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EA have brought yet more ire upon themselves with many players frustrated at the cards revealed in the new Path to Glory UT update.
It seems EA can’t escape controversy lately. Barely a month has passed since ‘boycott EA’ trended on X, and with the launch of its Euro’s update, it was only a matter of time until we saw a fresh one. Unsurprisingly it’s Ultimate Team that is producing the most passion in players, and despite having been handed a new set of powerful cards, their timing renders the previous Team of the Season cards useless.
The main issue revolves around three players who have recently received TOTS cards recently; Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, and Julian Alvarez. All three of these players featured just a handful of weeks ago. Predictably and inevitably, these TOTS cards are a touch lower rated than the shiny new Path to Glory. Now, I can understand why EA has done this. They want the new cards to have hype around them; to be desirable and exciting. This hype incentivises players to hunt for these cards, which in turn incentivises them to spend money on the in-game points you use to buy them. However, it also causes two knock-on effects.
First of all, it’s … boring. These two international tournaments could be a great chance to shine a light on players who usually garner less attention, but instead, Saliba is getting his 4th special card and De Jong his 5th. What’s more, Deschamps has hinted Saliba might not even be in the starting line-up, so why is he in this team? As one Reddit user pointed out “26 players in each roster, and EA decides to go with the ones that already have insane/numerous promo cards. Disappointing tbh.”
As a proud kilt-wearing Scot, I am also sad to not see any of our team making the cut, and similar sentiments have been echoed concerning the absence of any Venezuelans, Albanians and even Manchester United players. One Redditor complaining that “Romania qualifies and still no card for us”. At least Saša Lukić and Michail Antonio get their first special cards and I personally will be on the hunt for the 94-rated Undav.
There’s another issue, however, to repeatedly banging out card after card for the same player. Each time they do EA has to buff stats, to make the card more desirable than before, and as soon as this happens the previous card sees its value nosedive. Factor in that people are spending their hard-earned real money on these points only to see their investment undermined a few weeks later – it’s easy to see why tensions are running high.
The EA FC crowd is a tough crowd to please. Everyone wants to see their favourite player given plaudits, and there is an inevitable frustration that will come with cards later in the game’s release cycle being given stacked stats – Militao 96 rated? Still, it could be worse, UEFA could’ve given the rights to PES again.
