not bad but looking beyond that to the vouchers it appears to be a grind where I feel I should always be playing just with the team I want to advance, but I can't really do that most program missions require to play with different teams or players.
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The Spring Breakout Program - The showdown is no pushover. I have failed it 3 times already. Missions require stat grinds with 6 different teams. The more casual among us might have 4 or 5 common and bronze players per team at this early stage making these stat grinds painful.
-
Pipeline program - The moments seem tailor made to send people over the edge. 3 hits with 1 extra base hit. Pitch one inning with 3 strikeouts. etc. I have not looked at the rest of the missions closely
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The Pipeline Diamond Quest I succeeded in over half the individual missions and uncovered every square and I would still need to play on Hall of Fame for even a 50/50 chance of receiving the epic reward and even on that difficulty I have a better than 25% chance of getting neither card. If you take it down to veteran then it becomes basically a coin flip for the rare and only a 40% chance of the Epic. Talk about leaving things up to RNG.
I know that this is what many people enjoy and more power to you but at this point I could see myself and many others burning out earlier in the year. Maybe when I get more cards for all of the teams the stat grind missions won't seem as intimidating as they do now.
1 Hasn't TA always been like it is now? Not being able to proceed in a team's path without using cards from said team?
Yes, but now the path seems longer and the stat grinds seem more time consuming. I am not just looking at the time it takes to get the captain I am also taking into account that stats you need to grind to get the All-Star and Finest vouchers. If I want those rewards then I need to be playing my Cardinals don't have time to progress multiple teams TA quests.
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@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@x-814-x-MAFIA-x_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
I've spent several days with the game now and have been doing alright but I am beginning to feel like my pre-release concerns were correct. I think they over corrected in adding the grind back into the game and that it may discourage the more casual players very quickly.
-
Team Affinity - Getting the early cards is not bad but looking beyond that to the vouchers it appears to be a grind where I feel I should always be playing just with the team I want to advance, but I can't really do that most program missions require to play with different teams or players.
-
The Spring Breakout Program - The showdown is no pushover. I have failed it 3 times already. Missions require stat grinds with 6 different teams. The more casual among us might have 4 or 5 common and bronze players per team at this early stage making these stat grinds painful.
-
Pipeline program - The moments seem tailor made to send people over the edge. 3 hits with 1 extra base hit. Pitch one inning with 3 strikeouts. etc. I have not looked at the rest of the missions closely
-
The Pipeline Diamond Quest I succeeded in over half the individual missions and uncovered every square and I would still need to play on Hall of Fame for even a 50/50 chance of receiving the epic reward and even on that difficulty I have a better than 25% chance of getting neither card. If you take it down to veteran then it becomes basically a coin flip for the rare and only a 40% chance of the Epic. Talk about leaving things up to RNG.
I know that this is what many people enjoy and more power to you but at this point I could see myself and many others burning out earlier in the year. Maybe when I get more cards for all of the teams the stat grind missions won't seem as intimidating as they do now.
1 Hasn't TA always been like it is now? Not being able to proceed in a team's path without using cards from said team?
Yes, but now the path seems longer and the stat grinds seem more time consuming. I am not just looking at the time it takes to get the captain I am also taking into account that stats you need to grind to get the All-Star and Finest vouchers. If I want those rewards then I need to be playing my Cardinals don't have time to progress multiple teams TA quests.
I don't have the game yet and can't remember what the first TA looked like last year.
But when they had Exchanges in the path, that option gave out a decent chunk of progress.
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I decided to look - for the Spring Breakout missions
- 25 K's with Dodgers - I actually have 2 starters and a Reliever so doable but will take a couple of 9 inning games.
- 15 XBH with Pirates - I have 2 gold and 1 bronze position players (that one will take a while)
- 25 hits with Padres - I have 2 gold and 1 bronze position players (luckily I have been using Machado so I have some hits)
- 25 Ks with Rockies - I just grabbed the Ubaldo Jiminez card so I would need to pitch a couple of 9 inning games with him.
- 15 XBH with Tigers -
I have one bronze position player with 50/36 power - 25 Hits with Cardinals - Thanks to TA I have this one done.
All that for 30% of the program points needed.
And that is with my Digital Deluxe packs and 15 Twitch packs. Imagine how much worse off people starting Tuesday with no extra packs will feel.
One thing I don't want to do is use stubs to buy players to complete those missions. I am saving those stubs to try and complete the NL Central Collection at some point.
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@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
I decided to look - for the Spring Breakout missions
He has a point.
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@Blind_Bleeder_PSN So in that instance it looks like I could skip the Collection and either The Showdown or Optional Missions. Where do the cards for the optional missions come from?
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The TA is easy to start out, after the moment and the pxp with the silver, 3 SB (vs the As is good for this,I just got the 3 with 81 spd Andres Gimenez of Tor)then either 12IP or 3 W (the USA map is great for this)and then you have the gold player,after his mission you only need the one pitching and 2 hitting missions to get the diamond.
Have 1 team to dia,4 to gold and by time I'm done catus map(my last one) I'll have 10 to gold.(this is just with LS players mostly. -
@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Blind_Bleeder_PSN Where do the cards for the optional missions come from?
I don’t know. I didn’t get that far into analyzing the program. Maybe packs?
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@PAinPA_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
The TA is easy to start out, after the moment and the pxp with the silver, 3 SB (vs the As is good for this,I just got the 3 with 81 spd Andres Gimenez of Tor)then either 12IP or 3 W (the USA map is great for this)and then you have the gold player,after his mission you only need the one pitching and 2 hitting missions to get the diamond.
Have 1 team to dia,4 to gold and by time I'm done catus map(my last one) I'll have 10 to gold.(this is just with LS players mostly.Yeah, getting that captain card is fairly easy (I earned Edmonds last night) but you still need 230K more for the All Star Voucher and 310K more for the Finest Voucher.
That is what I consider to be the end goal of the program and why many, like myself, won't bother attempting multiple programs to that point.
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I feel the intent of TA is for everything past the Jolt card to be optional. The voucher I dont feel will be the only way to get the All star, but it will allow you to skip a grind for it. We know they are adding other TA related tracks and my suspicion is that they will have the future card sin those. its a little tough to judge this one without knowing the full picture. Regardless, i feel the first round of missions is too high. 50 Hits is not trivial. I play a lot and i recently got 150 hits TOTAL. Further, it encourages you to play in a cheesy way (vs CPU at Cost...er Coors). At the very least, I feel there should be a repeatable team pxp option so things like saves at least have some importance. But again, we don't have the full picture and for the record I really like what they have done
As for the showdown, if I can do it, anyone can. Draft Chourio and Clark and bunt. Use directional, and always up and pull. You will whiff on good timing from time to time (not too common on veteran inside the strike zone)
but if you are a poor enough hitter where the showdown is a struggle your results will almost certainly be better with directional. That said, I do think they need to allow a redo or two for failed stages. Especially if the intent is for people to do this 4 times.For Pipeline DQ, keep in mind a 25% chance on one stadium is a 43.75% chance of success between the two of them. I was afraid the RNG would be worse, also helps you get a pack from every showdown miniboss and stadium quest you do.
Those Pipeline moments are [censored]. However you have a fair bit of leeway in that program (and its not like the spring breakout where its leeway is 'beat showdown'.
Finally, I suspect these programs are a bit meatier because they are for early access plus the first week. We arent getting a content drop for a while, and they didnt intend us to have the programs done already. I think this is a MASSIVE improvement over last year. I get your point and agree there things that could be improved though, but at the same time I think we should at least be seeing how the whole inning plays out.
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@Blind_Bleeder_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Blind_Bleeder_PSN Where do the cards for the optional missions come from?
I don’t know. I didn’t get that far into analyzing the program. Maybe packs?
Showdown
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@Blind_Bleeder_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@Blind_Bleeder_PSN Where do the cards for the optional missions come from?
I don’t know. I didn’t get that far into analyzing the program. Maybe packs?
You get a choice pack containing those players when you complete the showdown. You get a pack after each completion if you care to do it multiple times. I’ve only done it once to get the 20 points and 5 from Horton’s mission.
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I’m a casual (ish) player. I rarely play online mainly doing the single player stuff. I’ve finished the Starter program. The TA is overwhelming. I’ve gotten to Billy Williams on the Cubs path, and the rest of the path seems like a slog. If they added bobble heads it would remind me of 18. I tried Diamond Quest. Not a fan. Did every square on the map and didn’t get either player. At least with conquest, the player reward is guaranteed. If I wanted to gamble on getting a player, I’d buy packs. Which I did unknowingly, cause the store layout is borderline predatory. The gameplay is crisp, so that’s a plus. But, if I go to the manage lineup screen, the game will crash about 4/10 times.
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@Teak2112_MLBTS said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
The voucher I dont feel will be the only way to get the All star, but it will allow you to skip a grind for it.
Then they should state that and I and others might be a little less stressed that we need to continually grind with our team of choice to the exclusion of other things.
And you may be right about them being meatier in order to last the next few weeks but that does not really lessen the frustration of hard Moments, Hard Showdowns, poor odds for Diamond Quest on lower difficulty levels, missions that require stats with multiple teams when you may not have any players yet, especially right out of the gate and especially for new players.
Remember new players starting Tuesday do not get the extra Digital Deluxe packs, preorder packs and may not have earned any twitch or now or later packs. They get 5 packs so will only have 20 mostly common and bronze players plus whatever scrubs the game gives them to start out. Kind of hard to do team stat missions with so little choice.
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@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
@PAinPA_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
The TA is easy to start out, after the moment and the pxp with the silver, 3 SB (vs the As is good for this,I just got the 3 with 81 spd Andres Gimenez of Tor)then either 12IP or 3 W (the USA map is great for this)and then you have the gold player,after his mission you only need the one pitching and 2 hitting missions to get the diamond.
Have 1 team to dia,4 to gold and by time I'm done catus map(my last one) I'll have 10 to gold.(this is just with LS players mostly.Yeah, getting that captain card is fairly easy (I earned Edmonds last night) but you still need 230K more for the All Star Voucher and 310K more for the Finest Voucher.
That is what I consider to be the end goal of the program and why many, like myself, won't bother attempting multiple programs to that point.
Just remember. When they drop the next TA for the Cardinals; chances are when you do those missions the stats will also count towards the previous TA.
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@Dolenz_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
- The Pipeline Diamond Quest I succeeded in over half the individual missions and uncovered every square and I would still need to play on Hall of Fame for even a 50/50 chance of receiving the epic reward and even on that difficulty I have a better than 25% chance of getting neither card. If you take it down to veteran then it becomes basically a coin flip for the rare and only a 40% chance of the Epic. Talk about leaving things up to RNG.
This is why I think Diamond Quest is an L. The RNG to get the rewards makes me not even want to spend the time trying. I'm ok having to achieve things to get rewards. But achieving them and still not getting them while also NOT getting PXP or Missions Advancement for most of the effort makes me wanna avoid the mode entirely.
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The way I see the spring breakout program:
- Showdown is for all intents and purposes required
- 25 points for moments. These are at least chill, fun moments
- 25 points for using the programs cards, plus 10 points for the repeatable pxp along the way.
- 20 points for the showdown (they should never require this, and with repeatable pxp it technically isnt by 1k is a lot of pxp)
- 5 points for pxp of your selected player
- 5 points for 25Ks with rockies (You will be getting 10 innings with Ubaldo Jiminez anyway...)
- pick your poison for other 10 points
I really hope with the showdown they simply forgot we arent using 99s anymore. As I said if I can do it (Im a guy who hits .250 with ~40% strikeout rate in ranked) anyone can, but its easily tougher than any non extreme showdown I did from last year.
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@trfatboy22_PSN said in Early thoughts - DD is going to frustrate the more casual and semi casual players.:
This is why I think Diamond Quest is an L. The RNG to get the rewards makes me not even want to spend the time trying. I'm ok having to achieve things to get rewards. But achieving them and still not getting them while also NOT getting PXP or Missions Advancement for most of the effort makes me wanna avoid the mode entirely.
I thought this is how i would feel, but if you blitz the two stadiums youll at least get 2 packs, plus any packs for mini boss stages along the way. Completing the full board to me is NOT worth it.
Note that the mini boss showdown stages count towards mission goals so you can use them for that (within reason, you dont want to be bringing bronzes)
The good thing is that these will ultimately be dirt cheap since they are easy to obtain for people that can hit high difficulties who will flood the market.
