The latest deep dive from EA reveals all the major changes to feature in the new FC 24 Ultimate Team.
There is less than a handful of days before the release of EA Sports FC 24, the first game in the brand new football video game franchise from EA Sports. The release is historic as this is the first time EA will be releasing a football game without the FIFA branding, as EA and FIFA ended their partnership after 30 years. So when EA can no longer use the “FIFA” title in their games, how will the pre existing archetypes will be affected?
Let’s talk about the FIFA Ultimate Team mode – also known as FUT – which has been EA’s most profitable game mode for the past 10 years. The players could collect the player cards of their favourite real world players and build their dream team in FIFA Ultimate Team.
However, with the aforementioned end to the partnership between EA and FIFA, FIFA Ultimate Team will be replaced by FC Ultimate Team, which is practically just a name change for the game mode. Nevertheless, that’s not the only change that is happening to Ultimate Team and in this article, we will be discussing all the massive changes that will happen to the Ultimate Team in EA’s new franchisr.
The Inclusion of Women’s Football
For the first time ever in the series, both halves of The World’s Game will unite in Ultimate Team. Men’s and women’s football will play on the same pitch allowing gamers to build their Ultimate Team of both worlds.
The announcemnt has received a lot of backlash from the community but EA has confirmed that the change is here to stay. As of this writing, there are only 5 women’s leagues (plus the UEFA Women’s Champions League clubs) and around 1600 new players to choose from but that could improve as we go deeper into the game cycle.
Some of the women’s card in the game looks absolutely overpowered, shoutout to Debinha, Caroline Hansen and Alexia Putellas. Judging from the EA Sports FC 24 Beta footages, it is evident that these cards hold great value in various positions on the field, with the exception of centre backs and goalkeepers.
Moreover, FC Ultimate Team will also witness Women Heroes and Icons, who have shaped women’s football in the past and made significant contributions to the game. If you are wondering how the chemistry in women’s football will work in FC Ultimate Team, stick with us and we will cover that later in this article.
Evolutions
If you are a frequent visitor of FIFA forums or FIFA subreddit, you could see that the fans of EA Sports FC/ FIFA have been requesting a feature that allows players to upgrade their player cards the more they play with them, similar to the myClub mode in PES.
The Evolutions feature in FC 24 Ultimate Team mode is a response to that request, as it allows players to upgrade certain player cards to make them keep up with the power creep of the game. Evolutions allows players to upgrade individual attributes or even skill moves and weak foot by completing themed objectives.
Once a player card is eligible for Evolutions, there will be multiple upgrade paths available, each with its own set of objectives and rewards. Players who complete the objectives and upgrade their player cards via Evolutions will receive upgraded cards of that player – and some cool rewards like packs, coins or club items.
Playstyles and Playstyles+
One of the most important overhauls in FC Ultimate team is the replacement of the “traits” system with Playstyles and Playstyles+. Supposedly, this new feature gives player cards unique capabilities and make their way of playing more authentic as these player cards will have enhanced abilities.
This enhanced abilities could range from minor stat boosts to faster animations which could be game breaking. For example, we all know how overpowered power shots were in FIFA 23 – but still had a downside of having a longer animation. For a player card with Power Shot as Playstyles+, like Rodri, the animation will be significantly faster and the shots will be even more powerful. We have a lot to discuss about Playstyles and Playstyles+, but that will be a discussion for another day.
Claim All Objectives
EA Sports is finally introducing the Claim All completed objectives feature in EA SPORTS FC 24. While this seems to be only a minor quality of life change, the frustration of individually claiming a plethora of objectives at the start of a season is better left untold.
This new feature streamlines the process and saves players valuable time from manually claiming each completed objective. With just a single click, players can now easily collect all their rewards and focus on what really matters – raging while they are in the game rather than raging when they are in the game menu.
No More Position Modifiers
Another minor change that deserves a major shoutout is the removal of position modifiers in FC Ultimate Team 24. If you didn’t know, player cards in FIFA 23 had alternate positions to which they could switch once a position modifier is applied to that particular card.
For example, Cristiano Ronaldo, whose base position is ST, had an alternate position of CF in FIFA 23. If he had to start in a formation with no ST (like like 433(5)) without losing chemistry, you had to manually change his position to CF using a position modifier.This is no longer the case in the new game – as you can put Cristiano Ronaldo at CF and he will automatically become a CF without using a consumable. Moreover, this quality of life change applies to both Squad Building Challenges (SBCs) and Ultimate Draft modes also – so props to EA for that.
Icons
This is sadly the time to say goodbye to Mid and Prime Icons as in FC 24, there will be only ONE base version of an Icon card – similar to how Heroes and normal player cards are available in the game.
However, similar to FIFA 23, boosted campaign versions of Icons will be available throughout the game cycle. There will be 8 new icons in EASFC 24
- Zico (Brazil)
- Bobby Charlton (England)
- Franck Ribery(France)
- Birgit Prinz (Germany)
- Homare Sawa (Japan)
- Camille Abily (France)
- Kelly Smith (England)
- Mia Hamm (USA)
Chemistry
In FC 24, player cards requirements for attaining National ( 2-3-2), League (3-2-3) and Club (2-2-2) chemistry points has only slightly changed from previous year. However, there are two major changes to chemistry in FC Ultimate Team – Icon and Women’s Chemistry.
Icon Chemistry
Icons in the earlier FIFA titles were were highly valued for their ability to enhance team chemistry as they gave soft link or strong links (depending on the player card nationality) to every player cards around them. However in FIFA 23, Icons could only give links to the players from the same nationality and therefore were objectively inferior to FUT Heroes when it came to squad building potential – while Heroes gave one nation chemistry point and two league chemistry points, Icons could only give two nation chemistry points. However, in EA FC 24, Icons will give one league point to every player league in the starting squad in addition to the two national league points – making them effective for building hybrid league squads once again.
Women Chemistry
Similar to FIFA 23, the chemistry system in FC 24 comes down to four different factors:
- Position – Player cards should be in one of their preferred positions to be even considered for chemistry calculation. Therefore, if Alexia Putellas is starting at ST, she won’t be even considered for chemistry purposes. Therefore, from here onwards, we are assuming that player cards are in their preferred position unless it is specified otherwise.
- Nationality – Similar to FIFA 23, two players from the same nation are required to get at least one Nation chemistry point. Therefore if you have Alexia Putellas and Carvajal in your starting squad, both of them are guaranteed at least one chemistry point.
- League – The biggest addition of FC 24 is the addition of women’s leagued, which are treated as different from men’s leagued. Similar to FIFA 23, three players from the same League are required to get at least one League chemistry point. Therefore if you have Vinicius Jr, Antoine Griezmann and Alexia Putellas in the same starter squad, you are NOT guaranteed one chemistry point as the latter is from Liga F, which is treated as a different league compared to LaLiga Santander.
- Club – Similar to FIFA 23, two players from the same club are required to get at least one Club chemistry point. However, one interesting twist you must note is that women’s club and men’s club are treated as equal even though their leagues are treated as separate. If you have Alexia Putellas and Robert Lewandowski, who plays for Barcelona women and men respectively, in the same squad, both of them are guaranteed at least one chemistry point even though they are from different leagues. In FIFA 23, if you have 4 players from the same club in your starting squad, you were guaranteed full chemistry for all of them. However, in FC 24, if you have two men and two women players from the same club in your starting squad, you can only guarantee 2 chemistry points each for them.
For illustrative purposes, if you have both Lauren James and Reece James in your starting squad, they will have at least 2 chemistry points – one for Nation links and the other for Club links. Even if you add another Chelsea player into the squad, for example Moises Caicedo, both Reece and Lauren James will only have 2 chemistry points each, while Caicedo will only have 1 chemistry point.
Squad Battles
Squad Battles is an interesting idea – it gives an opportunity for the players who do not want to compete in the PvP rat race to build a squad by competing for rewards by playing against AI. It also give players a safe space to complete objectives at their own pace.
However, the length of half time in squad battles was disheartening because it was massive 6 minutes long and put off many “online” players from ever touching the game mode. However, EA has assured us in their pitch notes that the length of Squad battles will be cut by 33% as they are reducing half time length from 6 to 4 minutes in FC 24. EA has also mentioned that the maximum amount of games considered for points in Squad Battles will be reduced to 32 from 40.
Rewards and Removal of Red Player Picks in Champs
Since most of the TOTW cards were obselete within the first two months due to the rapid power creep in the game, Red Player picks in FIFA 23 were mostly used as fodders for higher rated SBCs. Thankfully, EA realized this fact and has promised to revamp the rewards structure in FC 24 Champs (formerly known as FUT Champs). EA has not specifically mentioned what would replace the Red Player picks – they only said that “Ultimate Team Champions Player Items (sometimes referred to as Red Picks) will be replaced by rewards of equivalent value in-game“.
EA has also mentioned that higher divisions and ranks in all competitive modes in EA FC 24 will receive significantly boosted rewards compared to those in FIFA 23.
Other Quality of Life Changes
EA has also promised a lot of other quality changes – especially in the visual aspect of the menu and the game. These include:
- Animated Cards, which were already in FIFA mobile will make their debut in FC 24.
- New menus with streamlined navigation to get to different menus in a much faster pace.
- We can now equip customization items directly from the New Items Screen (better known as the Unassigned Screen)
- Ability to hide Loan Players when you are squad building in SBC.
- Two Player Walkout cinematic when opening a pack. If there are two high rated players in the same pack, both will feature in the walkout animation.
- Objective Groups will now be organised across multiple tabs. Some Objective Groups will now have themed backgrounds!
- Default Position search will now include both Primary and Alternative Position for SBCs.
- Acceleration Types will be available in Player Bios.
- Swap untradable duplicate items in bulk.
We all are ready to kick off the new chapter in EA’s marquee football simulator and look forward to all major changes coming to their marquee game mode Ultimate Team.
EA SPORTS FC 24 is set for release on September 29th and will be available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. EA Play members and Ultimate Edition owners will be able to play the Early Access on September 29th.
