The F2P Chasm: How recent updates are killing the grind.

On a personal level I am done, I quit completely, I feel like the time I invest in this game as an f2p gamer is no longer worth it. It was nice while it lasted

Absolutely agree with all of the issues raised. And my simple answer is NO — the grind is no longer worth it.

When a 120 OVR “box” card is priced at $160(!) and the performance of that card so far exceeds the 118s that most of us labor weeks to afford through the drafts, then there is no longer any hope of competing. The writing is on the wall:  This game is now designed to cater to (and exploit) “whales” who can spend hundreds per month while the rest of us (of which there are hundreds of thousands) are consigned to permanent second-class citizenship. 

And why must it be this way? One word…

GREED.

This isn’t about merely earning a reasonable profit. EA have done a deal with private equity (the Saudis and Jared Kushner) and we can see quite clearly the direction this is all headed — they mean to extract every last dime they can from this franchise. And if that means the gameplay suffers (which it already has) or that the bulk of the community (which is to say F2Pers) are made into a permanent underclass then that’s a price they are obviously happy to make US pay!

The only question is are we? Are we willing to become little more than FCM serfs? Are we willing to serve as cannon fodder for the whales while enjoying ZERO hope of ever rising above our lowly station and being able to compete with the “lords of the manor?”

I, for one, am not. I would sooner quit than be treated with such contempt. The EA College Football community apparently felt the same way and raised enough hell that EA backed off (for now) a plan to create a premium paywall within that franchise. I would love to see that happen with FCM, but if it doesn’t, and if EA continues on its current course then I will most definitely leave ahead of the new season and I won’t EVER come back to this, or any other, EA franchise. 😡

There is zero chance that anyone who has influence at EA cares about F2P players (somewhat rightfully as you get quite a bit for free) and the idea that there was a chance to grind and skill your way to competitiveness against whale accounts is a delusion. 

I have to respectfully disagree. I never expected to be Top 250 (or even Top 1k), but just 6-8 months ago I was able to grind my way into the +50 FC Champion ranks and win decent rewards. I couldn’t win every meta card, but I could at least target the ones that fit my team best, pool my resources and assemble a highly competitive squad. It cost me many hours and that was always the implicit trade off — P2P was for folks who wanted to save their time and F2P was for folks who might be cash poor, but could invest lots of time in the game. 

We all know P2P had an upper hand over F2P, but the gap was not monumental and the very existence of millions of F2P users created a pyramid for the F2Pers to climb (and ultimately sit atop). This last part is really important to note because the value proposition for P2Pers is in part created by the EXISTENCE of a community of millions of F2Pers! Part of the reason it feels worthwhile for a “whale” to spend thousands of dollars maintaining a meta squad month in and month out is because it enables them to sit atop a leaderboard of millions. Not only are the F2Pers required to provide matches for the P2Pers (especially when Division Rivals resets every month), but they also provide the “whales” with a psychic reward and sense of status and grandeur to their “accomplishments.” How much less valuable to the whales are those meta squads if they’re only ever sitting atop a pyramid of thousands?

All of this is to say that the very existence of the FCM community — P2P and F2Pers alike — creates value for EA. Even if F2Pers spend a fraction of the $$$ that P2Pers spend, the game doesn’t work without us (for example, getting a match would be a nightmare without thousands upon thousands of users worldwide). EA knows this, otherwise they would have made the entire app pay-to-play a long time ago! The problem as I see it is that right now EA thinks it can abuse F2Pers with impunity and that we won’t raise a big enough stink or leave in great enough numbers to cause them problems. Enough people will rationalize that we deserve to be treated like second-class citizens because we don’t spend big $$$ that we’ll sit still while they exploit us. EA is banking on the fact that for every post like this one someone else will reply likeLeoEyeNEye​ with a warmed over version of “this is a fight we can’t win so why bother?” My answer to that is simple:  Nothing in the world ever changed or got better with thinking like that.