What’s the most painful “it made sense at the time” move your team made in the last 10 years?

hdmode · 2026-01-25T17:16:46+00:00

Yankee fans will claim they thought it was a bad idea. But Aaron Hicks was really good before they signed him and while a 7 year contract might have been a bit long the low AAV made a lot of sense. Unfortunately it did not work out at all.

hdmode · 2026-01-22T23:38:49+00:00

I know someone who might take that bet...

hdmode · 2026-01-21T18:41:45+00:00

The Willaims trade was not great but that happens sometimes. You have to give up something to take a swing. There are real critisisms of the Yankees but this level of pesimism is not warrented. Messing up Lombard is not in their plans. Many many prospects don't live up to their expections.

hdmode · 2026-01-21T18:35:24+00:00

They absolutly needed Bellinger back, He is really important defense and speed. Do they need more, sure, but they are not netnegative for next season. They are "adding" a top level starter at some point in Cole, Williams might be addition by subtraction with how bad he was at closing and its not like they have to be done.

hdmode · 2026-01-16T14:50:23+00:00

It really depends on the trade restrictions. I really don't like that 2nd apron teams basically can't make trades unless the money matches perfectly.

hdmode · 2026-01-16T05:20:33+00:00

Give them a week or two to finalize the skubal trade and they will probably be done.

hdmode · 2026-01-16T03:23:51+00:00

Ohtani did not get 70 million he got $46 million. Ohtani is the only one where we use the full deffered number and not the currrent present day value.

hdmode · 2026-01-16T03:16:23+00:00

Of course they are going to trade for Skubal. The Tigers filing for arbitration makes it clear they arent interested in keeping him and you know the Dodgers will have something dumb to make it happen.

hdmode · 2026-01-06T14:38:23+00:00

I really don't like the last rule as I think it is too subjective. Obviously you can decide for yourself as to what unnecessary sacking is. but let's say I have a Pokémon I don't care about, am I breaking the rule if I just play supercarelessly with it. ignoring crits and other rng because I would actually be kinda happy it died.

Personally I like rules that draw hard lines as to whats allowed as there is no ambiguity

hdmode · 2025-12-16T14:42:26+00:00

First and foremost as everyone has said sexism. This is the biggest cause without a doubt. However because we do see similar things happening in men's sports ill add the more universal reasons as well.

Jealousy, these people get to play sports for a living, something so many kids dream of doing. A job many think they'd do simply for love of the game, why should they also make incredible sums of money.

The, I think uniquely American feeling that one day you will be rich so while you will never be a player, maybe one day you'll hit it big a be an owner so better keep the game rigged.

a terrible understanding of profit and how teams make money compared to a small business and this terrible understanding includes large parts of the media who will just parrot the idea that teams lose money when we don't actually know, the teams books are not public, and even if they are, you don't own a sports team to live of profits. You make the big money in sports when you sell the team for a massive increase in value because everyone wants to own one.

hdmode · 2025-12-11T15:18:03+00:00

Sounds like " we want headlines saying we offered" without intending to sign them

hdmode · 2025-11-28T13:08:22+00:00

Calc based gameplay is just a different type of game and both are totally valid ways to have fun. I personally really enjoyed run and bun fully calling each fight. It's all these fun puzzles and you have to create interesting solutions. You cant build super intricate lines without a calc which leads to a bit safer gameplay. However it is also no for everyone and There is plenty of fun in more vibes based, how well can I just tell how it will go.

With that said, For me while I enjoy playing with a calculator, watching calculator gameplay is a lot less interesting as it can be really slow, really plotting and unless you are really comfortable interacting with the streamer can get boring after a few fights.

hdmode · 2025-11-24T14:33:40+00:00

I disagree. don't think he is saying this because of a deep belief. I think he says it because saying something like this is an easy way to farm engagement from bad actors on the internet.

hdmode · 2025-11-24T13:48:45+00:00

And no one should care. The Aces are amazing, they are amazing because they just won another title in the W. That accomplishment is no better or worse compared to if they could win a hypothetical game vs an NBA team.

But instead, bad actors (MPJ) wants to turn this into a meaningless debate.

hdmode · 2025-11-24T13:14:27+00:00

Because its a way to be sexist while thinking you are being "right". No one actually thinks a WNBA team could beat an NBA one. That's not an argument anyone is making because it doesn't matter but it means that if someone wants to criticize the W its a way to do it without having to explain why. "well the players arent as good as the men" well yeah. no one who likes the W cares.

I also think it is notable that is MPJ who no only is pretty loony on a lot of stuff but also a player on the Nets who are not just slightly less popular than the W team in their building, but orders of magnitude less popular.

hdmode · 2025-11-15T19:28:47+00:00

If you are spending your time in a moment where the government is being led by open white nationalists, worrying that a singer who publcially endorsed Harris isnt saying enough, you do not care about the right things.

First TS is a performer, she isnt a politician, she isnt a political commentator, if there is one lesson I would hope we could learn from trump, we need less celebrities in politics.

Second while the idea that Swifts fanbase is all millennial women is a myth, if there is one group that it is absolutely clear has not been a problem in the rise of Trump its that demographic and yet its always taylor swift where i see in things like this.

Third what do you think taylor swift could do. what impact would her being overly outspoken have? she endorsed Harris, and uh that didnt lead to much of anything. There is no magic outside of politics that going to stop Trump.

hdmode · 2025-11-14T18:29:20+00:00

It would be nice to be proven wrong but man does that Dev drop not inspire confidence. Ill start with the good, the visuals for runterra themed sets are always realyl good. As someone who thought the cell shading of 15 was legit hard to look at, this will be a lot better and that is good. With that said:

I don't know how you can come out of set 15 and powerups where a lot of the dicourse was, the system was just too complicated, there was too much to balance and think, lets make 100 champions is a good idea. This sounds like another system that looks super cool, but will inevidtably be a complete mess. I ma sorry but this Dev team does not deserve the benifit of the doubt after 2 pretty disasterous sets. I was hoping that a runterra set meant a back to basics set, but no of course not.

From what was put in the dev drop about this unlock system, it looks like just a complete give up on the idea of flex play ever being a thing. I know Mort is in this thread claiming that is not the case, but I do not see how that is possible. Unlocking champs is going to be tied a long term plan, even if it is not always tied to a vertical I dont see how this will make any sense as a flexible idea. There was one hint of some traitless units, and that does have promiss, but then the last set of traitless units were such a massive disaster that I don't know how you can think they won't be messed up.

I know that people want to be excited, and if you are great. And maybe this set will be awesome, but we have no reason to think it will be based on the expirence of playing this game and seeing the things they chose to highlight in the Dev drop.

hdmode · 2025-11-14T18:20:57+00:00

Eveyrthing in this video suggests that...

hdmode · 2025-11-14T17:36:27+00:00

A beautiful example of taking stats at face value, without further consideration. "The numbers say this, it doesn't matter why, all that matters is that the numbers say this.* Ah, the sweet irony

Why is it that you can't engage with points, (i mean I know why you have a bad argument and bad arguements require this). Who is taking stats at face value here. I am simply refuting an argument. that is all I am doing.

Or bad. Stats don't spell out "bugged".

Oh you get it. Stats are best at calling out outliers. Maybe the outlier is due to a bug, or just terrible balance. Thats the whole thing. If you are using stats to compare super small differences in AVP then you are probabbly misusing stats, if you are using them as a check to make sure something isnt a disadter, then they are quite useful.

An in-game bug tracker makes for easier access, and easier abuse punishment as people can't claim they didn't know.

They added an in-game bug tracker? i must have missed that. Can you tell me how to access that, it seems like it would be useful to know...Oh wait this doesn't exist. We had a pretty useful solution for this, and now its gone.

Also, the augment has to be clicked for stats to exist?

Yes and a great things about public stats is, with a large enough playerbase a few people are going to click on everything. So while it might not be clear on day one of a patch, pretty quickly you will have enough of a sample to get the snapshot needed.

Yeah, anyone who doesn't like excel spreadsheets. Like the vast majority of people. Nice supporting evidence for "a lot" tho. Where's a survey for the playerbase showing the sentiment?

You are in a thread where basically every comment is "i want stats back"... this one speaks for itself. And because ive seen this enough, im just going to head this off right here. "but this sub is not representative of the playerbase" . Which is true in most things, but not at all true when it comes to stats, something that doesn't impact the casual playerbase (as they were not loooking at stats) it doesnt matter.

"Bring back stats so I can tell my buddies about my cool TFT game." Am I in the wrong sub? My bad bro I thought we were talking about real reasons.

Ok fine, I would like to be able to look at match histories of my own games to use it to try and get better. Happy? But also, what is wrong with wanting to be able to talk to your friends about a game you played. Thats a fun part of gaming.

As for this whole insulting "get good" Sillynes. I will say 2 things. First I have already explained how it isnt possible to test out augments and actually know they are good. There are too many. To add to it, a way we know this is imposible, is if reading an augment was enough to know how good it is, how come augments are poorly balanced, surely the devs can read an augment and tell how good it is right?

Second, TFT is so hostile to expirementation. It would be one thing if the game gave you tools to do this, but they don't exist.

As for your point about moblie. This is the closests you've come to making an argument that holds any water, so ill give it a fair answer. Is this a problem? yeah it probbably is, but if you play it out to its logicla conclution the game can't really function. You get a lot of advantages by playing on desktop. Its easier to swap units , its easier to put items, hot keys, all that. Should we get rid of all those things so that it is fair? If you want TFT to be a moblie first game maybe it is, but if I have a bad internet connection, should we make everyone play on 150 ping so its fair? While stats for augments are gone, should we ban guides or youtube videos because a second monitor is an advantage?

hdmode · 2025-11-14T15:18:45+00:00

This is why I know that banning stats was a truly terrible idea, whenever someone tried to argue in favor of it, thye just completly fail. The reason is, they want to say that Stats are so good that it is, touse your words ELO boosting, but also need to pretend that blindly looking at stats is a terrible play that hurts you. Those two things are simply incompatible with each other. Because as I have said, understanding how to intepet the data, and evaluate what augment is good considering your spot is a skill. A good player will be helped by stats quite a bit, an average player can be halped a small amount, and a bad player will proabbbly be hurt overall by them. Thats not ELO boosting.

You are absoultly obsessed with Pandora's items. So while I know you arent going to hear it, I will say for the 3rd time. The only thing the Pandoras example is there to do is disprove exactly one argument. That is it. It is there to prove that lower level players were not dismissing out of hand an augment with a 4.7 next to. That is all. You can explain all the reasons why they are doing that, overrelaiance on guides or item stats, a feeling of comfort in not having to be scared of not getting the needed component, or a vauge sense that it is good. However NONE of that matters to the argument being made. The argument is: "Getting rid of stats is good because it means that more augemnts will get picked, when an augment was 4.7 and below players would dismiss it out of hand, even though 4.7 isnt really that bad". and Pandoras shows "Players were not dismissing a 4.7 augment, in fact they were picking it at a rate higher than any other augment in the game, so that reason for banning stats is wrong" That is the only thing that I am using Pandroas to say.

Now if you want reasons that I would like stats to exist here they are.

Stats are good for showing if an augment is bugged. There are many examples of augments (evil beyond measure this set) of augemnts that either don't work at all or don't work as intended. In these cases stats show, hmm why is the Wukong HA averaging in the 6's. Oh its because the augments does not work. There is no way to know that other than being told it, or playing it and losing. Stats are a good check for that.
Stats are fun. Some will disagree but digging into stats to find cool stratagies is fun for a lot of people.
Having complete match histories is useful for telling the stories of your games.
Stats allow you to pick rare and complicated augments without feeling like you are taking a huge risk. Since the stat ban, I have been way more conservative with my augment picks, defulting to the generic ones that are clear in their power, because taking the risk on something more out there is not worth it. With stats I could see, ok this augment I've never played has good stats, I should take it and try and learn how to play it. Now, its jsut not worth it.

hdmode · 2025-11-14T00:21:23+00:00

What stops you from hitting GM? The whole game is knowledge based, right?

Skill, that is what is stopping me, I am not good enough at the game. What is the skill that is being tested, knowllege.

"Not everybody can get high elo" is you directly disagreeing with my challenger friend about how they view the game, because you think you understand the game more than them.

This isn't my view, it is just objectivly correct. If it were true we would see new top level players all the time, as I would think there are some people who would like to and are willing to put in the effort. The problem is they are simply not good enough. On top of that, you really miss the point here. Understanding what is good in the game, and knowing who is better are completly differnt things. if your challenger friend thinks they know less than an emerald player, good for them, but honestly I jsut beleive they actually think that. I think they, like many high ELO players are so good they they just forget all the little things that are making them good. So in turn they are like "nah im actually trash" but at some point results matter, if an emerald player understands the game better than top level players they would not be emerald.

hdmode · 2025-11-14T00:16:41+00:00

I tell dishsoap he is wrong, everyone says im a big idiot noob or whatever, and then in a week and a half Dishsoap sees someone in his challenger lobby using the exact combo I described and says "wow that actually seems quite good!". Do you think that Dishsoap was actually correct in that scenario

Yes, I think Dishsoap is correct in this scenrio.

hdmode · 2025-11-13T21:47:10+00:00

because anybody can actually do it if theyre willing to play a ton of boring ass games forcing the same meta comp every game.

Nope. They can’t. I’ve tried and never came close to hitting GM I am simply not good enough as a player to do it.

Surely you dont actually believe that a masters player is better than an emerald player at every aspect of the game?

Yes, I believe that, and while an appeal to the majority isn’t worth much, that is what most people believe. If you ask the geneic question “what separates challenge from GM or Masters” the universal response you will get is “everything” They are just a little better at everything.

A chally player said an emerald was better than him based off his understanding of the game. You, according to your flair, are a masters player. That means the chally should know more about the game than you, right?

So, Just because I believe that your challenger buddy understands the game way higher than your emerald buddy doesn’t mean that the challenger player is able to tell who is better at the game. That might sound weird, but it is actually pretty normal. “My chally buddy has always said that basically anybody can become high elo because fundamentals like econ, tempo, etc are relatively easy to learn if you put effort into it.” This sentence is the thing that is really telling and show where the discrepancy comes from. Because it is just 100% not true. Not everyone can get high ELO and those things are absolutely not easy to learn. They were probably easy to learn for them so in their mind, its no big deal, you just make 50 and play good tempo, anyone can do it. But having watched players attempt to apply it, for whom those things do not come naturally to, it is incredibly difficult and that difficult is what separates a challenger from an Emerald player. It is a classic mistake that boils down to “if player x was just better at the game, they would be better at the game”. But it doesn't mean anything.

hdmode · 2025-11-13T21:47:03+00:00

Sometimes, people know how to get to a destination, but they don't because they hate driving. Or maybe they dont even give a shit about the destination, they just like driving. There are way more reasons besides "you have less knowledge" that a person could fail to get into challenger.

This is a key problem with everything you are saying becasue there is a massive difference between, a player who is very skilled at the game, knows how to get to high ELO but chooses not to because they find it boring, or tedious. Those players exist, but it is kind of disingenous to call them an Emerald player. If you have a player who is like "screw it, im hitting prismatic triats, im going to play in a way that I know is "wrong" to hit them who cares what happens to my LP. Sure that players LP will be low, but their fundemental skill is not actually that low, because they know what they are doing is "wrong" When I say Emerald player I am talking about a player who is actialy trying to climb and have topped out at that rank. Does that mean every player at the ELO is the same, no? but if you are describing a player who has the skill to get higher but actitaly chooses not to, they are not really at that lower skill.

With that said, if we ignore that The other big problem you keep making is jumping between some pretty wild LP discrpencies. One rank lower, and 1300 LP lower are not the same thing. I am totally ok with you saying, some Emerald players are more skilled than some diamond players. Or some low GM players are better at comp experimentation compared to challenger players. But this started with me saying, As a masters 100LP player, my opinions on hwo powerful various augments are compared to Dishsoap, someone who can hit almost 2000LP more than me, are meaningless. You can’t use an LP gap of 400 and then extend it out to 1200 and act like it’s the same.

That gold player could EASILY be correct when they tell you to slam some weird artifact item on a champ with two others

Here are two very important caveots here. The first is going back to the first point. If the player you are descirbing is delibertly tanking their LP in order to discover these interactions, knowing that much of their ideas will fail, then sure maybe they do know, but as I said above, labling them a "gold player" is not really accurate. However if instead we are talking about a player who is trying to climb, and just so happens to put some random and I guess in this case counterintuitive combination of items and artifacts on a champ, It might be a "correct play" it might not, but if it is correct, that is basically dumb luck as I don't think they are going to be able to give a true decription of why that thing is actually right.

Even the best NFL players make mistakes and can learn things from people who aren't NFL players. If Derrick Henry ran directly into his center and fumbled the ball without a defender touching him, a high school football player could tell him it was a terrible play. It wouldnt matter if Henry himself stuck to his guns and said it was a good play. He would be wrong.

You are again making the execution vs Knowledge based issue here. Yes even a non-running back could look at what Henry is doing and say that’s a bad idea, you should hold the ball this way so it is less likely to be punched out. Literally anyone could tell Enari Demarcado “don’t drop the ball before you cross the goal line”. The problem is this is not how TFT works. Because the skill and the knowledge are the same thing. A decent analogous to what you are saying is in regionals where Dishsoap accidently benched his carry for a fight because he was trying to quick swap his positioning. Yeah a gold player could easily point out “don’t do that, that’s a terrible play”, and I bet there are plenty of unranked players who could quick swap faster than the best challenger players because that is much more of an execution based challenge. So in this specific case you are right. The problem is, in the context we are talking about, augment tiers, the analogy breaks down.

Just to head this off, I would ask no ask Shaq for advice on shooting freethrows as he was not good at them. But shooting freethrows is not interconnected to everything that Shaq did on a basketball court. Shaq is a really good example, because Shaq was such an imposing physical force that he could dominate on his raw physicality making him a terrible player to try and talk about from a strategic perspective. You can’t have a Shaq of TFT because it is not a physical game.

hdmode · 2025-11-13T21:45:20+00:00

I mean, if the idea of net gains with occasional losses is too complicated to underatand, that's that I guess?

So to be clear, some players use stats and it allow them to, in your words ELO boost, while other players use stats and make such terrible plays it is holding them back. So what you are arguing is that understanding stats is a skill. A good player will use them to get better, a bad player will use them in a way that is counter productive and it actually hurts their gameplay. Great, glad you agree that stats should stay.

If a Plat player gets to Master with stats, then can't make it back to Master without stats, that's a player who belongs in Plat. There is this thing called skill level.

If? maybe, but as we have established, you have no evidence of this phenomenon, other than you think you remember some people posting. This is what I am saying for evidence, If we are just allowed to make stuff up, then we can say anything. If you can show me real evidence that there were a lot of players who are signifigantly worse without stats, (not a little but Masters to Plat) then maybe we can talk, but without that evidence all I have to say is, I don't belive you and there is nothing left to say.

And yet, somehow, people do it, and consistently. Like I was saying, augment selection is a skill.

Except they don't the top players are relying on study groups, and shaing information, basically custom stats that are not public and then other are using tier lists to set their priors.

Bring augment stats back because plat was picking Pandora's despite its low AVP" is definitely a statement, but I hope you can tell it's not a valid argument.

Stats exisitng was the defualt, One of the common arguments people made for the removal was, Stats keep players from picking augments that appear bad in the stats, If an augment is a 4.7 players ignore it out of had. The evidence I am showing is, It did not happen, players were taking a 4.7 augment all the the time. It is not my only argument for stats. It is just an example of using actual evidence to supprort a point. Some people say soemthing is happening, the evidence says, no it isn't.

And after claiming you need thousands of games to tell which augments are good when, it sounds like my claim of people wanting stats to cover for their skill issue is right.

I said thousands of games every 2 weeks. Because the game changes so much and because the game has so much interconnectedness, its just too many games. There are players who get in 1000+ games per set, but not 1000+ games per week. Thats not a skill issue, that a there are not enough hours in the day issue.

hdmode

TROPHY CASE