Perfect Team

Perfect Team adds an additional play mode to OOTP: a collectible card game that allows you to build teams and play against thousands of other OOTP owners in online leagues, using the OOTP simulation engine.

If you're new to Perfect Team, you may want to have a look at the Tips section below before you get started - there's no way of reloading your game after a mistake here, so you'll want to avoid those mistakes in the first place!

Most of the Perfect Team screens have an equivalent in OOTP and work in the same manner. However, Perfect Team operates a little differently than normal OOTP play in some respects:

• no scouting
• no injuries
• no coaching staff
• no finances/contracts
• no trades
• no player morale system
• player development is disabled (although players can learn new positions)
• there is a limit of 26 players on the active roster, with no September roster expansion
• the reserve roster is limited to 175 players; additional players can be held in "inactive" status
• you must keep at least 20 players, 4 starters, 4 relievers, and at least 7 players in each lineup or the AI may set up your roster
• players demoted to the reserve roster have to stay there for a minimum of 14 days (league time)
• only one card per player is allowed on the active roster, including different cards for the same player
• the default player rating scale is 1-100 (with display of ratings > 100 enabled), but can be changed by the user
• games cannot be played live, although it is possible to watch the replays

During the league's regular season (Monday-Saturday), 31 league days are simulated every real day, one simulation every 30 minutes, starting at 10 AM ET and ending at 1 AM ET. On Sundays the postseason will be simulated, starting at 12 noon ET and simulating every 15 minutes. In addition to the regular leagues, Entry Pool leagues for new players are also running, simulating one game every 30 minutes and running non-stop until the next week begins and the teams are assigned to a regular league.

Leagues are sorted into different tiers: from the top down, they are Perfect, Diamond, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. Additionally, the Entry Pool league holds newly-created teams before their first assignment to a regular league (usually Iron, except in the first week following the game's release, where some teams may begin in higher leagues based on their Entry Pool record.) Every week, the teams with the best finishes in one level will be promoted to the next-highest one, while the teams with the worst records will be demoted down to make room for them. Teams will never be demoted out of an Iron league.

Perfect Points and cards can be acquired in a variety of ways:

• you can win additional points when your team receives achievements; the best and rarest achievements will award significantly more, up to several thousand for extremely rare events like perfect games
• you can win new player card packs by unlocking achievements in Challenge Mode games in regular OOTP; these are limited to one pack every few days, and are more likely to occur when your receive a higher-level achievement
• player cards can be bought and sold for Perfect Points via the in-game auction system; when putting a card up for auction, you can set the start price, a "buy now" price, and the duration of the auction. The auction house is global - everyone in the game can see every auctioned player, not just the ones in their league
• Perfect Points can be purchased via the "Buy Perfect Points" option on the Market menu
• standard card packs of 6 cards each can be purchased; these packs are guaranteed to have at least one bronze-level card per pack. Packs the contain higher-level cards like Gold and Diamond, and special packs like ones with Historical cards only, will also be available, although some of these will only be offered at specific times.
• cards can be sold immediately for a fixed amount, based on value category; if you do this, the card will simply disappear in our system and you get the PP added to your balance immediately.
• Points can be awarded for winning tournaments and completing collections.

"Live" cards are tied to the current Major League season; if a player's real-life performance improves or declines during the year from the predicted initial card values, his ratings will change.

Collection Missions

Collection Missions expand the collecting aspect of Perfect Team in a new direction, allowing rewards to be won by collecting cards. There are two types of missions: Missions for cards, and missions for completing other missions.

Missions for cards simply require collecting specific cards. When clicking on a mission title, the expanded mission info will pop down and show you the cards that are required to complete the mission plus the reward(s). Some missions require you to collect all cards of that mission, other missions a certain number - for example, any 7 out of 12 total cards.

Once a mission is complete, you can submit the mission to our servers, you will then receive the mission reward(s) and the cards of the mission (or the selected ones for the missions which only require any X out of Y cards) get locked. Locked cards can no longer be sold or auctioned, but they still can be played as usual.

Mission-completion missions can be finished by completing a certain set of missions, getting you an additional reward: Let's say there are Mission 1, 2 and 3 and a Mission A which is a mission that includes these three missions. After completing each mission you will get their reward, and after you have completed all three, you can submit mission A and collect another reward, usually for a much better reward than those given by the individual missions. Some of the very best cards in the game can only be acquired through completing missions (or buying those cards on the auction house, if someone who's completed the mission for them wants to sell them.)

Tournaments

Perfect Team Tournaments are standalone competitions that allow you to pit your Perfect Team against others, separately from the regular Perfect Team league, but using your collections of cards.

You earn all sorts of rewards when you are successful in a Tournament, from Perfect Points to Card Packs to Special Edition cards - and more. You don’t even have to win a Tournament to reap the rewards, as many Tournaments offer rewards for participants all the way down to the fourth place finisher.

There are thousands of combinations of Tournaments that can exist. Here are the fundamental options that are combined to create the individual competitions:

• Types: Quick (starts as soon as the max number of teams has signed up), Fixed Time, Daily, Weekly, Monthly
• Modes: Single Elimination, Single Elimination w/ Best of Three Finals, Best of Three, Best of Three w/ Best of Five Finals, Best of Five, Best of Five w/ Best of Seven Finals, Best of Seven, Round Robin, Round Robin w/ Best of Three Finals, Double Round Robin, Double Round Robin w/ Best of Three Finals, Double Elimination, Double Elimination w/ Best of Three Finals
• Roster Restrictions: None, Iron-only, Bronze or lower, Silver or lower, Gold or lower, Diamond or lower, Total Card Value Cap on Active Roster
• Card Restrictions: None, Live only, Historical only, Non-live only
• Tournaments with no restrictions whatsoever are called “Open Tournaments”.

Rewards for winning or placing highly in tournaments include Perfect Points, specific Cards, and Packs of various types.

New Weekly Content

New content will be delivered each and every week all Perfect Team season long in the form of new cards being added to the game, new missions and tournament types appearing, and other surprises!

Perfect Team Tips

If you're just getting started in Perfect Team, here are some helpful tips to get you off to a winning start:

• While the card quality (perfect/diamond/gold/silver/bronze/iron) and overall rating are good basic indicators of how valuable a player is, Card A not necessarily better than Card B just because A is gold and B is silver. There will be many cases where lesser-ranked cards are much more effective on the diamond than higher-rated ones. In particular, be aware that Live cards usually get a more generous classification than historical players (but are much more plentiful, which may lower their auction price into a range that makes them very affordable.)
• Remember that the Live cards will change their ratings as the season progresses. If a batter who starts the season with a 45 overall rating puts together an all-star year, his card will become much more valuable. Don't casually sell a cheap card for 5 PP early in the season only to find he's worth several thousand by July.
• Unless you need points immediately, auctioning your players will likely be more profitable than selling them off at face value - you can always use the auction option to sell them automatically if the auction fails. There have been times in the game when a Perfect card that would have drawn several hundred thousand PP on the auction house was sold for the basic 20,000 amount, costing his owner the equivalent of hundreds of standard packs.
• If you want a specific player or player type, watching the auction house and buying him there is usually a much more effective method than buying packs and hoping for the best. Wise auction spending will make a big difference in your overall success.
• Identify your biggest weaknesses and upgrade there first. After a few in-game weeks it should be apparent where your problem areas are.
• Conversely, don't bail out on a player just because he's had a rough month or even a bad season - there can be considerable variability in a player's results from year to year. If you're confident he's the right guy for your team, stick with him.
• When setting an auction price, be aware of both the card's auction history and any currently active auctions for the player - if there is a big supply of a particular card, you don't want yours to be the most expensive one.
• Always set a buyout price for your card, even if it's an outrageously high one - you never know when someone might actually pay it. But set it a fair bit higher than your starting bid; there's not much of a point in having a buyout one point higher than your starting bid.
• Unless you need points very quickly, avoid using very short auction durations, particularly when it's not prime time (US daytime hours) - give everyone in the game a chance to see the auction.
• Be cautious about your pitcher-batter roster balance - if you have too few of one or the other, the fatigue effects will hurt more than having an extra bench player will help. This applies to using fewer than 5 starting pitchers as well.
• Your ballpark settings can be tailored to help your team - or you team can be tailored to fit your ballpark.
• If you have an important game or series coming up, micromanaging your lineup to exploit your opponent's weaknesses can make the difference between winning and losing.
• If you have a group of friends that would like to stick together in a league, the League Placement Setting (Perfect Team Settings, Profile & Settings tab) can be used to specify that you want the PT placement algorithms to keep you together when setting up new leagues each Monday (although promotion and demotion will result in some movement in and out of the league.)
• Remember to hit Submit Team after any lineup changes to ensure they make it into the next day's simulation
• You can train players to learn new positions by playing them regularly at that position. The amount of time it takes and the effectiveness of the player at a new position will depend on the player's other position(s) and defensive rating. Generally, the relation between the new and old positions on the defensive spectrum (DH-1B-LF-RF-3B-CF-2B-SS-C) will determine how fast a player can learn (a SS learning to play 1B will adapt very quickly, a 1B learning to play C will not.) Some positions will be impossible for some players to learn, e.g. someone who throws left-handed cannot become a shortstop.
• If you find yourself in a league full of much more talented teams, don't despair - the promotion and relegation system will eventually sort you into a level where you're more competitive.

And remember, just like in OOTP, there's not a single pathway to success. Experiment with lineups and strategies, you may think of something that no one else has come up with yet!

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