Two top ICONs take us into Week 2 of Captains.

Couldn’t agree more. The shard system was supposed to be a “solution” — and sure, it’s technically better than the old full-blown lottery where you’d pray to the RNG gods and pull a 98 OVR in a 110+ event. Now we have a new(ish) event currency (shards), where we’re thrown literal pocket change — 10 shards from dailies, maybe another 10 if you toss 3K gems into the void and feel lucky (2,5k gems for 5 shard card).

If you somehow scrape together 1,500 shards, congrats — you get to pick a player from the gallery. Yay, control! Except you’ll need a few weeks (or your wallet) to get there. Meanwhile, you pull card after card at 105/106 like it’s some cruel joke. Even one P2W/Whale type player complained about the fully paid for card distribution, and that player dropped in some heavy coin...

And don’t even get me started on the Weekend Challenge. The AI is dialed up to "Final Boss of Dark Souls" difficulty, and the reward is a 104-rated glorified training cone. If EA insists on making the grind that hard, at least bump the shard rewards — maybe toss in more 30 and 60 shard cards instead of pretending 10 shards is a meaningful prize, because it's not, in fact, it's like you are spitting in the player base's proverbial face.

We’re not asking for a free 120 Messi here — just some actual value for the time and effort. Right now it feels like “grind, rage, repeat” — and the only real winner is the shop button.