Opening a pack offers a great sense of joy

Sep 29, 2014 14:40 GMT  ·  By

FIFA 15 is a very good game and I plan to spend about 7 to 10 hours a week playing it for the coming 12 months, until the new title in the series launches, but I suspect that a very limited number of that heap of minutes will be linked to the Ultimate Team experience, which is fast becoming the most important one for the fan community.

The reputation of the new experience is so big among the player base that EA Sports is devoting more resources than ever to it, despite the fact that there are some other modes that have failed to evolve in any big way.

FIFA 15 now allows players who are engaged with Ultimate Team to use a Concept Squad feature to plan for the future line-up they want to use, see how the Chemistry looks and then work to get the players that would deliver the best possible effects.

At the same time, there’s a new loan option which means that even a lowly team can be boosted with the use of a big star, including cover athlete Lionel Messi, as long as the player is willing to part with some of his/her hard-earned funds.

The attraction of opening a pack

I suspect that much of the love linked to Ultimate Team is linked to the feeling of discovery that’s associated with opening a new pack of players to see what falls out of it, something similar to what Valve used in order to make the booster packs for its card concept more attractive.

I also enjoy getting new stuff to play around with, but the effort required by the FIFA 15 mode, especially the time commitment, is way too high for me at the moment.

In previous installments of the football sim, there were also problems with the security of the accounts, and plenty of gamers chose to cheat in order to improve the performance of their own team.

This time around, EA Sports is promising that bans will be quickly delivered, but some time will need to pass before the community sees if the game is indeed fair.

The trends of modern gaming mean that the future of the FIFA series is linked to Ultimate Team more than any other currently included mode, but despite the thrill of discovery that it can offer, I plan to remain loyal to the classic local multiplayer experience for the moment.