Concerns regarding the new TOTY event..

It seems like the writing is on the wall. You just need to read the tea leaves to see what is going on here. This franchise appears to be on the verge of a death spiral and EA is clutching at straws to try and keep it profitable. We’ve already seen a serious drop off in quality control, suggesting staffing problems/cuts. They didn’t bother with a season reset (again suggesting it was too heavy a lift), and we’ve been getting the same players recycled time and again. And on top of all of this EA have shown themselves deaf to every entreaty (and there have been many!) to substantively improve actual matchplay. In short, they are phoning it in when it comes to the things that matter most to users and that create value (i.e., quality matchplay).

But when it comes to what matters most to EA — revenue — we see an increasingly ruthless approach. Since the new season began the useful life of EVERY player has decreased. This is no accident — it’s a calculated business strategy to compel any user who wants to remain competitive to spend. The only problem is/was that those of us who grind our **bleep** off usually manage to collect just enough gems to still win a meta player (sometimes two) per event by purchasing packs and from EA’s perspective this is a problem because it’s a perceived loss of revenue. So, it would seem, EA has decided to close this loophole in a desperate (and highly coercive) attempt to make us spend $$$.

To be fair, EA has to make money. But they are misguided in apparently believing that coercing users is the way to do it. They have bet on making FCM a casino (for collecting player cards) and this is the fundamental flaw in their business strategy. The VAST majority of users just want to play a FUN football simulator, but are not willing to spend money (to obtain cards) in a game that can’t guarantee consistent, quality matchplay. This majority of users (of which I am one) often refer to ourselves as F2Pers, but this is a bit of a misnomer. Over the years I’ve paid for loads of EA console titles — because they delivered a FUN, high-quality gaming experience of the sports I love. And I would absolutely pay for FCM IF it guaranteed similar performance… Alas, it DOESN’T. And that’s what makes these naked attempts to coerce F2Pers into spending so galling!

F2Pers are the life’s blood of the FCM community. We are not only the majority of users, but as “grinders” we spend more time in the app than anyone else. So, when EA actively and nakedly seeks to undermine the strategies that allow us to remain competitive it comes as a slap in the face — a serious disrespect of the time we’ve invested in the app. We love football and just want an app worthy of the game we love. We have shown ourselves willing to endure a whole lot of EA’s crap in order to play an app that at least sometimes delivers a fulfilling experience. But our patience and our tolerance for disrespect (whether it’s to the time we’ve invested or to the game we love) has limits. Many of us would pay for an app that delivered a consistently fair and fun user experience, but that is not happening at the present moment (despite our countless pleas for improvement) and we will not be coerced into spending on a second-rate casino posing as a football game. If that’s the route EA is choosing to pursue then it will lose more and more users and it will kill this franchise once and for all because we won’t be strong-armed into spending our hard-earned money at a glorified casino.