ATG 8 Card Pricing

I would also like to sound out the community on a topic. Does anyone else feel the same as me that, in general, the card pricing for ATG 8 is atrocious (especially a lot of the older cards in reference to newer card pricing). Isn't there a committee that oversees the pricing for new cards? If there is, why can't they undertake to a re-pricing project to fix a completely broken system?

1. Pricing is indeed atrocious.

2. SOM keeps promising that the set will be repriced, but it has not happened yet.

3. Have you ever served on a committee? It's a miracle that the jury system works as well as it does, since I find that getting a dozen people to agree that the earth is round is a bit of a task sometimes.

----------------------since I find that getting a dozen people to agree that the earth is round is a bit of a task sometimes.

You don't want to go there.

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2017/0 ... rth-theory

ROFL

More questions, to be appended to my post above. 1., 2., and 3. repeated.

1. Pricing is indeed atrocious.

2. SOM keeps promising that the set will be repriced, but it has not happened yet.

3. Have you ever served on a committee? It's a miracle that the jury system works as well as it does, since I find that getting a dozen people to agree that the earth is round is a bit of a task sometimes.

4. What should be the basis of the card prices? Rosters in the $140 million leagues are different than those in $100 or $200 million leagues. And the same can be said for very high caps, the ever-popular $80 million cap, and the $60 million cap. Do we have usage data for the various cap levels? What ballpark or set of ballparks should we use? You must realize that if we priced every card for its value in Minute Maid, nobody could win there since every other park in the set would have "bargain" guys and Minute Maid would have none. But if we ignore Minute Maid completely in our pricing, we see leagues with 4, 5, or even more teams using that park. How do you want to handle that?

4a. I suspect that cards such as the $7.40 Chipper Jones are prized in some caps and the $9.71 card in others. Do you think this is a good idea?
4b. What do you do about very skewed hitter cards? Do you just average out the two sides of the card, or do you use some sort of kluge? And just what is a lopsided card anyway? Does it break after 2R/L. or 3R/L, or 4R/L, etc.? Should you do the same for a lopsided $9 million card like Olerud as for a cheap 1B like Chris Davis or a cheaper 1B like Lee Mazzilli?
4c. Even worse, what do you do about very lopsided pitcher cards? Should you treat forward and reverse cards the same? Should you treat lefty and righty pitchers the same as opposite hand pitchers with the same balance rating? Should you treat very skewed starting pitchers the same as very skewed relievers? How much does the endurance rating come into play? Should you use different multipliers for the endurance value of starters in $100 million leagues as you do in $200 and up leagues? Relievers?
4d. How much should you adjust hitter cards for defense? Running speed? Base stealing rating? Injury frequency and duration? Bunting? Hit and Run?
4e. How should you value pinch-runner types like Taveras, Jake Wood, George Burns, Ron LeFlore, Al Wiggins, and others?
4f. What do you do about someone like Martin Dihigo? Do you price him as a corner OF? A 2B? A 1B? How about Jimmy Foxx - is he a "value" at 3B compared to first? What about Oscar Charleston or Yaz? Should their best cards be priced as a 1B or in the OF? Where should you price Kiki Cuyler, CF, RF, or LF? How about Babe Ruth? Most of his cards are rated at multiple positions.

This is not a simple subject. How long do you think it would take a committee of 5 to come to a consensus? And there are 5,000 cards. I have been refining my card valuation pretty continuously for about 6 years now, and every time I make what looks like an innocuous change, relative prices at almost every position go berserk.

I have answers for many, but not all, of these questions. But I'm sure not going to share them, (a) because, as an engineer, I hate like hell to be wrong about a calculation, and (b) because my answers seem to give me a competitive advantage that I am loath to give away. And many of the other good players have different answers that they also do well with.

Hello all!

Pricing is the essential, quixotic and ignored thing. It's ATG8 and some of these prices were created....

With repricing, I think overwhelmingly, cards need to be priced with main considerations given to the MAXIMUM POTENTIAL. The reasonable home for the card. Obviously, pricing can't be oblivious to this. I really appreciated your thoughts rburgh. Perhaps considering a card from multiple contexts isn't mathematical enough from a design perspective but I think we gotta think about our confidence level in pricings accuracy.

Do you think a pricing formula can be so precise it takes the "value cards" away? We've heard this over the years and it's obviously also a question of how much[i][/i] it does that as well.

This game is a card game like Magic the Gathering or whatever. Cards need to be costed relative to their potential impact/degeneracy on a meta or a "deck"/strategy. I'm looking at Gates Brown here. 9R, but how valuable is 450 PAs at a level better than most 10mil stars?

Caps is interesting but would you mind explaining what focusing pricing on higher caps like 140 or 200 mil would look like? Why would that be beneficial? I've never played as much or understood them much, but isn't $ not too relevant in 200 and 140 is kinda an in-between only a little more popular than 120, 170 or whatever? I've always thought having more supply and demand elements would greatly increase the tension and fun off roster building. Those are the best leagues. That's more a comment on game design/modes than just pricing.

Repricing is so overdue.

If access was available to the usage levels of players that would greatly enhance the re-pricing effort. Think of it as sports betting odds ... The more a player gets used, his price keeps going up until it reaches some type of equilibrium point.

Example: Ryne Duren - Raise his price to let's say 4.5 million. If usage doesn't decrease, raise it to 5.0 million. If usage still doesn't decrease, raise it to 5.5 million. If that's the magic number where his usage slows down, then the community has set the market.

And the same could be said for overpriced guys that no one uses. If their usage is extremely low, start dropping their price until they see usage.

Agree with the comments about pricing to best case scenario. Gates Brown and Kal Daniels are perfect examples of lopsided hitters that should be priced as if they are ONLY seeing RHP's, because that is what is happening anyways. But my suggestion above would address this as well. If their prices went up and their usage (or overusage) slowed down, it solves the issue.

I'm going to be a bit contrary here and say that pricing is just fine. Maybe not perfect, but fine.

Yes, there are outliers, cards that aren't priced at their value. But there are also an awful lot of rarely used cards that are priced properly, but function as bad values because the player's real-life characteristics just aren't useful enough in the ATG environment.

For example, we usually try to build home-park advantage. So when we play in Forbes, we're looking for CF who steal and hit XBH ... but not ones who hit 22 home runs and have a bunch of expensive but useless BPHRs. Sorry, Cesar Cedeno, but I'm going with Tris Speaker or Willie McGee.

And we're generally not looking for everyday players with awkward platoon ratings -- not balanced enough to fit reliably in the batting order, not unbalanced enough to maximize their value in a platoon. Sorry, Jim Thome, I'm going with Ralph Kiner.

Even when you get the right balance, they have to be useful at all caps. I play $60M-$100M and I'm just not looking for a card that costs $9.5M and still needs a platoon partner. I'm looking for that card at $1-5M. Sorry Josh Hamilton, I'm going with John Lowenstein.

Sometimes, you figure out a concept where you can maximize the value of some underused cards. I recently won 100 games and a ring with a team like that and it was the most fun I'd had in ages. It's the same reason why I occasionally play theme leagues. But yes, there are always going to be cards that are tough to find a use for, even though they're priced approximately right.

Excellent points Egvrich and Guynick.

Guynick's post had me thinking about "categories" of thought on what should happen withre-pricing and Egrich's comments even further. There's kind of:

1. Super-precise calculations that need to be focused off of park, cap etc.
2. Price updates---the game has been revised (ATG8???) yet pricing hasn't. Pricing is one of the most determinative things. Could be fun too to update prices.
3. Pricing based off usage very heavily---updated periodically with prices going up and down based on # of uses
4. Pricing is fine

Guynick mentioning #3 and the stock-market pricing made me remember these recurring ideas. Guynick, I'm on board with this in updating the prices (consider what's been happening, what's been over-power/under-powered) Perhaps this is obvious and inherent to reprcing, but I think beyond that is unrealistic and even distorting.

Question is, are the enough leagues to support this type of pricing? Won't many of the 1,000s of cards not have enough homes to have accurate pricing? I know it'll work itself out eventually, but the other thing is, will SOM really support something like this? They do do 2019live with everything but prices being updated. The first fantasy baseball I played back in the day on Sporting News allowed duplicate players in a league and had $s for them that were updated based on usage. It was very cool, but I don't the demand is there enough in # of teams to fit all our cards.

I'm definitely in the #2 camp of just updating the prices. This could mean many cards don't change price, though, I'd really hope this isn't the case or a common thing----Repricing would establish a new "meta" and totally change the game, not too radically though? I know some people don't want the game too change much at all and that's great. Repricing would be organic and obviously not change gameplay. Just way refreshen up the game that's nearing 10 years (?) in this pricing model.

[quote="nels52"]Guynick what you're saying is awesome! Though, I don't really agree with your stance on #4. If pricing could consider some of the things you mention, would you be in support of re-pricing?

The concern about Cedeno and Thome is legit, though, obviously, cards will inevitably not see play (how good are Thome's cards?) The idea of a dominant card like McGee that TRANSLATES to ATG and being awesome if fine right? But yes, card-types like Cedeno and I suppose Thome need to be priced accordingly. I love Cedeno's card, it's one of my favorite ever but he's been unplayable since re-pricing in ATG3 or 4. It's as much the pool of players and CFers getting bigger and bigger, but his old pricing had him in the 8s and maybe even low 8s (8.55?) The price increase killed him, plus the games totally different (more high powered) which way further hurts Cedeno at 9.75 or even 8.55.

***Beyond the 1,2,3,4 I laid out, I think asking kind of big changes in pricing should happen. To me, OPS is clearly under-priced, which seemed relevant to a toolsy, less OBP card like Cedeno. I know most won't be in favor of giving too much less per $ in ATG, but I think alot of pricing should go up and morseo hitting. Getting very good hitters in the 4mils and then elite hitters as low as 6-8 mil pushes the game towards a really degenerate place where it's tough to play higher caps or without said crushinators imho. Perhaps what I'm saying would kill higher caps, but I think it would help overall gameplay and diversity of builds. Maybe its as simple as fixing some really warped prices that enable offenses (Gates Brown, Dave Henderson etc.) So many guys can provide cheap OPS or at least HRs