MLB The Show 25 has done many things right. The return of the power creep has been a much-needed improvement. Some of the content drops have been downright tremendous. But the one drawback of Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 25 is how much you need to play offline modes to get the cards you want.
Diamond Dynasty Is MLB The Show’s Ultimate Team
Full disclosure: I play a lot of Diamond Dynasty. Hundreds of hours per year. For the uninitiated, Diamond Dynasty is a mode within MLB The Show that allows you to build a team comprised of the best players from yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It’s the Ultimate Team of MLB The Show.
I have friends who prefer playing Diamond Dynasty online. They loathe the sometimes sweaty nature of online play. I completely understand that, and I would never want the game to abandon single-player, offline options within Diamond Dynasty. There should be something for everyone, regardless of whether you like just collecting the cards or getting ultra competitive in Battle Royale or Weekend Classic.
The problem, as I see it, is that too much of the grind makes it almost necessary to dive into offline modes. If it were only for the occasional Conquest or Showdown, that’d be fine. Diamond Quest is also relatively quick to complete, making it a nice addition to the game this year. But too many of the best cards in MLB The Show 25 require you to do all of those, and too many require players to play a lot of Mini Seasons.
Mini Seasons Are The Bane Of My Existence
Mini Seasons are an offline mode within Diamond Dynasty where you take your team into a 28-game season of 3-inning games. After that, there are two best-of-5 series in the playoffs. Why do you have to play Mini Seasons? Technically, you don’t. But if you want the Summer Series collection rewards, then there are four cards you can only earn in Mini Seasons. All-Star collection? Mini Seasons. Those aren’t the only ones, but you get the idea.
Mini Seasons should exist. For players who want to build a dream team and play a Franchise-type season, it’s perfect. However, players who want to play online shouldn’t need to do so as much as we sometimes do. I spend more time getting the players I want on my team for online play than I do playing online. In a game that gets many things right, that’s an unfortunate problem.
Team Affinity Forces The Offline Grind
In my opinion, All-Star week cards and the Finest series are the highlight of MLB The Show every year. All-Star cards tend to signal the beginning of the endgame. At that point, you’re able to get some pretty elite players onto your team. Finest signals the true endgame, when most teams you play online will have “god squads” full of 99-overall players. In MLB The Show 25, most players from those two series are only earnable inside Team Affinity.
Team Affinity has been converted into a journey format for MLB The Show 25. This year, you’ll earn progress with each team individually. If you want the Yankees All-Star and Finest cards, you’ll have to do a lot of things with Yankees players and earn 365,000 Team Affinity XP just for the Yankees alone. That means completing tasks such as achieving 500 hits with Yankees players in Diamond Dynasty, 250 extra-base hits, or scoring 300 runs. If you want every team’s Finest player, you’ll need to do similar things with players from each MLB team inside Diamond Dynasty.
I actually like the Journey approach to Team Affinity. Getting the best cards shouldn’t be super easy. However, this is a bit much. Even Sony San Diego recognized this. A while back, they introduced the Color Storm series as a Team Affinity side quest of sorts. If you approached it correctly, you earned 150,000 XP towards each team’s Team Affinity journey.
The only way to quickly knock out these challenges is to play a ton of Conquest or Mini Seasons with a themed team that wouldn’t be very competitive in online play. That is, unless you’re a super elite player. Those players can win with almost any lineup. For the rest of us, it’s a tedious requirement to earn the players everyone wants when they start a Diamond Dynasty team.
There’s A Fix To This
I don’t want any of these things to go away. They’re actually all great additions to MLB The Show 25. However, online players shouldn’t feel like they have to do a lot of offline grinding just to be competitive online—at least not as much offline grinding. If there were online-specific challenges in Team Affinity journeys in addition to the existing ones, that would provide a solution. How to do this? Look no further than an unlikely source for solutions: Madden 25.
Madden 25’s Ultimate Team has ways to advance in the Field Pass that are specific to different card series. MLB The Show could do the same, but with teams. For example, “win 30 online games with at least two Diamondbacks in your starting lineup” could earn you 30,000 Team Affinity XP. I can put Ketel Marte and the Lightning Corbin Carroll in the lineup and play the mode I like the most while still earning endgame content. It’s a win-win.
Ultimately, no one HAS to do any of the Team Affinity challenges. But if you want the best content, you have to. Let’s make it part of playing how we want to play, and an already strong game will be even better.
