FIFA 16 is a game bursting with content, but for many players, it's all about Ultimate Team Mode. If you're unfamiliar with "FUT", this is a game mode where players must form teams with the cards they randomly get from digital booster packs. With the teams you assemble, you can participate in several tournaments and even a championship, all so you can gain more gold coins and continue to build your dream team. Anyone who wants to speed up this process can buy boosters with real money, but that's not a requirement.
Injuries are an unfortunate consequence of football but they serve no real purpose in Ultimate Team, especially when they’re the result of the softest of touches and you’re left trying to nurse your four million coin superstar back to health. It’s especially annoying when that player is a key part of a hybrid and you’re forced to change your entire team to keep your chemistry. It might be realistic but the point of Ultimate Team is to use elite players of your choosing to conquer the world and injuries just ruin this. In addition, they’re a coin sink when it comes to buying healing cards and FIFA 16 would be instantly more fun if they were removed.
When you’re in a position to buy high-rated players on Ultimate Team, it can be a risk. If you’ve worked hard to save up your coins in the aim of picking up Luis Suarez and he turns out to be a bit rubbish, you’ve got to try and sell him, often at a loss. FIFA 16 should introduce a system of Try Before You Buy, similar to how the loan catalogue works in this year’s game. You’d get a chance to use every player in the game once or twice - though crucially no more than that - to see how they perform. EA could restrict the option so you’re only allowed one trial player per match as well, for those who’d fear facing a super team of legends every other game. It’s fair and it’ll allow for more experimentation in your squad.
Speaking of the radar, this feature has been present in football games since back in the 90s and for good reason: it let's you plan your attacks by seeing where your players and the opponents are at any given moment. EA felt you don't need that anymore, and did away with it. The developers also did away with camera controls, another essential feature that's been around since forever, and also half-time lengths, with all matches lasting four minutes. You can't even pick a difficulty setting like in older games of the franchise, you just have to deal with what the game picks for you (usually tournaments have teams of ascending difficulty). I've played too many matches where I wasn't challenged in the slightest. In other words, if you've been accustomed to playing FIFA in a certain way in terms of difficulty, half time duration, and camera/zoom angle, well, sorry, you can't; you'll have to deal with EA's one-size-fits-all game.
“That sounds like a question for the execs!” Shaikh chuckled, clearly a bit nervous from my questioning, “Theoretically speaking I don’t see why not. In some ways it’s a bit weird, because Ultimate Team we tend to talk about and think of a separate piece, but the reality is so much of what it is is provided by core FIFA - the gameplay, presentation, audio, everything like that. So while you can get to the thing of yes, theoretically it could be something else, but you need it to be the whole of FIFA. Without all those other bits, Ultimate Team isn’t much of a game. In the end, there are free-to-play games of almost anything, but it’s obviously a big thing.”
One of the hardest things to do in FIFA Ultimate Team is to have a perfect roster of players that share the aforementioned factors. As a result, there is an alternative that you can do by basically splitting your team down the middle. In this one, you can have players from all around the world, but you must make sure that they share commons leagues or clubs. By making sure that players are in the correct position, you can focus on watching that the left side and right side respectively have high chemistry. Whatever the half-answer might be, my money’s on FUT being standalone within the next five years. The framework is there, the experiments in free-to-play psychology have been underway for years and, frankly, EA would be silly to overlook the chance to make Loads More Money.
