After originating in Asia — first in Chinese games like ZT Online and then in mobile games across the region — it was the rise of smartphones in the West that established free-to-start games as a norm.
PC games like League of Legends and World of Tanks picked up the format as it became the fastest growing segment of the gaming industry at the time. This time period coincided with the tail end of the PS3 and Xbox generation of consoles. As developers looked to the next wave of very-online gaming machines, the big question was how would they keep gamers continuously spending after they'd shelled out the cover price of a title, said Gee from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
According to Gee, EA's profit margins hovered around four percent at the time. Microtransactions, downloadable content and other "live services" as EA termed them, became the company's fastest growing business.
The company was hardly alone — in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 , Valve was visibly looking for the same formula. And it was clear why. Microtransactions, add-ons, in-game events — all of these were cheaper to produce than developing new AAA titles from scratch, and they provided the kind of predictable, regular revenue that investors love. The reason that Starbucks has value is because it's a habit, people go there every day. Ultimate Team runs in tandem with global football seasons, its in-game events mimicking the peaks and troughs of players' performances in real life.
Crucially, EA has a captive audience in FIFA because it holds the license for most of the world's major football clubs, with only a few exceptions. That means only EA — and not its closest rival Konami, which makes Pro Evolution Soccer — can publish a game with the most authentic kits, badges, stadiums and team names. And that is EA. But in tandem with these boom times, something else was happening. After the peak of consumer backlash against EA's loot boxes in Star Wars: Battlefront II , the company earned the ignominious distinction of a Guinness World Record for the most downvoted Reddit comment in history as it struggled to justify its game design as providing "a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Cumulatively, EA has garnered a reputation as a nakedly bottom-line driven publisher. Being at the top of an industry tends to put a target on one's back, and overblown pearl clutching has often followed game makers. But just how vocal gamers have been against microtransactions and the publishers that push them is unique, says Cam Adair, the founder of Game Quitters, a support group for gaming addicts. The idea of paying to win is inherently offensive if you play games; fair competition is a basic assumption of any game.
Microtransactions — especially in a game you're already paying to own — might feel like a corporate intrusion on the closed respite of the game world. There is very little business incentive for EA to change its reliance on loot box monetization right now. The potential levers to change that are regulatory pressure, legal pressure and public pressure.
The U. In the U. But a string of class-action lawsuits in California are challenging not just EA but Supercell, Activision, Apple and Google the latter two for selling loot box games through their app stores , while EA is also facing court battles in France and Canada. Another lawsuit in California alleges AI difficulty adjustment makes players perform worse than they should in Ultimate Team to incentivize buying packs EA denies the claim.
Yet the winds of public opinion are already clear. Overwatch and Rocket League have shifted their microtransaction methods away from unpopular loot boxes as battle passes gain popularity. Games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone sell cosmetic items over performance-enhancing ones, sidestepping the pay-to-win controversy altogether. Christopher Hansford, political engagement director at Consumers for Digital Fairness, which advocates against loot boxes in gaming, says that regulatory pressure in enough jurisdictions — such as the ban in Belgium where EA can no longer sell Ultimate Team packs for money — could lead EA to preemptively change their monetization method altogether.
Playtime allows parents and players to set limits on both time and money spent in FIFA. The core question remains what would Ultimate Team look like without paid packs? FIFA has experimented with introducing non-paid cosmetics into its 'Volta' futsal mode and stadium customization in Ultimate Team but the awkward issue is that those aesthetics likely do not incentivize FIFA players to spend the way a rare, playable Kylian Mbappe card can.
On YouTube and Twitch, videos of men joyously opening pack after pack in Ultimate Team are an entire genre. The in-game animation itself is all flashing sparks and delayed gratification.
The nationality, position then club of the revealed player flash on screen like cherries in a slot machine, before the final reveal of your received player. Get an Argentinian right winger that turns out to be Lucas Ocampos and you might feel you were close to getting Messi — then try again. It's no coincidence that Peniket spent his time watching YouTube pack openings when he was most addicted to buying them himself.
It felt almost aspirational: if only I had this many packs to open. A loss will normally lower your ELO, but quitting means it will remain unchanged, meaning future games will be against more difficult opponents. ELO climbs as high as 15 which is where games will peak in terms of the level of difficulty. It may be easy to coast through games with a super team as an experienced player, but the majority of FIFA players will face tough games where the deficit is rarely more than one goal.
Take short five-minute breaks after each win and perhaps a little longer if suffering an unlucky defeat. Trying to make up for a loss quickly can mean heading into a match on tilt which in the long run means more mistakes One of the most frustrating elements of FIFA 21 is unlearning techniques that were previously working effectively; this is because it takes longer to unlearn behavior than it does to learn something new.
EA Sports seem to constantly tweak finesse shots and weak foot actions amongst a vast array of in-game moves which can make it difficult to keep up. Watching pro players on Twitch or YouTube is a good way to find out what moves may no longer be recommended meta plays. FIFA fans should take advantage of the new releases that can make an instant impact and improvement to their team.
If players don't know how to make a lot of coins on Ultimate Team , it's important to complete the objectives where high-rated players can be worked towards without spending. The latest rated Ruben Neves season objective card is a fit for most teams as a box-to-box midfielder that can dominate at any level.
We can't help with time or judgement, but we can certainly fix you up with some hard-won knowledge. These modes give out big piles of coins each week. You like playing the game, right? So prioritise doing this stuff, then spend your hard-earned cash wisely. Buying and selling SBC fodder - Everyone loves Squad-Building Challenges, and this has an outsize impact on the value of tons of players at different times of year.
If EA drops a particularly exciting player SBC that requires rated players, every rated player is likely to go up in price with demand. You can also grab bargains when big promotions go live, usually at 6pm UK time on a Friday. Whether it's rewards or a promo, players open a lot of packs at these times, which increases supply and drives down prices. Identify some good fodder cards to buy, wait for the prices to drop, and grab a lot of them for your transfer list.
Then wait for prices to rise due to future SBCs, and sell at a higher price. Chem Style trading - Chemistry Styles are items that can be applied to players to boost their stats. The most popular are Hunter pace and shooting and Shadow pace and defence , which cost several thousand coins. The idea with Chem Style trading is to look for players who already have these Chem Styles applied but are being naively sold at a price that doesn't take this into account.
You can usually sell them on for a higher price to more discerning buyers. It's not super effective early in the FUT cycle, but when League SBCs go live where you have to submit a full squad for each team in a given league , the demand for bronze and silver players goes up considerably. Speculation based on real-world performance - This is riskier territory, but FUT's ties to real-world football mean there are opportunities for windfalls if you know where to put your coins.
Ones to Watch and other "live" FUT cards receive better stats when players make it into Team of the Week or teams progress in tournaments, and if you predict this and buy the special cards in advance, they often shoot up in value. However, they can also drop precipitously if the player gets injured or underperforms. Find your niche - There are myriad other techniques we could list, but they all rely on the same principle: knowing a particular area of the market well enough to take advantage of supply and demand.
With this in mind, it's not that difficult to come up with your own techniques. Perhaps you realise there aren't many rare gold Argentinian left-backs in the game, and you see them spike in price periodically as they feature in SBCs.
Buying them when they're low can make some coins over time. Final words of advice. Thinking ahead will help you a lot in FUT. There's more to FIFA 21 Ultimate Team than we've covered here -- from regular promotions and annual SBC patterns to the best content creators and more -- but if you've followed our guide then you should have a solid grounding to go out and build your best Ultimate Team. We do have a few final bits of advice that we live by in FUT though.
By completing them, you lose the players you submit permanently, in exchange for a player you will absolutely get bored of using before too long. Then, a wide variety of packs were available for preview and were legitimately helpful for boosting your team. Now permanent, previews are only available for Premium Gold Packs and Premium Silver Packs and are significantly less valuable. A few of these problems can be easily adjusted on the fly. EA could make more types of packs available for preview at any point.
The question is, what would motivate EA to do so? If the game were really about building the best team, you could continue to play FIFA 21 with a high-powered team that came from a year of work.
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