An appeal to EA, from offline UFC players.

Everything you've said is spot on. I get that the casual and online player is needed for EA to appeal to the broadest audience, however they can do this without alienating the more diehard fans that care about things like presentation and immersion. I made a separate post about this, but I don't think I will ever truly understand not having the ability to give CAFs colored shorts or anyone championship shorts. It's clear now that the archetypes are where EA has thrown it's lot for CAFs, but at least allow us the OPTION to edit the CAFs moves so we don't have a bunch of CAFs that all have the same moves and fight the same. Whats the point of 50 CAF slots if you're only confined to what the archetypes allow?  If you're a player that doesn't want to put in the time to change the CAFs moves you can go with the default moves but at least give other players the ability to customize a move set if they want to put in that time. No walkouts on three round fights and truncated Bruce Buffer introductions are also weird. If you're a player that wants to get straight into the game and skip those steps then so be it. You can just skip ahead just as you could in every other UFC game, but instead EA has taken away an aspect of the game that diehard fans like me no longer have. I liken it a bit to the NBA 2K games. People love skipping the David Aldridge sideline commentary in the beginning of games, to the point that it has become a meme. Every year however, he's in the NBA 2K games. Why? Because the folks who want to skip his lines can, and those that care more about immersion/presentation can experience it without hurting anyone else's experience.

I guess this is just my long-winded way of saying EA can easily appeal to a broader, casual fanbase without alienating players who care about customization, presentation and immersion. It's not a zero-sum game; you can appeal to both sides! Many of these changes are even harder to swallow because we've had them in previous games! EA UFC 1-3 felt like games that were building off of one another in a way that you could feel like the franchise was moving forward. Unfortunately, that feeling does not hold true for UFC 4 & 5. The key is optionality, I just wish EA saw it the same way.