That does improve tackling. Being able to pull out of a tackle and get a block in or something rather than just sliding past and letting the player waltz past you is more realistic, although I hope it's not overpowered if you like, where it's extremely hard to get past a defender.
Gaming FIFA 16
- Thread starter JR10
- Start date
I think he's saying "just make improve the shitty slide tackle rather than adding in feature to compensate for the shitness".
Almost definitely won't be getting this, Fifa 15 is incredibly annoying and given EA's commitment to adding in bollocks like WNT's and tattoos I can't see it improving much.
Why would the inclusion of minor things like tattoo's mean they haven't worked on the gameplay?
I agree tackling is shite but this feature stops the rigidity and predictability of slide tackling. Combined with that defensive tracking stuff they've added defending might actually be enjoyable.
Don't think I'm pro-EA, btw. I'd be the first one to say they're mercenary pricks who don't work for their money. They know people would buy a new copy just for updates kits!
This.
It's in EA interests to keep everything more or less the same now that they've found a money tap in Ultimate Team. Just give it a new lick of paint every year until people get sick of it, which isn't happening anytime soon.
I doesn't, I was a being a bit facetious. It does suggest a continuation of their policy of adding in pretty pointless trinkets to make sure kids will keep buying it while ignoring major flaws. Luckily konami appear to have sorted themselves out somewhat.
I think PES looks shite as per. Never liked it since PES 6, and that's only cause of the customisation options. FIFA is much more realistic and feels much better to play!
Have to disagree. PES is far from perfect and can feel quite silly at times - the shooting gets a bit too easy once you've mastered it. I find it infinitely more enjoyable than Fifa nonetheless and I'm actually pretty decent at Fifa. One of the main things PES wipes the floor with Fifa on is that the CPU are far more enjoyable to play against, so someone who only plays online and doesn't play career mode won't care about that I guess.
I only really play career mode and against mates, online just boils my blood. I have to admit, FIFA's cpu is wank... but I still enjoy it more. It feels so much better, and is less robotic. The animations are so much better and it's just much more fluid or something!
It still looks kind of.....mushy.
I feel like they've made it this way in the recent Fifas, probably to make everything look smoother and show off animations. Not responsive enough for my liking.
That being said, I've not bought a Fifa for about 3 years and with getting a current gen console soon I'll probably be one of the mugs that gets this.
I feel like they've made it this way in the recent Fifas, probably to make everything look smoother and show off animations. Not responsive enough for my liking.
That being said, I've not bought a Fifa for about 3 years and with getting a current gen console soon I'll probably be one of the mugs that gets this.
Pondering whether to get an Xbox or PS. The last console I owned was a PS2 
I became such a natural at playing FIFA from playing it over friends' houses that I'm thinking of just getting it for myself and being able to play online and what not.
Which one do you recommend?
I became such a natural at playing FIFA from playing it over friends' houses that I'm thinking of just getting it for myself and being able to play online and what not. Which one do you recommend?
If you wanna play FIFA with Caf mates then it's Ps4 otherwise chose the console which most of your friends are on.
So they've added Portsmouth's Fratton Park to the stadia in the game. I wonder if they've included the annoying guy with the bells.
Any news on Manager Mode? any new features?
I'm sick of them overlooking this every single year!
I'm sick of them overlooking this every single year!
I'd add the reason they added it before some cries that a stadium they wanted isn't in and why they included that.
It's a tribute to Simon Humber, who was one of the producers of the game and big Pompey fan. He died of cancer this year at the age of 40.
Yeah this... they're very similar really but choose the one that your mates are on so you can play online with them, if you have any that is. Hehe
I wanna see if all United players have been scanned in again, I don't know why but it made a huge difference last year... they actually felt like United rather than some generic team with a United kit on.
Just give me the option to buy a player and loan him back for a year straight away. Or at least the option to offer players to clubs.
THe My Player Career mode needs a dramatic overhaul. The way new skills and better stats are unlocked is utter bullshit.
They should go for a mixture between NBA 2k's system (you earn skill points for your performances/milestones and can invest them into whatever skills you want) and the current one (you get better at whatever you use in game succesfully and repeatedly) while also adding a "Training" feature, where you assign a schedule to your player and gain progress towards raising your stats. I hate it how every player in a given position is invariable going down the same path eventually, with some stats being almost impossible to raise (FK Accuracy).
As for manager mode: Make the youthsquad more interactable. EA isn't on the football manager market anymore, they might as well give FIFA more simulation features now.
They should go for a mixture between NBA 2k's system (you earn skill points for your performances/milestones and can invest them into whatever skills you want) and the current one (you get better at whatever you use in game succesfully and repeatedly) while also adding a "Training" feature, where you assign a schedule to your player and gain progress towards raising your stats. I hate it how every player in a given position is invariable going down the same path eventually, with some stats being almost impossible to raise (FK Accuracy).
As for manager mode: Make the youthsquad more interactable. EA isn't on the football manager market anymore, they might as well give FIFA more simulation features now.
Really like your progression idea and totally agree. I mainly play Pro Clubs and it would be great of you could actually develop your player in the ways that fit your style of play. Most people in the clubs have their pro's set as CMs regardless of where they play as it gives the best / most rounded set of attributes. Although your skills do progress and increase based on your in-game actions, it doesn't ever feel as though your pro is tailored to you - it just feels as though they get incrementally better very slowly.
Interesting, I wonder what the two new game modes are?
Also, new Ultimate Team card designs:
Nothing much to see yet, although I'm excited to see if they've done anything with Pro Clubs/Career Mode.
Interesting, I wonder what the two new game modes are?
Also, new Ultimate Team card designs:
Nothing much to see yet, although I'm excited to see if they've done anything with Pro Clubs/Career Mode.
Even if all cards are Messi I'll still be shit at it.
Anything to make them seem shiny and new so that people will buy, buy, buy
. Not a fan of UT myself - much prefer the career mode and pro clubs.They better have done something to pro clubs. Same accomplishments for five years. Lack of customisation.
Every pro just feels the same.
Every pro just feels the same.
Barely played Ultimate Team on Fifa 15 but i was really into career mode despite it having loads of faults as usual. I really wish they'd sort them out as it can be enjoyable with them but things such as player growth glitches can be so infuriating.
Those "TOTS,TOTM,TOTW,MOTM,inform" type cards render the gold cards useless.
Also the 2 new modes will be something like "Be the agent" and "Wimmenz football"
New modes when the ones we currently have are flawed, and have been for 8 years? Typical EA.
They should have challenges where you play as a legend and go through important moments of his career. Im sure they had something similar for a world cup or euro game.
That's actually a great idea, i think they had something similar for teams in a previous version where you start a match at a particular time and you have to change the outcome of the result (e.g Using United to comeback from a goal down to knock Arsenal out of the FA Cup with 15 minutes left,similar to last season's match).
That would be a great idea.
George Best and Giggs as legends just announced on Xbox conference.
Doesn't sound promising... at least 2k incrementally made their career modes better and richer with every new iteration of the game, like Sergej Bubka only raising the polevault world record by only by one cm at a time altough he could have crushed the record easily, just so he could earn more prize money.
EA on the other hand are like a poor decathlete, trying their hands at everything but never really polishing anything to perfection. The career player mode has always been broken and way more boring than it could and should be and EA won't even explore the horrendous micro transaction possibilities that a more practical and intuitive skill point system would bring. In addition of these weird cards, they could sell skillpoints. Easy money. Baffling.
EA on the other hand are like a poor decathlete, trying their hands at everything but never really polishing anything to perfection. The career player mode has always been broken and way more boring than it could and should be and EA won't even explore the horrendous micro transaction possibilities that a more practical and intuitive skill point system would bring. In addition of these weird cards, they could sell skillpoints. Easy money. Baffling.
Bit miffed they only have them on Xbox...especially since I still get charged the same amount for less content.
To be fair 2k stole most of their concepts from EA, EA added a lot of new concepts when they were trying to blow PES out of the water once and for all and it worked, they don't have to do much for another 2-3 years at the very least.
Besides, if they put everything in one cd you won't buy it the next year, i still think a GTA type mode will be introduced in the near future - even though 2k already beat them to it.
Also going to check out this "Sergej Bubka" guy on youtube as he sounds fascinating.
From his wikipedia page:
World record progression by Bubka
Bubka broke the world record for men's pole vault 35 times during his career.[3] He broke the outdoor world record 17 times and the indoor world record 18 times. Bubka lost his outdoor world record only once in his illustrious career. After Thierry Vigneron, of France, broke his record on 31 August 1984 at the Golden Gala international track meet in Rome, Bubka subsequently reclaimed the record on his next run, just minutes later.[14]
The fact that most of the time the record he improved was his own demonstrates his absolute dominance in the event. Exactly how high he could have jumped at his best is unknown: the majority of his world record attempts were made at 1 cm higher than the existing record, and once achieved, he would not attempt another record jump until the next opportunity to compete, even after a substantial clearance showing he could have achieved a higher height.[15]
New Legends:
https://www.easports.com/fifa/ultimate-team/news/2015/fifa-16-fut-legends
Giggs and Best
https://www.easports.com/fifa/ultimate-team/news/2015/fifa-16-fut-legends
Giggs and Best
We have news!
NEW TRAILER:
Career Mode (http://news.futhead.com/posts/fifa-16/32080-fifa-16-career-mode-preview)
NEW TRAILER:
Career Mode (http://news.futhead.com/posts/fifa-16/32080-fifa-16-career-mode-preview)
New Pre-season Tournaments
The first new addition to Career Mode is one we’ve championed as a site for some time – Pre-season Tournaments. Gone are the mundane series of pointless friendly games, and in their place a myriad of exciting tournaments spread across the globe. There are nine different Pre-season Tournaments in total, but you’ll be invited to choose from a selection of three at the start of each season.
The stature of your club will affect the quality of tournaments available, with Chelsea in our play through invited to the Asia Elite Trophy also featuring the likes of Bayern Munich and PSG. As well as altering the quality of opposition, the stature of the tournament will also affect the amount of prize money on offer. Which, you’ll be pleased to hear goes directly in to your transfer budget should you be victorious. For that reason alone, pre-season is now well worth playing.
The tournament format consists of a 4 team group stage, where you play each team other once before moving on to a Semi-final and Final should you be successful. But even if you find yourself knocked out in the earlier rounds, you’ll still receive a portion of the prize pool to go to towards your transfer war chest. So all is not lost either way.
The presentation of the new Pre-season Tournaments is excellent, as we’ve come to expect from EA these days.
Another small but incredibly significant change to the pre-season format is the much demanded inclusion of unlimited substitutions. You can now make as many as you want.
Player Training
Another community most wanted feature for Career Mode has always been Player Training, which finally makes its debut in FIFA 16. It’s based around Skill Games (don’t panic, it’s going to be fine) but the whole process can be automated (told you) as well if you wish to do so.
You have five player training slots in total, which you can assign to anyone in your first team squad. That includes youth players also, providing you’ve signed them to a permanent contract. After that you select an area of focus for each player to work on during that week. For example as Chelsea we put Diego Costa on a finishing drill, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek on to passing.
Once assigned you can either manually play the Skill Games yourself, or ‘simulate all’ to see the results in seconds. For me, the latter is by far the most attractive option long term. The player’s performance in each drill (rated A-F) will then start to improve the stat areas the training focusses on. Over time, it will slowly increase their overall rating too.
We trained Diego Costa for about 15 weeks consistently on his finishing and he went from 90 finishing up to 91, which probably isn't a difference you’ll notice in-game. His overall rating didn’t progress at all during that time either.
An example of the training automation screen below...
As your players skills improve over time it also affects their transfer value and this is shown on the training screen as a percentage increase. We trained Courtois as well over the same 15 week period and the game listed a 10% increase in his value. That only represented an extra £3 million on top of his asking price, but it’s nice to know that your time investment in player training is paying off in more ways than just improved stats.
Global Transfer Network
The Global Transfer Network, seems on the surface at least identical to FIFA 15, but under the hood there are some neat changes. As you all know, EA decided to mask the player overall rating (OVR) in many of Career Mode’s menus (which I like for the most part) but that tended to hinder rather than help you when it came to scouting players you knew little about.
Now, when you take the time to scout a player in detail you’ll be rewarded with extra information, like their current transfer value, wages and the unmasking of their overall. These are small details, but they’re incredibly useful when you need to make quick transfer decisions about players your own football knowledge perhaps doesn’t cover. These new details are all displayed on the main GTN screen too meaning you don’t need to click on the player and filter through all their stats to see it.
I’d love to see this go much further with scouts also providing an indication of a player’s future potential (that is their job after all) but it seems I shall be waiting another year at least for that to come around. For me the Global Transfer Network still has lots of untapped potential, but at least this time there’s actually a reason to use scouting, because you will at the very least get back the key information you need to make better transfer decisions.
Club Transfer Budgets
One of the biggest gripes with managing clubs in the lower leagues in Career Mode is that if you eventually make the Promised Land and gain promotion to the Premier League, you still only have a League One budget to work with. Due to the commercial revenue that comes with promotion these days that’s just not right, so to try and tackle that, EA have made a few changes.
Another nice change too is that if you have money left in your transfer budget at the end of the season, a percentage of it will be carried across to your next campaign. How much you get back depends on your performance against board objectives, but it’s much better than having £10 million wiped, just because you didn’t spend it. So if the right player isn’t available, you can hold on to your cash and attack the market again in the following season, providing you're doing well.
There was no way for us to see it in action, but EA have also added extra logic to boost promoted clubs transfer budgets as they move through the leagues. So if you do guide Yeovil to the Premier League, you should have a budget which at least gives you a chance to compete with the clubs around you. We'll need full retail code to prove it though.
Story of the Season
EA have utilised their Player Stories engine in various guises over the last few Career Mode iterations,with fairly mixed success. Some of the stories are really interesting and engaging, and others not so. But combined with the some of the new audio technology EA are stepping up their game on that front yet again with their newly dubbed - Story of the Season.
Now as well as the general comments about your next opponent, you'll also get deeper routed discussion about big transfers happening in world football (even outside of your league at times), notable player or team performances and should you find yourself in a title or relegation scrap, they'll debate that in some depth too. Things have gone yet another level down in terms of depth essentially.
Best of the rest
- New Player Training
- Updated Global Transfer Network
- New Club Transfer Budgets
- New Story of the Season
The first new addition to Career Mode is one we’ve championed as a site for some time – Pre-season Tournaments. Gone are the mundane series of pointless friendly games, and in their place a myriad of exciting tournaments spread across the globe. There are nine different Pre-season Tournaments in total, but you’ll be invited to choose from a selection of three at the start of each season.
The stature of your club will affect the quality of tournaments available, with Chelsea in our play through invited to the Asia Elite Trophy also featuring the likes of Bayern Munich and PSG. As well as altering the quality of opposition, the stature of the tournament will also affect the amount of prize money on offer. Which, you’ll be pleased to hear goes directly in to your transfer budget should you be victorious. For that reason alone, pre-season is now well worth playing.
The tournament format consists of a 4 team group stage, where you play each team other once before moving on to a Semi-final and Final should you be successful. But even if you find yourself knocked out in the earlier rounds, you’ll still receive a portion of the prize pool to go to towards your transfer war chest. So all is not lost either way.
The presentation of the new Pre-season Tournaments is excellent, as we’ve come to expect from EA these days.
Another small but incredibly significant change to the pre-season format is the much demanded inclusion of unlimited substitutions. You can now make as many as you want.
Player Training
Another community most wanted feature for Career Mode has always been Player Training, which finally makes its debut in FIFA 16. It’s based around Skill Games (don’t panic, it’s going to be fine) but the whole process can be automated (told you) as well if you wish to do so.
You have five player training slots in total, which you can assign to anyone in your first team squad. That includes youth players also, providing you’ve signed them to a permanent contract. After that you select an area of focus for each player to work on during that week. For example as Chelsea we put Diego Costa on a finishing drill, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek on to passing.
Once assigned you can either manually play the Skill Games yourself, or ‘simulate all’ to see the results in seconds. For me, the latter is by far the most attractive option long term. The player’s performance in each drill (rated A-F) will then start to improve the stat areas the training focusses on. Over time, it will slowly increase their overall rating too.
We trained Diego Costa for about 15 weeks consistently on his finishing and he went from 90 finishing up to 91, which probably isn't a difference you’ll notice in-game. His overall rating didn’t progress at all during that time either.
An example of the training automation screen below...
As your players skills improve over time it also affects their transfer value and this is shown on the training screen as a percentage increase. We trained Courtois as well over the same 15 week period and the game listed a 10% increase in his value. That only represented an extra £3 million on top of his asking price, but it’s nice to know that your time investment in player training is paying off in more ways than just improved stats.
Global Transfer Network
The Global Transfer Network, seems on the surface at least identical to FIFA 15, but under the hood there are some neat changes. As you all know, EA decided to mask the player overall rating (OVR) in many of Career Mode’s menus (which I like for the most part) but that tended to hinder rather than help you when it came to scouting players you knew little about.
Now, when you take the time to scout a player in detail you’ll be rewarded with extra information, like their current transfer value, wages and the unmasking of their overall. These are small details, but they’re incredibly useful when you need to make quick transfer decisions about players your own football knowledge perhaps doesn’t cover. These new details are all displayed on the main GTN screen too meaning you don’t need to click on the player and filter through all their stats to see it.
I’d love to see this go much further with scouts also providing an indication of a player’s future potential (that is their job after all) but it seems I shall be waiting another year at least for that to come around. For me the Global Transfer Network still has lots of untapped potential, but at least this time there’s actually a reason to use scouting, because you will at the very least get back the key information you need to make better transfer decisions.
Club Transfer Budgets
One of the biggest gripes with managing clubs in the lower leagues in Career Mode is that if you eventually make the Promised Land and gain promotion to the Premier League, you still only have a League One budget to work with. Due to the commercial revenue that comes with promotion these days that’s just not right, so to try and tackle that, EA have made a few changes.
Another nice change too is that if you have money left in your transfer budget at the end of the season, a percentage of it will be carried across to your next campaign. How much you get back depends on your performance against board objectives, but it’s much better than having £10 million wiped, just because you didn’t spend it. So if the right player isn’t available, you can hold on to your cash and attack the market again in the following season, providing you're doing well.
There was no way for us to see it in action, but EA have also added extra logic to boost promoted clubs transfer budgets as they move through the leagues. So if you do guide Yeovil to the Premier League, you should have a budget which at least gives you a chance to compete with the clubs around you. We'll need full retail code to prove it though.
Story of the Season
EA have utilised their Player Stories engine in various guises over the last few Career Mode iterations,with fairly mixed success. Some of the stories are really interesting and engaging, and others not so. But combined with the some of the new audio technology EA are stepping up their game on that front yet again with their newly dubbed - Story of the Season.
Now as well as the general comments about your next opponent, you'll also get deeper routed discussion about big transfers happening in world football (even outside of your league at times), notable player or team performances and should you find yourself in a title or relegation scrap, they'll debate that in some depth too. Things have gone yet another level down in terms of depth essentially.
Best of the rest
- You can now sign free agents outside of the transfer window.
- After scouting a player, reports are available for an entire calendar year before they expire (previously they lasted 3 months).
- Short loans have increased from three to six months and there is now an option to issue two-year loans.
- While the transfer window is open, the number of ‘high-profile’ moves by big players has been tuned to better match the number that typically happen in the real-world.
- EA have addressed values of players to better match the real-world transfer market.
- Transfer Improvements: When the user receives a scout report update, we will recommend him three players based on the weaknesses of the team.
- Global Transfer Network: We added a detailed tab to the GTN screen where the user can filter all the players that are fully scouted.
- Auto Transfer Budget: If you have enough money to buy a player the budget will automatically adjust instead of having the user go back to the budget screen and adjust the slider manually.
- Season Target: There were several complains of people being fired even if they performed well, we did some tuning to ensure this doesn't happen.
- Team Management: Adding extra info for the Formations. Right now we can have 3 different types of 4-5-1 formation without any distinction between them, we will add some extra info, such as Wide, False 9, etc to help differentiate them.
New Ultimate Team Game Mode - Draft Mode - (http://news.futhead.com/posts/fifa-16/32056-fifa-16-fut-draft-mode-preview)
A new year, a new mode for FIFA 16 Ultimate Team.
It's taken EA a while, but finally after years of waiting we now have a genuinely new mode to enjoy in Ultimate Team. It's going to take skill, luck and a whole lot of squad building creativity. Which makes us very pleased to introduce FUT Draft mode!
What is FUT Draft Mode?
FUT Draft is a brand new mode for Ultimate Team where you’re tasked with building a squad from selections of random players presented to you in groups of five. Think Hearthstone’s Arena mode, but for Ultimate Team.
Once your squad is assembled you’ll face-off against other FUT Draft teams (offline and online modes available) where your aim is to win four games in a row without being beaten. Each time you win, the potential rewards increase. So the more games you win in a row, the better your prize at the end will be. If you lose, you’re out and claim the prize at which ever win level you were at.
How do I enter?
It costs 15,000 coins or 300 FIFA Points to enter but FUT Draft tokens can also be found in FUT 16 packs, in the same way you might find a token to redeem 1,000 coins or a free Gold Pack. But don’t worry, even if you enter FUT Draft and lose your first game, you’ll always get back at least what you put in. It may not be in the form of 15,000 coins but it will be a prize of equivalent value.
What can I win?
The rewards will always be different, but we picked up Jumbo Gold Packs, Premium Gold and Silver Packs, coins, Standard Gold Packs and everything else in between. As soon as you get past one win, you'll be walking away with more than your entry fee, so there's plenty of reward on offer in FUT Draft.
How does it work?
Choose your match difficulty
First (if playing offline) you choose your match difficulty. This won’t affect the types of rewards you receive for winning, but playing on Amateur will reduce the amount of coins received per game. This step is not applicable to Online.
Choose your formation
Next you’ll be presented with five formations to choose from. The selection of formations will be different each time you enter FUT Draft mode, so if your 'favourite' formation isn’t available, you’ll need to choose a similar variant, or try something totally new.
Choose your captain
The first player to pick is your captain, which will be from a selection of five players as we mentioned. From our experience of FUT Draft, there are normally some very, very, very good players on offer for the Captain spot. You’ll be spoilt for choice.
Build the rest of your squad
Now it’s entirely up to you which position you choose to fill next. Select a position in the formation and you’ll be presented with five players to choose from who will fit that role. Keep picking until your first eleven, substitutes and reserves are chosen. You can auto-complete the process if you wish.
Will you try to build for chemistry, or just pick the best players? That’s completely up to you, and sometimes if the selection of players on offer isn’t quite what you were looking for, you’ll maybe need to make the best of a bad situation. Be creative.
Choose your manager
Lastly you get to pick your FUT Draft Manager which is your final opportunity to boost Team Chemistry should a Manger with the right nationality or league links be available.
Play some matches
Jump in at the deep end and start your first FUT Draft game, hopefully getting to that magic four wins which will yield the best prizes the mode has to offer. Once you're knocked out you claim your prize and then start all over again, building a new squad, and going on a new FUT Draft adventure.
Other things to note
So what did we think of FUT Draft mode? Well in short, it’s brilliant.
As varied and as interesting as squad building can be in the main Ultimate Team modes, there is still an alarming regularity in which you'll come up against the archetypal Bundesliga and BPL squads. People love solid green links, and get that but it doesn’t always make for great matches, or great squad building. FUT Draft turns that notion on its head but in a short, sharp format which is really easy to pick up and put down as you need.
Being played over just four games means you could quite conceivably build a squad, play the matches and collect your rewards in an hour and a half. And the great thing about it, is that all the coins you’re getting by completing matches, and anything extra you win in FUT Draft mode in prizes is all contributing to your main FUT experience, so it’s far from wasted effort.
And more often than not you’re going to get a chance to play with players (compared to previous games at least) that you may never have been able to afford in FUT. We saw Ronaldo, Suarez, Bale, Messi, Roberto Carlos and everyone in between in our time with FUT Draft, and whilst you’ll only get maybe one or two players of that calibre in each squad, it’s still great to get hands on with them. The challenge though, is making them all fit in to your squad.
One particular occasion we managed to get a bit of a Bundesliga theme going with Lewandowski, Reus and Kagawa creating some nice link potential. But then on literally our last pick Gareth Bale popped up. Putting him in the team completely destroyed our chemistry on that side of the pitch, but we did it anyway because he was better than what we had. And that’s the joy of FUT Draft, you never know what’s coming next, and as a result you'll end up using player combinations and formations you never would have tried before.
EA seem to have the quality and rarity of items received well balanced right now too. (we’ve played a few versions over the last few months) We were normally getting mostly Gold’s, one or two very special players, a few silvers and maybe the odd bronze too now and again in an average squad. It’s pretty hard to get 100 chemistry and I think we only managed it once. But if building 100 chem squads was easy in FUT Draft, the whole mode would be rendered fairly pointless.
Myself and Tom had an absolute blast with FUT Draft, whether it was playing individually or building a squad together. During which we probably spent more time arguing about who to pick, than actually playing matches. But that’s the essence of why FUT Draft mode is fun, it’s about football opinion, a bit of luck, a lot of skill, and the Ultimate Team squad building we all love so dearly. All wrapped up in a very accessible four game format with the chance to win a whole lot more than you entered with. Sign us up for day one. FUT Draft is excellent.
Other Changes to Ultimate Team
As well as FUT Draft there have been a whole host of other changes across Ultimate Team which have centred on community feedback, and making the mode easier to navigate than ever before.
It's taken EA a while, but finally after years of waiting we now have a genuinely new mode to enjoy in Ultimate Team. It's going to take skill, luck and a whole lot of squad building creativity. Which makes us very pleased to introduce FUT Draft mode!
What is FUT Draft Mode?
FUT Draft is a brand new mode for Ultimate Team where you’re tasked with building a squad from selections of random players presented to you in groups of five. Think Hearthstone’s Arena mode, but for Ultimate Team.
Once your squad is assembled you’ll face-off against other FUT Draft teams (offline and online modes available) where your aim is to win four games in a row without being beaten. Each time you win, the potential rewards increase. So the more games you win in a row, the better your prize at the end will be. If you lose, you’re out and claim the prize at which ever win level you were at.
How do I enter?
It costs 15,000 coins or 300 FIFA Points to enter but FUT Draft tokens can also be found in FUT 16 packs, in the same way you might find a token to redeem 1,000 coins or a free Gold Pack. But don’t worry, even if you enter FUT Draft and lose your first game, you’ll always get back at least what you put in. It may not be in the form of 15,000 coins but it will be a prize of equivalent value.
What can I win?
The rewards will always be different, but we picked up Jumbo Gold Packs, Premium Gold and Silver Packs, coins, Standard Gold Packs and everything else in between. As soon as you get past one win, you'll be walking away with more than your entry fee, so there's plenty of reward on offer in FUT Draft.
How does it work?
Choose your match difficulty
First (if playing offline) you choose your match difficulty. This won’t affect the types of rewards you receive for winning, but playing on Amateur will reduce the amount of coins received per game. This step is not applicable to Online.
Choose your formation
Next you’ll be presented with five formations to choose from. The selection of formations will be different each time you enter FUT Draft mode, so if your 'favourite' formation isn’t available, you’ll need to choose a similar variant, or try something totally new.
Choose your captain
The first player to pick is your captain, which will be from a selection of five players as we mentioned. From our experience of FUT Draft, there are normally some very, very, very good players on offer for the Captain spot. You’ll be spoilt for choice.
Build the rest of your squad
Now it’s entirely up to you which position you choose to fill next. Select a position in the formation and you’ll be presented with five players to choose from who will fit that role. Keep picking until your first eleven, substitutes and reserves are chosen. You can auto-complete the process if you wish.
Will you try to build for chemistry, or just pick the best players? That’s completely up to you, and sometimes if the selection of players on offer isn’t quite what you were looking for, you’ll maybe need to make the best of a bad situation. Be creative.
Choose your manager
Lastly you get to pick your FUT Draft Manager which is your final opportunity to boost Team Chemistry should a Manger with the right nationality or league links be available.
Play some matches
Jump in at the deep end and start your first FUT Draft game, hopefully getting to that magic four wins which will yield the best prizes the mode has to offer. Once you're knocked out you claim your prize and then start all over again, building a new squad, and going on a new FUT Draft adventure.
Other things to note
- Player fatigue and injuries reset after each game, meaning your FUT Draft squad will always be fit and raring to go.
- Even if you lose your first game, you’ll always get back at least what you put in, in terms of reward.
- You can preview how a particular player fits in to your squad before actually committing.
- You can save and export your FUT Draft squads to Concept Squads should you come across something particularly brilliant you want to build for real.
- Over the course of the year all In Form, TOTY, TOTS and MOTM player versions will appear in FUT Draft. You could still pick up a Week 1 In Form in FUT Draft 10 weeks after their release for example.
- You won’t permanently own any of the players you play with in FUT Draft. They’re used in FUT Draft and FUT Draft only.
So what did we think of FUT Draft mode? Well in short, it’s brilliant.
As varied and as interesting as squad building can be in the main Ultimate Team modes, there is still an alarming regularity in which you'll come up against the archetypal Bundesliga and BPL squads. People love solid green links, and get that but it doesn’t always make for great matches, or great squad building. FUT Draft turns that notion on its head but in a short, sharp format which is really easy to pick up and put down as you need.
Being played over just four games means you could quite conceivably build a squad, play the matches and collect your rewards in an hour and a half. And the great thing about it, is that all the coins you’re getting by completing matches, and anything extra you win in FUT Draft mode in prizes is all contributing to your main FUT experience, so it’s far from wasted effort.
And more often than not you’re going to get a chance to play with players (compared to previous games at least) that you may never have been able to afford in FUT. We saw Ronaldo, Suarez, Bale, Messi, Roberto Carlos and everyone in between in our time with FUT Draft, and whilst you’ll only get maybe one or two players of that calibre in each squad, it’s still great to get hands on with them. The challenge though, is making them all fit in to your squad.
One particular occasion we managed to get a bit of a Bundesliga theme going with Lewandowski, Reus and Kagawa creating some nice link potential. But then on literally our last pick Gareth Bale popped up. Putting him in the team completely destroyed our chemistry on that side of the pitch, but we did it anyway because he was better than what we had. And that’s the joy of FUT Draft, you never know what’s coming next, and as a result you'll end up using player combinations and formations you never would have tried before.
EA seem to have the quality and rarity of items received well balanced right now too. (we’ve played a few versions over the last few months) We were normally getting mostly Gold’s, one or two very special players, a few silvers and maybe the odd bronze too now and again in an average squad. It’s pretty hard to get 100 chemistry and I think we only managed it once. But if building 100 chem squads was easy in FUT Draft, the whole mode would be rendered fairly pointless.
Myself and Tom had an absolute blast with FUT Draft, whether it was playing individually or building a squad together. During which we probably spent more time arguing about who to pick, than actually playing matches. But that’s the essence of why FUT Draft mode is fun, it’s about football opinion, a bit of luck, a lot of skill, and the Ultimate Team squad building we all love so dearly. All wrapped up in a very accessible four game format with the chance to win a whole lot more than you entered with. Sign us up for day one. FUT Draft is excellent.
Other Changes to Ultimate Team
As well as FUT Draft there have been a whole host of other changes across Ultimate Team which have centred on community feedback, and making the mode easier to navigate than ever before.
- A new item 'tag' system will allow you to tag multiple items within a pack and then 'Send all' tagged items to where ever you like. Leaving the rest of the pack contents in tact. No more, sorting individual items.
- When you want to apply a consumable to a player, FUT will now suggest items based on the players needs. If they have an arm injury, and you have an arm heal item, it will bring that to the top of your consumables deck. The same goes for players without a contract, etc. No more trawling through consumables.
- You can now search specifically for In Form versions of players on the Transfer Market.
- FUT has a brand new in-game broadcast presentation pack.
- FUT story lines have been added to the in-game commentary, with Tyler and Smith now able to discuss your top scorers, new players and much, much more relating to your FUT squads.
- The new In Form's look unreal. Seriously.
Any news on gameplay additions/changes? Sorry im in work now so can only read the info in the spoilers