The only thing I've seen micro transactions used for is progressing your rtts player further than you've earned the points for. I don't play diamond dynasty but I would imagine there are some in there as well. It is not even close to being as awful as nba2k was.
The big new addition that I don't remember from last year at least, is the challenges where you can use those stubs to enter a challenge with a bigger payout for completion similar to gambling and we can make our own challenges and upload them. I think there were challenges in the past, but I don't remember the stubs being a part of them and even then, you get stubs through some things in the game too so it's not necessarily something you need to spend money on.
To expand on your answer as well, the free 30,000 stubs you get from GS is good for RttS in the beginning but I only ended up spending a few of them on my player since it felt kind of cheap, but the biggest thing for me will be using them to get out of an injury my player has. I guess I might use it on my Indians franchise to increase the budget since it's one of the cheap teams, but it's definitely not needed and won't ruin the game.
Nothing requires it and that's what people were trying to say back when the preorder bonus was announced and people were adamant that it meant the game was ruined when it's something that's been in the game for the past few years and just wasn't something people cared about at the time. Once a few games went overboard with the microtransactions though, it suddenly meant The Show had to follow.
Basically, it's there mostly for your own personal gain but nothing that will hurt your experience as I NEVER buy them.
spent the first few games of my career hitting like garbage but i've been around .400 the last few including this one. Feels good!
