As Claudia Pina pirouettes on the edge of the penalty box and slams yet another shot low past my helpless goalkeeper I wonder why I bother.
If you’ve played Ultimate Team on FC 26 – whether on console or PC – you’ll almost certainly recognise this tedious scenario that plays out on an irritatingly regular basis in online games. Like Arjen Robben’s trademark cut-in-and-shoot move, you can see it coming, but there’s very little you can do to stop it. So why do I keep coming back?
Spot the difference
I’ve been playing FIFA games (with the obligatory Pro Evo sabbatical in the early noughties) since David Platt was on the cover over 30 years ago, but I’m a relatively recent convert to Ultimate Team.
The general concept has never hugely appealed to me. I don’t see the point of a mode where all the teams are more or less identical; an inevitable result of some players being more effective (or ‘meta’) than others. There are only so many times you can line up against the same turbo-charged wingers, absurdly agile forwards and monolithic defenders before it starts getting tremendously boring. I’ve seen Omar Marmoush and Sandro Tonali more times this past month than my own neighbours.
That goes for the gameplay too. There always seem to be particular mechanics that can be abused and exploited for easy goals (at least until EA nerfs them). Last year it was finesse shots and trivelas, this year it’s the aforementioned intricate dribbling followed by a daisy cutter into the back of the net. It has got to the point where many matches don’t really resemble real football at all.
Then there are the human players themselves, a lot of whom seem intent on finding ways to be endlessly obnoxious. Whether it’s attempting to humiliate you with the most over-the-top skill moves (which would be met with what’s known as a ‘reducer’ if anyone were to attempt them on an actual football pitch); wasting time by passing around the back as soon as they take the lead; or deploying whichever goal celebration I’m supposed to be most offended by, the Ultimate Team community takes the concept of being a bad winner and runs with it (straight past my flailing defenders).
These players are clearly better than me at the game and that’s fine. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but some people are clearly able to sink more of them into FC 26 than I can.
I could spend countless hours learning all the flicks and tricks to try to beat them on their own terms, but I have better things to do with my time, such as going outside or having face-to-face conversations with other human beings.
Besides, there’s something far more satisfying in Ultimate Team now that keeps me coming back.
Got, got, need
For many, a big part of Ultimate Team’s appeal lies in the rewards it gives you, which come in the form of mystery packs that contain new players to use in your squads. Open enough of these packs and eventually Kylian Mbappé, Ronaldinho or some other superstar will pop out, but it could take you all year.
I still get a certain pleasure from this, presumably because I used to collect football stickers when I was at school and it gives me a nice little tingle of nostalgia, but instead of chasing the game’s valuable rarities like pretty much everyone else I decided to recreate my beloved Brighton & Hove Albion within the game. They are, after all, my own ultimate team.
Of course, Lewis Dunk’s stats are inferior to Virgil van Dijk’s, and Danny Welbeck can’t pirouette like Pina, but they’re much easier to get hold of. And thanks to Evolutions, which allow you to gradually improve your players’ abilities by completing specific tasks in matches, I can create a Seagulls squad that’s able to compete.
I still get beaten a lot – of the 15 games I played last weekend, I won eight and lost the rest – but those victories are all the more satisfying when they come with my supposedly substandard team. Past experience tells me I wouldn’t do any better if I had the same players as everybody else anyway, and I certainly wouldn’t enjoy playing with them as much.
Evolutions are drip-fed over time, and the ones that boost stats the most cost coins, which you earn by playing games or selling players. So for now I’ll have to keep putting up with the so-called ‘fidget spinners’ that set up camp around my 18-yard box as I save for more Evos, but the day EA makes it harder for them to score easy goals can’t come soon enough.
