What's next for EA FC?

If you don't feel like reading everything here I have put the most important points in bold.

I want to start off by saying this is all personal opinion. As a result I cannot make any in-depth comments on the states of Rush, Pro Clubs and Ultimate Team as they are not my go-to game modes. (However, I do think it necessary to mention that the times I have played Rush in Career Mode have been actually quite enjoyable, and I look forward to seeing how Rush progresses in EAFC long-term.)

Anyway.

I have been playing FIFA/FC games for almost 12 years now and I can safely say that this is no longer the football game I fell in love with. Of course a lot of this is down to the changing in gamemode popularity, players' visions of what they want to see in a football game, and (respectfully) a bias towards marketing Ultimate Team.

First of all, I have to talk about the slow yet progressive annual purge of national teams. I think it's a shame that just 29 of the 210 recognised men's nations are in this year's edition - EA FC claims to have "unrivalled authenticity" yet actively neglects quite frankly the most authentic football in the world. And before I get hit with the "licensing is not as easy as it sounds" line, let me be very explicit here: I am not asking for fully-licensed national teams. I think the generic teams like Brazil with EA-made kits and Bolivia without their FA crest were fine, I could make do with that. I am simply asking for more global representation as we can't say that FC contains "all the best teams" yet Brazil, ranked 5th in the world, and Belgium, ranked 8th in the world, remain absent. Again, to reiterate, using the country's flag instead of the licensed FA badge is fine. Making generic kits would be fine (I mean just steal some assets from Create-a-Club and add a bit of colour). But please, EA, give us back CONMEBOL. I think if a country has a minimum of 23 players in the game, it should have a national team. Maybe 30 if you consider Career Mode progression, especially if those nations can be scouted by youth scouts in Manager Career.

And speaking of which, I have to talk about Career Mode as well. To start, I'm actually excited about where EA will choose to go with the new FC IQ model and tactical settings. I personally would love it if EA brought back player-specific instructions alongside this (like how we could get our players to make inside runs more or stay back while defending - obviously these are just examples but some new ideas could be introduced like selecting which players move into the box more frequently). Using this, we could have custom player roles to really give managers a bigger sense of control over their squads and emulate player styles that synergise with their active PlayStyles.

Other than this though, Career Mode doesn't really feel like Career Mode. Player Career is almost there I think, but there's still some issues. It feels more like I'm playing a Football Life Tycoon where I collect money every in-game week, and use it to buy myself a personality. Investments mean basically nothing to me in terms of my football career, yes it's important in life outside football but I shouldn't have to purchase a hot tub, mansion and hire a dog groomer just to learn how to perform a Trivela. The whole thing makes no real sense to me. Also, please bring back match intros in Player Career. FC 24 removed them, the community was outraged, now it's back but not fully back? And it's not like any special cutscene is getting in the way, yes you could make an argument about the pre-match enhanced objectives but we saw that in FIFA 23.

I also think there's a glaring issue with the rate of development of players - obviously short-term having some players grow by +5 OVR isn't a massive problem but it gets to a point where even relegation candidates in the Premier League have players that are reaching into 86 OVR which honestly just feels wrong to me, a player of this ability should be playing for a team like Borussia Dortmund or PSG, not stuck in the Championship with Burnley. And on the other end, you have teams like Manchester City that end up with a 93-rated right back, Nico O'Reilly is somehow a 98-rated CM, it just looks like I've been grinding Evolutions on UT. I think the big causes are that there seems to be no real way to decrease OVR other than just... being old, and the imbalance caused by Dynamic Potential essentially saying "The best you'll ever be is 84, no wait you look like you could be a 88, but you also could grow to 95". I think a higher proportion of player growth should be form-based.
The same applies to Player Career - there was nothing wrong with the old system of running training drills and gaining attributes based on career milestones. I personally like the concept of form-based growth and random stat changes, similar to how we see it in Manager Career - obviously with the level-based system being so recently adopted I don't see it changing anytime soon but I'm just putting the idea forward as a long-term fix. I would like to suggest potentially using roles and development plans to grow in Player Career, potentially even controlled by the AI manager to fit their tactical playstyle (i.e. a Left-Back playing for Pep Guardiola's Manchester City would be developed as a Falseback).

On an unrelated note - can we address how the Custom Tournaments feature has been basically untouched for at least 12 years? I would love to see this expanded with things like qualification rounds, more teams to start with, bigger groups, new formats, more substitutions, new trophy designs - so much more can be done with this mode yet it's been collecting dust because nobody... really cares anymore.

Another way to potentially reignite the creative side of EAFC would be to relaunch the Creation Centre. The Create-A-Club community has so much to showcase, from the Red Bull London playthroughs to Mark Goldbridge's United Stand FC, and I think the only way to elevate this is to give more creative freedom to the players. I'm talking uploaded club crests, add custom kit sponsors, creating new leagues full of custom teams. You could even implement something along the lines of the tactic share codes to import other players' custom teams.
On the subject of Create-A-Club I really dislike that custom club kits don't take the font of the league you move into. Obviously I understand why since some league fonts like the Premier League and EFL fonts are multicolour and have a preset range of colours but I honestly think a good trade-off would be to restrict the amount of colours you can use for kit fonts in order to use the authentic fonts instead.

Another unrelated topic here but I don't really understand the licensing agreement between EA and UEFA - how comes the CONMEBOL Libertadores license comes with all participating teams available but I still have to use Malmo FF as a placeholder for Crvena zvezda? I'm sure it's a licensing thing I don't understand (seeing as I don't work in EA's corporate structure unfortunately) but for me it kind of puts me off of playing UEFA competitions in, say, my first Career Mode season, or in Tournaments Mode.

My final point will be short and simple - if the licensing allows it then please add EFL scoreboards to FC 26. It's slightly irritating that EA have the EFL licenses but don't seemingly have access to the graphics packages.

In this final section I simply want to offer a large amount of gratitude to any of the developers at EA that do take the time to read all of this, and I apologise if anybody feels I have been unfairly critical of EAFC. To reiterate this is simply my opinion on the state of the current game based on my personal playing experience, and experiences with FC/FIFA titles of the past. I do hope, whether short or long term, that EA take these thoughts into consideration as I am sure that a large portion of the EAFC Community (especially the Career Mode players) would agree with me about most of the points made. Any response to this would be greatly appreciated though I understand if some things need to be kept hush before FC 26 gets its public release.

Thanks again!