I’m not sure I follow the “fewer resources” argument. Seems to me the problem is that the “whales” will always have more resources and that this gets magnified over time when there’s no reset. Because at the current new meta card drop rate (and given crappy draft odds, poor shard exchange rates, and a hyper-inflated transfer market), nobody who is F2P can maintain a competitive lineup anymore. Put another way, the gap between the haves and have nots (which, I admit, will always exist) just gets bigger and bigger over time due to the changes EA has made in the last 8-10 months. For example, a year ago my F2P squad was only -2 OVR worse than the top ranked players and holding more or less steady. Today it’s -4 OVR, and that gap gets visibly wider with every passing month. Absent a reset it’s destined to become a chasm.
That’s not to say that a non-reset doesn’t advantage me to some extent. As a “grinder” who has logged in every day for more than 18 months, I’m undoubtedly better off than most casual players (in terms of resources), but that doesn’t mean I think this advantage should be grandfathered in in perpetuity — that just doesn’t seem fair to many existing players, not to mention that it disadvantages and discourages new players from joining.
Unfortunately, the larger problem here isn’t merely autoplay or whether to reset or not to reset. The issue is EA’s priorities. Their single-minded pursuit of higher profit margins and the commitment to a micro-transaction business model has distorted everything about the game. Fun, competitive and realistic gameplay has been obliterated as a priority by the imperative to maintain engagement by any means necessary (hence, no major improvements to game mechanics for ages and autoplay used as a bandage to level the playing field). The logic seems clear: make the game only as good as is necessary to keep people spinning the hamster wheel (or playing the slots if you prefer the casino metaphor). Don’t cut into your profits by offering improvements beyond what is absolutely essential to keep them playing, and, don’t ever make it so good that they aren’t motivated to spend on better players. Under this set of incentives, mildly frustrating gameplay is a “feature” (not a “bug”). In another manner of speaking, micro-transactions (and lack of serious competition in the gaming marketplace) have created a “race to the bottom” in terms is gameplay quality. [Its not unlike Google intentionally making their search worse several years ago in order to keep you on their platform longer so they could sell more ads — look it up!]
It’s for similar totally self-interested reasons EA is foregoing the reset —because it keeps those with major investments of money (i.e., whales) and time (i.e., grinders) appeased. EA makes the bulk of their revenue off the former and needs the latter as rankings ballast and cannon fodder. So the fact that it disadvantages tens and hundreds of thousands of casual users and discourages new ones from joining (by raising the barrier to assembling a truly competitive squad higher than it would have been with a reset) just gets ignored. EA seems inclined to ignore the fact these effects will likely shrink the FCM community in the long run because the only metric that matters is higher profits today.
I’ll end by asking this: Would any of us recommend this franchise to a good friend right now? I wouldn’t. That’s a first for me in my long history with EA titles, but it’s as damning a statement as I can offer to anyone at the company who is listening.
