EA confirms some of the big changes it will be making to Ultimate Team with the release of FIFA 21. While fans have been excited about FIFA 21 career mode features, each year it is FIFA Ultimate Team and the changes to it that prove the biggest draw to the series.
In a post on the official FIFA 21 site, EA confirmed that this year's Ultimate Team removes the use of fitness items, staff coaches, and training items. Fitness items, which have been available in Ultimate Team since it launched in 2008, are used to restore a player's fitness after each match, with this fitness level being affected by how hard they ran up and down the pitch. While EA has said that the feature was done to get players to rotate their squads, like a real-life soccer match, most just found it frustrating.
Many FIFA Ultimate Team players also criticized EA for stuffing card packs full of these fitness items in an effort to pad them out, lowering the odds of getting more desirable items. It's unclear if fewer players purchased FIFA Ultimate Team's loot box-style card packs, or "surprise mechanics" as EA calls them, because of this. However, EA is likely to have been concerned about ruining the fun of opening card packs and potentially damaging its own profits.
This is just one quality of life change that EA is making in FIFA 21's Ultimate Team mode. The company has also confirmed that some "toxic" goal celebrations will be removed from Ultimate Team. This is great news for anyone who has felt enraged by the game's "shushing" celebration, but again, removing this also keeps players having fun and potentially spending money for longer.
There's a lot that EA hasn't confirmed about FIFA Ultimate Team in FIFA 21. Each year, fans get very excited about the design of card packs and how they are animated. This may seem like a small thing to non-fans, but these animations are one reason why FIFA Ultimate Team makes so much money for EA.
Fans will also want to know about player ratings in FIFA 21 so that they can start putting together an idea of who to add to their Ultimate Team squad. Some players, such as FIFA 21 cover star Kylian Mbappé, will surely have a brilliant rating and incredible stats but there are thousands of other players whose stats will also need updating. EA have more reveals planned for August.
FIFA 21 will release on October 9th and is coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: EA FIFA