From what I’ve seen the value proposition with EA only ever trends in one direction and it never seems to favor the user. Kannix is right to point out that EA risks incurring the wrath of their whales if they suddenly sweeten the deal (because this systematically devalues the investment the P2Pers have made), but I can’t say I feel sorry for EA. After all, they created this mess by cooking up the draft system (and it’s abysmal value proposition) in the first place.
If this were an honest game they’d just put a single $$$ price tag on each player and/or use a single in-game currency. Instead, they use these convoluted exchanges to deliberately obfuscate the TRUE cost of building an elite squad. I once spent the better part of an hour working out the expected value of the old gems packs and was somewhat shocked to find that the larger the gem pack the LOWER the expected value (in terms of shards at trade-in). I would have fully expected that the more gems you spent the better the value, but that’s because I hadn’t realized how incredibly cynical EA is. Suffice it to say, I now just assume anytime they roll out any new system that it’s more likely than not that it’s an attempt to claw back value from users. This was overwhelmingly obvious when the drafts came out and it would appear it’s changed little (if at all) now that they’ve created a greater spread of OVR rating within Pool A and made the highest-rated players (currently the 120s) as expensive as any cards we’ve ever seen.