Newcomer’s feedback: Why I paid for Premium Pass, and why I won’t pay anymore.
I started playing Ultimate Team this March, after years of only playing casual Seasons. I paid for Premium Pass in both Season 6 and 7, and it was good value for money. With a team consistently made with Season Pass players, I climbed division by division and made it to division 5, going now towards division 4. For this, I am thankful to the company.
I think that time is more important than money, and if money helps me spend less time on grinding, then I chose to pay. For this reason, I also paid a long time for GTA+. But it’s the very comparison to GTA Online and GTA+, that convinced me to stop paying for future FC26 Premium Passes. And here is where I think the FC26 Premium Pass was worth it and then, not anymore.
Why it was worth it:
Exclusive content. Both games offer exclusive content to payers, and this is plus. The Premium Pass players are nice to have, especially when starting the game
Both games offer in-game coins to payers. None offers much, but still this appreciated. Again, for a starting player, the coins FC26 Premium Pass offers are useful.
Why it’s not worth it anymore:
No discounts.
This is such a simple marketing decision, I feel bad mentioning it. Why don’t you offer some minimal discounts to Premium payers? For instance, 10% percent to a given number of paid evolutions each Season?
No bonuses and multipliers.
GTA+ has very enticing bonuses, where GTA+ players receive often 4x rewards of certain activities, which makes the weekly grinding worth it and one of the best live service games I played. FC26 has very low and malfunction bonuses, for players in general, not only payers. “Score the last goal of the next rival match”. Ok, I do that, but my opponent rage quits at 4-0 and the game doesn’t record my goal. Great, no bonus then.
No valuable rewards.
GTA and GTA+ really gives each player the opportunity to expand their business as much as they work for it. Grinding leads to guaranteed payments and wealth. On the other hand, after grinding Ultimate Team for almost 2 months, I still play daily with a feeling of scarcity, whether of valuable players, coins or necessary fodder. I haven’t yet packed a player remotely close to 500k, despite countless hours of playing and submitting SBCs. On the market, my best sold player was 20k. And my club current coin balance is 530k coins. Not long after you start playing Ultimate Mode, you realize the best way to expand your club is not paying for Premium Pass to the very developers of the game, but to third-party developers. Why pay for Premium Pass, when I could direct the approximate same sum of money to a company that offers me a SBC solving tool or to a Patreon trading coach, that can help me make smart trading and fair coins? Both methods are legal and more certain to bring valuable players to your club, than paying for Premium Pass. And with the gains I eventually make with third-party tools, I can just pay the Premium Pass with in-game coins. Am I wrong?
Worst Custom Support and zero interest in solving personal problems.
I play several online games on a wired gigabit network, on PS5 and Nintendo Switch. All perform very well, including FC26 Seasons. But for whatever reason, Ultimate Mode suffers greatly: game bugs, weird mechanics, latency. But when I report that I just lost a rank in Seasons due to the game closing on me, these are some of the answers I got: “You have a glitchy network”, or “If we had a problem, it would’ve been reported by everyone” or “We will investigate and fix it, if more players report it”. My dear EA advisors, I play fluidly Seasons on the same game and same network, yet when I play Ultimate Mode it’s suddenly my glitchy network? These types of answers are truly insulting and the fact that I hear them repeatedly, tells me EA has no real interest in admitting and fixing general problems, let alone solving problems at individual level. Whenever I had an issue that led to content loss, Rockstar apologized and compensated me whichever way was necessary. I don’t expect compensations, but the fact that you really made a general corporate manifesto of telling people it’s their fault and not even trying to find a real solution to personal case, convinces me you are not the kind of company I would pay Premium Passes for.
Final thoughts
I don’t want to make it sound that I hold high other gaming developers, because I had my share of quarrellings with Rockstar and it’s never easy to get something out of them. And they are greedy, just like any big gaming company. But then again, I remember that this Sunday, when I get my Squad Battles Elite 3 rewards (hopefully), I will get to pick between my forever stalkers Xhaka, O’Shea and Godfrey; a perfect way to end a long week of grinding. And suddenly other games and companies sound a lot better.
