Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

[misterawesome]

This is my first time doing some heavy DD play. Doing Topps Now moments and the April POTM has built me up a solid team. I was pushing hard on the 2nd Inning but just fell short of scoring the Bosses.



I'm having a baby in a few weeks, so I'll be losing the time to do heavy grinding on lots of programs, but I am still interested in playing with my current squad and picking up a few new guys along the way (via pack luck, stubs, etc). I'm looking for some recos to make my limited time most rewarding. Would Ranked Seasons make sense for me (I'm interested in longer-form/continuous play, rather than 3-inning spurts)? Should I chip away at Topps Moments and Evolutions to build up a towards season-long exchanges?


Any and all advice would be a help!

<style></style>

[papadell]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

This is my first time doing some heavy DD play. Doing Topps Now moments and the April POTM has built me up a solid team. I was pushing hard on the 2nd Inning but just fell short of scoring the Bosses.



I'm having a baby in a few weeks, so I'll be losing the time to do heavy grinding on lots of programs, but I am still interested in playing with my current squad and picking up a few new guys along the way (via pack luck, stubs, etc). I'm looking for some recos to make my limited time most rewarding. Would Ranked Seasons make sense for me (I'm interested in longer-form/continuous play, rather than 3-inning spurts)? Should I chip away at Topps Moments and Evolutions to build up a towards season-long exchanges?


Any and all advice would be a help!

<style></style>

With your interests and the limited time, I would recommend doing the Daily Moments to build towards the rewards each month. You get the Evo cards that you can turn into better cards and the ultimate prize of the featured monthly card. I would do the Topps Now moments each week and then do the monthly programs to earn all those rewards and cards. And ultimately I would stick to Ranked if that's what you truly enjoy.

Ranked games can be a 30-45 minute investment per game. If you want the longer form games it's really your only choice anyway outside of the random 6-inning events. But I think doing the above could help you maximize your time, scoring the various rewards along the way and making progress in the Inning Program.

And any time you might have a little unexpected extra time, there will be plenty more you can do on top of that as well.

And congrats on the baby!

[misterawesome]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

Thanks for this! I was staying on top of those moments before getting sucked into chasing the dragon of that 2nd inning program, so I'm happy to hear I was on the right track. They get a little redundant so I'm going to mix in some RS. I played my RS game this AM...well, until my opponent bailed in the 3rd inning. I'm hoping that's not too regular an occurrence.



It would be an ideal for me to have some sort of offline RS mode, where the CPU would build out opponent teams from the DD card universe. So you would get a comparable level of competition, in ongoing environment (81 or 162 game season) but without the drama of sharks or early-quitters. But I digress.


And thank you for the well-wishes - it's the first baby and I'm very excited!



<style></style>

[misterawesome]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

With your interests and the limited time, I would recommend doing the Daily Moments to build towards the rewards each month. You get the Evo cards that you can turn into better cards and the ultimate prize of the featured monthly card. I would do the Topps Now moments each week and then do the monthly programs to earn all those rewards and cards. And ultimately I would stick to Ranked if that's what you truly enjoy.

Would Team Affinity be worth my limited time? I realize that's a very subjective. But there are two TA2 cards I'm interested in - Edgar and Mays - and wanted to see if that's worth chasing at the expense of Topps Now.

<style></style>

[papadell]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

Thanks for this! I was staying on top of those moments before getting sucked into chasing the dragon of that 2nd inning program, so I'm happy to hear I was on the right track. They get a little redundant so I'm going to mix in some RS. I played my RS game this AM...well, until my opponent bailed in the 3rd inning. I'm hoping that's not too regular an occurrence.



It would be an ideal for me to have some sort of offline RS mode, where the CPU would build out opponent teams from the DD card universe. So you would get a comparable level of competition, in ongoing environment (81 or 162 game season) but without the drama of sharks or early-quitters. But I digress.


And thank you for the well-wishes - it's the first baby and I'm very excited!



<style></style>

I believe they'll eventually add something like you described. In 2019 it was the Signature Teams program with a handful of rewards including Vlad Sr. Last year it was the All Timers Program with Ruth. I'd bet they add something like this later in the year.

Moments are definitely redundant. But the Topps Now ones specifically help you earn the Monthly award cards which are usually pretty decent and free for just playing. I'd recommend just doing them first thing and getting them out of the way if you want to complete them as they can sometimes be annoying.

Would Team Affinity be worth my limited time? I realize that's a very subjective. But there are two TA2 cards I'm interested in - Edgar and Mays - and wanted to see if that's worth chasing at the expense of Topps Now.

<style></style>

The beauty about Team Affinity is you don't really have to chase it. You'll accumulate points just for playing with cards from each team/division. And you earn points quicker playing online so if you prefer RS, you're already on the way. Granted, it requires stacking your team with specific players to earn towards their divisions but it can be done.

If you really want those cards, you don't have to grind too much to just get the first choice pack in each division and then you can use them whenever you want. The conquest maps are probably like 60-90 minutes at most and get you a decent chunk of the way there. If you have the collection pieces for each division that helps too.

Overall, you get rewarded simply for playing this game so you can keep playing like normal and get there eventually or grind stuff like showdown/moments/conquest to get there a bit quicker.

[brunopuntzjones]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

I'd focus on anything timed - daily moments, monthly program conquest/showdown and missions. The daily team innings missions and exchanges may not seem like much but knocking those out every day, which requires at most 30-45 minutes if you need pitcher innings, adds up to like 50k XP over the course of a program, more if you decided to do the online only ones, too.

Team Affinity isn't timed and it looks like not focusing on it will only give you more opportunities to accumulate stats across all the different seasons (i.e. plate appearances for season 2 and innings for season 1 count the same right now). If you have more time later you can get a little more bang for your buck.

I tend to play a lot on weekends but I find that if I can get in the daily moments and a conquest game or two on weekdays I can more than keep up with the program. I've finished both ahead of schedule playing offline only and with the occasional day off.

[misterawesome]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

This is all great advice - thank you. I've been splitting my time between doing the West TA2 Conquest Map and playing catchup on the Topps Now Moments (I'm about two weeks behind). I need a break after banging out too many moments, and want the progression of a real game instead of basically taking BP over and over.


Once I get my AL West goal (Edgar Martinez), I want to work on 94 Willie Mays. Will I be able to "re-use" my West Conquest points on the NL West automatically? Or will I have to do the Conquest a second time?

<style></style>

[papadell]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

This is all great advice - thank you. I've been splitting my time between doing the West TA2 Conquest Map and playing catchup on the Topps Now Moments (I'm about two weeks behind). I need a break after banging out too many moments, and want the progression of a real game instead of basically taking BP over and over.


Once I get my AL West goal (Edgar Martinez), I want to work on 94 Willie Mays. Will I be able to "re-use" my West Conquest points on the NL West automatically? Or will I have to do the Conquest a second time?

<style></style>

The Conquest points are one time only so you'll won't get extra. You do get the Plate Appearances tallying as well as having missions with the players in the packs.

[JoshC1977]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

Once I get my AL West goal (Edgar Martinez), I want to work on 94 Willie Mays. Will I be able to "re-use" my West Conquest points on the NL West automatically? Or will I have to do the Conquest a second time?

<style></style>

Once you beat the West map...you will get 30 TA points for both the NL West and AL West.

[papadell]

Re: Guidance for a No $ Spent Player Losing Grind Time

Oh I completely misread that haha