[QuikSand]

Team Diamonds - a (sort of) wrap up post

I noted here, with some enthusiasm, the team diamonds program. A pretty big deal for this game in its yearly cycle, it provides one high-level player for each franchise, available to gain by completing an expensive set of various players from that franchise. This year, the team diamond players were rated 90, making them among the most useful and coveted players in the game at that time. In addition, there was an extra incentive, if you completed all 32 of the team diamond sets, you gained tokens sufficient to complete a set for a supercharged 95 Dan Marino card, Which was both the highest rated card in the game, and usable with all 32 theme teams. A deliberately very powerful card, and one that many people would engage the lengthy process to obtain. Overall, this is a pretty well thought out program to launch in the early stages of this year long campaign.

Now, the situation has changed. The various 90 rated team diamond cards are no longer highly coveted, they are no longer generally speaking selling for 250 K… Many of them are now selling for more or less training value, which for a 90 rated card is about 100 K. There are still a handful that sell at a premium, but that is more like 180 K. Prices for the relatively modest components of these sets, however, have not shrunk along with the price for the top and card… Meaning that finishing these individual sets is no longer profitable, or even a break even proposition. For the relatively boring cards that are now selling for 100 K, purchasing the components might cost 175K, or thereabouts.

So, the net effect of this program, now that it has kind of run its course, is that the rich got richer, and the poor get the picture. If you had lots and lots of coins, or lots and lots of time, or preferably both… You went out and assembled all 32 of these sets, got many of those players, sold them back for more coins at a profit, and then assemble the Dan Marino and his power up card… And you now probably still possess the most powerful card in the game. Or, alternatively, you sold the Marino card at a premium price and got back, say, one and a half million coins.

I landed somewhere in the middle. I never had enough coins to really engage in all 32 sets, so I did my own bit of profiteering here and there, I ended up completing six of the sets, a few of them more than once, and did OK by the whole thing. But now, the Marino card is basically unreachable for me. I can’t afford to sync 1 million coins in the process of doing the remaining 26 of these sets, just in hopes of getting a Marino card that sells now for 800 K.

It’s fine, the way I play this game, committing to not spending real money, means that I miss out on some of the high-end things… They want to have things in the game be so moving and exciting to push people to pay real money through micro transactions. I get it, it is a business.

So, in practical effect, I think my ability to continue grinding out coins as components of these sets will be much more sparse. I have done the Andre Rison set six or seven times now, and I have bought and sold some of the peculiar parts for that set many times over. Now, I am seeing some of the peculiar cards that had previously been selling inexplicably for 10 or 15 or 20 K… Those cards are now available for 3000 coins. Two weeks ago, I would jump on this… Now, I just don’t have much confidence that there will be resilience in these sets. I will probably finish Rison one more time, try to sell it for 180 K, and that’s probably it.