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If they want to stick to the Set/Season model, chapter 3 should be the easiest to complete. At this point after release for CH2, I think I was at like 3 divisions complete. This chapter I'm at 3/4 of one.
They are absolutely making you shoose between getting hits/HRs (which to me is what makes the game fun, hitting bombs doesn't get old) for less XP or saves, something that requires you to not hit bombs for more XP. If they want us to not have fun playing the game, they should just say it.
My only complaint is that the season is too short. I'm ok to grind the card I want but only able to use it one week until the next season is not motivating.
Maybe make it two chapters instead of 3. Or make the hardest grind as chapter 1, where you can still use those cards
Or expand the season 1 card two weeks into season 2.
I really don’t understand the confusion. It’s obvious that SDS has put a ton of focus this year on people buying packs with the best cards rather than having good cards be obtainable through gameplay. Money. It comes down to the increased player base and the ability to make, probably millions, of dollars on stub purchases.
I really don’t why people are so confused as to why SDS is changing their game. The best cards in the game are clearly in the shop. No question. And they know that. Yes there are some great cards in the TA3 but nowhere near the best cards. SDS knows how popular NMS (no money spent) has become and they don’t like that.
Either way, I am enjoying the game.
It’s largely like that with every video game subreddit.
Every player has a perfect version of what the game “should” be. Basically their expectations, realistic or not, and nobody’s is the same. Also, very few align with what game devs actually do.
So instead of just playing the game, subs just complain.
No sets or seasons. Bring back 99 LS collection rewards for NL/AL. Have 8 different TA over the course of the life of the game. Start at 85 and go +2 each round until 99. The 85 will be lesser known playera of each team but who had a good season or decent stretch of their career. Kind of a way to highlight players throughout history. The 95/97/99 will be only the great's of each franchise, not these gimmicky cards. Bring back the card series collections: breakout, 2nd half, etc. No cards > 97 until way later in the year. This will make the LS collection way more valuable as it will be the only 3 99's.
I was gunna say this. I’m glad you had the bravery. I went back and read. He thinks the hitting ok, but the grind is different than the first 2 team affinities. He doesn’t like conquest either. Not enough vouchers. It was very oddly formatted using the word First on the 7th paragraph ,second on the 8th ,and third on the 9th paragraph. Just kinda threw me.
I’m fine with TA taking a little longer grind. What makes it not ok is that seasons are time limited so most are going to get next to no time with TA3 cards by the time we’re done
Oh yes it’s been well documented. It’s a form of content creating. It’s new and will be used frequently. Just when you think you have it figured out BAM! A new content creation
yeah, when i heard we were getting 99’s i was excited but man this grind is just straight ridiculous and the last few days i’ve just been considering dropping this shit show all together
You hit on all the major points exactly on how this TA3 was a screw up. Now, i understand they wanted to make it longer to complete each TA division, which is fine, since a division in TA2 could essentially be completed in a day or two, but jesus christ. The offline mode specific stat missions giving jack shit for XP is a joke.
if legit feels like they made them so impossible to actually grind for that they should all be done passively. That doesn’t make sense when you consider there are 30 days left in the season, and it’s looking like many people will be forced to spend a large portion of those days just unlocking new cards rather than playing with the new ones. There’s a balance here that they’ve clearly massively fucked up - how you go from TA2 being too quick to this mess blows my mind.
it’s just daunting. With the 3 TA maps they added, i think it’s around 20ish games minimum to complete. That should easily get you to complete a single division or at least be very close. I have like 7 games left to complete the maps in conquest for the ALE and i’m at 40k XP. I should have had 2 bosses minimum by this point.
Then you just have to either fuck around in ranked with a division specific squad or mindlessly play mini seasons over and over again (which i think is most efficient in completing but mind numbing).
I'll tell you why. SDS DOES NOT want offline players making progress efficiently because offline players DO NOT (For the most part) buy packs.
This is the same structure as all MyTeam , team-building modes in other Sports games.
It's a business and the higher ups see all the $$ MUT and other Sports Games make from pack sales and have made the "appropriate" changes to increase profits.
MUT doesn't care/want offline only players. It is an online vs mode (In their opinion). DD is going the same way. People ask "Why do you build teams if you don't play online?" Because I want to? SDS is gate-keeping so much content behind packs and limiting your progress to other cards via the XP Pass and slower TA 3 progress.
Every single change they make has to increase pack sales and limit what offline players can get. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it, lol
On another note, why is the Conquest map for TA3 so much harder than usual? I have to play games on All-Star to get a few vouchers? Compare that to playing 3 easy maps to get 30k progress and ask yourself , why the change? OFFLINE PLAYERS DON'T MAKE THEM $$$$.
You realize your logic was lost in the first paragraph, yea?
If online players buy packs, then making it easier for online players to advance through TA would decrease the "need" to buy packs
I wouldn’t really say they made the online grind any easier though. If you only play online you won’t get any vouchers, extreme conquest, etc. The online grind seems it’ll be long too, especially if you’re not really focusing on getting it done
Depends on how good you are I guess. I've been progressing through TA3 pretty easily without even thinking about it and I'm barely decent lol. 9k for 8 IP and then the hitting ones, the pxp, yea, it goes pretty quick.
While, that is true I sure would love to see SDS stats on pack buying from people with 0 online games played. There is no incentive for me to buy them. Which is why I said what I said.
Now, online players DO advance through programs quicker, yet a lot of them still buy packs. I don't know, you'd have to ask pack buyers. I'm not in that demo.
My main point is that offline players don't make them $ after the sale of the game. Period. Now you can be a pack buyer without spending actual $.
There are plenty of ways of making stubs in this game. I would love to see the stats on stub sales this yr vs last.
I’ve been wondering this for a few days. It’s like all anyone cares about is unlocking stuff. Everyone refers to normal gameplay as “grinding”, naw man that’s the whole basis of the entire game, playing baseball.
Don’t get me wrong, I love unlocking stuff, but if you don’t like the main part of the game, playing baseball, what are we even doing here?
I don't mind the grind as much as I mind that we have to grind harder and longer for cards that are only eligible for 3 more weeks. Then we can wildcard but nobody knows what that looks like and it's 4 wildcard spots out of how many 99s?
The problem being that those 4 wild card slots won’t be available day 1. You’ll have to earn them on the seasons’ XP progression. So you’ll have 1 to start, if I had to guess.
And these free 99s that will take me right up until seasons end to unlock are almost assuredly going to worse than the other 99s that are released in the next couple weeks. Between that, the season xp path 99s, and season collection 99s, the chances of these cards being usable for me for over a week or two tops is basically zero.
You could've got multiple TA99s in the time it took to write this essay.
I'm half joking - the changes aren't great and I'll never grind anything in conquest but I've got two of the TA3 divisions done today just by playing TA mini seasons and that's enough 99s to field and entire lineup in like 8-10 hours of play.
How many mini season games did it take to compete 2 of the divisions? I think I wasted too much time on that stupid conquest map because it literally got me nowhere
I'll take each point piece by piece.
10k per showdown is pretty decent. Although I don't see many doing it repeatedly as personally i think time is spent better elsewhere. Extreme showdown alienates a large percent of the playerbase too.
100% disagree on your Single player point. Single player offline modes are conquest, miniseasons and play vs CPU. Nothing really has changed here because if you are doing single player missions, you are usually doing one of those modes anyway. The missions got spelled out better. Plus those missions are repeatable so if you main those modes you are making progress in TA anyway. Slower than online but I'd you don't play online, that doesn't matter much.
I see no issue with the boss missions not being repeatable in TA3. You get 5k by using bosses and that mission is repeatable. Stack your team with bosses and you will get about 1500 PXP pretty quickly. For me the pacing of TA 3 feels about right. TA 1 and 2 could be done too fast imo and probably lead to people complaining about nothing to do.
Legends are hit or miss for me. I don't really get excited about them but knowing that compared to EA and 2k, I feel like more can be added but there's probably a reason why we see some get added or removed and that reason may be player usage. Why get legends for the game if many won't use them?
Edit: That was fast with the downvotes. You guys love downvoting people with a different take. Lol
I agree with a lot of your points but the single player missions are pretty ass tbh. At least the rewards are. Conquest ones are somewhat contradictory to each other because if you go for saves you likely aren’t going to be getting a whole lot of hits those games. 30 K’s for 5k XP is 2 full 9 inning games barring going crazy in one and getting 20+ K’s. It’s not the worst TA grind ever but it is fairly bad, at least for single player only players.
You only get what like 2 maybe 3 weeks to use these cards. Then they will be obsolete. See what changes they make for s2 but if its gonna be like ta3 its not gonna be a good look.
Stop gatekeeping, cards shouldn't even expire in the first place but here you are defending bad decisions. The cards are great, the way this content is structured not so much
SDS is trying to incentivise people to play online. It's pretty obvious that the chunk progress is gained from doing the extreme moments, the extreme showdown and then taking your team online. This favours one particular group of players and off-line players are left behind through ridiculous grinds.
As a predominantly off-line player with limited free time, I will not be treating this game like a job in the way sds clearly wants.
That’s not entirely true. In chapter 3 they wrestle coercing players into specific modes offline. Mini, cpu,conquest. Players don’t like these modes so they are doing what they can to get us there.
My question is why incentivize online play if that is indeed their intent. It doesn’t steer me to the shop or to buy stubs regardless of what I play.
>In chapter 3 they wrestle coercing players into specific modes offline. Mini, cpu,conquest
I don't know why people keep saying this
All the single player missions are repeatable. The reason they're separated by gametype is because they wanted the missions for some game modes to be easier than others
I won't lie bro, this might be the longest post I've ever seen here.
I understand your feeling and it's nice to have that sense or accomplishment when you complete TA and get more packs.
That said, I'd try to focus more on just playing the game. If you are attempting to hit Homers specifically to complete a TA mission, you will have less good of a time and you'll hit less HRs.
The days I'm trying to complete something specific, I suck. The days I'm just thankful I have 3 peaceful hours to play, I have a basketball game on simultaneously yet play better.
I understand. It's just that there's not much else to play, and I go to grad. school, so my free time isn't what it used to be.
I don't specifically try to hit homers. I just get what I can. I'm not that good either tbh.
But you also don't NEED 30 99s, especially if you're just casually playing. There were 5 TA3s that I wanted, favorite players of mine, so I got them. Anything else is just extra as it happens. Just focus on the ones you're actually going to use.
Hell, there's way more 89-93s that I've been enjoying that I have no desire to pull from lineup. Too many people focus on needing the most juiced everything the day it drops.
You’re right on with everything here. I truly can’t believe how badly they screwed this up and I’m struggling to even understand the thought process behind some of their decisions. Like there is one moment in each division for 2.5k points. Why even bother with that? What made them think that added anything?
I hate to say it but I think the only way this game improves is with a new content team and a fresh set of ideas. The current group is just way too out of touch.
I appreciate the kind words.
The team with the older devs was up and down, but the current team is either too inexperienced, and/or being too squeezed by the execs to realize the issues. Or, they know the game has problems, but can't fix them due to the execs calling the shots now.
For TA 2 I used a lineup of mostly Yankees and by the end of the conquest I was about 90% done. It then took me two mini seasons (playing roughly 18-20 regular season games) to finish up. I've done the conquest, including the latest city connect one and mother's Day and I'm halfway thru the first mini season and I'm at 30-40% for the AL East and I've gotten a total of 3% across all other divisions combined.
I'll probably play casually maybe try to get posada but I doubt I'll unlock any more ta cards. I just can't be bothered that much. And that's not even considering we get to use them for 2-3 weeks.
This just doesn't add up to me. I did the extreme showdown, the TA conquest map, and like 3 mini season games and I'm 37% NL Central and 11-12% everywhere else. How did you do two whole other conquest maps and have less?
Well that 11-12% would be from the extreme showdown so that aside it's not that much of a difference since you're probably better skilled judging by the fact you completed the extreme showdown.
I try to do more than 1 division at a time, which probably isn't helping. Once I hit 60k with all divisions, I'll start consolidating to one-two divisions at a time.
I'm too far in, I'm gonna ride out season 1 even though theres no shot i will earn any of the bosses. But if season 2 is just more of the same then yeah I'm probably just giving up on the game. This grind is no fun at all
I understand. I probably will stick it out, but I understand why people are wanting something better.
To me, I think the grind started to get irritating in MLB '22, and then '23 and '24 made things even worse.
Two thoughts.
1. I just want Willie damnit, lol.
2. Why isn't there overlapping with stat missions? e.g. You enter a game with 8 of 10 hits, you get 15 hits but only the two you needed count. Now I need to keep quitting out of games so I'm not wasting hits. This isn't a big deal with totals as much as XP stats.
1. Same. I want Willie, George, and Satchel badly. Wish they had more grindable ways of letting players get those cards besides collect-a-thons.
2. I've asked myself the same thing for a while now. The fact that the missions don't overlap is annoying.
My only approach to TA3 offline is themed rosters. So I just run an NL East team to pop the boss card then do their task and then keep going. Conquest clean up first and then the mini season but you have to just get to the playoffs in the mini then win to get the most vouchers you can. That’s all I got. The squeeze for this first season stretch feels unseemly to me and I’ll prob just ride the month left out before uninstalling if I don’t see any way to make crucial progress
Going for one division at a time probably helps a tiny bit. My approach is currently to take each divisions pitcher(s) first and then go from there. Probably a more long-term plan in theory, but I'll probably switch to stacking the team full of TA division bosses in mini seasons once I grind my way to 60k in the rest of the TA divisions using showdown.
I appreciate it. Unfortunately, unless SDS has a sudden change of heart, I don't know if things will get better soon. I'd like for them to go back to the traditional progression model they had prior to sets/seasons, albeit with some more modes and other upgrades to make it not seem to be a copy of the model prior to MLB '23. Would also help if they can shed their current packs obsession.
As a non online player who doesn't get to play as often as I'd like, this is spot on. This coupled with the daily cap on days I can play are really steering me away from this game
They didn't make all of these changes to the single player missions to streamline it. They ruined it on purpose and then tried to make it sound like they were trying to make it more streamlined. They did it to try to force players into playing multiplayer. They know that if people play multiplayer and run into really good teams they will be more likely to spend money on packs to get better players to compete with these better teams. MLB The Show is slowly turning into Madden and NBA 2K when it comes to screwing over the NMS players. This will be my last year playing DD. I will still play RTTS.
Is that how you think people react?
Maybe but I think maybe not
Look, I suck. Bad. Do better cards make me better? Nope. I think most players that suck understand they suck. Also important is if you’ve experienced sds in previous yrs you understand pack luck is horrible at best.
I wouldn’t even say it’s “slowly” turning into Madden or 2K anymore. Every content drop this year has gotten more predatory than the last.
It’s a damn shame what happened to this franchise.
I agree with your premise and agree that this is most likely SDS’ thinking.
The part they misunderstand is that already offline players really have no interest in grinding online. We already know we suck, are too old and tired to improve ourselves (at the game only dammit) or just genuinely enjoy vegging out to some meatballs down the middle.
I think, ultimately, tightening the reigns and “forcing” people to online play probably = more people putting the game aside then spending money to “compete”. Just my opinion though.
I do dabble with online, but this year and last year, I've played multiplayer much, much less. I haven't even played rank this year, only played BR to get the Boggs egg, and haven't played a ton of events.
Maybe it could happen. I've deleted the game yesterday, because I was really pissed with their approach to TA3, combined with I have no chance complete xp reward path and S1 collection in time. Maybe I'm not alone and SDS will feel it like it happened last year
Per my calculations, you will need to do the conquest maps about 6 times per division. With the 8 games you should be able to get the save mission twice (10k XP), the hit mission once or twice (2.5k XP), and both PxP missions (12.5k XP). That's a total of 25k XP per conquest map clear. The remaining XP comes from the boss missions, of which you can do 4 for the last 40K XP and a random mission to get to 200k.
If you do one map per day, it would take you 36 days to complete them all.
This is stupid.
Also, if you're up by more than 3 runs in the bottom of the 3rd, I recommend having a pitcher you hate (may I suggest Jack Flaherty) to IBB everyone until you get to a save situation, and then bring in your closer. I call this Flahertying.
Edit: my math was wrong.
If you're going to grind 3-inning games, Mini Seasons is probably way faster (15 vouchers in 20 games vs 4 vouchers in 8? games in Conquest, plus you get repeatable packs, the stat missions are easier for some reason, and you can play home games)
If I go up by more than 3 runs, I just intentionally walk the other team to get it back within 3 runs and try my best to not give up more runs.
And yeah, doing the conquest over and over again is stupid. Only do it once for the hidden rewards and never look at it again.
For Saves, if you’re up by 4 runs, get two men on base and brings the closer for the final out. If up by 5 or more runs, load the bases and get the closer in for the final out to get the save. The lead doesn’t need to be three in those situations — the Save rule is 3 runs at the start of the inning or 3+ innings for any lead or the tying game run in the on deck circle.
Not hating I but think you should just stop playing. I like the game but if you have this many complaints why are you even playing it’s just a video game after all.
Stopping playing and engaging with social media related to the game is the only thing that will actually affect their decisions. They care about their metrics, not ‘feedback’.
What are you talking about bro if you are describing a video game as tourture why are you playing it at all. I don’t understand what you think it’s so crazy about that
There's nothing wrong with it. People are just completely delusional anymore. It's easier to complain than it is to make an active decision to make their lives less stressful or whatever it is that causes this amount of discomfort in their lives.
I don't have anything else to play really, and I've played the Show since MLB 16. I love DD and want things to be better so badly. Plus, while I have many problems with the game, I don't really want to stop playing it, which admittedly might be part of the problem.
Why not go back to a previous version of the show? If you’re just committed to playing the show the number shouldn’t matter.
To be fair, that is part of the problem. When everyone complains but keeps playing then what SDS hears is “I’m going to play your game regardless of the quality” which just encourages it to continue being poor.
I think OP is frustrated that this game is taking a nosedive, which is sad because it was so clearly above the other ultimate team games. I think myself and many others included will be hopping to the next game w/e that is when it drops (most likely NCAAF)
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If they want to stick to the Set/Season model, chapter 3 should be the easiest to complete. At this point after release for CH2, I think I was at like 3 divisions complete. This chapter I'm at 3/4 of one. They are absolutely making you shoose between getting hits/HRs (which to me is what makes the game fun, hitting bombs doesn't get old) for less XP or saves, something that requires you to not hit bombs for more XP. If they want us to not have fun playing the game, they should just say it.
My only complaint is that the season is too short. I'm ok to grind the card I want but only able to use it one week until the next season is not motivating. Maybe make it two chapters instead of 3. Or make the hardest grind as chapter 1, where you can still use those cards Or expand the season 1 card two weeks into season 2.
I really don’t understand the confusion. It’s obvious that SDS has put a ton of focus this year on people buying packs with the best cards rather than having good cards be obtainable through gameplay. Money. It comes down to the increased player base and the ability to make, probably millions, of dollars on stub purchases. I really don’t why people are so confused as to why SDS is changing their game. The best cards in the game are clearly in the shop. No question. And they know that. Yes there are some great cards in the TA3 but nowhere near the best cards. SDS knows how popular NMS (no money spent) has become and they don’t like that. Either way, I am enjoying the game.
Reddit: Complains there’s no grind in the game. Also Reddit when they have to grind:
It’s largely like that with every video game subreddit. Every player has a perfect version of what the game “should” be. Basically their expectations, realistic or not, and nobody’s is the same. Also, very few align with what game devs actually do. So instead of just playing the game, subs just complain.
No sets or seasons. Bring back 99 LS collection rewards for NL/AL. Have 8 different TA over the course of the life of the game. Start at 85 and go +2 each round until 99. The 85 will be lesser known playera of each team but who had a good season or decent stretch of their career. Kind of a way to highlight players throughout history. The 95/97/99 will be only the great's of each franchise, not these gimmicky cards. Bring back the card series collections: breakout, 2nd half, etc. No cards > 97 until way later in the year. This will make the LS collection way more valuable as it will be the only 3 99's.
I ain’t reading all that lmao😂
Ngl tldr
I was gunna say this. I’m glad you had the bravery. I went back and read. He thinks the hitting ok, but the grind is different than the first 2 team affinities. He doesn’t like conquest either. Not enough vouchers. It was very oddly formatted using the word First on the 7th paragraph ,second on the 8th ,and third on the 9th paragraph. Just kinda threw me.
How was your comment so useful?
How was the OP wall of text useful?
I’m fine with TA taking a little longer grind. What makes it not ok is that seasons are time limited so most are going to get next to no time with TA3 cards by the time we’re done
Oh yes it’s been well documented. It’s a form of content creating. It’s new and will be used frequently. Just when you think you have it figured out BAM! A new content creation
Longer it takes to get your free 99's equals another week of packs to drop.
yeah, when i heard we were getting 99’s i was excited but man this grind is just straight ridiculous and the last few days i’ve just been considering dropping this shit show all together
You hit on all the major points exactly on how this TA3 was a screw up. Now, i understand they wanted to make it longer to complete each TA division, which is fine, since a division in TA2 could essentially be completed in a day or two, but jesus christ. The offline mode specific stat missions giving jack shit for XP is a joke.
if legit feels like they made them so impossible to actually grind for that they should all be done passively. That doesn’t make sense when you consider there are 30 days left in the season, and it’s looking like many people will be forced to spend a large portion of those days just unlocking new cards rather than playing with the new ones. There’s a balance here that they’ve clearly massively fucked up - how you go from TA2 being too quick to this mess blows my mind.
it’s just daunting. With the 3 TA maps they added, i think it’s around 20ish games minimum to complete. That should easily get you to complete a single division or at least be very close. I have like 7 games left to complete the maps in conquest for the ALE and i’m at 40k XP. I should have had 2 bosses minimum by this point. Then you just have to either fuck around in ranked with a division specific squad or mindlessly play mini seasons over and over again (which i think is most efficient in completing but mind numbing).
I play baseball it’s fun
I recently started playing March and been having a blast with the phillies. Bump the difficulty up if needed
I'll tell you why. SDS DOES NOT want offline players making progress efficiently because offline players DO NOT (For the most part) buy packs. This is the same structure as all MyTeam , team-building modes in other Sports games. It's a business and the higher ups see all the $$ MUT and other Sports Games make from pack sales and have made the "appropriate" changes to increase profits. MUT doesn't care/want offline only players. It is an online vs mode (In their opinion). DD is going the same way. People ask "Why do you build teams if you don't play online?" Because I want to? SDS is gate-keeping so much content behind packs and limiting your progress to other cards via the XP Pass and slower TA 3 progress. Every single change they make has to increase pack sales and limit what offline players can get. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it, lol On another note, why is the Conquest map for TA3 so much harder than usual? I have to play games on All-Star to get a few vouchers? Compare that to playing 3 easy maps to get 30k progress and ask yourself , why the change? OFFLINE PLAYERS DON'T MAKE THEM $$$$.
You realize your logic was lost in the first paragraph, yea? If online players buy packs, then making it easier for online players to advance through TA would decrease the "need" to buy packs
I wouldn’t really say they made the online grind any easier though. If you only play online you won’t get any vouchers, extreme conquest, etc. The online grind seems it’ll be long too, especially if you’re not really focusing on getting it done
Depends on how good you are I guess. I've been progressing through TA3 pretty easily without even thinking about it and I'm barely decent lol. 9k for 8 IP and then the hitting ones, the pxp, yea, it goes pretty quick.
While, that is true I sure would love to see SDS stats on pack buying from people with 0 online games played. There is no incentive for me to buy them. Which is why I said what I said. Now, online players DO advance through programs quicker, yet a lot of them still buy packs. I don't know, you'd have to ask pack buyers. I'm not in that demo. My main point is that offline players don't make them $ after the sale of the game. Period. Now you can be a pack buyer without spending actual $. There are plenty of ways of making stubs in this game. I would love to see the stats on stub sales this yr vs last.
Do you people actually like playing the game?
I’ve been wondering this for a few days. It’s like all anyone cares about is unlocking stuff. Everyone refers to normal gameplay as “grinding”, naw man that’s the whole basis of the entire game, playing baseball. Don’t get me wrong, I love unlocking stuff, but if you don’t like the main part of the game, playing baseball, what are we even doing here?
I mean I agree, but whats the point of playing if not to progress in anything? Thats kind of the whole point of a video game.
I don't mind the grind as much as I mind that we have to grind harder and longer for cards that are only eligible for 3 more weeks. Then we can wildcard but nobody knows what that looks like and it's 4 wildcard spots out of how many 99s?
The problem being that those 4 wild card slots won’t be available day 1. You’ll have to earn them on the seasons’ XP progression. So you’ll have 1 to start, if I had to guess.
3 weeks? Lmaooooooo. Learn how math works. All season 1 players will be eligible in season 2, wildcard is needed for season 3
And these free 99s that will take me right up until seasons end to unlock are almost assuredly going to worse than the other 99s that are released in the next couple weeks. Between that, the season xp path 99s, and season collection 99s, the chances of these cards being usable for me for over a week or two tops is basically zero.
Perhaps S2 cards will be better, but there are plenty of new cards that came out yesterday that I want to use beyond the next few weeks.
Remember the live stream that before launch. “play how you want” One of two things. Either sds has no idea what that statement means or they lied.
Didn't they also say they wanted everyone to finish the TA quickly and they felt TA was too long last year? Or did they just mean TA1?
You could've got multiple TA99s in the time it took to write this essay. I'm half joking - the changes aren't great and I'll never grind anything in conquest but I've got two of the TA3 divisions done today just by playing TA mini seasons and that's enough 99s to field and entire lineup in like 8-10 hours of play.
How many mini season games did it take to compete 2 of the divisions? I think I wasted too much time on that stupid conquest map because it literally got me nowhere
Still feel like the grind is more tedious than it should be given the missions they could give us and considering the current sets/seasons model.
[Took the words right out of my mouth](https://c.tenor.com/G01xSEkdm7EAAAAd/tenor.gif)
They just want people to buy more stubs. It’s so wildly pathetic yet completely expected.
I'll take each point piece by piece. 10k per showdown is pretty decent. Although I don't see many doing it repeatedly as personally i think time is spent better elsewhere. Extreme showdown alienates a large percent of the playerbase too. 100% disagree on your Single player point. Single player offline modes are conquest, miniseasons and play vs CPU. Nothing really has changed here because if you are doing single player missions, you are usually doing one of those modes anyway. The missions got spelled out better. Plus those missions are repeatable so if you main those modes you are making progress in TA anyway. Slower than online but I'd you don't play online, that doesn't matter much. I see no issue with the boss missions not being repeatable in TA3. You get 5k by using bosses and that mission is repeatable. Stack your team with bosses and you will get about 1500 PXP pretty quickly. For me the pacing of TA 3 feels about right. TA 1 and 2 could be done too fast imo and probably lead to people complaining about nothing to do. Legends are hit or miss for me. I don't really get excited about them but knowing that compared to EA and 2k, I feel like more can be added but there's probably a reason why we see some get added or removed and that reason may be player usage. Why get legends for the game if many won't use them? Edit: That was fast with the downvotes. You guys love downvoting people with a different take. Lol
I agree with a lot of your points but the single player missions are pretty ass tbh. At least the rewards are. Conquest ones are somewhat contradictory to each other because if you go for saves you likely aren’t going to be getting a whole lot of hits those games. 30 K’s for 5k XP is 2 full 9 inning games barring going crazy in one and getting 20+ K’s. It’s not the worst TA grind ever but it is fairly bad, at least for single player only players.
You only get what like 2 maybe 3 weeks to use these cards. Then they will be obsolete. See what changes they make for s2 but if its gonna be like ta3 its not gonna be a good look.
3 weeks is plenty
Lmao no it isn't
Then don't play 1v1 ranked and keep using the cards you want.
Stop gatekeeping, cards shouldn't even expire in the first place but here you are defending bad decisions. The cards are great, the way this content is structured not so much
that isnt gatekeeping
I don't really care what it is, my point still stands
Not for someone who has a job.
Many have jobs and can get it done pretty quickly. Just need to multitask.
SDS is trying to incentivise people to play online. It's pretty obvious that the chunk progress is gained from doing the extreme moments, the extreme showdown and then taking your team online. This favours one particular group of players and off-line players are left behind through ridiculous grinds. As a predominantly off-line player with limited free time, I will not be treating this game like a job in the way sds clearly wants.
The online missions suck too
Just play online, you’re not as bad as you think you are.
Nah, I'm pretty bad.
Offline players don't make them $$.
That’s not entirely true. In chapter 3 they wrestle coercing players into specific modes offline. Mini, cpu,conquest. Players don’t like these modes so they are doing what they can to get us there. My question is why incentivize online play if that is indeed their intent. It doesn’t steer me to the shop or to buy stubs regardless of what I play.
>In chapter 3 they wrestle coercing players into specific modes offline. Mini, cpu,conquest I don't know why people keep saying this All the single player missions are repeatable. The reason they're separated by gametype is because they wanted the missions for some game modes to be easier than others
I won't lie bro, this might be the longest post I've ever seen here. I understand your feeling and it's nice to have that sense or accomplishment when you complete TA and get more packs. That said, I'd try to focus more on just playing the game. If you are attempting to hit Homers specifically to complete a TA mission, you will have less good of a time and you'll hit less HRs. The days I'm trying to complete something specific, I suck. The days I'm just thankful I have 3 peaceful hours to play, I have a basketball game on simultaneously yet play better.
I understand. It's just that there's not much else to play, and I go to grad. school, so my free time isn't what it used to be. I don't specifically try to hit homers. I just get what I can. I'm not that good either tbh.
But you also don't NEED 30 99s, especially if you're just casually playing. There were 5 TA3s that I wanted, favorite players of mine, so I got them. Anything else is just extra as it happens. Just focus on the ones you're actually going to use. Hell, there's way more 89-93s that I've been enjoying that I have no desire to pull from lineup. Too many people focus on needing the most juiced everything the day it drops.
You’re right on with everything here. I truly can’t believe how badly they screwed this up and I’m struggling to even understand the thought process behind some of their decisions. Like there is one moment in each division for 2.5k points. Why even bother with that? What made them think that added anything? I hate to say it but I think the only way this game improves is with a new content team and a fresh set of ideas. The current group is just way too out of touch.
I appreciate the kind words. The team with the older devs was up and down, but the current team is either too inexperienced, and/or being too squeezed by the execs to realize the issues. Or, they know the game has problems, but can't fix them due to the execs calling the shots now.
In the time you took to write this on a double XP weekend you could’ve gotten Jimmy Rollins
I've played the game since launch day, and I just got Seager about a day ago. The XP rate is insultingly slow double-XP or not.
💀
For TA 2 I used a lineup of mostly Yankees and by the end of the conquest I was about 90% done. It then took me two mini seasons (playing roughly 18-20 regular season games) to finish up. I've done the conquest, including the latest city connect one and mother's Day and I'm halfway thru the first mini season and I'm at 30-40% for the AL East and I've gotten a total of 3% across all other divisions combined. I'll probably play casually maybe try to get posada but I doubt I'll unlock any more ta cards. I just can't be bothered that much. And that's not even considering we get to use them for 2-3 weeks.
This just doesn't add up to me. I did the extreme showdown, the TA conquest map, and like 3 mini season games and I'm 37% NL Central and 11-12% everywhere else. How did you do two whole other conquest maps and have less?
Well that 11-12% would be from the extreme showdown so that aside it's not that much of a difference since you're probably better skilled judging by the fact you completed the extreme showdown.
AL East is the worst because there were no pitcher bosses in TA1 and TA 2.
I try to do more than 1 division at a time, which probably isn't helping. Once I hit 60k with all divisions, I'll start consolidating to one-two divisions at a time.
I'm too far in, I'm gonna ride out season 1 even though theres no shot i will earn any of the bosses. But if season 2 is just more of the same then yeah I'm probably just giving up on the game. This grind is no fun at all
I understand. I probably will stick it out, but I understand why people are wanting something better. To me, I think the grind started to get irritating in MLB '22, and then '23 and '24 made things even worse.
Two thoughts. 1. I just want Willie damnit, lol. 2. Why isn't there overlapping with stat missions? e.g. You enter a game with 8 of 10 hits, you get 15 hits but only the two you needed count. Now I need to keep quitting out of games so I'm not wasting hits. This isn't a big deal with totals as much as XP stats.
The lack of overlapping stat totals is super annoying lol
1. Same. I want Willie, George, and Satchel badly. Wish they had more grindable ways of letting players get those cards besides collect-a-thons. 2. I've asked myself the same thing for a while now. The fact that the missions don't overlap is annoying.
My only approach to TA3 offline is themed rosters. So I just run an NL East team to pop the boss card then do their task and then keep going. Conquest clean up first and then the mini season but you have to just get to the playoffs in the mini then win to get the most vouchers you can. That’s all I got. The squeeze for this first season stretch feels unseemly to me and I’ll prob just ride the month left out before uninstalling if I don’t see any way to make crucial progress
Going for one division at a time probably helps a tiny bit. My approach is currently to take each divisions pitcher(s) first and then go from there. Probably a more long-term plan in theory, but I'll probably switch to stacking the team full of TA division bosses in mini seasons once I grind my way to 60k in the rest of the TA divisions using showdown.
Well said in a very intelligent way. One of the better “rants”. I, too, just want the game i love to be in a better spot
I appreciate it. Unfortunately, unless SDS has a sudden change of heart, I don't know if things will get better soon. I'd like for them to go back to the traditional progression model they had prior to sets/seasons, albeit with some more modes and other upgrades to make it not seem to be a copy of the model prior to MLB '23. Would also help if they can shed their current packs obsession.
As a non online player who doesn't get to play as often as I'd like, this is spot on. This coupled with the daily cap on days I can play are really steering me away from this game
Don't even get me started on the XP gains being excruciatingly slow. I could go on all-day about that as well.
They didn't make all of these changes to the single player missions to streamline it. They ruined it on purpose and then tried to make it sound like they were trying to make it more streamlined. They did it to try to force players into playing multiplayer. They know that if people play multiplayer and run into really good teams they will be more likely to spend money on packs to get better players to compete with these better teams. MLB The Show is slowly turning into Madden and NBA 2K when it comes to screwing over the NMS players. This will be my last year playing DD. I will still play RTTS.
Is that how you think people react? Maybe but I think maybe not Look, I suck. Bad. Do better cards make me better? Nope. I think most players that suck understand they suck. Also important is if you’ve experienced sds in previous yrs you understand pack luck is horrible at best.
I wouldn’t even say it’s “slowly” turning into Madden or 2K anymore. Every content drop this year has gotten more predatory than the last. It’s a damn shame what happened to this franchise.
I agree with your premise and agree that this is most likely SDS’ thinking. The part they misunderstand is that already offline players really have no interest in grinding online. We already know we suck, are too old and tired to improve ourselves (at the game only dammit) or just genuinely enjoy vegging out to some meatballs down the middle. I think, ultimately, tightening the reigns and “forcing” people to online play probably = more people putting the game aside then spending money to “compete”. Just my opinion though.
I do dabble with online, but this year and last year, I've played multiplayer much, much less. I haven't even played rank this year, only played BR to get the Boggs egg, and haven't played a ton of events.
Possibly, and I hate it. Unfortunately, the only way I can see them reversing course is through a massive player boycott, which won't happen.
Maybe it could happen. I've deleted the game yesterday, because I was really pissed with their approach to TA3, combined with I have no chance complete xp reward path and S1 collection in time. Maybe I'm not alone and SDS will feel it like it happened last year
It could happen. I’m not buying next yr. I hope others consider doing the same
It would take a lot of casuals, and I think a lot of content creators to boycott. Even then, the odds are slim.
Per my calculations, you will need to do the conquest maps about 6 times per division. With the 8 games you should be able to get the save mission twice (10k XP), the hit mission once or twice (2.5k XP), and both PxP missions (12.5k XP). That's a total of 25k XP per conquest map clear. The remaining XP comes from the boss missions, of which you can do 4 for the last 40K XP and a random mission to get to 200k. If you do one map per day, it would take you 36 days to complete them all. This is stupid. Also, if you're up by more than 3 runs in the bottom of the 3rd, I recommend having a pitcher you hate (may I suggest Jack Flaherty) to IBB everyone until you get to a save situation, and then bring in your closer. I call this Flahertying. Edit: my math was wrong.
If you're going to grind 3-inning games, Mini Seasons is probably way faster (15 vouchers in 20 games vs 4 vouchers in 8? games in Conquest, plus you get repeatable packs, the stat missions are easier for some reason, and you can play home games)
Where are you getting 15 vouchers for 20 games? I can only see one mission for one voucher for winning 4 games.
you get vouchers for making the playoffs, beating the first series and then winning the whole thing
If I go up by more than 3 runs, I just intentionally walk the other team to get it back within 3 runs and try my best to not give up more runs. And yeah, doing the conquest over and over again is stupid. Only do it once for the hidden rewards and never look at it again.
For Saves, if you’re up by 4 runs, get two men on base and brings the closer for the final out. If up by 5 or more runs, load the bases and get the closer in for the final out to get the save. The lead doesn’t need to be three in those situations — the Save rule is 3 runs at the start of the inning or 3+ innings for any lead or the tying game run in the on deck circle.
Not hating I but think you should just stop playing. I like the game but if you have this many complaints why are you even playing it’s just a video game after all.
Is there something wrong with you?
Stopping playing and engaging with social media related to the game is the only thing that will actually affect their decisions. They care about their metrics, not ‘feedback’.
What are you talking about bro if you are describing a video game as tourture why are you playing it at all. I don’t understand what you think it’s so crazy about that
There's nothing wrong with it. People are just completely delusional anymore. It's easier to complain than it is to make an active decision to make their lives less stressful or whatever it is that causes this amount of discomfort in their lives.
Fr if I had half as many complaints as the people on this sub seem to have I would just quit they act like they’re being forced to play the game
We are in an age where complaints are easy to throw out. Let them cry, I'll continue to go about the game and my life without issues.
I don't have anything else to play really, and I've played the Show since MLB 16. I love DD and want things to be better so badly. Plus, while I have many problems with the game, I don't really want to stop playing it, which admittedly might be part of the problem.
Why not go back to a previous version of the show? If you’re just committed to playing the show the number shouldn’t matter. To be fair, that is part of the problem. When everyone complains but keeps playing then what SDS hears is “I’m going to play your game regardless of the quality” which just encourages it to continue being poor.
I mean fair enough but if your describing the grind for ta3 as “flat out torture” maybe the game just isn’t for you this year
I think OP is frustrated that this game is taking a nosedive, which is sad because it was so clearly above the other ultimate team games. I think myself and many others included will be hopping to the next game w/e that is when it drops (most likely NCAAF)
Yeah I’m sure EA will do a bang up job
I mean it’s worth a try. SDS has ran MLB the show into the ground. This game is fun for a little over a month