My assessment of Player Career Mode.

Question

Hello, folks. Here's my assessment of career mode so far.

Well, not so far, since we all know nothing will be fixed or added... Here's my assessment of career mode.

I'm a player career mode guy, so I'll share my thoughts about it. I want to know what you guys think.

And let's just skip talking about the gameplay issue because... it will be a thesis if we are to tackle that.

1. UI.

So, UI is bad. It's too cumbersome and confusing.

I have to move more than once to actually get into what I want to know.

I'm okay with moving to different tabs for different categories, but it once is fine to have to basic information.

If I'm going to the 'Season' tab, I want to see everything; league standings, individual records, calendar (upcoming schedules, match histories), and more in one screen.

We have an entire screen to fit all information compactly once, but I have to move to another section. This is too much.

2. Social Media

I know EA is excited about adding social media feature (not really a feature, just a filler), but again, they're overdoing it.

Rignt now, social media has no function. It's supposedly there to give news, but I can't get the full news without actually looking at the comment.

The post is 70% same picture and dotted news. Just take out the image and deliver us the news. When I click that specific post, show me the corresponding copy-pasted picture.

If there's a social media feature, I think we should control it. Make us decide what to post about. This could perfectly linked with personality, fans, manager's rating, etc.

Rigth now, it's just... there. And it takes the entire half of the screen!

3. Transfers

There are too much transfers. Too much, too random.

I remember I could disable first transfer window in previous games, but why did EA took out that option? Why?

Of course, transfers exist, and they play a big part in football, but does it have to be overdone?

Transfers right now are overflowing, unrealistic and so random. I get it. I can see you want to fully utilize social media filler with transfers, but stop abusing them!

4. Training

For now, training is just for getting XPs. It has nothing to do with maintaining fitness or sharpness.

Just like in manager career mode, doing too many training could affect my energy. Being conservative with training could maintain my energy but deplete sharpness.

I think this add more to immersion. Right now, training does nothing.

5. Match intros

I don't have anything to say about this. Why in the world did EA remove the intros in the first place?

I can't understand this decision in any of my logical capacity. Like, why?

6. Watching a match as a sub

Again, manager career mode allows to see the full match from the bench (sideline).

But why not in the player CM? I'd like to see my player reacting to the match from the bench.

7. Activities

Again, Activities has nothing to offer rather than giving personality points.

Doing certain activities can give more fans or I don't know, approvals from the locals.

8. Press conference

Another opportunity to form my player's personality. My answers, approaches, or attitudes can add more immersion.

9. Player roles

This could play a big role in player career mode as well. I can be assigned to specific position with specific role.

And from how well I perform to that task, my ratings, manager's rating, playstyle, personality, and much more can be modified.

Being a CM isn't just about being in a CM position. I can have a defensive role, or I can play more offensive role.

I can play out wide to support the winger, or I can drop down to prepare for counter attacks and such.

10. Pre-match warm-up

This could play a part for temporarily boost my sharpness or fitness for the match.

Of course, this doesn't have to be a definitive one. Just slightly give an advantage for a single match.

11. Chemistry with teammates

Think of Son and Kane, Torress and Gerrard, Lampard and Drogba and more.

High chemistry would make teammates making movements on 'right' time. Or they could spot me when I'm making a run.

Low chemistry would cause out-of-rhythm movements, or wrong choice of passes.

This would add more to being a player. There would be a solid record that I can track and try to achieve more.

12. Transfer objectives?

Please change them to be more realistic. Do you really think scoring 15 finness shots would make other team to consider buying me?

Just say 15 goals. If EA had made more sophisticated and tactical game, these objectives would have been far better.

Pairing with player roles, if I'm doing great as a certain role, statistics according to it would be considered as a transfer factor.

13. This is something I found a long time ago, but for some reason, the news, social media, that objective prompt after the matches are done are shown wrong after an international game.

For example, when I finish my international match, the news would say my league team has won against France or something like that.

I don't know if it's just me, but this clearly shows EA has never tested anything of their game. Small thing, but small details that matter.

So, these were what I noticed from playing payer career mode and what more could be added more.

I know it's a high hope. But every time I see player career mode, I see a vastly wasted opportunity to have a great mode to immersively play football.

Right now, player career mode is only about being a player and playing a match, and that's all.

Anyway, I'd never expect EA to do something to make this mode a little better.

I don't know why they just takes out a random feature. Add, don't replace.

How you guys think about this mode?

mrkirkferentz · Answer

I have a lot of the same thoughts honestly.

1. The UI drastically decreased in quality for basically no reason. Tables are a lot harder to read and more difficult to locate, the news tab is completely gone for some reason making tracking transfers difficult around the league, everything's been fractured up for the sake of changing how it looks.

2. The worst part about social media right now is that none of the posts make any sense. If you actually open any of the individual posts, all of the comments are just nonsense randomly generated filler comments that don't even relate to the actual post. I get that Twitter is full of AI bots spamming that kind of stuff now but that doesn't mean EA has to imitate it. It would have at least been nice to see some effort. There's no point in actually opening posts up to read them.

3. Didn't really consider this but yeah, every window there's a bunch of nonsensical transfers that don't make a whole lot of sense.

4. Honestly, I don't even play the trainings lmao. I get A's on three of them once when I start a save and just simulate to farm XP, there's no reason to touch them otherwise.

5. This was a problem for me last year, but it's even more egregious that EA said they'd be putting them back in for career mode only to completely forget to add it back for player career. Works in Manager just fine, for some reason.

6. Would be a really good addition, especially early on when you're basically just simming through matches anyway.

7. This was another problem of mine that I've been thinking about since I really got back into FIFA in 22. Activities, money, none of these things matter. Especially in FC 25 where you can basically give your character the option of maxing out on personality from the jump. This makes a lot of the contract negotiation stuff with the agent pointless. Why do I care if the game says I'm making 30k pounds a week? There's literally nothing to spend that money on, having a richer contract doesn't earn me more XP or anything, so why even bother?

8. Agreed, and part of it is just how it'll be with how much preference manager career gets over player. I get it, because manager career is a major part of the player base, but the assets are there to give those options to player career without much hassle. It should be an easy addition, just like pre-match introes.

The whole agent system right now is kind of a mess too, but it's a one-step-forward, two-steps-back kind of mess. EA made an objective improvement with how individual transfers worked from 23 to 24 by allowing players to plan where they wanted to go. I remember playing career in FIFA 23 and spamming old saves, reloading over and over and over again to try and get to a specific club that I wanted to go to. The RNG also made it impossible to make moves that real life players have actually done (going from Europe to the MLS or something). But yeah, the objectives are silly and outlandish a lot of the time. EA also kind of handicapped the whole system because there's no reason to want to pursue the more difficult challenges or the higher paying contracts. Money doesn't matter, there's nothing to spend it on but buying personality points, so I always just use the lowest paying contract objectives for any club and breeze through them.

There's a framework for something really, really good in there somewhere, but it just doesn't seem like EA cares enough to put the effort in as opposed to what they do with manager career. If they would at least put pre-match intros back in for player career that would be a step.

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