EA Sports FC

[Stevo985]

17 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

Unfortunately 2K are just as bad when it comes to microtransactions and removing single player offline stuff. Their treatment of NBA 2K consumers is terrible. 

Fair, I just meant in general as competition to EA. 

[PieFacE]

Still think EA should make FUT a free to play game and have a separate development team working on the base game and actually work on the current set of game modes like Seasons/Pro Clubs/Career etc. 
Sick of the game trying to shove FUT stuff in my face all the time when i have 0 interest in it. It's the worst thing to happen to the game. 

[Hobsons Choice]

41 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Fair, I just meant in general as competition to EA. 

They need competition for sure. Funny thing is, I remember during the PS2 era that I always used to buy the 2K sports games, because they were much more detailed, deeper experiences. 

I would love if Sports Interactive developed a playable game, with elements of FM. Will never happen of course, but a man can dream.

[GarethRDR]

6 hours ago, HKP90 said:

Soooo. There are rumours of in game ads for EA Sports FC 25, a game I'm presuming they are still charging £65 for. 

Good luck with that, EA.  

I think... I think I'd finally be out.  Christ.

[jacketspuds]

[GarethRDR]

18 hours ago, jacketspuds said:

Essentially the same experience I had with Dark Souls.

[Straggler]

I've been doing a create a club save that may be of interest.  The basic premise is that I can only sign players who have at any point been at Villa (youth and first team). This includes over the save any players that Aston Villa sign, so the only place I scout is in the original team.

The created team starts in league 2. I gave the club a load of cash and put negotiation strictness on loose.  It is impossible to fill the team at the start any other way. Every generated player goes straight on the transfer list and the big buy begins. Filling out the first squad with old players was a proper trip down memory lane. Hourihane was the star of my first season with some real surprise contributions from Samatta (deadly in the air in the lower leagues) and Donacien being my star defender. 

I found I had to lose the loan cheat to fill the squad out properly,  but other than that it's all very simple.  It's also a bit of a change to have to rely entire of the players that Villa sign as your only form of scouting. It's made me look at a bunch of players I would never have normally looked at.

When I did eventually get to buy players direct from Villa I always over paid to compensate for the fact I'm only taking players off them. I've no idea if it helps an ai controlled club, but you never know.

Anyway, I've been having fun with it....

[GarethRDR]

Those little self-goals/imposed playstyles are what I'm mostly in it for these days.  I'm a particular fan of starting a player career with the oldest player I can find for a specific nationality who's got a proper face-scan, retiring them immediately and taking them into management, with either the goal of getting them at the helm of a specific club or depending on who they're given out of the gate, seeing how far you can take that club. 

I'm currently Jonathan de Guzmán, in charge of FC Volendam (literally the only job offer I got when I retired).  The year is 2028, and in those 5 seasons I've won the Eredivisie twice and the Oranje Beker once.  I've just had my first "disappointing" season with the board pissed off that I didn't get past Rangers in the Champion's League round of 16 (despite winning the league) and failed to meet one of those ludicrous youth player objectives.  Frankly they can get ****, as under my stewardship the club is now worth over £800m, I've currently got £290m in the transfer kitty (having never spent more than £6m on any single player) but I've no need to buy anyone as thanks to my wheelings and dealings via free agency, my line-up currently looks like this:

 

 

Mbuyamba and Backhaus are the only survivors from the initial squad.  Bringing in De Cuyper in a trade-deal and switching him from a LB to a LW has been the biggest success story.  Club infrastructure is maxed out with all 5* scouting, 5* youth academy and as many 5* trainers as I can possibly hire (I hate that this is solely tied to meeting club objectives and that you only get an additional +1 trainer if the board's happy. it should be one of the things you can just spend money on, as it currently stands getting a small club up to snuff on the training pitch takes forever).  Academy is producing a steady slew of world class talent that is routinely loaned out or sold as needed, as a rule I don't keep hold of players if offers come in as the club isn't yet big enough for players to not want to move on (that's a self-imposed rule). 

Have also "built" and moved to a new stadium as of last season, which is another thing that I have internal head-canon for; if I ever get to +£100m in the transfer kitty and I can keep hold of it all until the end of a season, I'll allow myself to change the stadium a club is in at the start of the following campaign (obviously only works with clubs whose stadiums aren't already in the game) to a larger capacity one (but not straight to the biggest, just to around the next 10k-capacity-tier of stadiums).  It's a nice bit of fun as I wind up doing a bit of digging into that particular club's history to find something suitable to name the new stadium.  Hence, FC Volendam are currently turning out at the swanky new Dick Tol Stadion, named for the club's record goal-scorer:

I'll only "upgrade" the stadium again if I can hit two criteria: 1) keep £200m in the bank and 2) win the CL.

I was offered the Netherlands job and I took it for a couple of games only, but I don't particularly like splitting responsibilities as it doesn't really happen in reality, so my head-canon is I'll "caretake" if my own nation offers me the job, but only until the end of that season, then I retire.

It's been a fun save thus far.  I had originally planned to aim for the Feyenoord job at some point, given that's where De Guzmán spent most of his playing days, but despite my success, nobody's come calling.  Convinced it's that ol' systemic racism in the managerial space rearing it's ugly head again.  Jokes on them, another couple of years and we'll be bigger than Ajax.

[GarethRDR]

On 09/07/2024 at 16:28, GarethRDR said:

I'm a particular fan of starting a player career with the oldest player I can find for a specific nationality who's got a proper face-scan, retiring them immediately and taking them into management

I took 4 seasons of dragging Ipswich kicking and screaming to the Premier League, (have no idea how I wasn't fired along the way, had 3 seasons in a row of getting dumped out of the play-offs), but Tyrone Mings is finally in charge of Villa. 

It's always amusing to see what state the game has left a club in, virtual Unai (UnAI, ha! *ahem*) had certainly made some... bold choices.  Absolutely no change in the GK depart, but at some point there was a brutal cull of the back-line, to fund some bonkers splurge on Koundé, Van De Ven, Lucas Hernández and Dest.  Somehow, only Calum Chambers survived. Middle of the park is largely untouched, but there's been another seachange up front with Watkins and Durán long-gone, and Zirkzee and Fati in their stead.  Spicy.

Board wants a CL finish and an FA Cup/Conference League double.  Just about to go into January with £100m in the bank.  Should be do-able.

Christ, I just looked up where the old boys wound up.  Poor Ollie is at Everton.  He deserves better than that.  Konsa's at Hoffenheim, Torres at Chelsea.  Biggest suspension of disbelief goes to Digne winding up at Copenhagen, they must be subsidising his wages with the entire GDP of Denmark.

[Straggler]

Looking forward to turning off board objectives in EAFC25.

[GarethRDR]

21 hours ago, Straggler said:

Looking forward to turning off board objectives in EAFC25.

Holy shit has this been confirmed?  BIG win if so, it's the worst/most broken part of Career Mode, save for the relentless transfer requests.  Giving the option to turn it off seems like a tacit admittance that they can't be arsed/don't know how to fix it, either.

[Straggler]

3 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

Holy shit has this been confirmed?  BIG win if so, it's the worst/most broken part of Career Mode, save for the relentless transfer requests.  Giving the option to turn it off seems like a tacit admittance that they can't be arsed/don't know how to fix it, either.

You can certainly turn off getting sacked. That has been confirmed.  I'm not 100% sure that will disable board objectives entirely but it will certainly make them irrelevant. I'd agree that they have done this instead of fixing the objectives, which seems utterly beyond them.