My Final Message..

The worst, finest drop of all time, an SDS employee on a burner account? I said I wasn't going to talk MLB The Show Diamond Dynasty anymore, but... Here we are. This pack is egregious. These exchanges are even more egregious. Before we get into this, I'm just gonna say it right off the top. 2K's my team and Madden and FIFA's ultimate team being worse means absolutely nothing. Let's start this video by going all the way back to 2018. The first time I was ever asked by MLB The Show to do anything was when they flew me out for the cover athlete behind the scenes in 2018 for Bryce Harper's Cup. A couple of months later, MLB The Show invited me and a bunch of other content creators out to San Diego to see the studio play the game. We all got together. This was the first ever community event. This is news. Cheers. There he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys ever heard of Twitch Prime? Yes. Yeah? Well, let's tell the people about it. Why are you not vlogging right now, guys? You know what? I was up at 6.15, so I'm awake. I have my coffee, but I'm just not trying to vlog. They gave us a couple things for free. They let us play the game early. They took our feedback. We had face-to-face conversations with them about things we wanted to change in the game. And if you were playing the game back then, you remember MLB The Show 18 was horrible. Immortal Cards ruined MLB The Show. MLB The Show 18 was just microtransactions for bobbleheads and... Base players so that you can unlock immortals. The reason that community event was such a big deal back then was because it was the first time San Diego Studio had ever done something like this, and they were doing it immediately after a bad year. They brought a bunch of content creators in to discuss, what can we do differently? What can we change? What do you want us to take out? What do you want better? And I remember sitting at lunch with Tips and Lewis and talking about how bad immortals were, what exactly it was about immortals that were so bad, and we had a lot of say in what changed between 18 and 19. We really did. And then the game went on to have like a three, four. 4 year incredible run from MLB 19 through the C19 drama all the way to MLB The Show 22 this game was peak and then in MLB The Show 23 they introduced Seasons and this was the first time there was a huge change in the game that seemed almost entirely centered around how can we make as much money off of this mode as possible and for the last few years it just feels like Every little decision that gets made in the game, fun is not the number one priority. Getting people excited to play the game is not the number one priority. Getting people to spend their money is the number one priority. And I wouldn't be shocked if every time an SDS content employee or someone on the team comes up with an idea and they wanna pitch it to Sony to put it in the game, how does this make us money? Izzy. Probably a conversation in every single one of those meetings now that this game made as much money as it did between 19 and 22. This is now a cash cow because of the peak that this game had. Let's take a look at this tweet from Scan on Twitter. Aluminous420 tweets, Why is everyone so upset about the finest exchanges? It cost me 200k subs for all four cards. 50 each for those four specific cards at 99 overall seemed like a decent deal to me. Scan quote tweeted it and had a pretty good breakdown. Said, not trying to be rude, just want to explain the complaints. Why did many creators complain? There used to be an MLB The Show where 200K for four cards wasn't normal. Especially in November, and for many creators, they've seen a mode that's very no-money-spent friendly constantly dangle microtransactions in your face. MLB The Show nowadays requires you to play the mode an unhealthy amount to have enough stubs to get all the content. This is the case when the modes are all the exact same as they've been for the last few years, just minor additions like Diamond Quest and Weekend Classic, which only gets updated once a month and ranked. The fact that 200K for four exchanges seems like a small number nowadays isn't exactly example for this. We're just used to expensive cards remaining expensive all year, all the time now. Also, this time of year was when SCS typically started to make the fun content more accessible. Finest packs existed. You got them for free. I don't think they used to cost 50k. Could be wrong. Finest packs have always been, you know, in the store and relatively expensive, but they did give Give you a bunch of... free options and the exchanges in existence period is horrendous my biggest complaint always is if you're putting cards in this game and there is nothing playable involved with unlocking it it's bad content what do you mean i can unlock james wood by just trading in a bunch of expensive cards where's the gameplay I want to play the game. It's a paywall. Hey, here, buy this James Wood. That's all it is. There's nothing else attached. There's no playing MLB The Show involved. It's bad content. Many of us creators have played for a long while where the accessibility to content was a big reason why we played. Also, creators have audience of players they know play far less than them. So many of these players won't even sniff the content without pulling out their wallet. He then goes on to talk in detail about this specific person, and this is important. From what I see of your profile, again, I mean no disrespect, you're playing the game to a point where you have 200 parallel five cards. You're in a small minority of players that are playing this game a ton. Just because it's a mindless experience for you does not mean it doesn't hamper the experience for others. If you are playing this game 20, 30, 40 hours a week, You are in the absolute minority, one percenters. People want to turn their console on and unlock James Wood. They don't want to mindlessly grind for two weeks to get the stubs necessary to buy them when he comes out. That's the game now. But unfortunately, there are enough whales out there that just dump $1,000 into the game when big things come out and then whatever. Two grand at the beginning of the year, let me do the collections right away. There's enough of those people in the community that they're not gonna care about the rest of us. And as long as the super grinder community Defends this, you're making it so much worse. The way the Illuminous 420 type of player plays the game, you will not be impacted by the things we want. You will still have all the funds necessary to get whatever player you want whenever because of how much you play the game. There's no structure of the game where you won't be set, but that's not how 99% of people play. Now, another response to Scan's tweet that I thought was interesting. Who says you have to get every card? Why not play with the free cards that are easy to earn? I've learned that sometimes there's cards that do better for me. Also, how come no one thinks about Battle Royale as a place to try out cards they can't unlock themselves? Jose? Pretty good reply. And I think this opens up another point that I would like to talk about. Scan hit the nail on the head here with his reply that there's so many 99s in the game now. It's super saturated. I remember when 99s used to come out back in the day. We would do this. We would go to Battle Royale and jump into BR and try and debut cards that way. I remember when the Vladdy Jr. Prospect card came out years ago. Everyone made a video using him in Battle Royale because it takes a million redrafts to get who you want now because of how saturated the game is. On top of that, they have destroyed the value of the mode. You could go to Battle Royale to legitimately make stubs even if you weren't a consistent, flawless player. If you could just go 12-in-1 or 10-in-1 or whatever year it was you were playing, every now and then, the cards were so good and so valuable, you could flip them and make a bunch of stubs. People tried Battle Royale even if they weren't good. I will never forget the day when that flawless pack became a no-sell. That was stage one in destroying the mode. Now, the first sentence of your question, who says you have to get every card? Hand up, I think every card should be obtainable. This game has a one-year life cycle. Everything in it is irrelevant in March of 2027. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing in this game has actual real value. None in four years, they're going to cut the servers off and you're never going to see this stuff again. You're buying imaginary items that you don't actually own. Everything should be unlockable. Every card, every mode, everywhere should be unlockable without playing the game 38 hours a week or spending all of your money. Now, shortly after this content drop came out, a few hours later, we have a burner account pop up that's talking pretty reckless towards Sony and people who only bash San Diego Studios over Sony. Now, hands up. Very much could be a completely fake person, completely making it up, that has no attachment whatsoever to San Diego Studios. And as someone who has been to San Diego Studios a bunch, and I was there in 2019 when the Sony people came downstairs to watch over us, and it was very awkward, and you could tell that the SCS employees were like shaking in their boots, I understand. So I doubt an actual employee who is in the walls would jump on a burner account acting like that. At the end of the day, I don't care if it was legitimately legitimate or not. 90% of the stuff they said rings true and is legitimate. I don't know where this game goes from here. I remember back in the peak of this game, I was loving it so much. I was having so much fun. I had two accounts. You could grind everything, play everything. You'd have so much fun. I was willing to swipe the card for 50 bucks or a hundred bucks here and there to get something unlocked for pack squads because I was having so much fun. No money spent on the other account anyway. Like I didn't stress that stuff. Now I want Sony to understand this because I know there are thousands of people like me. I feel nasty playing the game. When I can tell you're trying to push people to the, and I know that it's only like 0.1% of the user base, the whales that are making you all of your money. But at some point you are going to lose so many people that those whales aren't going to make up for it. I really do think this game will go the hockey ultimate team route before it goes the Madden route. And when I say the Madden route, I mean, Madden can do whatever they want. There will always be whales. The game's big enough. The community's big enough. There will always be whales. I have always questioned if MLB The Show actually has that. And I wouldn't be stunned if a few years from now, this mode is just dead in the water with the direction they're going now. And I've been trying to say this for a couple of years now. You need to make this more fun. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. James Wood, Bryce Terang, two really popular, fun, young players that people would like to use. Parker Messick, almost might win rookie of the year. If not, we'll be in second, probably top five in the Cy Young. These cards are just sitting behind exchanges. And the only reason the exchange is 85 plus live series is because 85 plus live series cards have had no value all year. People didn't hoard them. Because there was no other use for them. People have been quick-selling them. People don't just have hundreds of 85-plus diamonds in their inventory. This was an attempt to bump the value on those cards. There's not a coincidence that there was a stub sale when this went in the game. It's... Yeah, now I'm sitting here three o'clock in the morning deep thinking this edit I've been editing this video for the last hour or so putting it together I'm big on if you're gonna provide a criticism You should also provide some sort of solution or an opinion to one so that's how I'm gonna end this I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told Stephen Lewis Ramon and everyone else at that lunch on day one of community day MLB 19 I see what the other games are doing I see the amount of money that's getting made in these ultimate team modes. I know you got people above you that are going to be looking down on you, looking at how much money are we making on this, and they're looking over at Madden and 2K. You can have your paywalls, but you can't structure the game around the paywalls, which is what you did in MLB 18 with the Immortals, and you almost lost everyone, and you were able to reel us back in. You should never have content that has nothing playable with it at all, especially... If the only way you unlock it is to exchange good cards and you do stub sales and stuff to you you're doing that you're trying to make people buy the cards. Give me something to do. Every single content drop should have something to do. Think about when the egg hunt program came out for the first time a few years ago. That was one of the craziest community days ever. Why? Because it was the first time in Diamond Dynasty history we were required to do everything. You had to put your feet in every pool. You had to play every single mode, even if it was just for 10 seconds. The whole community went on a scavenger hunt. Think back to the inning programs back in the day and the way you guys used to release that stuff on social media. The three inning program players had a combined 700 stolen bases and 400 strikeouts and 17 all-star games or whatever it is. And you just let the, you gave the community a puzzle. You never confirmed anything. You let us chat it up for a couple of days. There was, you guys generated hype better for releases. When those releases came out, it wasn't always the exact same. Thing. Every time. I get it. There's so many things that have been added into this game between MLB 18 and MLB 22. There's so many different things that need to be updated. And I think it's cool that when content comes out, there's so many different ways you could approach. You can kind of pick and choose how you want to unlock something because of all the different ways that you do it. But dude, every content drop is, boom, here's a couple of moments that gets you 30%. Here's some PXP missions to get you another 30%. And if you want to just skip that and do this conquest map and or mini season and or showdown, you can use it as a shortcut. It's the same thing every time. Every content drop is copy paste every single time. And the crazy thing is that structure is great, but you can't just do it over and over and over and over and over again. You can have your paywalls. I talked about this. I said it about the Bobbleheads and the Immortals in 18. You can have your paywalls and lure your whales. But if you really want to get the whales on the game... You have to make the game really fun. Getting everybody buzzing about it online is what's going to make those 200 MLB players turn the game on, swipe their debit card for two grand and unlock all the cards so they can join in on the fun. You have to create the fun first and then the whales will follow. A content drop should be so unique and interesting that 10 streamers go live on Twitch and they all have a thousand viewers. YouTube's buzzing, Twitter's going nuts. We know what the content is before it comes out now and it doesn't come out that often. It does. Doesn't feel like there's enough passion. The passionate content drops are few and far between. It's very wishy-washy. Take that as you wish. I'm sorry, I love you all. Have a great day.