What You Need to Know About MLB The Show 25 Diamond Dynasty

A Blog by Greg

MLB The Show 25 has officially released, and if you are like me, you have been playing an unholy amount of the game’s most popular mode: Diamond Dynasty. After pre-ordering the game and staying up for the midnight release on Thursday (technically Friday, but who cares), I have been grinding Diamond Dynasty almost non-stop. Since I haven't played any of the other modes yet, I am going to focus my review solely on the Diamond Dynasty mode. Here is everything I liked and disliked in the new MLB The Show 25’s iteration of Diamond Dynasty.

Sets Are Gone!

Hallelujah! The “Sets” system that was introduced in MLB The Show 23 is no longer present in MLB The Show 25. If you aren’t familiar with what “Sets” means, allow me to briefly explain the concept and why it was so divisive within the Diamond Dynasty community. Most sports games with a “build your own fantasy team mode” (such as Ultimate Team in NHL, Madden, and FIFA or My Team in NBA 2K) struggle with releasing cards with too high of an overall early in the game's lifespan. However, MLB The Show tried something new by releasing very high overall cards incredibly early in the game's lifespan for both The Show 23 and 24. The caveat was that you could only use these cards for a little over a month or two before a new “Set” would be released, and all the players released in the previous Set would become unusable. While in theory, it makes total sense that a set system would keep players intrigued later in the game’s life cycle and give players an opportunity to use different cards, in practice, it was a disaster. The major problem was that too much content was being released at the same time, and it was rather overwhelming to the casual player. Additionally, the feeling of grinding for specific cards and using them throughout the year while creating a certain connection with your squad was stripped away from players. Essentially, the start of a new set meant spending another week or two grinding to get new cards. However, players wanted to use the cards they spent the last two months playing to unlock. San Diego Studios, the developers behind The Show franchise, didn’t listen to community feedback after MLB 23, but for 25, they gave in to the demand of the fans. However, they did change up their style of content releasing.

Lower Overalls

MLB The Show’s Diamond Dynasty mode always stood out to me from other modes such as NBA 2K’s My Team or Madden's Ultimate Team for one specific reason: I could unlock a card on day one that I could use for the rest of the year. For example, if I pulled Mike Trout’s Live Series card out of a normal “Show Pack” on the first day the game was released, he would be a staple of my team for many months. On the contrary, if I were to pull base series LeBron James from a standard NBA 2K pack on My Team, he would be in my lineup for at most a few weeks before new content made him irrelevant. While The Show’s strategy of flooding the game with cards that would be relevant for months made the game unique and made the game seem less reliant on microtransactions, it sometimes made me feel content with my Diamond Dynasty squad way too early in the game’s lifespan. In The Show 25, SDS took a page out of the EA and 2K playbook by slow-playing the release of high-overall cards. Don’t get me wrong, Shohei Ohtani is still a 93 OVR, and if you get his card out of a pack, he surely will be a part of your team for months. However, the game is not overflooded with high overall cards with incredibly high power attributes at release, unlike other entries in the franchise. The lower overalls also have an effect on online gameplay. In general, the lack of cards with high power attributes has made gameplay significantly different as exit velocity, on average, is lower, and home runs are definitely more rare than in previous games. While fans are still divided on whether this is a good or bad thing, it certainly offers an experience different from what Diamond Dynasty fans are used to. Expect a significant amount of grinding to achieve the “all-diamond-team” that was so easy to obtain in previous versions of Diamond Dynasty.

Online Modes

Like previous years, Diamond Dynasty’s online modes consist mainly of Ranked Seasons, Events, Co-Op, and Battle Royale. Events and Co-Op are essentially the same as they have been since being added to the game, so I won’t spend any time discussing them. The same cannot be said for Ranked Seasons and Battle Royale, however. Ranked Seasons lowered the requirement to reach World Series status (which always contains some of the best rewards the game has to offer), making it more accessible to weaker players. To balance things out, they added an even higher rating, played on the game’s new G.O.A.T. difficulty, that gives the highly skilled players that achieve this rank new and special rewards. However, these changes are rather minor in my opinion, as the mode itself is the same as anyone who has played Ranked Seasons in the past 7-8 years would come to expect. A significant change occurred in the Battle Royal mode (a mode in which players draft cards that are not limited to the ones in their collection and compete against other players in three-inning games). BR, as players have dubbed it, no longer contains rounds with “guaranteed players” related to the Battle Royal Program. Essentially, in the past few installments of the game, there would be certain cards that were certain to show up in a specific round because they were associated with the Battle Royal Program. Again, this addition to the game sounded great in theory, but in practice, it resulted in many teams in BR looking nearly identical to one another in the game mode that was supposed to have the most diversity amongst cards in the whole Diamond Dynasty mode. The removal of the BR program and the “guaranteed card” rounds is a major win for Diamond Dynasty. However, I am hesitant to give SDS too much credit for this change as it is essentially just regressing the mode to a version in which it was more popular with players. No real innovation took place in my opinion.

Offline Modes

Unfortunately, Conquest, Showdown, Moments, and Mini Seasons are almost exactly the same as they were in previous games. Fortunately, SDS did throw a bone to the offline lovers this year by adding a new game mode titled Diamond Quest. This brand new game mode combines the best aspects of the other offline modes into one significantly less boring and more rewarding game mode. Diamond Quest is truly awesome and, unlike all the other offline modes, has incredible replay value. The format is similar to conquest, but instead of playing the CPU in three-inning games over and over again, the player is surprised at each move with either a moment, showdown challenge, or free space. The end goal is to explore as much of the board as possible so when you face the final “Stadium Challenge” (which is just a three-inning game against the CPU), you have increased odds at receiving the best rewards. The rewards and cards at stake, at least for the initial two main Diamond Quest maps released at launch, are incredibly valuable. Additionally, unlike other offline modes, the cards you receive from completing a Diamond Quest map can be sold on the marketplace. This creates an entirely new economy in the offline sphere, allowing players to effectively collect valuable, sellable cards while avoiding playing other users. Diamond Quest has been a major success so far in Diamond Dynasty, and I, along with many others in the MLB The Show community, am looking forward to seeing how SDS evolves the game mode.

Thanks for reading and make sure to follow me on X (GRMBets) for more MLB The Show content. As always, be sure to follow TheSkippersView account and the rest of the team on X as well!