Casino game

Its nice to hear the voice from a mid OVR player mate.  I have a 115ovr team and I struggled to clear the event as well.  Now think of a new player to the game and what his opinion of the game would be after playing the challenge ☺️There are quite a few threads raising concerns.  Hopefully EA listens but they are quite slow in picking feedback. 

Last year around same time they suddenly dropped an improved system which made AI harder than H2H.  Took them a while to tone it down.. so probably the same here. 

Also I think they R trying to advertise the new Captains players

You nailed it—the game has 100% become a casino. It has little or nothing to do with skill anymore (out-of-region matchmaking leads to horrendous lag to ensure H2H is no fun anymore), and all of EA’s time and energy seems to be focused on producing new and increasingly gimmicky methods for trying to get us to spend on new cards.

It’s absolutely sickening to me the way in which EA disrespects the sport we love with an app that doesn’t even try to produce quality, realistic football matchplay between users. Instead, they’ve created a rigged environment full of bright flashing lights that’s basically a glorified slot machine. We jump through hoops (e.g., bouncing balls off of “bunny” bumpers???) in order to have an increasingly small shot at winning a decent player. I was grinding for an entire month on that last Ragnarok and never got a card over 107–such a rip off. It’s an absolute joke.

At what point do we step outside of the “casino” to see the sun is rising, we’ve lost all our money, and we’ve got to find something better to do with our lives? If you can’t win decent cards and you can’t even play a decent game of football then what’s the point???

Game is so rigged that my players are heavy to move around, everytime opponents are counter attacking my defensive players are performong slode tsckles without me pressing the button, everytime Im trying to shoot the ball from the final third the game would suddenly lags, everytime I face 104 players, their players can move faster than a 113, this head to head gameplay now is a f****** joke! And EA doesnt do good to fix it! They only cared about people who purchase, no more ethics from these greedy people

Had a chat with MM on Discord, and surprise, it’s not just us, and this has been reported to the devs.
However, my rant will be that someone has gone overboard again with the AI. Whatever “challenge” this was supposed to be ended up as an unbalanced, frustrating mess.

I’m running 115 OVR VSA/LVL line up (soon to be 116 once I pick a proper 111 Striker, maybe Forlan or another Icon/Hero since I don’t care for current-gen players). Most of my squad is Gold rank with 30 training, a few Reds at 25 (training takes WAY too long, lol). Anyway, these are elite cards, not fillers/fodder.

Midfield in diamond is stacked with Zidane 111 CM(L), Gullit 109 CM(R), Pirlo 111 CDM, and Del Piero 111 CAM. Defence is full Meta so are strikers. I usually walk through PVE without blinking.

Tried autoplaying the final match for fun. Bad idea. 0-6 down before I killed the game. Players forgot how to pass, fouls don’t exist apparently, and Buffon was flying like he belonged in a Marvel movie. My midfield may as well not have been on the pitch, but in the pub next door, getting wasted with Paul Gascoigne and George Best, who threw a last-minute bender party. 

After five tries, I finally won 4-2 once I got angry enough to play seriously.

The next day, I changed to my 114 OVR squad using a 3-CAM/2-CDM formation that dominates H2H and got me into Top 250 Masters in previous iterations. First autoplay? 0-5. Took a few more frustrating attempts to squeeze out a 3-2 win.

And the grand reward for all this? A worthless 104-rated card. Might as well have handed me 10 shards instead so i dont have to exchange the card. Should throw in a participation badge while at it.

Here’s the actual problem: if top-tier squads run by very experienced old school players are struggling like this, mid-range and casual players have no shot. It’s not difficulty, it’s bad tuning. No one enjoys wasting time for garbage rewards.

Frustrating your player base into quitting isn't a challenge, just bad design/coding and lack of comprehensive testing by the lowest denominator type players.
2C.