Re: Suggestion/Feedback:Aborting the Draft System

Very Very Bad Draft system.plz change system plz.

Can’t think of one. (And couldn’t agree more!)

Drafts are not useless if you compare them to the past store packs without the pity counter, where you were guaranteed nothing but the lowest card. The issue is with how the draft parameters/probabilities have been set, and it's degrading as new events are launched.

We need to have fun and fun comes from opening packs!! Who cares about OVR all the time? Who cares about getting pool B and pool A? Give us our packs which made the game fun. That is all we mostly want...
Sometimes I feel like UFL might actually slowly take over this bs.

You spend a resource in both. Open the pack or use a draft voucher. Makes no difference, you still get a card assigned by RNG.

The difference is that packs never guaranteed a higher rated player after x amount of tries, drafts do that with a pity counter in both pool A and B. Yes, there were some packs with guaranteed players, and in fact, you can get packs that give you high rated players but at exorbitant cost like the current "pitch surprise" that doesnt even give you a tradeable card nor guarantees top ovr either.

You also need ovr to climb to compete in VSA/LVL/MM.

🤷‍♂️

I don’t think anyone can argue that we aren’t materially worse off since the drafts were instituted. Yes, the “pity counter” makes the drafts less bad than they would otherwise be, but when you factor in all of the changes EA has made since the introduction of the drafts the effect is that it is much harder than ever before to claim top players that improve your squad. Part of this is the ultra-low probability of ever winning a max Pool A player (personally, I’ve claimed at least 20 Pool A players and NOT ONE has been max). Part of it is really poor shard exchange rates. And the kicker is that the transfer market is now virtually useless (for anyone who isn’t a “whale”) given the hyperinflation of meta player prices.

Before the advent of drafts, most events enabled you to grind your way to accumulating enough shards to claim at least one meta card. You could do the math early on and be able to target the player that would most improve your squad. This was highly valuable/rewarding because you had value and certainty. But EA apparently saw it as missed opportunity to extract revenue and so they shut it down and constructed this randomized draft system and made it FAR more expensive (whether measured in time or $$$) to claim top players. We now have to grind for two months or more to accumulate enough shards to claim a single meta player (because the chances of winning one outright are effectively nil). That’s roughly double what it used to be.

Bottom line is this:  The last 12 months has seen EA claw back a ton of value from users and offer nothing in return. Across the board the rewards available to be earned are poorer and/or less certain (e.g., placed behind a game of chance with poor probabilities or a higher than ever paywall — or both!). The cost of everything has gone up. And gameplay has not improved one iota. In short, we get less and less value and we pay more for it (whether in time or money) with each passing month. Quibbling over whether the “drafts” are inherently the problem ignores this overarching truth. Certainly EA could create a draft system that actually delivered similar levels of certainty and value as we enjoyed previously but EA quite obviously has CHOSEN not to! To me this is reason enough to criticize the “draft system” — not because such systems are inherently flawed or can’t EVER work, but because the one we’re stuck with is so clearly designed to give us the shaft.

Are you speaking in the right mind? Do uk how much gems and fc points I wasted just to get 120 OVR 3 times?
I spent half of that in 2nd anniversary when packs were there..
Secondly, nobody LITERALLY nobody cares about OVR, we care about fun and engagement, something EA isn't ready to give us without pulling the money out of our ahh
Nevertheless you EA employees are really sickening atp.

Tell your friends, other community members to start posting here about it too bro, we alone can't do anything against this greedy giant.

The draft system itself isn't necessarily the problem, and people hate it for the wrong reasons.
It's quite different from store packs, where you get one individual loot with minimal guarantees with every pack you open that resets the odds pack after pack, vs. drafts with two pity counters (pool A and B). The issue is how EA has configured it: RNG/probabilities of getting a good/high-rated card, where you mostly get 120 by the 70th draft, sometimes 121 and seldom 122. Then there's the shard cost of the cards, which has been getting progressively worse, event by event, especially with the max OVR being 122 atm, where your price range goes between 40 and 70k.

The two pity counters are actually what make drafts a lot better than store packs, as at least there is some progression towards a higher-rated card, more often than not, it would be a popular player with many, instead of just endless random fodder. 

Bro all I need is some fun and drafts isn't giving me any, spending money on this game has also become worthless now..
I used to spend 100-500 dollars per month in fifa mobile and not regret a fade, now it is just worthless..
I hope EA aborts this finally and brings back the iconic packs in fc27

I think I acknowledged that it’s not having a draft system, per se, that’s the problem, but that the low probabilities and poor exchanges provide less value than what we used to get. You compare the draft system exclusively to packs, but we used to be able to claim meta cards using shards earned through events and that has now been nearly totally replaced with drafts. The cards you can win outright in events are nowhere near meta, and all the other event rewards (like gems and vouchers) only lead to more drafts (with the aforementioned low probabilities and poor exchanges that we both agree are a problem). These changes — taken together — stripped away a lot of value from users.

As I’ve said, my problem with the “draft system” is that it’s net effect has been to make meta cards more expensive (in time and/or money) than they used to be. Under the old system I used to be able to claim 1-2 meta cards per month (not to mention using coins in the transfer market). And I could generally choose the player(s) that best helped my team using the old shard system. Now, thanks to the poor draft probabilities and rotten exchanges it’s more like 1-2 meta cards per 2 months and I can only control what player I get by allowing myself to be ripped off in the shard exchange (because the Pool A thing is a “pig in a poke.”

Obviously, everything you say about the pity counters offering a modest certainty of progression is true, but in my mind that’s all beside the point if the net effect of the draft system (across all aspects of the game) is that we get less progression and less certainty for our time and money than under the prior system. If EA would only provide a better path to winning the max Pool A players (e.g., on the 100th draft) and/or improve the exchange rates, I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem keeping drafts. But if they insist on using the draft system to claw back value from their customers (which is unequivocally and quite transparently what they’ve done) then I feel like it deserves to be called out for what it is — a raw deal.

Which is what ngivz0f1ql1q and I said in the thread. Drafts/Packs/Whatever you call the mechanism of exchanging grind resource/money into gems/FP, then into vouchers/packs, into shareable cards makes little difference here. As you agreed, drafts have a higher chances to get a better card solely with the pity counter.

The issue remains around the parameters set in the drafts that give you low probabilities of getting high-end desired players, followed by a nearly 70k shard cost for these cards, while signing release rewards are getting smaller.

As you rightly said, the progression is ridiculously hard now, and getting a single high-end and desirable card becomes harder with every event, borderline impossible with the current onset. But that does not make drafts as a mechanism evil/useless. It's just the set config for drafts and the resources given in signing releases vs. the card cost. EA really needs to address this before it gets out of hand. Lowering -1/-2 max OVR (namely 120/121) card cost shardwise was a good move, but still not enough.