The Death of the Ultimate Journey: How Content Overload Ruined
The Lost Art of Progression Once upon a time in FIFA Ultimate Team, building your squad was a true journey. Gold cards were the backbone of your team for months, and packing a high-rated gold player felt like a massive achievement. Back then, a "Promo" was exactly what the name implied: a rare, limited-time event that introduced highly coveted and scarce cards. If you missed out, that was it. This scarcity created a sense of awe around special cards and maintained their market value.
The Weekly Promo Trap Fast forward to the EA FC era, and this fundamental philosophy has been completely abandoned. Today, Ultimate Team suffers from severe "Promo Fatigue." EA releases a new promotional squad every single Friday. The concept of "limited availability" has vanished. This relentless cycle doesn't just kill the hype; it burns out the player base. The excitement of a new promo is immediately overshadowed by the anticipation of the next one just seven days later.
Devaluing the "Special" Cards The problem goes beyond the weekly releases. EA has saturated the game through the in-game Store and Squad Building Challenges (SBCs). Even after a promo officially ends, players can easily obtain these cards through store packs, daily "Casino SBCs," or the frequent "Best Of" batches that re-release old cards. This constant supply destroys the Transfer Market, crashes the value of hard-earned cards, and renders standard Gold cards practically useless (SBC fodder) within the first few weeks of the game.
A Prime Example: The TOTY Crisis Take the Team of the Year (TOTY) promo as the ultimate proof of this broken system. Historically, the entire value of a TOTY card stemmed from its extreme rarity and near-impossibility to pack from standard rewards. Last year, however, the market was flooded with TOTYs due to an unlimited "82+ x20" upgrade SBC, which many players shamelessly grinded over 500 times. This year, the devaluation has reached a new low. Whether you are a hardcore pro or an average casual player, obtaining a TOTY item from standard FUT Champions rewards has become the norm, simply because the pack probabilities are now absurdly high. When the absolute most prestigious cards in the game are handed out like regular rewards, the concept of "special" completely loses its meaning, and we don't know if the unlimited SBC upgrade challenge will be released this year or not, but I hope it doesn't happen.
Where is the Journey? Currently, within less than a month of the game's release, an average player's squad is entirely composed of rainbow-colored special cards. While it might sound fun initially, it completely destroys the sense of progression. When you achieve your "Ultimate Team" by November, the desire to keep playing diminishes significantly. For FC 26 to succeed, EA needs to hit the brakes. We need a return to a balanced system where Gold cards matter, promos are genuinely special events, and the journey of building a team feels rewarding again.
The Store Dilemma
Pack Inflation: How the Store Killed the Magic In the golden era of Ultimate Team, Store Promos were a rare treat. Packs contained far less than they do today, yet the community celebrated them. Because the game's overall pace was slower and top-tier cards were genuinely rare, opening a promo pack felt meaningful. Today, however, the Store has become an aggressive, non-stop content machine that stays active 24/7, ultimately killing the magic of pack openings.
The Fall of "Lightning Rounds" The clearest evidence of this downfall is the state of "Lightning Rounds." Historically, these were limited-quantity packs available for just one hour, and they would sell out globally within minutes, creating a massive adrenaline rush. Today, EA keeps these "limited" packs in the store for several hours, and ironically, they often expire before the global supply runs out. This is a massive red flag; it proves that the relentless content overload has successfully destroyed player interest and demand.
The Death of Classic Packs & Artificial Upgrades This saturation has rendered the game’s legendary packs obsolete. The iconic 50k (Rare Players Pack), 100k (Jumbo Rare Players), and 125k (Ultimate Pack)—once the absolute pinnacle of pack openings—have practically disappeared from relevance. In their place, EA has introduced packs with artificially inflated "guaranteed ratings," such as the (83+ x10) packs. Historically, these absurdly powerful packs were strictly reserved for "Futties"—the end-of-game celebration in July and August. Injecting them into the game's early lifecycle destroys the organic grind and makes packing a high-rated player feel cheap, fake, and unrewarding Even if the company manipulates the odds of luck within these packs.
The Demise of Icons
The Demise of Football Royalty: How Icons Lost Their Prestige Remember when seeing an Icon on the pre-match loading screen struck fear into your heart? That intimidation factor is completely gone. The flood of the newly introduced 'Silver Icons' has made footballing royalty far too common. We have gone from chasing the absolute rarest cards in the game to filtering through them as mere fodder. Furthermore, the Evolution system acts as the final nail in the coffin. It strips away the historical authenticity of these legends, turning them into unrealistic, upgraded "mutants" rather than the iconic figures they are supposed to be. Where is the fun and exclusivity if every opponent fields an evolved Gullit, Maldini, Pelé, or Maradona?
ICON SBC Dilemma This devaluation is heavily driven by the game’s aggressive Squad Building Challenge (SBC) strategy. Currently, if you enter the SBC section, you are bombarded with not one, but two simultaneous, long-term Icon upgrade packs that can be crafted almost daily. This begs the question: Why? Why do we need two concurrent Icon SBCs available for weeks on end? In older FIFA titles, an Icon SBC was a rare, monumental event that didn't drop weekly. This scarcity kept the market value of Icons sky-high and maintained their prestige. Today, due to the overconsumption of Silver Icons and the daily casino-style SBC grind, the vast majority of Icons are practically worthless. The ultimate goal of the game has been destroyed by its own accessibility.
The Leak Epidemic
The Leak Epidemic: Killing the Element of Surprise To make matters worse, the very content that we are already fatigued by is constantly spoiled days in advance. EA’s inability to secure its database against data miners means the element of surprise is completely dead. We no longer wait in anticipation for Friday night content because we already know everything that is coming.
A perfect reminder of what we have lost is the legendary "FUTMAS" promo from FIFA 19. Back then, data mining wasn't ruining the experience. Instead, the entire community would eagerly log in at 6 PM just to decipher cryptic clues on the loading screen—like a player's shirt number, club, or nationality. We had to guess who the upcoming players were. That pure, organic anticipation created a magical sense of community excitement that simply does not exist in the game anymore.
The TOTY Illusion A live example is the current TOTY promo. The entire squad was leaked before the official voting had even closed! While most of the community knows the voting system is largely cosmetic, having the biggest promo of the year fully exposed prematurely completely killed the hype and excitement.
January is the New August: The Swaps Disaster Further leaks regarding the upcoming "Swaps" event on January 29th highlight the absurdity of the current game cycle. We already know this event will feature "end-game" packs that historically shouldn't be seen until July or August. Releasing the best possible packs in January—even if EA heavily manipulates the pack weight—destroys long-term engagement. Why grind for the next five months when you have already hit the ceiling of pack rewards?
The Ronaldo Tragedy The ultimate proof of this broken progression is the leaked Ronaldo Swaps card, which reportedly boasts higher stats than his current pack version. Historically, an easily accessible, top-tier R9 was strictly reserved for "Futties" at the very end of the game cycle, as he has always been the ultimate, max-price player. Handing out a superior version for "free" through a Swaps system in January has decimated his market value. One look at his current price tells you everything you need to know: the awe and prestige of owning the best player in the game have been completely erased.
