MLB The Show 24: Season 2 Breakdown

Season 2 has finally arrived and the meta has reset. All those 99 overall cards we’ve been earning the last couple weeks hit the bench, as we jump all the way back down to low-Diamond cards.

It was always going to be interesting to see how things felt, shifting back to lower overalls after nearly a month of 99’s.

Let’s talk about that and discuss the program details.

Gameplay Update

To start off the content stream, SDS acknowledged the foul ball issues and stated a patch would be coming next week.

This is the first time that SDS has spoken about the issue which is obviously a great development. Excessive foul balls have made online play exhausting and frustrating. With the rest of gameplay being in a pretty good spot, cleaning up excessive foul balls will make the game play and feel better.

No word on the exact timing but I’ll happily wait another week if it means the game plays better.

A Whole New World (Again)

The stated goal of Seasons in Diamond Dynasty has been to “recreate the excitement of launch multiple times during the year.” That slow build to higher overalls is the nectar of ultimate team modes and returned this year after the experiment last year. In a sense, this structure truly does mimic a new game release because there’s a ton of 99 overall cards at the end of each cycle. Those still playing have their ultimate God Squads and use those until the next game launches and we start all over.

The seasonal structure gets its first crack at it here in Season 2. In terms of cards resetting with new Cornerstone Captains, we get a barebones card pool to choose from. It’s rather jarring having that snapback, considering the rest of the game remains unchanged. There’s no “new car smell” from all the pre-season hype. We know how the game plays, how the game looks and the content snapping back to low-rated cards feels fine to me. With multiple Wild Cards this season, we’ll be able to use more of our “older” cards during the season than we did last year. That’s a plus and having new Captains to mix and match with has certainly been fun.

I decided to get weird and Wild Card Season 1 Cornerstone Captain Byron Buxton for my Hitter Captain, brought back my favorite Live Series cards and activated Cornerstone Luis Castillo as my Pitching Captain. This hybrid boost gives my hitters a solid boost in both Contact and Power. Combined with their Inside Edge boosts on a given day, I’m effectively improving the Buxton boost from Season 1.

The caveat here is one of the most notable changes in Season 2 – select Captains have been de-buffed. By my observation, it’s Cornerstone Buxton and Switch-Hitting Captain Carlos Santana. Their respective boosts have been weakened, though I’d argue it doesn’t make them entirely unplayable. Instead, it lowers their power levels down in line with the power of the Season 2 Cornerstone Captains. A sensible move that still allowed us the option to do this. As more cards release I’m sure I’ll switch this up, but the fact that I could carry over my previous build, activate a new Pitching Captain that has crossover appeal and “improve” my Season 1 team is appreciated.

No XP Boost

Unfortunately, SDS did not announce a change to XP. That means XP will continue to be capped at 15,000 XP per day and that’s a huge disappointment. For folks like me that don’t have a ton of time to game, we can’t really keep up with that pace. I only unlocked a single Boss in Season 1 and only got two of the three Season 1 Collection cards. The head start boost is appreciated, but I’ll again barely be able to take advantage of Double XP so I’ll still be behind the pack. SDS stated that more XP would be available in programs and that they’re committed to helping players progress faster. I’m definitely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and time. Moving the main rewards up in the Season 2 XP Program Path is a nice gesture as well. We’ll earn our first Boss pack at 900,000 XP instead of 1 Million this time around. That effectively gives us the 99 Bosses a couple weeks earlier.

Who’s the Boss?

Chipper Jones, Ken Griffey Jr. and Roy Halladay are the Bosses featured in Season 2. Each player has a Hall of Fame series card which means we get some of the best versions of these players we’ve ever seen.

Meta Overall data isn’t available for these cards as of this writing, but we’ll absolutely take a deep dive on these cards in the future. It’s a safe assumption that Chipper Jones will be a popular first pick, with Griffey Jr. right up there. Halladay is a Hall of Fame/Legend master and probably ends up the least popular.

A cool touch in this program is that each of these Bosses also have lower-rated Diamonds in two separate choice packs in the XP Path. Again, data isn’t available on these cards yet but I actually quite enjoy this move by SDS.

It lets us use new or unique versions of these players for a huge chunk of the season. It’s sort of like an Evolution style program, except you just get the cards over time versus earning them through stat grinds. The fact that each of these versions can potentially fit on different theme teams adds another unique twist to it.

Team Affinity Season 2

Naturally Team Affinity returns with 30 new cards featuring every MLB team. We’ll do a deep dive on Team Affinity in the coming days, but the power creep lowering us back down will have an interesting effect with these Team Affinity cards. We just got a full round of 99 overalls a couple weeks ago featuring big name legends. Now we’re back in the upper-80’s with a mish-mash of names.

The best part is just having something new to grind, I suppose. Team Affinity in Season 2 will end up featuring the All-Star game so the cadence of Chapters being released will differ from Season 1.

Season 2 Collection

In addition to the Boss pack, we also get a new round of Seasonal Collection cards. This Seasons choice pack includes the following players:

Derek Jeter
Frank Thomas
Bob Gibson

 

These players also have incredibly tasty cards as you’d expect. We’ll again get surprise updates to the collection rewards as SDS will add new tiers every couple weeks.

On the surface, I’d say these cards are better than the Season 1 Collection cards. Bob Gibson dominated Ranked last year and this card might be better. Derek Jeter has one of the best SS cards we’ve seen in Diamond Dynasty. Frank Thomas looks like Frank Thomas cards typically do, which is certainly not a bad thing.

Programs Return?

We already have two programs coming in the next week or so and that’s a good sign. Programs used to be the main way we got content, only to disappear in Season 1. Most of the new cards being released came in premium packs that cost Stubs and/or money. The community rejected this pretty much from the beginning, yet nothing changed throughout the first season. Hopefully this is the start of more programs to grind and progress with.

This didn’t stop SDS from dropping multiple packs today. We again got Season Awards cards in a pack and a new Fresh Start Choice Pack. I thought for sure packs would be cheaper after the community revolt, but I was wrong. These packs are listed for their previous costs which are up to 40,000 Stubs a pack.

I just cannot see the value in buying these packs, especially with the power creep making them useless quicker than the seasonal reset.

But it doesn’t matter what I think. Enough of these were sold that they didn’t have to change course so why would they?

Season 2 Savior

Many were claiming to be done with Diamond Dynasty because of Season 1. I’m sure plenty of players truly peeled off but I think SDS showed off enough to get people interested. It’s hard to resist building up a whole new team in Diamond Dynasty. Getting to do that again while still having access to some cool cards we already have is a mix between last season and the previous years. It’s all going to come down to how SDS releases content.

If they stick to little or no programs to grind and force feed packs, then I do think the player base will crash heading into NCAA Football’s return. Laying a trail of packs at our feet leading up to the All-Star game content isn’t my idea of a good time.

A lot will hinge on this gameplay update, too. I think pitching and hitting is in a good place for the most part. Foul balls are the biggest issue, so cleaning those up will help the gameplay shine even more. As long as they don’t tweak any other aspect this should be a positive that helps the new content play better as well.

I wasn’t ready to declare MLB The Show 24 dead, so I’m not ready to declare that Season 2 “saved” the game. I don’t think we’ll have a true indication of the rest of the year’s content cycle for a couple weeks yet. The gameplay update should land next week and we’ll see over the next 2-3 weeks what SDS is doing with packs and programs.

That’s the breakdown for Season 2! What are you most looking forward to this season? Who are you using as your first Wild Card? Let us know in the comments!