A season of sniping: a retrospective

MyTEAM
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Wanted to make an account to document 2K18, as someone who was decently addicted to the sniping lifestyle. (Console)

Early in the season I was sniping silvers from the team collections. When they first started releasing historic cards, I was sniping the Hawks. (Shout out Amy Joe Jesus) Unfortunately I was loaded up on Hawks when they released Kobe into the historic packs, crushing my bankroll.

I probably had 200K MT left after the Kobe drop wiped me out. Was thinking about quitting and then the All Star Plus Packs dropped. I realized pretty quickly that certain of the sapphires in this historic sets never made an all-star game, so they would be almost non-existent. From then on, I was killing it, regularly buying sapphires for less than 10K and flipping for 90K+. For the next month or so, was scroll-sniping historics non-stop. I believe this was so successful because of the PD Harden glitch, there were a lot of whales out there sitting on millions of MT willing to lock in for Oscar.

As far as the historics now, I’m not conceived that these new packs killed the market. If anything, pulling them became harder now as they threw other moments content into the packs. I just don’t think there are many people left who want Dr. J. There are some people who probably want a Dirk still.

Pretty burnt out at this point. Overall, would say I made close to 4 million MT grinding the historics this season. Haven’t sold any of it, just waiting for PD Jordan.

The lineup looks like this right now:

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The PD Magic is a fun card, really the only card that gets me to fire up a game anymore at all.

I’ve tried to grind Supermax a bit, but the 5-out killed my soul and I never wanted to play cheesy. Also, don’t want to complain too much about the equalizer but it exists heavily for me. Ruby teams shoot contested 70% against me frequently until the 4th quarter, when it suddenly switches off. Makes every game into an unnecessary grind.

No VC purchased this season.

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This is the squad of my dreams (minus Lonzo). Nice assembly and way to snipe

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historics made me SO much mt too. im kinda on the fence with them now. prices have fluctuated and finding that the historics dont sell very easy anymore. but man ive made a KILLING off ruby MJ.

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Yeah, Current Bronze/Silver was a nice racket for a while. Historics way more so.

I spent too much time working AH for MT this year, but stayed away from player cards because I find it too annoying to have a ton of player card dupes in my AH inventories. Which doesn’t make any sense because I do plenty of super-grindy things to make MT.

But I’ve settled into my niches and I’ve built up a nice net worth so I’m going to try to remind myself to quit grinding the AH so much.

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@Brooklyn great squad and thanks for the thoughtful/interesting post. How much time do you think you spent sniping to get this squad? And would you do it again in 2k19?

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It was a lot of time sniping, most of the time I would snipe while watching Youtube or something. Would estimate it between 30-40 hours. I wouldn’t waste time in the beginning of the season again, would play Domination, build up like 300K, 400K and then wait for better sniping later in the season. It’s not worth the grind to make less than 20K a flip.

Also, I think there are opportunities to make tons if you play it smart. Could have realized Bobby Jones wasn’t in Playoffs packs, and scooped up every one as well. End-game diamonds like Durant also doubled in price, could have loaded up on those for easy MT.

I’m not sure I will even play 2K19 if the equalizer stays as is. This team seems pointless when I can compete with a Ruby squad. Bricking wide open shot after shot and getting out rebounded by random 500MT cards is way too frustrating. Especially on offense when everyone starts fumbling the ball and it seems like I lose 20 speed attributes across the board. I think the algorithm has a lot to do with amount of VC spent, that is the ultimate goal for them.

If I actually paid for packs I would be pissed off. What is the actual point of grinding for a good squad if they are going to nerf the sliders? Doesn’t make sense, “balanced” game play should be in PNO only. Not to mention the rewards for Supermax are a total joke.

I had a lot of fun playing domination this season, but I was done within the first month. Schedule Mode is a complete joke and Pack & Playoffs is trash. Wish I could use this team in another offline mode.

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I did the exact same thing and flipped historic players (I created the topic “after 3 weeks of sniping, this is my team” on 2kmtcentral). I don’t know wether you wanted to say that you only spend 30-40 hours of sniping to get this squad because this is VERY hard to believe for me. I’m super familiar with historic player prices and also made a small fortune during the all star packs. there is no such thing as a regualr mt income if you snipe so it’s hard say how long it takes to build such a team like yours (my team is btw: diamond penny, diamond mcgrady, diamond vince, diamond dirk, diamond shaq and a nice bench).
but tbh, I assume you (not YOU but every sniper I mean) either gotta be a student, jobless or have holidays or a mix of these to work the auction house until you make millions: at least if you are sniping historic players.

a (very) good average of mt would be something like 10k Mt per hour for sniping. if you snipe 6 hours a day, that’s about 60k Mt. do it a whole week and you can make over 300K if you are lucky and things like a market crash happened. it can also be 150k mt or over 500k.

if you don’t want to spend much time on sniping and you have enough money, you can simply buy mt. building an all diamond end game squad takes prolly about 150 hours of sniping, at least. I know what I’m talking about. I sniped sapphire wesley matthews for 900 MT and a second one for 2k, enes kanter fpr 2k, ruby morris peterson for 2k and dozens of other historic players for under 3k while selling them for 30k and more.

you also gotta be that type of guy who kinda enjoys working the auction house. it sounds weird but it’s almost like meditating for me. I enjoy scrolling and scanning prices again and again much more than actually playing online matches against cheesers. it’s a positive thrill to see super underpriced players and try to buy them as fast as possible and eventually getting the green confirmation.

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Amen about SuperMax and the equalizer making everything pointless. As soon as I see a Ruby/Amy squad I know I’m going to lose. I had 99 KD bricking wide open 3s from the fucking corner like 3 times in a row.

The only time I have a good game is against other Good Squads. I win 70% of those at least, but I don’t get matched with them much anymore. I guess people quit already because of the equalizer ruining everything.

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Appreciate the detailed and honest explanation! And this is what always confused me about sniping and people “bragging” how they spend no money on the game but snipe their way to a great squad. You really have to enjoy sniping otherwise you’re better off getting almost any job and buying VC or MT directly.

Let’s even be optimistic and double your estimate to assume you make 20k MT/hr. Let’s also optimistically assume you could sell MT for $40/100k. That’s only earning $8/hr at best…basically minimum wage. Of course you get the occasional “bonus” or “tip” when you flip Matthews for 100k profit. But it doesn’t add that much to your average “earnings.”

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I quit supermax because of too many overpowered cards ruining gameplay by making the game NBA jam and eliminating any team building streategy. The equalizer has been around for a few years and is annoying but is surmountable imo.

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I would say my number is on the conservative side, you are probably right. To be fair most of it came a few weeks following ASW.

I also never searched for Rubies. It was methodical scroll-sniping of the saphires, I was very effecient.

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For many, “not spending money” is not so much about saving money, nor is it necessarily really enjoying the process of “playing the AH.” For me, at least, it’s just being stubbornly against spending money for an advantage in a video game for three reasons:

  1. I’m against players gaining competitive advantage by spending $.
  2. Even if I weren’t, and spent $, it wouldn’t be gratifying. It wasn’t earned. I’d prefer to “earn” through grinding gameplay, but since that’s not possible with virtually all the best cards in the game, I grind the AH.
  3. I don’t like spending money I don’t have to spend. But this is a distant third.

I’ve made 2M or more in MT so far. Spent far too much time doing so. So I’m not at all self-congratulatory about it. The time cost was very high. Too high.

Next year, I may just draw a line and not play MyTeam at all. If I do, though, I will probably just grind all offline gameplay first and not concern myself at all about whatever is going on in packs until I’m totally done with offline. And when I’m done with offline, the I’ll just buy MT from another player.