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The wink-and-nod April Fools' Day program from Sony San Diego is back for MLB The Show 26 in Diamond Dynasty.
Common Courtesy Program Celebrates Foolish Team-Building
Generally, you would not want to build a team of Common-tier players in Diamond Dynasty. But as has become a tradition for SDS, the annual April Fools' Day program — this year, called Common Courtesy — brings some excellent rewards for players willing to fool around in the mode.
The program's XP reward path asks users to complete four Moments of failure with Common-tier players unlockable on the path — including Kerry Wood and Carlos Peña, neither previously confirmed as returning Legends in Diamond Dynasty for MLB The Show 26 — obtain Parallel XP with them, and then accomplish a handful more statistical Missions with equally dubious objectives:
- Tally five hits with Common players
- Give up 15 hits with any pitchers
- Make five errors with any players
- Get caught stealing five times with any players
Obviously, the first one is the "toughest," in a sense, in that Common players will largely struggle to hit, but going into a nine-inning Play Vs. CPU game on Rookie and making all of this happen in one fell swoop is probably the sanest way to tackle Common Courtesy, so even that shouldn't be that hard. Throwing meatballs will yield hits, holding the throw button down too long on grounders to short will produce errors, and getting caught stealing is trivially easy once you're on base.
But try as you might, you will only get 64 Stats for the XP reward path through most of these current tasks, which is a far, far, far cry from the 10,000 necessary for the Ballin' is a Habit pack at the path's end. Remember, though, as is advised in game: Not everything is as it seems. The Common Courtesy Collection rewards no Stars for now, but nabbing and collecting all four of those players from the reward path before the collection expires on April 2nd at 3 p.m. Eastern/noon Pacific earns a Deluxe New Threads pack, and that collection is also very likely to be replaced by one where collecting all of those players gives 10,000 — maybe 9,936 — Stars to make the Ballin' is a Habit pack obtainable.
Additionally, Common players awarded through April Fools' programs past have had a habit of morphing into or unlocking equivalent Gold or Diamond players — so it's fair to expect similar this year for Jorge Soler, Trevor Story, Peña, and Wood, with those cards actually being what go into a collection for the Ballin' pack.
Of course, there is a chance that the last bit of shenanigans for Common Courtesy is already here: The lone repeatable Mission in the program rewards nine Stars for accruing 500 Parallel XP with Common players. So if there isn't some enormous quantum of Stars available tomorrow or beyond, it's theoretically possible that SDS really wants to see if any users will play the literal thousands of games needed with a Common player somewhere in the lineup to get a singular Ballin' is a Habit pack.
Going down that sort of rabbit hole would be good preparation for the impending Egg Hunt program, at least...
UPDATE, APRIL 2ND: As hinted at on April Fool's Day, the Common Courtesy program was updated at reset on Thursday to allow for the completion of its XP reward path and the acquisition of the Ballin' is a Habit pack at the end of it. And through completion of the Collection — which that awards the 9,936 Stars to finish the XP reward path — players will also unlock Diamond versions of Kerry Wood, Carlos Peña, Jorge Soler, and Trevor Story, the latter checking in as a 90 OVR shortstop among the best at his position in all of DD.
