Everything We Know About Team Affinity in MLB The Show 25
Team Affinity is reverting back to focusing on all 30 teams through "My Journey," which aims for players to accomplish key team milestones.
MLB The Show Diamond Dynasty has been the pinnacle of the Ultimate Team genre across sports games for half a decade. The ability to create competitive teams without requiring pulling out the trusty credit card stands out among its contemporaries.
The most important factor in that is SDS' passion for making content free and grindable. In the last few years, a primary avenue for this content has been through the Team Affinity programs. These programs were a way for each team to get a Diamond Legend or Flashback reward.
Team Affinity this year is experiencing a massive shift in the thought process behind its purpose. In the last few years, TA has served as the primary medium to give us large quantities of rewards for each division throughout the year. Now, TA is still giving us the players important to your favorite franchise, just in a year-long grind called "My Journey."
The journey includes a silver, gold and 85-overall Diamond player card at launch. Unlike previous years, your progress does not stop once you get the 85-overall boss. TA progress continues, and you can earn your favorite team's All-Star and Finest players in the form of vouchers months before those cards are revealed and released to use in game. There will be "catch-up" opportunities released as the year goes on for people who might have fallen behind in their progress.
Another unique change is that the boss player card you earn for each team also acts as a captain card. All these captain boosts are unified across each team. These upgrades include Contact vs. R, Contact vs. L, Batting Clutch, and Hits Per 9. Worse teams will have better numbers boosted than better teams. The number of players per team are as follows: 5 for Tier 1, 12 for Tier 2 and 18 Tier 3.
The grind in Team Affinity feels intentionally drawn out, though they have a ton of options for places to complete the missions. This finally includes Co-op, as PXP will track in that game mode. Part of "My Journey" includes an optional, season-long grind that holds some pretty insane counting stats. These are here to serve as a way for people to track their team progress and give extra incentive to continue to use theme teams and eventually unlock the flex foam finger icon.
This shows that SDS has heard much of the community's talk around Team Affinity feeling like monthly homework. Instead, they have gone back to the roots of Team Affinity and made this a grind for each team. These first bosses will take players roughly two hours and 55,000 Team Affinity XP to earn per team. Although not every boss has been revealed, it seems there is an emphasis on Legends for teams that have access to a multitude of them.
Completing a team's Live Series collection will also be a goal that includes a 20,000 TA XP reward.
With all of that said, the live stream crew hinted toward the fact that this "My Journey" is not the only Team Affinity for each team. There will be roughly three or four TA programs released with new bosses and unlockables reflecting the current points in the game's power creep.
Expect Team Affinity drops right before the All-Star Game and right before the MLB Postseason.
Julian is an MLB The Show streamer and content creator with a focus on tier lists and player tips and tricks. He is also a former baseball player, lifelong Yankees fan and has played MLB The Show since MLB The Show 20.