Is EA SPORTS F1 dead?

To say that your cortisol levels have increased to such a degree because of unfounded rumours from a Youtube personality is pretty concerning.

Nico, take a break. Find something else to do. Gaming is an escape, especially for casuals such as yourself. It no longer sounds like an escape for you but something that is affecting you too much

@TotosHeadphonesit's been like this since ever. On glory old Codemasters days Nico would be frequently called out on his hyperbolic rants.

I honestly don't know what would be the best course of action here. It's like Nico has ever responded well to criticism or advice either.

Edit: putting it in a different way.

Nico, you'll obviously get a general and broad endorsement of the "microtransactions are bad! Ultimate team is bad!" sentiment.

You will not, however, get any validation for the "EA you're killing my franchise" and "I'm so angry" and "F1 is dead" sort of sentiment you have a penchant for knitting and weaving into your posts.

That is not a healthy attitude one should have towards entertainment products.

And it's all made even worse when you're the one foraging around for rumours.

Look guys, here's the thing: I like F1 games. I love F1 games. The first F1 game that really got me into the groove was F1 2015, my nowadays second favorite F1 game, and since then, I played almost every F1 game save for 2016 and 2018.

However, as much as I love those games, I also criticize them if something is wrong. And ever since EA took over in 2021, F1 took a huge downfall regarding playability. The cars tend to oversteer a lot more, the AI are stupidly broken on several tracks, online play is horrible, and all the things that are important for an F1 game get worse and worse every year. It almost feels like EA wants to make the game so difficult and irritating for non Esports players that they just give up because they can't make money off the casual players.

See, the first F1 game with proper microtransactions was F1 2019, where you could purchase certain suits and liveries. The next being F1 2020, which introduced the Podium Pass. However, these are all Codemasters F1 games, and even if they wanted to make additional money from microtransactions, Codies still prioritized making the game suitable for all types of players.

Not so with EA SPORTS F1 games. F1 2021 was the worst F1 game ever in my opinion. Drifting cars, overpowered AI, Verstappen dominating everything, and a feeling that I would play Ridge Racer with F1 cars. The Braking Point story was great, but really, this game is the fricking worst. And while F1 22 was great at the beginning save for the frequent crashing and strong AI, it became worse pretty fast, starting with the massive increase in front wing damage effect, and then changing the handling model, which makes the cars harder to drive.

All I'm asking is: How good could these two games have been if EA didn't take over? Both of them would have been solid successors to F1 2020, and I would have had so much fun with them. But instead, I tortured myself for weeks and months just to get my hands on all the stuff from the Podium Pass, and I honestly regret that I did this.

And like I said: If F1 23 is getting Ultimate Team, I will not purchase this or any following F1 games. EA SPORTS is ruining F1, and apparently, I'm the only person that sees this because I loved F1 2020 and only looked for a viable successor.

@LuckyNico92 Look at your words:

• angry
• dead
• fricking worst
• horrible
• irritating
• love
• money cow
• regret
• shoveling grass
• stupidly
• tortured

Do not deflect. As I said above, everyone will endorse your rejection of microtransactions. What we do not bite and honestly wished could come to an end is this hyperbolic language and unhealthy attitude towards a videogame. No one will validate that sort of sentiment.

This is not downplaying the importance of videogames. It's a huge and complex industry, and the fact that we're here day in and day out just shows how much we care for the franchise and this community.

Do not deflect. There's no "apparently I'm the only person..." going on over any concrete, relevant matter pertaining to this franchise. What you're being called out on, again, is this unhealthy relationship over an entertainment product. All this fuss over a rumor from an 85k subscribers youtuber. This kind of unfit overreaction.

Personally, I rarely engage with your posts anymore because of this. It genuinely feels bad to be entangled in these unfounded levels of intensity you always resort to when expressing your "passion" for these games.

TL;DR: Microtransactions and F1 "ultimate whatever" = bad

Unbridled emotion over an entertainment product = unhealthy 

Unbridled emotion over a rumor about an entertainmend product = unhealthy²

We've discussed the Ultimate Team concept of the F1 games before and I still fail to see any way that it could really work even if EA wanted to make it happen. I don't see it happening myself. In FIFA you can just play the game and completely ignore that FUT exists anyway.