Forum Discussion
The bottom line is this: EA created a “K” economy when it brought in badges and the draft. What is a “K” economy? It’s one where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (one line trends upward while the other goes down). It used to be that F2Pers could grind their way to being relatively competitive in this game, but this stopped being the case some months ago and the gap between P2P and F2P is now a chasm (e.g., 128 OVR v 122-123 OVR).
Sadly, based on the current setup this gap is only going to grow. At this point no amount of sweat equity will enable me to field even a 124 OVR team let alone 128. Six months ago I was routinely at +30 - +50 across the FC Champions DR modes, and now I barely make it to +10. I still grind every last event, but EA has clawed back a ton of value and placed it behind a paywall and, in the process, relegated most of us to second-class citizen status. 😔😡🤬
Badges and further reduction of tradeable cards created that gap between P2W and F2P, not drafts.
Remember that the drafts replaced store packs that never gave me the highest card at the time, despite doing them religiously for years (using gems). The only time I got a high-end card was when pity counters were added to the likes of Bdor, and I got Zidane on a guaranteed card.
No matter what people say, in my experience, drafts is a much fairer system than the 3k daily packs or other non-FP store packs. You do get a guaranteed high-end card at the end of the cycle, and more often than not, I did pack quite a few of 117 OVR in past events, well ahead of reaching the final number of 100 (and now 70). You do get a high mid-range card every 10 with the worst luck, which store packs never did, so despite the bad rep, the drafts are actually a big improvement. It would be great if they stuck to one kind at a time instead of sometimes 5+ different drafts on the go (too much variety actually lowers the positive impact of drafts).
Badges are the evil in the recent game evolution. Despite a fairly decent luck in the past events with claiming a significant number of 117s, I never actually completed a badge, and even this TOTS, which is a lot longer with higher chances to reach the end of level 4, I doubt that I'll get there. A slight reduction in the last level to the required number of points would go a long way to level the fields a little bit.
Hardly any high-end tradeable cards in the economy removed ability to make coins easily to keep up with whales too.