Previously 117 cards cost us 900 phase 2 tokens, multiplied with 15 gives us 10500 shards....but now it costs us around 20k. But the releasing price still remains same, 117 over game 150phase tokens, now give 2250shards.
They are just fooling us with the new UI and designs.
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.
This was also visible in the livestream (but as that was in my humble opinion too close to the reset time, it gave you little time to act).
Either way, for about the same ~20k you can now collect a 119 (okay okay, a bit more) and for less than that a 118. So while I agree that the old event 117s are now overpriced (they were overpriced in the previous system, and now even more assuming that you'd use old event players for shards and you'd use those shards for old event 117s), the question is how bad this really is - given that not long from now, those 117s are probably not too relevant anymore.
I was surprised that old events' 116s and 117s give more shards than the current event's 116s and 117s. I do think that is kind of fair though - in the old events these were the top-notch players, and in the current event the new 116s and 117s are probably less good player items... In fact, I like the fact that I can still get something at least for my old event players (though it is a shame that I cannot exchange players from before the 26 Phase 2 tokens for shards, and otherwise only 112- players for a mere 2000 extra time tokens...)
Also I understand that EA did not suddenly change the shard values for the old event players - modifying that would have caused an outrage by those that feel mistreated by that. So that move is purely logical.
I hope this helps. I suggest you give the new format a try for a little while before you write it off. Good luck!
Cheers,
Kannix
