Well saidEvil_Larry26. Couldn’t agree more.
The talk in the league I manage echoes that of the larger community you describe. Folks are very dissatisfied with (a) the lack of certainty baked into the draft system, and (b) the far poorer rewards (as compared to the previous system). People are angry/frustrated, but increasingly they appear resigned to the idea that the game just might not be worth it anymore. And these aren’t casual players. These are folks who grind every single day who don’t see a future in which they can remain competitive. I mean, when you work out the math (which I’ve done) it’s an absolutely ludicrous amount of money you’d have to spend on FC Points in order to obtain the certainty of winning a top player in the position where your squad needs improvement. We’re talking >$50 for one card and it’s a crapshoot which one you’ll get! How many of us have the kind of money to spend, and spend, and spend some more in order to land 4, 5, or 6 top cards when only one (or maybe two) actually improve our squads?
If EA wants our $$$ then it needs to offer value, and simply minting more player cards and making them more and more rare/expensive is NOT the way to do it. IMPROVE gameplay (e.g., game mechanics) and ALL player cards become more valuable because the game is FUN to play. I, for one, would gladly pay a flat fee of $50-$100/yr if FCM performed consistently like a true football simulator. However, I won’t spend ANYTHING on a slot machine that offers increasingly poor odds (which is what the draft system offers compared to the shard system) when I can’t consistently enjoy USING the cards I win (and when new bugs crop up every week).
I don’t know how this all ends, but I fear it will all end badly if EA continues to pursue the path it’s on — wherein it offers less and less, but demands more ($$$). TOTY has seriously damaged its relationship with the FCM community and the rumors are already spreading in my league that the next event is not going to bring back the shard system. As I alluded to above, this is already causing some members (myself included) to begin contemplating a reluctant retirement. Within the next month, if EA opts to ignore the type of feedback Evil_Larry26 (and many others) has provided, or is simply too slow to respond, we could very well see a death spiral of users quitting the game. Maybe EA has already decided that a “purge” of F2Pers is an acceptable loss if it allows them to extract more revenue from “whales,” but it’s hard to see how the game thrives without the passion (not to mention the sheer numbers) of “grinders.”
