Community Manager
OK, so I’m sharing this as a window into the head of an F2Per who has logged in everyday for over a year and has built a respectable squad that’s reached FC Champions (+10 VSA; +30 H2H; +5 MM). I manage a league that’s 100 strong. I occasionally spend the odd $0.39 or $0.99 and would spend more if only EA would invest in improving the game mechanics. But I currently don’t spend “real” money on FCM because it feels like a “casino” where the odds are long and payouts aren’t high enough quality to be enticing (i.e., the gameplay quality is too inconsistent and the rate of card replacements is too high and both of these factors undermines the value of cards). So, with that as preface…
I’ve been through the TOTY draft twice now (i.e., I’ve spent 200 vouchers) and BOTH times it took until my 100th draw to get a Pool A player and BOTH times that player was a 116 OVR CM (instead of the attacker I needed!). I now have a Pedri and a Pirlo, neither of whom is a substantial improvement over my current CMs (who are slightly lower OVR but more physically dominating — Toure and Gullit). And, herein lies the problem with TOTY (meaning the draft system and all the attendant exchanges) for me and many others — you can grind your tail off for over a month and STILL have no certainty of improving your team.
After 200 drafts I still don’t have enough 113-116 players to exchange for even HALF of the 900 Phase 2 tokens required to buy a 117. I’ve used every available player trade-in for Daily Pick tokens to maximize my 113-115s and I’m still nowhere close. Similarly, I’m still well shy of the 20(!) 115s required to convert my 115 Raphinha into a UTOTY. Based on my experience of only winning a Pool A player on my 100th draw, it makes ZERO sense for me to cash in gems for vouchers unless I have the minimum 300k required to buy a full 100 (thus, securing the Pool A player). I don’t have that many gems, and even if I did I would be reluctant to spend them on a “pig in a poke” (i.e., another Pool A player that doesn’t meet my needs). And so it appears I’m now stuck (after more than a month of grinding) with a pile of mediocre spare parts that I can’t really use and with little hope of improving my situation before the end of the event.
All of this has me (and many others) asking: So, what’s the point anymore? Why did I waste my time on this event? And why on earth would I go on wasting my time on future events if they are designed in the same way (with no certainty of winning even one top player that fits my squad)? That’s the question many of us are asking ourselves. We want to have fun playing football with a team we curated. But it’s no fun when you can’t be competitive (i.e., when you have NO real chance of winning meta cards), and you can’t “curate” your team when you have no control/certainty over the players you win (and when all of the exchanges are so poor as to be virtually useless).
I really would like to know the dev team’s thoughts on this because the TOTY event feels to this dedicated player like an effort by EA to claw back a ton of user value and place it behind a dauntingly high pay wall. If that was not the intention, then it would be really helpful to hear EA say something before loads of us pack our bags and leave. I’m not saying this rhetorically or as a provocation. I mean it quite earnestly: Give us a reason to stay! We love football, and many of us enjoy the community (even if not always the game), but we’re deeply frustrated with recent changes. We’ve given them a chance for over a month now, find them miserable to the point of being intolerable, and just want to know whether you intend to make changes before we walk away.
