PLEASE RECONSIDER TEAM AFFINITY
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I’ll be ok with it if they do evolution programs for all the captains or something like that.
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The way I understood it is they separated the original TA and no.1 fan (season long) TA, so once you cap out on Jolts, only no.1 fan will count until the next drop in what… May?
Other TAs will drop along the way.
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At least we are getting 88+ overall Jolt players, I will try to get Eric Gagne Gil Hodges and Chase Utley as soon as I get my hands on MLB The Show 26 for the PS5.
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@Dolenz_PSN right..maybe every TA captain gets their own program to upgrade the card later on. Either way, the content is plentiful so I'm not too worried if it's a lesser TA program.
My absolute favorite thing about 23 and 24 was seeing the new inning coughseasoncough drop and thinking how I planned to tackle the TA. Was i going to use a theme team? Run the miniseason a few times? Use the prior TA cards? Showd...no not that. And the conquest, of course!
This being gone really soured my enjoyment of 25
It’s possible they have a vision to have something to fill the void, but I am very skeptical. We will see what the programs and mini seasons look like.
I agree with this. They kept saying/referencing how quickly everything could be complete. Two hours for this. 20 minutes for that. Less than 2 hours to get both jolt captains etc. I am skeptical we get programs like the TA in years prior to 25.
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I really hope that this is a misunderstanding and they will have TA drops throughout the year. As a primarily offline player, TA is always the bedrock of content for me. It allows me to build rosters in creative ways like the manager of a fantasy team. And isn’t that ultimately what Diamond Dynasty is about? Last year I consistently ran out of things to do. OnceFinest came out without the typical TA program paths and conquest maps, I more or less stopped playing the game. Without TA, unless there is something equally robust, I can see this game getting stale very quickly.
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My fear with no additional TA is they are already bad at distributing cards evenly amongst teams. Without those automatic cards to all 30 teams, I worry that it will be even worse this year.
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My fear with no additional TA is they are already bad at distributing cards evenly amongst teams. Without those automatic cards to all 30 teams, I worry that it will be even worse this year.
They did say there will be drops where each team gets a card. The cynic in me says this is a good chance to put more players in things like all star game packs.
I also really hope if they are going back to one captain per team they allow bench captains to work. What if Yankee fans want to try the new legend Phil Rizzuto? DH a light power SS? This has always been a captain flaw though.
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I think the interesting thing will be do these cards increase as the power creep increases. if thats the case i'm 100% ok with it. if they stay 88 all year, then yes its nice out the gate but awful for end game.
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@Teak2112_MLBTS I agree. The glitch year where this worked was the best year for captains. I also worry that captains will quickly become obsolete. I hope they have a plan to properly scale them with the power creep. I’d love run a theme team all year.
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@LIONED-33_XBL Exactly
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Completely agree with the OP. TA is my favorite part of the game. That and the US conquest map. We lost the US conquest map last yr (although they finally added a version of it later in Nov / Dec). And now we're getting 1 two hour TA track per team for the entire yr. I hope they misspoke or we are all misunderstanding what they said yesterday. Or maybe there are new style programs that will serve as TAs, just with a different name.
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After thinking about this for a bit I think everyone might be misunderstanding what is happening, including myself. Last year the TA path was longer but it was set in stone at the start of the season. There were no cards in the path outside the vouchers after the initial drop. We got the cards from the Color Store and Neon Programs. I have a feeling it will end up being very similar to last year in that regard. We are going to get other player programs where each team has 1 or 2 cards to acquire in the program but they won't be added to the TA Path. Maybe I am wrong but I hope I am right and it would make sense. I think we will get traditional programs for All Star cards and Finest cards as well rather than the earned vouchers we had to get last year.
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Completely agree with the OP. TA is my favorite part of the game. That and the US conquest map. We lost the US conquest map last yr (although they finally added a version of it later in Nov / Dec). And now we're getting 1 two hour TA track per team for the entire yr. I hope they misspoke or we are all misunderstanding what they said yesterday. Or maybe there are new style programs that will serve as TAs, just with a different name.
To be fair to SDS, the audience for this game is all over the place with diverse things they want from the game.
I know there are many players who view content as cards themselves: they are happy to just play ranked games and little else but ranked games (or events). They don't want to put in effort to get cards, because they don't find it fun or rewarding.
Myself, i don't think cards are content: they are a driver of content. You do content to get cards.
I'm also the type of person that likes some degree of decision making in things. And the 23/24 style of TA had that, and Neon/Color Storm at least had some of that, albeit to a lesser degree. But some people find all that choice overwhelming and just want a linear path.
SDS can't please everyone with something like TA, but they could have at least done something with the finger path (which at least has a good deal of packs in it) instead of what looks like the same old 'just hit well with the team'.
I'm not holding out any hope for there being a good TA replacement, but maybe they will surprise us.
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We'll all just wait and see. I am of the opinion that they either need to add more later or boost the captain cards throughout the year. Maybe start at 88, then boost to 92, 96 and 99.
But the only reason I would not be a fan of the second method is then it eliminates the need for these players to get different cards along the way. I mean who doesn't want this beast of a card back

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@Dolenz_PSN one can hope
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@RealMessiah_XBL that’s exactly it; it will be almost exactly like last year. If you watch the stream the missions can be done in a single sitting, especially with 9 innings MS games.
They may not be Neon or whatever, but we’ll definitely other themed TAs. They will probably move the themes around, like Summer being in TA and Neon being it’s own program outside TA, but overall the structure will be the same.
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Maybe they will address it in todays stream since this is what most people seem to be talking about after yesterdays stream.
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It seems obvious that you're not gonna be using 88 captains forever, so there will be new paths to get different captains. This Team Affinity seems like it's just a launch-day program that it is pretty much done and over after about a month.
They keep saying that this year has more content and "things to do," but I don't really see that yet. All of these things seem really quick and short - doesn't seem to be a whole lot of steady grinding to do. I'm bothered by them constantly making concessions to players who hate putting in time to grind.
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It seems obvious that you're not gonna be using 88 captains forever, so there will be new paths to get different captains. This Team Affinity seems like it's just a launch-day program that it is pretty much done and over after about a month.
In 2024 you were stuck with low captains until post Finest. So there is precedent.
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I think I actually like this move, assuming it means more of these cards will be available in other programs like they said. TA is usually great early in the game, but in the future drops I get kind of burned out on having to play with teams I just don't care about to try and get a reward I might want. TA requires so many rewards cards throughout the year that it eliminates those guys as possibilities to be in other programs. So as long as the other programs are solid I think this will be a welcome change.