ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

[00:00:00] enough is enough.

[00:00:04] Welcome to FUT IN REVIEW powered by FUTCOACHING.com

[00:00:08] your regular dose of FC 24 ultimate team podcasting goodness.

[00:00:14] Ladies and gentlemen, it is safe to say that we are fed up.

[00:00:17] Enough is enough.

[00:00:19] And the events over the past few days have brought to a head

[00:00:22] lots of problems and concerns we have had around this game

[00:00:26] for a very long time.

[00:00:28] We are going to get deep into those issues and look at all the controversy

[00:00:32] that stems originally from, well, originally a lot of things.

[00:00:36] But most recently, the kind of powder keg was lit

[00:00:39] by incorrect rewards being dished out on Friday's weekend league,

[00:00:43] where lots of people were suddenly getting really good cards

[00:00:45] only for EA to then take them away, saying that they were not intended

[00:00:49] for you to get such good cards.

[00:00:52] Other minor problems cropped up over the weekend as well.

[00:00:54] But this led to a whole boycott FC 24 movement

[00:00:58] originally sparked by one of the game's largest content creators.

[00:01:02] Nick run the foot market.

[00:01:03] We're going to look deeper into everything that's gone on since then

[00:01:06] and much, much more give our own thoughts.

[00:01:08] Before we get into all of that, what I wanted to start today's podcast

[00:01:12] with was just a message to everybody out there

[00:01:16] that whilst we are going to be talking about a lot of things

[00:01:18] that make us frustrated, we are also we can't lose sight

[00:01:23] of the lots of positives that this game has given us.

[00:01:27] Most importantly, it's given us access to a fantastic community.

[00:01:31] The people that I'm spending this podcast with,

[00:01:33] everybody in our discord, our listeners, you're the best thing about this game

[00:01:37] because it brings us together and we share those experiences.

[00:01:41] We share the highs, we share the lows, we share the frustrations.

[00:01:44] And that is the best thing about gaming.

[00:01:46] It's bringing people together.

[00:01:48] And look, while there are so many problems

[00:01:51] that we can talk about around this game, let's not forget

[00:01:54] that we do spend hours on it.

[00:01:55] There is enjoyable times.

[00:01:57] There are great pack pools that we enjoy.

[00:01:59] There are great weekend league results.

[00:02:01] There's the dramatic comebacks.

[00:02:02] There's the ridiculous goal you'll score from 35 yards.

[00:02:05] You know, it brings a smile to your face.

[00:02:08] So there is not this game is not inherently totally awful.

[00:02:12] There is not, you know, it is not the demon.

[00:02:15] And EA sports are not entirely,

[00:02:18] you know, totally useless.

[00:02:21] With that being said, though, we have got lots to talk about.

[00:02:24] And to do so with me is the Scout Nathan Downs

[00:02:28] and my main man Shaq Attack.

[00:02:30] Shaq, I'll start with you.

[00:02:31] How are you, my friend?

[00:02:33] I'm doing fabulous.

[00:02:35] And that's a really, really good start to I think it sets

[00:02:38] the show up really, really nicely for what we're going to talk about.

[00:02:40] And I think all of us in the community are equally as frustrated

[00:02:44] as you are.

[00:02:45] And I think a lot of us have just been I think it's just

[00:02:48] this is just the last straw to make break the cameras back.

[00:02:50] It's just there's so many things that have happened time and time again.

[00:02:53] And this is just I think it's just really this is like Messigate.

[00:02:57] But I think it's much it was much harder to get this done.

[00:03:00] So a lot of people, I think I feel really bad for those people

[00:03:02] that actually were trying to get those rewards in the last win.

[00:03:06] And there was a flipped over.

[00:03:08] I think I feel worse for those people because they were actually

[00:03:10] trying actively to try and get those rewards.

[00:03:12] And yeah, I think it's just gone down horribly wrong.

[00:03:17] There's a whole lot of things to get into.

[00:03:18] I think we'll go we'll go through the summaries of what's happening

[00:03:20] across across the Twitter verse on this on this regard.

[00:03:23] But overall, I think one thing I'm really glad about the fact that

[00:03:28] I think everyone's feeling enough is enough.

[00:03:30] We all we all have have we all have put up with this as

[00:03:35] I'll put it lightly without saying too much.

[00:03:37] It's like a weirdly abusive relationship that we've just tolerated for so long.

[00:03:41] And I think everyone's vocal about that right now.

[00:03:43] So yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next half an hour

[00:03:46] or 45 minutes of ranting about this well in in in sequence and also

[00:03:52] as positively as possible to try and actually put our thoughts across

[00:03:56] rather than just yelling.

[00:03:58] Exactly. And Nathan, my friend, how are you?

[00:03:59] How have the past kind of a few days affected you or not affected you?

[00:04:04] Yeah. Thanks for having us back on as always.

[00:04:06] I'm loving our Tuesday sort of catch ups as you like.

[00:04:10] Some great points there that you've made in the intro.

[00:04:12] First things first, though, I have to sort of second

[00:04:14] the thing about the community.

[00:04:16] We'll go on and talk about Nick from the foot markets video at some point.

[00:04:19] But he did also highlight that, you know, the community is such a big part of it.

[00:04:22] And I've said in the past, the community has helped me sort of personally,

[00:04:26] you know, having made really good friends through it.

[00:04:29] Got through some times in my life that were tricky and it's due to the community.

[00:04:33] So I will say that I'm I feel a bit flat today.

[00:04:38] I've done my homework before this.

[00:04:39] I've looked at quite a lot of big streamers videos who have kind of rented.

[00:04:44] I've tried to stay away from all that until today, obviously.

[00:04:47] So I know what we're on about very much aware of all the issues that have been going on.

[00:04:52] So I'm going to try and take the role of the balance person in here.

[00:04:55] I ran a lot.

[00:04:57] And I know you guys are very, very passionate about this as well.

[00:05:00] But we, you know, the theme of our podcast in general is to try

[00:05:03] and be as positive as we can and balance.

[00:05:06] So I'll try and assume that role.

[00:05:08] And, you know, I probably will serve off into complete rants

[00:05:11] and go on tangents like I always seem to do.

[00:05:13] But I think it's worth.

[00:05:15] I think it's a very, very good topic.

[00:05:16] It's very current right now.

[00:05:18] And there's so many flip sides to kind of get into it.

[00:05:21] So I'm excited.

[00:05:22] I think Shakespeare optimistic saying it'll be only half an hour.

[00:05:25] I think we could probably talk for the next week and a half constantly on this.

[00:05:28] So, yeah, let's let's get in and hit the subject.

[00:05:31] Yeah, absolutely. It's worth saying as well.

[00:05:33] Again, apologies. There was no show over the weekend.

[00:05:35] Of course, it is the foot interview meetup happening right now

[00:05:38] in Crete, John and others enjoying themselves in the sunshine.

[00:05:43] And there's going to be lots more content around that.

[00:05:45] And again, that's just one of the fantastic positives of this game,

[00:05:47] you know, has led to that.

[00:05:49] So we were getting together having a great time.

[00:05:50] So I'm very much looking forward to all of these stories and videos

[00:05:53] coming out of that. But let's dig in.

[00:05:56] And we will do our very best to be as balanced and as coherent.

[00:05:58] And I'm actually kind of glad that a few days have passed for this

[00:06:00] because it's allowed a bit more perspective.

[00:06:02] I remember jumping on with John and Chris in the minutes after Messigate,

[00:06:06] and it was really raw and emotive.

[00:06:08] And I'm glad I've had, you know, a good few days to sort of,

[00:06:11] you know, calm down, had a good number of cups of tea in that time being.

[00:06:14] So, look, let's start with it because Messigate is the right point.

[00:06:18] Now, if for those of you who may have been away

[00:06:21] or you don't pay that much attention

[00:06:23] with what basically happened is people started playing footchamps on Friday.

[00:06:28] He opened up at eight o'clock as it has done throughout the season.

[00:06:31] And obviously some people speed run it really quickly.

[00:06:33] And so around sort of 10, 11 o'clock, people,

[00:06:36] the biggest streamers started opening rewards.

[00:06:38] And they noticed that a lot of people were getting very, very juice rewards

[00:06:42] in terms of they were getting player picks, even at 11 wins,

[00:06:45] containing the likes of Dembele, who was 14 million coins or whatever it was.

[00:06:49] And Bappé, Zaire Emory, all of the top tier reds,

[00:06:53] the basically you never see, was suddenly popping up.

[00:06:56] Now, it wasn't a guaranteed and Bappé simulator.

[00:06:58] It wasn't guaranteed Dembele, but this was you were very, very unlucky

[00:07:03] if you didn't see one of these cards.

[00:07:04] And of course, word quickly spread players hopped on.

[00:07:07] I think all the time, most people were expecting

[00:07:10] that this was going to be corrected.

[00:07:12] However, the time wore on, the time wore on.

[00:07:15] Nothing happened.

[00:07:16] Nick Brown, the foot market scrambled to 11 wins as quickly as he possibly could.

[00:07:20] And he got in Bappé and lots of people did the same.

[00:07:23] However, in the early hours of the morning,

[00:07:25] I think it was around two or three a.m.

[00:07:28] He put out a tweet basically saying funds over kids.

[00:07:32] We've corrected the rewards.

[00:07:35] And I'm going to find the exact language used because I think it was

[00:07:39] the language used in this tweet that really, really set a lot of people off.

[00:07:45] Now, they said we have identified an issue where the champions

[00:07:48] player picks rewards were providing unintended results.

[00:07:51] This has been corrected in game.

[00:07:55] And it was that phrase, unintended results

[00:08:00] that really sparked the controversy

[00:08:04] because it was E.A.

[00:08:06] in so many words, saying that we don't intend for you to get such good rewards.

[00:08:12] Now, unlike the messy situation where the player pick was corrected within

[00:08:16] within an hour, as I said, this lingered.

[00:08:19] In fact, the tweet was powered at two fifty one a.m.

[00:08:22] So you had a nearly six hour window.

[00:08:25] Now, we do not know how many percentage of players got these very juice cards.

[00:08:29] We will never know.

[00:08:30] Anecdotally, I played a couple of games in division rivals

[00:08:33] and I think out of five opponents, at least three of them

[00:08:36] had one of these juice red cards.

[00:08:38] Admittedly, I'm in division one.

[00:08:39] I'm probably going to play more commit players.

[00:08:42] So we don't know.

[00:08:43] And also, E.A. provided no follow up to this issue.

[00:08:47] So we do not know.

[00:08:48] This set the FIFA community a light.

[00:08:53] You can go to the tweet on the E.A.

[00:08:55] FC direct and you can see some of the responses, most of which I can't read

[00:08:59] because they contain swearing words.

[00:09:02] The top top ranked one at the moment, most light is the penthezes.

[00:09:05] You have to be joking.

[00:09:06] Leave it as it was. Everyone was happy, mad, legit, mad.

[00:09:09] The you intend to shaft people for playing your competitive game mode.

[00:09:14] And if you played footchamps since I played footchamps on two accounts,

[00:09:17] the rewards of garbage, utter garbage.

[00:09:19] I was lucky.

[00:09:21] I saw a Marquinhos who is I think about 800 K.

[00:09:24] But 99 percent of picks you've seen across streamers

[00:09:27] across our discord have been garbage, the same kind of garbage

[00:09:30] that we saw through Bundesliga Tots.

[00:09:32] Nobody was sniffing and Bapé or in Belé or any of these really

[00:09:36] or Fittinia or these top ranked cards.

[00:09:39] They just almost went completely the opposite direction

[00:09:42] and made sure they weren't in red picks.

[00:09:45] What this then led to was, as I said, fury.

[00:09:49] And the biggest thing came from Nick Run the Footmarket.

[00:09:52] And I don't want to read out his entire tweets.

[00:09:55] But the gist of it was he said, I've had enough.

[00:09:58] If other big content creators and content creators in general

[00:10:01] want to come together with me and boycott this game,

[00:10:04] stop streaming this game for a few weeks.

[00:10:07] I am down to do this.

[00:10:08] He's had enough.

[00:10:10] He if you've watched Nick's content through the through

[00:10:13] this entire FC 24 cycle.

[00:10:15] And again, if you don't follow him, Nick is one of the top streamers.

[00:10:18] He gets about six to 12000 viewers.

[00:10:21] It's him and Auzio are the two big ones that you will see these days.

[00:10:24] So he's easily top five content creators in this game.

[00:10:27] And he basically put his hand up and said, look,

[00:10:29] I'm happy to boycott this to try and force through change.

[00:10:32] It wasn't one particular thing for Nick.

[00:10:34] It was a whole list of problems that we are about to get into.

[00:10:39] So I don't want this again.

[00:10:42] Let's not frame this whole debate in.

[00:10:43] It's just about this one mistake or it's just about FC points.

[00:10:47] It's it's everything.

[00:10:49] And his goal is to basically try and force some change from EA

[00:10:52] to make a better gaming experience.

[00:10:54] Now, unfortunately, a lot of people who watched his videos

[00:10:59] saw his tweets really took this up in quite an aggressive manner.

[00:11:03] And lots went to harass other streamers, saying, stop playing this game.

[00:11:07] You're part of the problem.

[00:11:08] You're a sellout, yada, yada, yada.

[00:11:10] And Nick very quickly realized this and put out follow up tweets

[00:11:14] saying, look, please don't do this to other streamers.

[00:11:16] That's not my intention.

[00:11:18] And he recognized that lots of streamers are not in a financial position

[00:11:20] to give up the game, stop putting out videos.

[00:11:23] And he very quickly walked, walked back and said, look, I realize

[00:11:27] this is probably asking too much of people.

[00:11:29] Please don't go and harass them.

[00:11:31] We'll come up with a different plan.

[00:11:33] And in the day since, the general idea has now been

[00:11:36] and lots of content creators are joining Nick, the likes of Orzio,

[00:11:39] the likes of Nate, Nate, the foot accountant have joined Nick

[00:11:42] in calling for a boycott, not of the game entirely,

[00:11:46] but of opening storepacks, particularly opening storepacks with points.

[00:11:53] So that's that's where everything started.

[00:11:57] And look, we're going to get into our issues with the game

[00:12:00] and lots of the issues that Nick and the other big content creators

[00:12:03] and everybody in the community has come up with.

[00:12:05] But just very quickly, I realize because I'm yapping on for a long time there.

[00:12:09] I mean, Shaq, what was your reaction to what Nick has put out

[00:12:13] in the last couple of days?

[00:12:15] Oh, last couple of days, I think he's really summed

[00:12:17] the whole situation up really well.

[00:12:19] I think you did a great job there explaining the

[00:12:22] the way that the whole thing unfolded.

[00:12:23] I think Nick, in his own right, I think his intentions are right.

[00:12:28] But his execution is very

[00:12:31] I don't think he thought about the repercussions of the

[00:12:35] putting his thoughts out there without vetting them

[00:12:37] and putting it straight on X.

[00:12:38] And the part that really disappointed me initially

[00:12:43] when the first tweet came out was people were just being

[00:12:45] really angry with each other and people just calling each other

[00:12:48] within the community out.

[00:12:49] That's not the intended result.

[00:12:52] And I think that really disappointed me because at the end of the day,

[00:12:54] we were fighting against each other as a community rather than

[00:12:57] turning anger towards EA.

[00:12:59] And that's the most important thing.

[00:13:00] And as days have gone on and what I've noticed is that people

[00:13:03] have actually understood what he was trying to do.

[00:13:05] And everyone has seemed to have moved their direction

[00:13:08] and anger towards EA, which is the I think it's finally moving

[00:13:12] in the right direction, which gives me a lot of joy.

[00:13:15] But I think Nick's original idea was probably

[00:13:19] sensible to a certain degree, but I don't think he actually

[00:13:22] would get the buy in from everyone.

[00:13:24] And as you said, a lot of people's livelihood depends on this game.

[00:13:27] So I think what we have right now is probably the best we can.

[00:13:29] But the one thing I really want to point out is what will happen

[00:13:33] maybe towards ultimate thoughts, even let's let's push that aside.

[00:13:36] Let's even talk about as the game progresses and we start towards

[00:13:39] FC 26 or 25, what's going to happen with the likes of Bates in

[00:13:44] and that will they just throw in a lot of FIFA points?

[00:13:46] I mean, FC points on the game and will we just completely forget

[00:13:49] this whole attitude that we had?

[00:13:51] What about people like us?

[00:13:52] I'm quite clearly I openly vocalize this fact

[00:13:58] that at the start of every year, I've loaded a couple of FIFA points

[00:14:01] at the start of the game.

[00:14:02] And that's the way I play the game.

[00:14:03] That's the way I've done it for years.

[00:14:04] I've started the game, never put any FIFA points again.

[00:14:06] And that's that's the way I've done it.

[00:14:07] So am I going to change my habits and all the people in the community

[00:14:10] that don't that are spending FIFA points now?

[00:14:13] Well, are we going to carry this across to FC 25?

[00:14:16] If that's the case, then I think we have made a huge difference.

[00:14:19] We will make a huge difference going forward.

[00:14:21] But if you just forget about this and move on and then look at the next

[00:14:24] flashy thing and just completely forget the stance that we're taking right now,

[00:14:27] I think that that really would

[00:14:31] it'll all feel like it's all in vain.

[00:14:33] Yeah. And Nathan, go back to again what sparked this whole thing is

[00:14:36] in this particular era, this whole EA putting out

[00:14:41] what they call unintended red picks and then changing it.

[00:14:44] I mean, what did you make of their response to that heart,

[00:14:47] to the whole Mbappé de Bel-A and red picks situation?

[00:14:52] To be honest, I think it's very typical EA.

[00:14:54] We saw it with the messy gate.

[00:14:56] You know, I've missed out on both these.

[00:14:57] The messy MS by about half an hour when I was fuming.

[00:15:01] I was really demoralized then.

[00:15:02] But this as well, as soon as you saw that tweet, first things first,

[00:15:05] she thought their choice of words is horrific.

[00:15:08] They really need to take more care with what they're saying.

[00:15:11] Even if they'd have nerfed it and just said, you know,

[00:15:14] there was an issue with red picks, this has been addressed

[00:15:16] rather than saying unintended, because we've obviously got our own

[00:15:20] side chat on the go and our WhatsApp group.

[00:15:22] And when it came to to play in champs, I said, you know,

[00:15:26] I'm really demotivated.

[00:15:27] I know that my results are going to be my rewards are going to be horrific.

[00:15:30] They absolutely horrific.

[00:15:31] And to be honest, they were.

[00:15:34] I rushed to well, I couldn't even be bothered.

[00:15:35] So I just got to 11 wins.

[00:15:36] I kind of speed run it.

[00:15:38] I got Loku, Lala and Donnarummo as my three

[00:15:43] for 11 wins in both picks, exactly the same three picks.

[00:15:47] And to be honest, I wasn't surprised about it.

[00:15:48] The only surprise was that Donnarummo is a 95 rated.

[00:15:52] So it's quite high for the I mean, obviously usable.

[00:15:54] But in terms of what you're expecting for a red pick,

[00:15:57] that's kind of what I thought I would get.

[00:15:58] They look like they've nerfed it from being unreal

[00:16:01] to just garbage, like you've already said.

[00:16:04] But I just I don't understand, you know, why it can't all just be random.

[00:16:08] Why does it have to be they have to assign a specific one?

[00:16:10] I know that, you know, you don't want everyone getting an Mbappe or a Dembelli

[00:16:14] because then the people would probably play for a few weeks

[00:16:16] and put the game down.

[00:16:17] But these these cards should be reachable randomly.

[00:16:22] It shouldn't be that so and so, you know, they've spent X amount of points.

[00:16:25] So let's juice up their pack weight.

[00:16:27] These ones have been away for a month.

[00:16:29] Let's juice up their pack weight.

[00:16:30] Each card should just have zero point zero zero two percent.

[00:16:34] I know that's very low, but in the grand scheme of things,

[00:16:36] you know, they should just randomly allocate it.

[00:16:38] It shouldn't be a case of we've increased that or we're going to decrease that.

[00:16:41] Give everyone a fair chance, same chance.

[00:16:44] And to be honest, I think one of the streamers

[00:16:47] like I've watched so many videos today, I can't remember who it was.

[00:16:49] But one of them said, just leave it.

[00:16:51] You've made the mistake.

[00:16:52] Why is it fair that a certain amount of people do it?

[00:16:54] Same with Messigate. Messie wasn't a guaranteed Messie.

[00:16:57] It was just higher odds because of the the rating of that of the MLS league.

[00:17:01] He kind of was the only one from that.

[00:17:02] So not everyone was getting it.

[00:17:04] Not everyone would have got Dembelli or Mbappe or both.

[00:17:07] Just just leave it because now you've got some people who have got both.

[00:17:11] And, you know, Mbappe certainly is that's a game.

[00:17:13] That's an endgamer.

[00:17:14] Dembelli probably will be.

[00:17:16] Obviously, you'll get towards 40s where everyone's a 99 rated.

[00:17:19] But, you know, the the changes of the cards at that stage are minimal.

[00:17:23] So let us all have a good shot if we get it.

[00:17:26] Fantastic. If we don't, we're in the lottery.

[00:17:28] We're in it to win it.

[00:17:29] You know, if number three comes out of the national lottery

[00:17:32] for weeks in a row, they don't say, right,

[00:17:34] we need to remove number three from the lottery pack.

[00:17:37] It's just still there.

[00:17:38] And if you get it, wonderful.

[00:17:39] If it's not, you know, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

[00:17:42] I just think that EA are showing a little bit of disrespect to the user base.

[00:17:46] You know, we all grind, you know, we put time, we put effort.

[00:17:50] Some people put money in, you know, mental stress, fatigue.

[00:17:53] Everything goes into that.

[00:17:54] So I don't understand why they can't just say, you know,

[00:17:57] we've made them we've we've messed up, but actually

[00:18:00] we're going to mess up the whole community instead of those people

[00:18:02] that are, you know, potentially different time zones or that's the livelihood.

[00:18:07] You know, as someone with a family, I don't really get to play after,

[00:18:10] you know, in the evening.

[00:18:11] So I'm out until late into the week.

[00:18:14] So I need to rush through mine.

[00:18:15] Why am I disadvantaged just because of, you know, circumstances?

[00:18:18] It shouldn't be like that. It should be right.

[00:18:20] They got it. So I've got at least a fighting chance.

[00:18:24] So, yeah, I think I just think it's a run theme with EA just now

[00:18:27] that they mess up and it's us that are kind of

[00:18:32] hindered by it all rather than actually making it fair for everybody.

[00:18:36] Yeah, look, loads to unpack just from this mistake alone.

[00:18:39] And I very much agree with both of you.

[00:18:41] I think one of the other things that a lot of people point out

[00:18:43] is quite sinister in a way is how EA made this change

[00:18:47] without actually changing anything in the game play.

[00:18:49] So there was no patch that the server didn't drop.

[00:18:51] EA could just like that, change the pathway,

[00:18:54] which people have long since, you know, fueled the long held suspicions

[00:18:58] of things like pack rotations.

[00:18:59] And it's funny because we were going to do this whole FIFA

[00:19:02] fact or fiction show at some point anyway.

[00:19:05] And, you know, we're going to get into a lot of those conspiracy theories now.

[00:19:07] So that's one element to it that really sat, you know,

[00:19:10] sat really uncomfortable with a lot of people.

[00:19:12] And again, as you said, Nate, it's the whole what harm was it going to do?

[00:19:17] This was different to Messi and John very much articulated back in that show

[00:19:20] in January. Remember, this is when Team the Year Messi came out there.

[00:19:24] If you gave everybody Messi, it really wrecks the power curve

[00:19:28] at that time because Messi was still really head and shoulders.

[00:19:31] But actually, is Dembele that much better than most of these three

[00:19:35] playstyle plus Tots cards? Not massively.

[00:19:38] The same with Zaire Emory.

[00:19:40] Is he that much better than a lot of the midfielders people have got right now?

[00:19:44] And yes, Mbappe is a broken glitch.

[00:19:46] But as you both said, like,

[00:19:49] he's not so far above what you've got now.

[00:19:52] Most people have a player of the month and Mbappe, for example,

[00:19:54] when he's dropped out of a lot of teams.

[00:19:56] So and it wasn't a guarantee either.

[00:19:58] It was a chance at getting one of these cards.

[00:20:00] And it goes into one of the deeper things that we'll get to

[00:20:03] with the whole kind of rewarding players for their grind.

[00:20:05] But as you said, Nate, people put their effort in.

[00:20:07] They should have that chance of getting one of these things.

[00:20:10] Not a guarantee, but a chance.

[00:20:11] And the red picks that were showing up ever since that change

[00:20:14] showed that you don't really have a chance.

[00:20:16] It is an absolute freak if you see one of those cards.

[00:20:20] And that just kind of rammed home how hard it is.

[00:20:23] And Nick made the great point as well.

[00:20:25] His stream numbers were through the roof of people watching him

[00:20:28] scramble for that 11th win to get a chance when those good cards.

[00:20:32] And everyone would have been would have been so energized to be like,

[00:20:35] Oh, my goodness, let's play this weekend league.

[00:20:37] We've got a chance of a great player.

[00:20:39] You would have just.

[00:20:40] It's such an easy goodwill win for EA to do that,

[00:20:46] especially in May.

[00:20:48] Is the 14th of May now when we can league is closing today.

[00:20:51] Your new game is going to be out in 16, 18 weeks, whatever it is.

[00:20:56] And you're probably going to release some juiced up footies

[00:20:58] cards in six weeks time that make these cards meh anyway.

[00:21:04] So why didn't you just do it?

[00:21:05] But look, let's break it down then into some of the wider

[00:21:08] concerns, the community and what this has all brought to the fore.

[00:21:11] And of course, the first one is the mistakes.

[00:21:13] It's the ramp.

[00:21:14] And we've talked about it on this ever since I've posted this show.

[00:21:17] And we can talk about mistake after mistake after mistake, not just messy gate.

[00:21:21] You've had players in the wrong SBCs.

[00:21:24] You've had even over the weekend, they released an icon pick

[00:21:28] at the wrong time of day at six a.m.,

[00:21:31] an icon pick that wasn't supposed to have base icons in.

[00:21:34] And it had base icons in it.

[00:21:35] And they had to take it down after a couple of hours.

[00:21:39] Players given the wrong images, clubs with the wrong badges,

[00:21:43] not being able to submit certain SBCs because it doesn't recognize

[00:21:47] a certain type of player problems with EVOs.

[00:21:50] We could literally spend an entire hour here talking about mistakes.

[00:21:54] But that is just the most easiest one to that has sparked a lot of this.

[00:22:00] It's the constant mistake.

[00:22:01] It's the lack of quality control.

[00:22:03] We've done entire shows on it.

[00:22:04] So I'm not going to go deeper into this.

[00:22:07] The mistakes just need to stop.

[00:22:08] The point I will ask the two of you about is Matt,

[00:22:13] Matt HD Gamer came out with a video this week, Shaq,

[00:22:17] and he almost questions whether these mistakes are either an act

[00:22:22] of sabotage or someone within EA trying to get any more attention.

[00:22:26] Can you see either of those being an explanation?

[00:22:30] I'd be highly surprised.

[00:22:31] I think last year there was a slight argument that you could make

[00:22:34] when they kept getting the back

[00:22:36] back odds wrong on different languages.

[00:22:38] And people are still opening those packs in the hopes of packing

[00:22:41] something that you shouldn't pack so that you can get a compensation back.

[00:22:45] But then that's backwards because you're spending more money

[00:22:47] to get something that you don't really care about in a couple of weeks time.

[00:22:50] So those kind of things, I did question whether there was completely

[00:22:54] internal sabotage, but also it was more towards EA trying to say,

[00:22:57] you know what, let's just play this and we get more sales happening

[00:23:00] anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

[00:23:01] And we can compensate everyone in a couple of weeks time.

[00:23:04] For example, I think we had an issue last year at Ultimate Dots.

[00:23:08] And that pack was rectified.

[00:23:09] I think it was a Portuguese or Brazilian.

[00:23:12] I can't remember what it was.

[00:23:13] It was a pack that you open in this particular language.

[00:23:15] And we got the results.

[00:23:16] We got the compensation for that pack four weeks later,

[00:23:19] three weeks later when those dots cards were not even

[00:23:22] no one cared about the starts cards.

[00:23:23] And that's when we got the compensation.

[00:23:25] With this current situation that's going on, I think sabotage.

[00:23:31] That's probably a good explanation as to why it happened so often

[00:23:34] with such a large company.

[00:23:36] But you would expect that if this keeps happening,

[00:23:39] that there will be someone with an ear that takes a good hard look

[00:23:42] at themselves and think we probably need to have better quality assurance

[00:23:45] of everything that goes out.

[00:23:46] Every single thing needs to be quality checked to make sure

[00:23:49] someone's next on the line for content being wrong.

[00:23:52] So if that's not happening, I mean, no one's taking any action.

[00:23:55] I don't believe that people can constantly try and sabotage

[00:23:59] the company from within.

[00:24:00] It's more that people are just messing up consistently

[00:24:03] because firstly it could be a small team.

[00:24:05] It could be a lack of resources that they have on that end

[00:24:07] and they're trying to do the best they can,

[00:24:08] but things just don't turn out the way that they intended to.

[00:24:11] And it's a 24 hour cycle.

[00:24:12] You have to have new content coming in.

[00:24:14] There's not many games. If you think about it,

[00:24:16] this is not how the game was a couple of years ago.

[00:24:18] There's not many games that have daily content cycles

[00:24:21] and such heavy content as well.

[00:24:23] And I'm not trying to, I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

[00:24:27] I'm just trying to demystify the sabotage from within angle,

[00:24:32] which I do believe it's just completely ineptitude.

[00:24:38] They just haven't hired the right kind of people

[00:24:41] to do the right kind of jobs and quality assurance,

[00:24:44] I think Nate's probably an expert at QA

[00:24:46] and that's something that is strongly missing at EA.

[00:24:48] And I think at some point as paying customers,

[00:24:50] we're tired of this.

[00:24:52] We're tired of this especially because it affects us tremendously.

[00:24:55] And before, I really want one of the things for someone

[00:24:58] who lives in a place that's away from Europe,

[00:25:02] we don't get access to any of these mess ups as well.

[00:25:04] And that's more frustrating than you can imagine

[00:25:06] because none of these things,

[00:25:07] we're not even awake for these things.

[00:25:10] We don't even have a chance

[00:25:12] to try and obtain these sorts of things.

[00:25:14] And it's frustrating that it keeps happening over and over again.

[00:25:17] I think one of the things that really annoys me is the messy gate.

[00:25:21] Of course, didn't have a chance.

[00:25:23] But the Yaya Tour thing where people got heaps and heaps

[00:25:26] and heaps of coins back for something

[00:25:28] that shouldn't have happened in the first place,

[00:25:30] that's ridiculous.

[00:25:32] And their whole compensation system is really messed up as well.

[00:25:37] In this case, as you said, Dan,

[00:25:38] all they had to do was keep the rewards as they were.

[00:25:40] Don't give out Mbappe.

[00:25:42] Maybe don't give out Usman as well.

[00:25:44] Just give out Vitiniya, give out Zair Emry,

[00:25:47] give out these kinds of cards and people will still be happy

[00:25:49] that okay, yep, I've got something.

[00:25:51] I haven't backed an Mbappe,

[00:25:52] but I've read that I'm happy with that makes my team.

[00:25:55] Everyone's happy.

[00:25:56] I don't understand that the greed is what really annoys us.

[00:26:00] Anything to add on the mistakes front, Nathan?

[00:26:02] Yeah, I mean, firstly, like I'm a quality manager.

[00:26:06] So my line of work is sort of addressing

[00:26:09] who we're accountable to.

[00:26:10] So in our case, it's like Scottish government.

[00:26:12] So when we've got people we have to report to

[00:26:15] and feed into, et cetera, we've got those pressures.

[00:26:17] EA don't really have anyone governing them per se.

[00:26:21] They just kind of feed in their own things.

[00:26:22] So that's probably one of the reasons

[00:26:25] they can get away with this.

[00:26:27] I think John, a while back,

[00:26:30] I can't remember whether he said it on the pod

[00:26:31] or whether it was in the discord.

[00:26:33] But he highlighted that actually one of his

[00:26:35] sort of business buddies had said,

[00:26:37] maybe these types of things aren't fully just mistakes.

[00:26:41] Maybe EA are doing this because what are we doing now?

[00:26:43] We are talking about FC24.

[00:26:46] We're talking about yes, they've done things wrong,

[00:26:48] but we're still talking about them.

[00:26:49] It's highlighted when you look at,

[00:26:51] between sort of 6 p.m. and midnight

[00:26:54] when I went to bed on Friday,

[00:26:56] EA FC and Mbappe was trending number one

[00:26:59] on all over social media.

[00:27:00] So I'm not saying it's fully intentional by any means,

[00:27:04] because I don't think a company should be putting

[00:27:06] themselves in the window to be saying,

[00:27:07] look, we're incompetent.

[00:27:08] We're making mistake after mistake after mistake.

[00:27:11] But they are still in the limelight.

[00:27:14] It's still a pressing matter.

[00:27:15] And I think it'd be interesting to see the player count

[00:27:19] for that window or even all the way through the league

[00:27:22] and champs, because maybe people are still on there

[00:27:26] and they hope that they glitch it again.

[00:27:27] It may drive people to the game.

[00:27:29] It may drive people to the store to get these players

[00:27:31] thinking that there's a higher drop rate.

[00:27:32] So it may just highlight that the game is still there.

[00:27:36] People still want these cards,

[00:27:37] whether you hate the game,

[00:27:38] whether you love the game,

[00:27:39] whether you're, you know, hate EA.

[00:27:42] If somebody said to you,

[00:27:43] do this and you'll get an Mbappe.

[00:27:45] Do this, you'll get a Dembele.

[00:27:46] Even if Dembele might be,

[00:27:48] he'll probably never be obsolete,

[00:27:49] but he'll not be elite tier in three weeks time.

[00:27:52] You will go and do that nine times out of 10.

[00:27:54] Most people on the game,

[00:27:56] and certainly people listen to this pod,

[00:27:58] looking at the videos of these big streamers.

[00:28:00] They will do X, Y, and Z to try and get these cards.

[00:28:03] So maybe they're a bit more reluctant

[00:28:06] to fix all these issues and fix the gaps

[00:28:10] because people are still going to the game.

[00:28:12] People are still sort of thinking about FIFA,

[00:28:14] talking about FIFA or FC 24.

[00:28:16] So I'm not saying that's right.

[00:28:19] It could be potentially very, very clever,

[00:28:22] but you know, the flip side is

[00:28:23] nobody wants to be marked as incompetent.

[00:28:25] So if I was working for EA and making these mistakes,

[00:28:28] I would probably be thinking,

[00:28:30] oh, that's going to look really bad on me

[00:28:32] that all these things are slipping through the net.

[00:28:33] So there is swings and roundabouts,

[00:28:35] but the one thing I would say is it just needs to stop.

[00:28:37] Like it can't be hard.

[00:28:39] Like I'm all about processes, procedures.

[00:28:42] We have to audit.

[00:28:43] You've got to have, you know,

[00:28:44] you've got X is the start point,

[00:28:46] Y is the end point,

[00:28:48] and you've got to have steps by steps by steps

[00:28:49] to get to the end point.

[00:28:51] These things should be written down.

[00:28:53] These things should be there that, you know,

[00:28:55] if Jim goes off set from, you know,

[00:28:57] content pushing at six o'clock, you know,

[00:28:59] Lacey could go in and pick it up.

[00:29:01] These things shouldn't be so difficult.

[00:29:03] So I do think it is incompetence,

[00:29:05] but I also don't think EA are that fuss

[00:29:06] because it is still keeping them in the limelight.

[00:29:09] Well look, we're going to jump around a lot here.

[00:29:10] And I realized that, you know,

[00:29:11] we've already been going off nearly half an hour

[00:29:13] and that there is a man in Crete

[00:29:14] who was going to be editing this

[00:29:16] and there's loads of you listening out there

[00:29:17] who we're going to be trying to

[00:29:18] get through this entire show.

[00:29:19] So we've got so much to get to.

[00:29:20] We can do three shows on this,

[00:29:21] but look, when you talk about EA,

[00:29:23] a couple of things that I wanted to point out

[00:29:25] that EA have released in the past few days,

[00:29:28] they've literally just had an earnings call.

[00:29:30] And one of the things they've talked about

[00:29:32] is how revenue is down.

[00:29:34] It's starting to come down for EA a little bit.

[00:29:37] And if you look at some of the signs around EA,

[00:29:40] you can kind of perhaps understand

[00:29:42] why some of these mistakes are being made.

[00:29:44] Now, EA famously, or not famously,

[00:29:47] I'm just telling you,

[00:29:48] EA laid off several hundred employees last year,

[00:29:52] trying to tighten belts, make themselves more profitable.

[00:29:56] There was as well,

[00:29:57] and this forms part of the Nick

[00:29:59] around the foot market stuff,

[00:30:01] Nick was sent an email by someone

[00:30:03] claiming to have worked for EA.

[00:30:06] Now he said he wanted to remain anonymous

[00:30:07] and he failed to verify or provide Nick,

[00:30:11] he was sent into inception I should say,

[00:30:13] he failed to provide, you know,

[00:30:15] proof that he worked for EA.

[00:30:18] But it was the kind of email that made sense.

[00:30:21] It was the kind of thing that you would,

[00:30:22] it was bizarre that you would go through so much effort

[00:30:25] to make things up.

[00:30:26] But it is important to caveat

[00:30:27] that it has not been verified.

[00:30:30] But amongst the things he was talking about

[00:30:31] was obviously the pressure from above

[00:30:33] is to drive up sales.

[00:30:36] He was talking about how lots of people

[00:30:38] were laid off during the COVID era.

[00:30:42] And now EA turns to a lot of third party contractors.

[00:30:45] And that note on third party contractors

[00:30:47] might come on to something we talk about later

[00:30:48] in terms of leaks as well.

[00:30:50] And that basically the whole atmosphere isn't great.

[00:30:53] He also talks about, you know,

[00:30:54] we talk about mistakes with game and gameplay

[00:30:57] and we're gonna talk about gameplay and things a lot,

[00:30:58] but he was saying that a lot of the problems

[00:31:01] stem from the fact that code was written by people

[00:31:03] that are no longer working there.

[00:31:04] And they didn't exactly leave detailed instructions

[00:31:07] and you know, on how to fix things.

[00:31:09] So all that they are doing now

[00:31:10] is they're building on top of this.

[00:31:12] And we've talked about this in shows in the past now.

[00:31:14] There's an engine that has been built

[00:31:16] on top of so often that they don't actually know,

[00:31:20] you know, they'll pull out one thread from somewhere

[00:31:22] and it'll impact somewhere else they had no idea.

[00:31:26] And subsequent to that inception,

[00:31:29] not inception sorry,

[00:31:31] gonna lose my head with the content credits.

[00:31:32] The Panthers were saying that he had had a discussion

[00:31:34] with a former EA employee as well who told him,

[00:31:36] for example, that draft,

[00:31:38] the reason that draft never changes

[00:31:40] is because the guy that wrote draft

[00:31:42] no longer works for EA

[00:31:43] and hadn't given any kind of instructions

[00:31:45] on the code behind it.

[00:31:47] So that's why if you're wondering,

[00:31:48] cause if you remember, Nathan as well,

[00:31:51] we had this whole new position change stuff,

[00:31:52] didn't we this year,

[00:31:55] but draft stayed the same in that

[00:31:58] it was giving you players that, you know,

[00:32:00] as a CF that couldn't actually play

[00:32:02] in alternative positions and things like that.

[00:32:04] And people were like, well, that's a bit odd

[00:32:06] in such an oversight

[00:32:07] and yet that's never been corrected.

[00:32:08] So again, these are unverified things.

[00:32:12] If they add up to a picture of a company

[00:32:14] that is cutting costs,

[00:32:16] that is trying to be as lean as possible.

[00:32:18] You know, they've got shareholders to appease

[00:32:20] and again, their stock price

[00:32:22] is not doing brilliantly at the moment.

[00:32:24] And it's a point where,

[00:32:27] long story short,

[00:32:28] this company is not going to willingly spend extra money

[00:32:32] on things like quality control,

[00:32:34] if it's unless it is something

[00:32:36] that is impacting their bottom line.

[00:32:38] Now, whether this whole situation

[00:32:39] does impact their bottom line,

[00:32:40] we're going to come onto.

[00:32:42] But we just lost Shaq for a few minutes.

[00:32:44] He's been taken out, he's been silenced by somebody.

[00:32:47] So we'll hope to see Shaq back soon.

[00:32:50] But in the meantime, let's move on to gameplay.

[00:32:53] Cause this was the big thing for Nick as well.

[00:32:56] In that he said, you know,

[00:32:59] it's not just all the store pack issues

[00:33:03] and mistakes and things like that.

[00:33:04] All of this is basically boiled down

[00:33:06] to the fact that this game to him was not very good.

[00:33:09] He's called it the worst FIFA he's ever played,

[00:33:12] FIFA EFC, whatever you want to call it.

[00:33:15] He says it's the worst.

[00:33:16] He's fed up of the drop back.

[00:33:18] He's fed up with the glitches.

[00:33:19] He's fed up of just boring gameplay and not having fun.

[00:33:23] Now we've talked throughout this year,

[00:33:26] now I think both of us are kind of,

[00:33:28] we find the game reasonably good,

[00:33:31] but can you see why someone like Nick

[00:33:34] has reached that point with this game?

[00:33:36] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:33:37] I mean, up until a few weeks ago,

[00:33:39] I'd stated even on this pod

[00:33:41] that I thought gameplay was actually fine.

[00:33:43] I didn't have an issue with the gameplay.

[00:33:45] I thought it was a bit boring,

[00:33:47] the sweaty cutback matters.

[00:33:49] And some of the videos do go on to talk about

[00:33:52] the Murph and the Trevellas

[00:33:53] and the finesse shots and stuff.

[00:33:55] What I will say is the last month, six weeks maybe,

[00:33:59] I am starting to notice a massive change in gameplay.

[00:34:01] I'm getting stutters.

[00:34:02] Part of it's my own control

[00:34:04] because I seem to have right stick drifting.

[00:34:05] So I'll be running up the line

[00:34:07] and randomly the ball will just go

[00:34:08] a completely different direction,

[00:34:09] but I know that's me.

[00:34:10] But even the last few days,

[00:34:13] the amount of times that I'm in the right position

[00:34:16] and players just glitch through,

[00:34:17] the amount of times I block a shot

[00:34:19] and somehow it ends up being an own goal

[00:34:20] for no reason at all.

[00:34:22] There's so many stutters, so many glitches.

[00:34:26] So many times I'm getting kicked out of games

[00:34:28] and our pet peeve over the last wee while

[00:34:30] has been that when people quit on you

[00:34:33] and you don't get the win,

[00:34:36] these things are infuriating

[00:34:38] and I can completely appreciate

[00:34:40] why people will sort of say, enough's enough.

[00:34:42] If I wasn't just kind of a habitual person,

[00:34:45] I would probably be saying the same.

[00:34:47] I am unfortunately one of those

[00:34:48] that does kind of play out habit.

[00:34:51] And for the last few weeks,

[00:34:54] it's just starting to get to me a little bit

[00:34:56] that it's exactly the same glitches, issues, bounce backs.

[00:35:00] And each year they sell this,

[00:35:03] this is coming into the game.

[00:35:04] That's going to be better.

[00:35:05] We're having the best gameplay experience ever.

[00:35:07] And to be fair, up until, like I say,

[00:35:09] a few weeks ago or a couple of months ago,

[00:35:11] I thought the game was actually pretty good.

[00:35:14] The graphics, it looks smooth, it plays nicely.

[00:35:17] It's a bit repetitive,

[00:35:18] but there's been a noticeable change,

[00:35:20] I think over the last wee period.

[00:35:21] And I totally see what they're saying to it,

[00:35:24] to be honest.

[00:35:25] Yeah, look, completely agree

[00:35:27] with what you said there, Nathan.

[00:35:28] And just again, the server issues,

[00:35:30] the amount of people even today

[00:35:32] as we are recording this,

[00:35:33] they're getting frequently kicked off the servers.

[00:35:35] We had, of course, over Bundesliga weekend,

[00:35:37] basically being unplayable on Friday and Saturday

[00:35:40] with people getting no, you know,

[00:35:43] being four and a lot,

[00:35:44] and getting disconnected and glitched off

[00:35:46] and things like that.

[00:35:46] It's just, and again, we are talking about a company

[00:35:49] that in just their last quarter

[00:35:52] had a revenue of $1.8 billion.

[00:35:57] This isn't a struggling independent company.

[00:36:00] This is a company with so much resource behind it,

[00:36:04] if they want to.

[00:36:06] But again, they are choosing not to invest in this game

[00:36:12] because at the moment they can get away with it.

[00:36:15] And what's this, the whole crux of this thing

[00:36:18] will come down to the point

[00:36:19] that I've always talked about,

[00:36:20] which is, and everyone's talked about, competition.

[00:36:22] There's no competition.

[00:36:24] There has been no repercussion for EA

[00:36:25] for these cock-ups, for these bad servers.

[00:36:29] Players haven't deserted this game in droves yet.

[00:36:32] Despite all of the moaning that we might do,

[00:36:35] you know, over Messigate, for example,

[00:36:36] how many people said,

[00:36:37] oh, I'm gonna quit the game after Messigate?

[00:36:39] How many people did?

[00:36:40] Not very many.

[00:36:41] I'm sure there are people that gave up

[00:36:43] and after X mistake or Y mistake,

[00:36:46] the odd person will drift off and not come back.

[00:36:48] But nothing EA has done to this point

[00:36:51] has driven them off en masse.

[00:36:52] So while it's not hurting their bottom line,

[00:36:56] and they can't quantify that it's hurting

[00:36:57] their bottom line,

[00:36:58] they're never gonna invest in these things.

[00:37:00] But it's just, as you said, Nathan,

[00:37:02] it's just not good enough.

[00:37:03] It's not good enough that these mistakes keep happening.

[00:37:07] It's not good enough that the gameplay

[00:37:08] has the amount of glitches and mistakes that it does.

[00:37:12] And Shaq, the other point that I know,

[00:37:14] so I'm gonna bring Orzio into this conversation here,

[00:37:16] not literally, you know, we're not that big time.

[00:37:18] But Orzio, who has generally been

[00:37:20] one of the biggest points streamers

[00:37:23] in terms of Heal Open Up,

[00:37:24] he's transitioned mostly from a gameplay guy

[00:37:27] to a pack content streamer.

[00:37:30] The opening people's packs and things like that.

[00:37:31] But even he has reached a point where he said,

[00:37:34] you know, I'm gonna boycott spending FC points

[00:37:36] because I want a better game as well.

[00:37:38] And this guy is the exact opposite.

[00:37:40] This guy's coached Tex.

[00:37:42] He's been a, he literally gets rank one

[00:37:45] every single week.

[00:37:46] He's been a former pro player.

[00:37:47] So you cannot talk about skill issue with this guy.

[00:37:49] Even he's fed up with the gameplay Shaq.

[00:37:51] And he's talked about, again,

[00:37:53] why are EA prioritizing nerfing things

[00:37:56] like finesse shots and Traveller shots

[00:37:58] over the drop back and stuff like that.

[00:38:02] And just where do you see gameplay right now?

[00:38:04] And is it fair, do you think we've reached that point

[00:38:08] where this gameplay is so bad

[00:38:10] that change does need to be made?

[00:38:12] Oh, the gameplay has been horrendous for a while.

[00:38:14] But I mean, there are ways to overcome it.

[00:38:16] So the way to overcome it

[00:38:17] is playing the five back rack meta,

[00:38:20] which is again bad in itself,

[00:38:22] which is it's too bad that you can't even use it

[00:38:24] in pro tournaments.

[00:38:26] So it clearly shows that that particular formation

[00:38:29] and that particular style is broken

[00:38:30] because you can do certain things

[00:38:31] that you shouldn't be able to do.

[00:38:32] Things that just kind of overpowered,

[00:38:34] like the stuff like the near post headers from corners

[00:38:38] that keeps happening consistently.

[00:38:40] Sure, it's fun when it happens,

[00:38:41] but should it happen that frequently?

[00:38:43] And if you actually peel back and look at the game,

[00:38:46] every goal that you probably can see comes from the wing.

[00:38:49] There's hardly any goals that actually come

[00:38:51] through the middle where people are passing through

[00:38:54] and I'm a victim of that.

[00:38:56] And I'm also trying to put that onto people as well,

[00:38:58] because that's the only way

[00:38:59] the game seems to work for us.

[00:39:01] Along with all that,

[00:39:02] I think the biggest thing

[00:39:03] that's frustrating a lot of people as well

[00:39:04] is the fact that connectivity issues

[00:39:06] have just taken this gameplay experience

[00:39:09] to a whole other level where connecting to the game

[00:39:12] consistently and having consistently good gameplay

[00:39:15] over and over again,

[00:39:16] even over the course of maybe weekend league,

[00:39:19] it's just not happening.

[00:39:21] And that's putting a lot of pressure on people's gameplay

[00:39:24] because they just go back

[00:39:25] and I'll give you an example with me,

[00:39:26] even if I wanna try something new,

[00:39:29] I don't even know if the first game

[00:39:31] that I started with the day,

[00:39:32] I can't expect the second game

[00:39:33] to feel exactly the same.

[00:39:34] So I'm reluctant to try anything new

[00:39:36] because none of the things would work.

[00:39:39] I can't pull off skill moves most of the time.

[00:39:42] And Inception, one of his videos said the same thing.

[00:39:45] He was like, I know how to do skill moves EA

[00:39:47] and I have been a huge skill in the past.

[00:39:50] I can't scale consistently.

[00:39:52] And I've taken those sorts of things out of my gameplay

[00:39:54] because the game doesn't allow me to do those things.

[00:39:57] So the only way I have to play

[00:39:58] is the way that the game wants me to play,

[00:40:00] which is go through the wings.

[00:40:01] Look, I've started to cross

[00:40:03] because of certain players that I have on my team.

[00:40:05] I've started to use that sort of whip pass,

[00:40:07] which is great, it's fun.

[00:40:09] But that's probably the only thing I'm using

[00:40:11] and that's not what I'm used to doing.

[00:40:13] And that's what annoys me.

[00:40:15] Don't you think it's any surprise

[00:40:16] that Shakir starts to cross

[00:40:17] after talking to two British guys weekly?

[00:40:21] He's taken that old British mentality of 4-4-2,

[00:40:24] get it to the big man in the box.

[00:40:26] Team with the season highlight and does bring it up.

[00:40:29] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:30] Certain players, yeah,

[00:40:30] I should have matched that immediately.

[00:40:33] Yeah, again, I completely agree with you my friend.

[00:40:36] And again, when you've got players

[00:40:38] that kind of quality like Orzu that are saying

[00:40:40] that I can't do stuff in this game anymore.

[00:40:42] And it goes back to that whole, you know,

[00:40:44] they're building.

[00:40:45] And again, in that earnings call,

[00:40:46] they were talking about hyping up hypermotion five

[00:40:50] and it's a case of,

[00:40:51] now I think Nick was saying as well

[00:40:53] that this is part of the gimmicks now they do

[00:40:55] because they can't actually fundamentally change

[00:40:57] the game very much anymore.

[00:40:58] So they just slap a load of branding on it.

[00:41:00] You know, no, it wasn't something that people asked for.

[00:41:03] And it's like the shooting

[00:41:05] and lots of people have pointed out

[00:41:06] that shooting over the course this year.

[00:41:08] And Orzu said it in as well,

[00:41:10] people are just like,

[00:41:11] oh, just needs green time your shots,

[00:41:12] green time your shots.

[00:41:14] He's talking about how the fact,

[00:41:15] if I've beaten the defense

[00:41:16] and the goalkeeper has moved to the other side

[00:41:18] and I'm using a player with 99 shooting,

[00:41:21] I shouldn't need to green time it

[00:41:23] for it to go into the corner.

[00:41:25] And that sums up finishing last year was great.

[00:41:29] And I'm almost certain I know how they've broken it.

[00:41:32] And again, I've said this on this show,

[00:41:34] precision shooting,

[00:41:36] something that nobody asked for,

[00:41:39] nobody has really ever asked for,

[00:41:41] they brought it in.

[00:41:42] And for precision shooting to be worth it,

[00:41:46] they had, they had to have done something

[00:41:49] to regular shooting,

[00:41:50] which is why it feels off now.

[00:41:52] Because if they didn't make regular shooting worse,

[00:41:56] there will be no benefit to precision shooting.

[00:42:00] And again, it's just EA putting something in a game

[00:42:02] to sell it as a gimmick that nobody has asked for

[00:42:05] and has ultimately made this game worse.

[00:42:07] Now I go back to that leaked EA employee email

[00:42:11] that was sent to Nick.

[00:42:13] And one of the things he talks about

[00:42:14] was how patches and things like that

[00:42:15] are signed off by somebody who plays it

[00:42:17] in an offline environment.

[00:42:20] And for all of you listening out there,

[00:42:22] I've no doubt played squad battles

[00:42:24] and will go, God, this is really smooth.

[00:42:26] This is really nice.

[00:42:27] I can do things in squad battles.

[00:42:28] So if that is the case,

[00:42:30] and again, we don't know if it's legit,

[00:42:32] that would explain part of the reason why.

[00:42:34] But I wanna segment this whole thing on gameplay

[00:42:37] over to the other big thing

[00:42:38] that this whole campaign that is growing,

[00:42:41] and it doesn't really have a name yet,

[00:42:43] but this whole anger towards EA,

[00:42:46] communication is another huge thing

[00:42:49] that is just completely gone from this company.

[00:42:52] The fact we get two sentences out of a company

[00:42:55] when they managed to rile up their entire

[00:42:57] or a large portion of their most dedicated fan base

[00:43:00] on a Friday and they have the gall

[00:43:02] to just put out two lines, but unintended results,

[00:43:06] says everything that's wrong with it.

[00:43:08] And we've been over some of the reasons

[00:43:09] why this has happened in the past.

[00:43:10] They used to have things like community managers

[00:43:13] and they got abused really badly.

[00:43:16] So on that front, I can understand why personal accounts

[00:43:19] are not out there saying, here's the problem.

[00:43:22] But gents, when's the last time EA did a Q&A?

[00:43:25] When's the last time?

[00:43:27] We don't even, do they still do that show on a Friday?

[00:43:30] Top bins?

[00:43:31] Is that still a thing, Dave?

[00:43:32] I've not seen that anyway, no.

[00:43:34] But I think that's the main thing.

[00:43:35] At the start we opened up by saying

[00:43:37] the community is something that we really like

[00:43:39] and maybe we need to rephrase that.

[00:43:41] Especially something I really like.

[00:43:42] Our Discord, the foot in review community is wonderful.

[00:43:45] But you just hit it on the head there.

[00:43:49] There was a community engagement and he got abused.

[00:43:51] You look at some of the reactions to Nextpost

[00:43:54] and to other streamers posts.

[00:43:56] Some of it's vile.

[00:43:57] It's not even just people are a bit angry.

[00:43:59] Some of it is actual vile.

[00:44:02] You've seen some of the messages our guys get

[00:44:03] for just the way they play FIFA, disgusting.

[00:44:05] So what I will say is,

[00:44:07] whilst I do really enjoy our community,

[00:44:09] I think there are issues throughout the wider

[00:44:12] FIFA or FC24 community where some people,

[00:44:16] I'll call them keyboard warriors

[00:44:17] because they probably would never say it to your face

[00:44:19] or whatever.

[00:44:20] But there's a lot of people out there

[00:44:21] say stuff that,

[00:44:23] I don't understand what goes through people's heads

[00:44:25] when they think they can get away

[00:44:26] with saying certain things.

[00:44:27] So from EA's point of view,

[00:44:30] nobody could pay you enough in the world

[00:44:33] to have to sit and tolerate some of the stuff

[00:44:34] that comes out of people's,

[00:44:35] well, comes off people's keyboards we'll say.

[00:44:38] So that, I think has been to the community's detriment

[00:44:41] is that people think they're behind the screen

[00:44:43] so they can say and do whatever they want.

[00:44:44] So, I 100% agree they do need to improve

[00:44:49] their communications, don't get me wrong.

[00:44:50] And maybe doing their own podcasts

[00:44:53] or doing a, maybe not their own

[00:44:54] because it'll be tailored

[00:44:55] because we've had that with other podcasts before,

[00:44:57] but doing something that shows they have a face

[00:45:00] and they have accountability would be the way forward.

[00:45:02] But I'm not gonna sit here and say,

[00:45:05] EA need to employ somebody to set

[00:45:07] and do live sessions with the whole community

[00:45:09] because I think that would be putting people in,

[00:45:13] mental health thing's a big thing at the moment.

[00:45:15] I think that would be the worst thing they could do.

[00:45:17] And you would, it's easy to get behind stuff

[00:45:19] to rally behind stuff when it's wrong

[00:45:21] and people want change.

[00:45:22] But if they made a flawless game,

[00:45:25] people would still be wanting something different

[00:45:27] because it's not the way they want it.

[00:45:28] So I'm very reluctant to say

[00:45:30] somebody needs to face it up

[00:45:32] but I do think they need to explore ways

[00:45:34] that they can communicate much better

[00:45:36] and not just let you know what they're saying

[00:45:38] but a lot more effectively

[00:45:39] and a lot more considered than what they do just now.

[00:45:41] Yeah, and I agree with you absolutely on that.

[00:45:44] And again, it's one of the point

[00:45:45] that I think Nick Runfoot Market,

[00:45:48] Nick2080 and NEP were all in a call on stream

[00:45:51] yesterday morning.

[00:45:52] And they were talking about how,

[00:45:53] look, the community is not gonna help itself

[00:45:56] if it just goes into loads of streams and says,

[00:45:58] FEA, they kind of need to show

[00:46:00] that they are thinking about this rationally

[00:46:02] and responsibly and it's not just a mob mentality.

[00:46:05] So that's one thing.

[00:46:06] However, when you talk about,

[00:46:07] okay, the user base doesn't help itself

[00:46:11] with being abusive.

[00:46:12] The other thing that MattHDGamer said in his video

[00:46:14] that was published the other day

[00:46:16] and he just called something like,

[00:46:17] what's going on with EA or something like that,

[00:46:19] was he talked about how he was part

[00:46:21] of this game changers program.

[00:46:22] And people out there might've seen this,

[00:46:24] you know when streamers get this early access

[00:46:26] and some of them are events and at live events,

[00:46:28] they're part of this game changer creators network.

[00:46:31] He said he was in it for I think eight years.

[00:46:34] And he was saying how they had a discord

[00:46:36] and content creators would post, you know,

[00:46:39] fully researched, well thought out

[00:46:41] with loads of relevant examples of things and issues,

[00:46:45] including things like no loss glitches.

[00:46:47] I think it was one example he talks about.

[00:46:48] And he was saying that the discord was just,

[00:46:50] is not monitored.

[00:46:51] There was no responses,

[00:46:52] that no one was engaging with them.

[00:46:54] And they were just like, yeah, okay.

[00:46:57] There was no like some for the dev team saying,

[00:46:59] oh, look, we've investigated this particular issue.

[00:47:01] Here's why we can't do it.

[00:47:03] And they weren't even saying like off the record,

[00:47:05] this is it, it was just ambivalence.

[00:47:07] And I think that is just the mentality

[00:47:09] that EA have taken.

[00:47:11] And whether they justify it with what Nathan's just said

[00:47:13] is saying that, oh, the reason we don't come out

[00:47:15] and talk to you guys is because, you know,

[00:47:17] we get abused.

[00:47:18] But they've literally drawn the drawbridge at the castle

[00:47:21] and they're just sitting on the top watching everybody.

[00:47:24] And at the moment that people are still paying their taxes

[00:47:27] and the king in the top of the castle is very happy.

[00:47:30] And he doesn't care that, you know,

[00:47:31] the people aren't actually getting to talk to him

[00:47:33] because he's like, well, I'm still getting the money.

[00:47:34] I don't really care.

[00:47:35] But the communication is dire.

[00:47:37] Like again, will very occasionally

[00:47:38] when they release these patches get an example

[00:47:40] of a reason why they've or what they've done

[00:47:42] to tune for nesh shots and great.

[00:47:44] Why is this not a monthly thing?

[00:47:46] Why is there not pitch notes every few weeks saying,

[00:47:49] oh, a lot of the communities has been talking about,

[00:47:51] one of the examples Nick 2018 point out was,

[00:47:53] where are goalkeeper evos?

[00:47:54] Where are goalkeeper play styles?

[00:47:57] Why isn't someone from EA coming out in a month,

[00:48:00] the updates saying, oh, lots of people have mentioned

[00:48:02] there's no goalkeeper evos.

[00:48:03] Here's why we can't do this.

[00:48:04] It's because currently within our code,

[00:48:06] it's da-da-da,

[00:48:07] we're really working on it towards FC 25.

[00:48:10] All you've got to do-

[00:48:11] They have changed goalkeepers though.

[00:48:12] My goalkeepers now likes to sit down

[00:48:13] and have a sandwich when their attacker runs through.

[00:48:15] Like literally just, I don't know what's happened

[00:48:17] but last week my keepers just now

[00:48:19] sit down, cross their legs and pull out a pork,

[00:48:22] put a sausage roll or a pork pie

[00:48:23] and eat their lunch while they're on the bench.

[00:48:25] Changed something anyway.

[00:48:26] Yeah, but you know what?

[00:48:27] You know exactly what I mean

[00:48:29] in that these problems we have with gameplay,

[00:48:31] there is no open dialogue anymore.

[00:48:33] There is no, we've seen you.

[00:48:35] Look, they opened this feedback portal

[00:48:38] around team of the year, didn't they?

[00:48:39] Around January and apparently some people has,

[00:48:41] I think Nate, the foot accountant was saying that

[00:48:44] people are reading it because some people

[00:48:46] were submitting into that portal

[00:48:47] that they've been transfer banned

[00:48:48] or coin wiped for something

[00:48:50] and suddenly their accounts were back.

[00:48:52] So it appeared as if it was being monitored

[00:48:55] but this whole, whether it's arrogance,

[00:48:58] whether it is they just see it as not being worth it.

[00:49:02] The whole lack of communicating with this community

[00:49:05] is just, it's not good enough.

[00:49:08] No other game and a net was talking about how they sell

[00:49:11] other communities.

[00:49:12] The Helldivers 2 is a great example

[00:49:14] from the past few weeks.

[00:49:15] There was a massive row within Helldivers 2

[00:49:18] because people, they suddenly introduced a requirement

[00:49:21] that you had to have a PSN account to play the game.

[00:49:24] Even if you're on like PC or whatever.

[00:49:26] And lots of countries don't even allow you

[00:49:29] to have a PSN account.

[00:49:30] So they were effectively being forced off the game

[00:49:33] because they couldn't do this.

[00:49:34] The Helldivers community rallied together,

[00:49:37] they review bombed it, they boycotted it

[00:49:39] and suddenly the decision was reversed.

[00:49:42] And Nick have all been saying that

[00:49:44] this community is too big.

[00:49:46] And I think Nate, you've been touching on this as well.

[00:49:48] This community is so big.

[00:49:49] There are so many casual users out there

[00:49:51] that don't even get knee deep into content creators

[00:49:54] and Twitter and stuff like that.

[00:49:56] That it's impossible to rally an entire community

[00:49:59] around one issue.

[00:50:00] And maybe that is why EA don't communicate

[00:50:02] because it's that whole,

[00:50:04] well if we're not acknowledging

[00:50:05] that there's problems within our game,

[00:50:06] people won't notice them.

[00:50:08] Like if we're not telling you

[00:50:09] why there's no goalkeeper evos,

[00:50:11] maybe you'll forget about it.

[00:50:13] And maybe that is, but I mean Shaq,

[00:50:16] any thoughts from you on the communication front?

[00:50:18] No exactly that.

[00:50:19] I think one of the things that EA is really good at

[00:50:21] is from the end of July all the way up

[00:50:23] till maybe early September

[00:50:24] is when you hear from someone from EA,

[00:50:26] that's because they're trying to promote the new game

[00:50:27] and you can hear all the buzzwords,

[00:50:29] you hear all the really exciting things

[00:50:30] that are coming up in the new game.

[00:50:32] And once the new game is released,

[00:50:33] off they go back hiding into their whatever

[00:50:35] they have to do.

[00:50:36] And they might release a patch notes

[00:50:37] at the start of the year

[00:50:38] with a couple of things about things

[00:50:40] that they're nerfing, things they're buffing.

[00:50:41] And that's it.

[00:50:42] That's simply because I think with the lack of resources,

[00:50:44] they start thinking about the future

[00:50:46] or the new game of the following title

[00:50:50] and they don't really work enough

[00:50:51] or they don't really care enough about the existing game

[00:50:53] because it's then moved on to the live content producers

[00:50:56] and they are the ones that have to cash the cow

[00:50:58] as much as possible

[00:50:59] and try and extract as much money

[00:51:00] from the users as possible.

[00:51:02] So from a gameplay perspective,

[00:51:03] I think it's just as long as it's not broken,

[00:51:05] you don't have to worry about fixing it.

[00:51:07] And that's literally the ethos that they take.

[00:51:10] But what really annoys me is come July,

[00:51:12] the buzzwords that start hitting down with,

[00:51:15] this is gonna change next year,

[00:51:16] this new buzz, hypermotion, 17 million, whatever it is,

[00:51:19] it'll just come up with all these new buzzwords

[00:51:22] that start coming.

[00:51:24] Everyone really, I've been playing EA games.

[00:51:27] I think the first EA game that I played was 1994

[00:51:29] and I've consistently played since then.

[00:51:31] So I'm talking from a long time of experience

[00:51:33] where, yes, 1994.

[00:51:36] I'm telling you every single year,

[00:51:37] I've fallen as a kid, I've fallen into their traps

[00:51:40] and as an adult, I've fallen into their traps.

[00:51:42] I'm still falling into their traps.

[00:51:44] When I see their stuff,

[00:51:45] I don't really, I just, I don't even read it.

[00:51:47] I've stopped reading any of these promotional materials

[00:51:50] because it's not even worth the paper,

[00:51:53] the word, it's not even worth as much as the paper,

[00:51:55] the words that they actually put in there.

[00:51:57] And you compliment that with,

[00:52:00] I think some of the people

[00:52:01] that have actually gone into EA,

[00:52:02] the people that I think are working at EA

[00:52:05] are people from the community.

[00:52:06] So if those people,

[00:52:08] quite vocal people from the community as well.

[00:52:10] I mean, I'm not trying to shout people out,

[00:52:12] but I used to have a fair amount of dialogue

[00:52:14] with Dr. Pop Love,

[00:52:16] I don't know if you remember him from back in the day,

[00:52:17] he used to run a podcast as well.

[00:52:20] And he actually went as one of the gameplay producers

[00:52:22] on EA and as soon as he went to the gameplay producers,

[00:52:25] trust me, he's just completely ghosted me.

[00:52:28] I've never mentioned this,

[00:52:29] but he's completely ghosted me.

[00:52:30] I don't ever hear from him.

[00:52:32] I don't even know if he's working for EA anymore,

[00:52:34] but he went to work with Joel Dunin,

[00:52:36] the Dunin's and Dragons guy on Twitter.

[00:52:39] He went to work with his team

[00:52:41] and it's literally once they go in,

[00:52:43] they just get sucked into this vortex

[00:52:45] of a multinational company that you have NDAs

[00:52:47] and this and that.

[00:52:48] And look, I'm not having a go

[00:52:50] at those few specific people within the EA,

[00:52:52] they're just doing their jobs.

[00:52:54] But as an organization,

[00:52:55] I don't think they are supported well enough

[00:52:57] to actually go out and do the right things.

[00:52:59] And Dan, you started the show with $1.8 billion

[00:53:02] as the revenue for this particular quarter.

[00:53:07] I don't think they care.

[00:53:08] They don't care if the revenue figures

[00:53:09] are staying at 1.8 billion.

[00:53:11] I wouldn't care if I was a company that large.

[00:53:14] So yeah, that's the honest truth.

[00:53:16] And this is it.

[00:53:17] And this brings us kind of towards the end

[00:53:19] and where we think this is going in the future.

[00:53:22] Because we could talk about problems for another hour.

[00:53:24] I've not even ranted about the companion app

[00:53:26] and how utterly woeful that is.

[00:53:29] And the amount of money that EA leaving on the table

[00:53:32] with things like this and how I've said in the past,

[00:53:34] make a premium companion.

[00:53:36] I'm giving you a free idea.

[00:53:37] Make a premium companion app for 10 pound a year

[00:53:39] that you actually work on and I will buy it.

[00:53:42] So anyway, we could go on to the cows come home.

[00:53:45] But where this is all leading

[00:53:46] and it stems from what you've just said Shaq,

[00:53:48] where is it going to hurt EA?

[00:53:51] And this is where Nick

[00:53:52] and some of the other content creators

[00:53:53] are now starting to come together

[00:53:56] and all zero and others.

[00:53:57] And now they're saying that they think

[00:54:00] that the starting point

[00:54:01] and one that most people can get on board with,

[00:54:03] especially from a content credit front

[00:54:05] is to stop buying FC points and opening store packs.

[00:54:09] Sounds a bit familiar

[00:54:10] as we had our own bid the points campaign.

[00:54:13] But look, and before I,

[00:54:15] I'm not gonna do a victory lap here

[00:54:16] because all three of us in this call

[00:54:18] have bought FC points and at least two,

[00:54:21] well, all three of us have bought FC points

[00:54:22] for this particular game cycle.

[00:54:24] How we've used them.

[00:54:26] And we've always said on this show,

[00:54:27] you've got disposable income.

[00:54:28] We are all in our 30s, 40s.

[00:54:31] Nathan, you're 50, 60.

[00:54:34] Wow.

[00:54:35] Get some age jabs back from last week.

[00:54:37] We are old enough, ugly enough.

[00:54:41] Well, in my own case, not you two handsome gents.

[00:54:43] All of us.

[00:54:44] We know money.

[00:54:46] We can make a mature, responsible decision

[00:54:48] about where we wanna spend our disposable income.

[00:54:50] That's up to us.

[00:54:51] But we've always stressed, you don't have to.

[00:54:54] There is no need to spend.

[00:54:55] And I did it.

[00:54:56] I was a fucker, first owner only for an entire year.

[00:55:00] I didn't spend an entire,

[00:55:02] I think the two games in a row,

[00:55:03] I didn't spend an entire single point.

[00:55:06] It was only when the EVOs came out this year

[00:55:07] that I went back on.

[00:55:08] But regardless,

[00:55:10] that is the strategy that people are now going down.

[00:55:12] It is they vowed that they're gonna stop spending FC points.

[00:55:16] They're not gonna show other,

[00:55:17] they're not gonna take share place

[00:55:18] from people who want to open store packs with FC points.

[00:55:23] Some are even saying they're just not gonna go

[00:55:24] to the store full stop, even with coins.

[00:55:27] Others have said, well, look, you've earned coins.

[00:55:29] If you wanna spend your coins on packs,

[00:55:30] I will show that.

[00:55:32] So look, that's in the minutia.

[00:55:33] But what people do seem to agree on is that

[00:55:37] spending points for packs, they're not gonna show it.

[00:55:39] They're not gonna promote it.

[00:55:40] And the hope is that it makes enough of a dent

[00:55:44] for somebody at EA to go,

[00:55:46] oh, why are pack sales down this quarter?

[00:55:51] And that somebody high up enough will go,

[00:55:53] oh, wait, what's been going on?

[00:55:57] Well, we need to fix this.

[00:55:59] And whether they fix it through engagement,

[00:56:02] whether they fix it through spending money to make money

[00:56:05] or whether they double down and say, oh, okay, well, fine.

[00:56:08] They might well just go, right,

[00:56:10] here comes your $100 store pack.

[00:56:12] We don't know.

[00:56:13] But the whole idea is that the community

[00:56:15] and content creators are now saying

[00:56:17] we need to get some attention.

[00:56:20] They want to either hit EA in the pocket

[00:56:22] or they want to drum up enough attention

[00:56:25] where major press outlets are starting to pick up on this

[00:56:28] and cause corporate embarrassment to EA.

[00:56:31] They would like to see things

[00:56:32] like the Wall Street Journal and Forbes

[00:56:34] and the Times and stuff pick up or the BBC,

[00:56:37] pick up on an article of, you know,

[00:56:41] FC gamers are unhappy and are doing X, Y and Z.

[00:56:45] Because if you remember Icon Gate, gents,

[00:56:48] the press did actually pick up on that

[00:56:50] and EA did come out with a load of stuff,

[00:56:52] statements and an investigation and things like that.

[00:56:56] Whether things changed, I don't know,

[00:56:57] but I've not heard of icons being sold since.

[00:56:59] So maybe they did close the door on that at least.

[00:57:03] But it did promote some change

[00:57:05] because it got enough notoriety.

[00:57:08] Nathan, what do you make?

[00:57:09] Do you think that this is the right starting point?

[00:57:13] Do you think they could have gone further?

[00:57:14] I mean, how do you think that this will play out?

[00:57:18] Yeah, I think that's the right way to go.

[00:57:20] Like you say, we've all put points on in the past.

[00:57:23] I opened one this morning with coins.

[00:57:25] So I'm not going to say don't open any things

[00:57:27] because those coins, you know,

[00:57:29] the coins are the way the game is.

[00:57:31] They are almost worthless to a degree.

[00:57:33] So I'd rather spend coins I've got set in there

[00:57:36] and at least use them.

[00:57:37] And I got a good pull out of that.

[00:57:39] So, but I think no points is a good one.

[00:57:41] Like you say, we did bend the points.

[00:57:44] There's such a good way in the game to grind.

[00:57:46] My worry is if we do take it,

[00:57:49] well, I'll say we,

[00:57:50] if people stop spending coins

[00:57:52] because there's enough in the past,

[00:57:53] sorry, if people start stop spending points

[00:57:55] because there's enough ways of grinding players

[00:57:57] through packs and recyclables and whatever,

[00:58:01] EA being EA will probably just take away all rewards

[00:58:04] and then just say, right,

[00:58:05] the only way you can do it is by going to the store

[00:58:07] because that's the sort of thing

[00:58:08] that you'd expect from them.

[00:58:09] But I think it's great that they're trying to say,

[00:58:12] right, we're not opening anything with points.

[00:58:15] We remember, was it two years ago,

[00:58:17] we had the first 100 rare gold.

[00:58:19] I don't even think it was like a 184 plus

[00:58:22] is whatever, it was just a hundred rare golds.

[00:58:24] And that was massive.

[00:58:25] And I'm pretty sure at the time,

[00:58:27] the Centurion is, yeah.

[00:58:28] Yeah, so I'm pretty sure in the store

[00:58:30] that was the only promo pack

[00:58:32] or there was maybe two promo packs.

[00:58:34] We're now having,

[00:58:35] like if I just look through my store then,

[00:58:37] there's probably double figures worth

[00:58:39] of promo packs in there.

[00:58:40] And that's the issue is grabbing people

[00:58:44] because we've seen through,

[00:58:46] no, like we said, we did for champs.

[00:58:47] I saved all my packs from champs

[00:58:49] from rivals rewards and through the week.

[00:58:53] I didn't get a single blue out of them,

[00:58:55] not a single one,

[00:58:56] but I spent, I think it was 300,000 or 250,000 coins.

[00:59:01] And I got one of the better tots from that.

[00:59:05] It just shows you because,

[00:59:06] you know, the milestones you've got 87,

[00:59:10] I think it was 86 times three or 87 times two,

[00:59:12] had that, had all the other ones, 85,

[00:59:15] all my 83 times 10s, all the player picks,

[00:59:18] they all give you pretty much the minimum rate.

[00:59:21] And like my 87 times two was 287.

[00:59:22] So my 83 times 10 was an 84, 85

[00:59:25] and 88, 83.

[00:59:27] It's like that's the constant theme.

[00:59:29] I think if we boycott that,

[00:59:31] start hitting the bottom line of EA,

[00:59:34] they have to take note.

[00:59:35] But like I say,

[00:59:36] my fear is that they will just double down,

[00:59:38] go even harder to stop these ways

[00:59:41] of getting other players like they have.

[00:59:42] Like these minimum ratings are pretty much,

[00:59:45] you know, 90% guaranteed ratings

[00:59:46] rather than your minimum ones.

[00:59:48] And I can see them stepping that up

[00:59:50] to try and force people a little bit more.

[00:59:52] So people that are still in the store

[00:59:54] and even a lot of the people in the game now

[00:59:55] seem to be a bit more diehards than the casuals.

[00:59:58] The casual base seems to have dropped off on the whole.

[01:00:01] And that's the worries

[01:00:02] that these people will go actually know

[01:00:04] because if I don't do that,

[01:00:05] my team is gonna fall so far behind.

[01:00:07] Let's go back to the store.

[01:00:08] So it's a catch 22 for those that want to make a change

[01:00:11] but those also want to stay fairly competitive.

[01:00:14] Yeah, and Shaq look all the metrics,

[01:00:16] look, you know, we talked about earlier.

[01:00:17] I mean, sales are the physical copy in the,

[01:00:19] well just the game in general,

[01:00:20] we're down 5% in the UK.

[01:00:22] If you go and look at the steam charts,

[01:00:24] it is down year on year, the peak players are down.

[01:00:29] There's unquestionably a drop in players on this game.

[01:00:34] So EA strategy has to be to get more profits,

[01:00:36] create that same at level,

[01:00:38] they have to get more money per user.

[01:00:40] So that seems to just as even more important

[01:00:42] that especially those of you

[01:00:43] that are routinely spending points

[01:00:46] that you will make the difference

[01:00:47] because if there's less users to sell packs to

[01:00:51] that, you know, they are counting on

[01:00:52] you spending more and more and more.

[01:00:54] And that was quite evident from day one as well.

[01:00:57] And I think one of the things that really has

[01:00:58] I probably didn't look at this closely enough

[01:01:00] and I think Dan, you brought it out

[01:01:02] just in this conversation

[01:01:03] and even just before we started recording

[01:01:05] is the fact that our EA pumping up more profits

[01:01:09] to sell the company in the future

[01:01:10] and this is something we talked about a year ago.

[01:01:12] And if you think about all the things

[01:01:14] that we've spoken about right now,

[01:01:15] cutting down resources,

[01:01:16] cutting down as much as possible,

[01:01:18] laying down staff during COVID,

[01:01:19] not having enough people,

[01:01:20] no quality assurance,

[01:01:22] outsourcing all the jobs across

[01:01:25] to different parts of the world

[01:01:26] that get bits and bobs done with no QA.

[01:01:29] So we're just trying to points the picture

[01:01:32] as EA trying to be as lean as possible,

[01:01:36] generate as much profits as possible,

[01:01:38] as much revenue rather as possible

[01:01:40] to look as fluffed up

[01:01:42] and as ripe for the taking as such

[01:01:45] and then get sold across to a massive, massive investor

[01:01:48] a massive organization for example.

[01:01:50] If you look at it even this year,

[01:01:52] one of the things I started noticing

[01:01:53] was you see a lot of connection with Amazon.

[01:01:55] There's a lot of prime information

[01:01:56] when you score a goal

[01:01:57] on the top right hand part of our prime.

[01:02:00] It could just be that they're looking for

[01:02:02] either the Disney's or the Amazon's

[01:02:04] or the Apple's to try and save them

[01:02:07] and take them away from their payroll right now

[01:02:09] because at the end of the day,

[01:02:11] EA is quite a lucrative company at the face of it

[01:02:15] but the cost of maintaining what they have is probably,

[01:02:18] also the stuff that you've spoken about

[01:02:19] as the code being built on,

[01:02:21] I don't think anyone has the time, money or resources

[01:02:23] to try and get all those things,

[01:02:26] unravel all those things

[01:02:27] and still give a game that's playable, that's sellable.

[01:02:31] So their best bet is to try and sell

[01:02:34] and the fatter they look,

[01:02:36] the riper they look,

[01:02:37] the easier it'll be for them to actually get sold.

[01:02:39] So that's probably where this is all leading up to

[01:02:42] and they don't really care about loyalty then.

[01:02:44] They don't really care about us

[01:02:45] because they're not gonna be here to care about us.

[01:02:47] It's gonna be another company's problem

[01:02:49] and you've hit the nail on the head

[01:02:51] by finding that information out.

[01:02:53] Yeah, exactly as you said.

[01:02:55] If the intention is for EA to sell or to merge,

[01:02:59] then yeah, they are gonna be focusing,

[01:03:01] hyper focusing on profits and making them lean

[01:03:04] and again, at this point, if they are

[01:03:06] and we don't know that these talks came out around

[01:03:08] sort of the middle of 2022

[01:03:10] so we don't know what the corporate strategy is.

[01:03:11] There's been not that much talk about it since

[01:03:13] but it does make sense

[01:03:14] and again, are you gonna commit

[01:03:16] hundreds of millions of pounds, dollars, whatever it is

[01:03:18] and hire whole new developers

[01:03:20] to build up a brand new engine from the bottom up

[01:03:23] at the moment unless the cash cow

[01:03:26] is in danger of falling over

[01:03:29] and at the moment while there are the starting signs

[01:03:32] that it is again, industry experts are putting out

[01:03:35] how play time is down and has decreased quite a lot.

[01:03:39] I think 23% since 2021,

[01:03:42] obviously lockdowns ending and things like that.

[01:03:44] The user base again, selling fewer copies, less interest.

[01:03:48] Now there does come that tipping point

[01:03:50] where you run out of users to sell enough points

[01:03:53] to when your profits start going down

[01:03:55] and it's then that you do get people

[01:03:56] asking the questions, why are these going down?

[01:03:59] Is there a way we can fix this to prop things up?

[01:04:04] And that goes back to what Nick has been saying.

[01:04:06] Nick has been saying he's not even,

[01:04:08] he's left aside the whole gambling,

[01:04:12] influence of kids and stuff like that.

[01:04:15] He says to EA, go and run your store all you want

[01:04:17] if you want to, but just make a good game

[01:04:19] at the same time, reward those people

[01:04:21] that have paid you a hundred pounds for the game,

[01:04:24] give them the time of day and then yeah,

[01:04:26] by all means go nuts if you want to sell enough packs

[01:04:30] to responsible mature adults

[01:04:33] who wanna drop hundreds, thousands of pounds,

[01:04:35] go for it, but at least you're producing a game

[01:04:37] and we're all getting the benefit of that.

[01:04:40] So look, I join those people that are saying

[01:04:43] and I will join the movement for whatever my influence is.

[01:04:46] Over the past few months, I have been happy

[01:04:48] to put on a five or 10 or there to do an Evo with points.

[01:04:51] I will stop doing that.

[01:04:52] I will not be putting on any more points.

[01:04:54] That is me done for the foreseeable future

[01:04:56] until we see meaningful change in this game.

[01:04:58] I encourage others to do the same,

[01:04:59] but also not gonna sit there

[01:05:01] and tell people how to spend their money.

[01:05:02] But if you do want to impact change in this game,

[01:05:05] if you are sick and tired of bad servers,

[01:05:07] bad gameplay, things getting nerfed,

[01:05:10] if you're sick of that, that is one thing you can do

[01:05:12] and we're not gonna say stop playing the game,

[01:05:15] stop watching things.

[01:05:18] We have to make somebody within EA wake up

[01:05:23] and this seems to be the easiest path to do that

[01:05:28] is to cause a noticeable drop

[01:05:30] whereby somebody starts asking a question

[01:05:33] and then we go from there.

[01:05:35] Now look, that has been about an hour of us

[01:05:39] talking about this

[01:05:40] and we could sit here for three hours,

[01:05:43] four hours, five hours doing a live stream

[01:05:46] and there are loads of things I'm sure we have missed.

[01:05:49] There might be the odd thing that turn a phrase

[01:05:52] or something attributing one of these content creators

[01:05:57] that I've not expressed brilliantly

[01:06:00] and I very much encourage you to go and follow

[01:06:02] and watch each of those videos

[01:06:04] to get the full context around their arguments.

[01:06:06] Do support them as well.

[01:06:08] They are trying to make a stand.

[01:06:10] Just giving them that engagement will help support them

[01:06:12] and thank you to those of you who support us as well.

[01:06:15] There's lots going on just before we move on

[01:06:17] because funnily enough, the game is still,

[01:06:19] the world still turns

[01:06:21] and we have got a brand new team this season

[01:06:23] that we've not even really talked about

[01:06:25] and we'll briefly talk about content thing

[01:06:26] in just a few moments

[01:06:28] but I just wanna finish with Adam's post

[01:06:32] that he's put into the mailbag again,

[01:06:34] join the Discord, Discord's absolutely free.

[01:06:36] Put your questions in there.

[01:06:37] Adam has said,

[01:06:39] and also how fractured the community seems to be.

[01:06:41] Also, why haven't they acknowledged the connection issues

[01:06:43] that plagued us all yesterday?

[01:06:45] And finally,

[01:06:45] the wording of their statement on the red Dembele

[01:06:47] and Bape cards flying out to everyone Friday night

[01:06:50] shows they generally don't want us to have nice things

[01:06:52] and that's the most despicable thing

[01:06:53] coming from a company that's given so much

[01:06:56] that's given so much from its loyal to a full player base

[01:07:01] and I think we've covered all those things

[01:07:05] and I think Adam just sums up brilliantly well

[01:07:09] in that we give this company a lot, literally billions.

[01:07:14] We are not asking for the world in return.

[01:07:16] We're not all asking to be given in Bape's and Dembele's.

[01:07:19] We're all asking if it's treated fairly.

[01:07:21] We're asking for communication

[01:07:23] and we're asking for meaningful improvement

[01:07:26] or at least dialogue around the game and the gameplay.

[01:07:32] That's all we want.

[01:07:33] It's the start.

[01:07:34] And that my friends is the least,

[01:07:37] the very least we deserve.

[01:07:41] Will any of it change?

[01:07:43] We don't know.

[01:07:44] Realistically, the only thing

[01:07:46] that is going to make huge change is competition

[01:07:49] and games like Goals, UFL, E-Football, AN Other

[01:07:54] are still realistically a couple of years away

[01:07:57] from being at the point

[01:07:58] where they can be a serious competitor if ever.

[01:08:00] I know John,

[01:08:02] foot coach John has said in the past,

[01:08:05] the amount of money that these people have at their disposal

[01:08:07] and the whole gaming industry is shrinking.

[01:08:09] So look, the chance of strong competition,

[01:08:12] it's not huge right now, certainly.

[01:08:15] So we need to try and make EA

[01:08:18] and the game we have better.

[01:08:20] And look, thank you for all of your support.

[01:08:22] Appreciate those of you who've listened

[01:08:24] to this last hour plus of us talking.

[01:08:26] If you've got your own thoughts,

[01:08:27] you know where we are, join the discord for free.

[01:08:30] All the socials, all our individual socials,

[01:08:32] foot coaching is the main one.

[01:08:36] But that just is it.

[01:08:38] One other question in the mailbag

[01:08:39] as well sort of related to this,

[01:08:41] it's kind of game play.

[01:08:42] So I'll put it in here.

[01:08:43] It's not really related to the controversy past week.

[01:08:45] But Bankai says,

[01:08:46] I wanted to ask your views

[01:08:47] on the state of passing in FC24.

[01:08:49] I seem to really struggle.

[01:08:50] Pass being underpowered

[01:08:51] or going in different directions to where I am.

[01:08:53] I've noted often an easy pass for a tap

[01:08:55] and will sometimes go to a different player than intended.

[01:08:57] I want to ask how often it happens to you guys,

[01:08:59] if at all,

[01:09:00] and how do you think it's best to improve your passing?

[01:09:03] Thanks in advance.

[01:09:04] Well, I'll throw it to the coach here first, Nathan.

[01:09:06] Yeah, I think passing,

[01:09:08] unless you've got the players with the right play styles,

[01:09:10] passing seems to be very erratic.

[01:09:12] But I do think a lot of that's down to AI movement.

[01:09:15] There's a lot of players standing still.

[01:09:17] So where you'd expect the ball to go in,

[01:09:19] realistic football,

[01:09:20] they don't make that movement.

[01:09:21] Or as a FIFA coach,

[01:09:24] but as an actual football coach,

[01:09:26] which I do as well,

[01:09:27] you tell your players to be on their toes

[01:09:28] and move to the ball.

[01:09:29] That doesn't happen.

[01:09:30] So you have to use the right type of passes,

[01:09:32] whether it's the R1X,

[01:09:35] where it's the driven pass.

[01:09:38] People complain about three balls,

[01:09:40] but three balls are so effective,

[01:09:41] not just because you can play a three ball in behind,

[01:09:44] but it plays the ball into the open space.

[01:09:46] So a lot of it has to do with your actual pass

[01:09:50] selection, your choice of passes.

[01:09:52] I saw a streamer as well who's very good at it,

[01:09:54] uses play a lot pretty much every time

[01:09:56] to get on the ball,

[01:09:58] which if you can do that,

[01:10:00] that's incredible.

[01:10:01] I think that's a little bit too much

[01:10:03] because being able to get the pass,

[01:10:05] get the player a lot,

[01:10:06] get in the right position is just a bit too much.

[01:10:08] But I would say make sure you're doing the right passes

[01:10:11] with the right type of player.

[01:10:12] Somebody like a De Bruyne

[01:10:13] obviously probably never misses a pass

[01:10:15] if you do it correctly.

[01:10:17] But in certain areas,

[01:10:19] you need to select whether to double tap X

[01:10:21] to give it a little loft

[01:10:22] or whether you need to hold it and drive the pass.

[01:10:24] So that's what I would suggest anyway.

[01:10:26] But I don't think passing is as crisp as it should be.

[01:10:29] Yeah, I agree.

[01:10:30] And that was one of the things

[01:10:31] that Auzio was talking about in his video as well.

[01:10:32] He was talking about how,

[01:10:33] why is he having to play a lock all the time

[01:10:36] to get his player to go in front of a defender?

[01:10:39] But look, lots and lots we can talk about

[01:10:42] and we will be continuously talking about it.

[01:10:44] We're not going to let this thing drop again.

[01:10:46] We kind of started up in the points campaign

[01:10:48] and we kind of let it drop to the side.

[01:10:50] We're going to do our bit to raise awareness

[01:10:52] and keep talking points on.

[01:10:53] I appreciate people,

[01:10:55] some people of you just want to enjoy this game.

[01:10:57] We will put in the time codes in this,

[01:11:00] in pods in future do our best to sort of,

[01:11:02] if you do want to skip it, you can skip it

[01:11:04] because some people do just want to use this as escapism

[01:11:07] and don't want to be talking about the bad things

[01:11:08] and talk about the positive things.

[01:11:09] So let's end.

[01:11:11] We've obviously talked for a long time

[01:11:12] so we're not going to go on for too long.

[01:11:14] The guys didn't do a show

[01:11:15] because they were all in Crete, good for them.

[01:11:18] Shaq, League Un team of the season.

[01:11:20] What did you make of it?

[01:11:21] What have you made of it so far?

[01:11:23] Any players that have caught your eye

[01:11:24] and just your general thoughts?

[01:11:26] I think overall the team is pretty,

[01:11:28] I think the top end is as we've all discussed

[01:11:30] is really, really, really good.

[01:11:32] They have some really good players.

[01:11:33] I think Virginia has one

[01:11:34] that really has caught my eye this afternoon.

[01:11:36] Sayre, Emery is like an incredible card as well

[01:11:39] on paper.

[01:11:40] There's a whole heap of cards

[01:11:41] that actually will fit a lot of teams.

[01:11:42] I think that goes without saying.

[01:11:44] I think even the likes of Aubameyang

[01:11:47] are definitely usable with interesting play styles

[01:11:49] but I think the lower tier ones

[01:11:51] which are easily more packable,

[01:11:53] they could do a serviceable job on your teams

[01:11:56] but I just feel that they will not last within your teams

[01:11:59] for more than a week, week and a half

[01:12:00] because they just, as you keep saying,

[01:12:03] the difference between the top quality

[01:12:05] and the next level,

[01:12:06] there's a huge gap between those layers

[01:12:08] and after that it's just,

[01:12:10] every single one of them is just slightly better

[01:12:12] than the other and it doesn't really make

[01:12:14] too much of a difference.

[01:12:15] That's what I'm finding with this

[01:12:17] and the back way it's been is quite horrendous as well

[01:12:21] because you can barely attempt to try any of these cards

[01:12:23] so unless you buy them off the market.

[01:12:27] Yeah, the pack way has been,

[01:12:28] I think on the bottom end it's been,

[01:12:29] I'm getting more fodder ones than I did in Bundesliga

[01:12:33] but I've not really hit that many of the top ones.

[01:12:36] I think the most expensive,

[01:12:37] yeah, I've got Marquinhos red

[01:12:39] and I think I've got Aubameyang.

[01:12:41] They're two sort of really notable cards

[01:12:44] I've got from this program

[01:12:45] so I've got most of the trash ones

[01:12:47] once or twice as well

[01:12:48] but Nathan, any names from this start to you?

[01:12:51] I'm going to just get the elephant out of the room.

[01:12:52] You packed Vettinia this afternoon

[01:12:54] continuing your ridiculous streak.

[01:12:57] If you wonder why Nathan was playing the role

[01:12:59] of EA defender on this show.

[01:13:02] Yeah, no, my tot's look has been pretty steady

[01:13:05] to be fair.

[01:13:06] So now I've got Vettinia who to be fair on release,

[01:13:09] obviously I wanted an Mbappe and then Béla

[01:13:11] but I was being realistic

[01:13:12] and knowing that I wouldn't have got him

[01:13:14] but Vettinia is one I'm happy with.

[01:13:16] Turam, I'd love to Turam

[01:13:19] because I think he's always amazing.

[01:13:22] Marquinhos, I'm very jealous of him.

[01:13:24] Just looking through now,

[01:13:25] I've got Del Castillo who people were raving about

[01:13:27] he's 37K.

[01:13:28] Aubameyang is just pure pace.

[01:13:30] He didn't cause me many issues

[01:13:31] apart from the space he occupied.

[01:13:33] There's some nice cards there.

[01:13:34] Some of them you kind of don't think

[01:13:37] would they get in, would they not?

[01:13:38] I think I've had six bentolibs by now

[01:13:40] and I've had three or four Tadevos as well

[01:13:43] all untradable so they've just gone

[01:13:44] into the exchanges basically

[01:13:46] to boost up my pack so I can recycle again.

[01:13:48] But the team's very solid.

[01:13:51] It's like Bundesliga though.

[01:13:52] Bundesliga didn't really have any bad cards per se.

[01:13:54] They had obviously better cards

[01:13:56] but it's a very solid, well rounded team again.

[01:13:59] I can imagine that the next couple as well

[01:14:01] are just going to go,

[01:14:02] the top players are going to be very, very good.

[01:14:05] It'll be interesting to see,

[01:14:06] I don't know what's coming on Friday

[01:14:07] but if Serie A comes,

[01:14:09] it'll be interesting to see what they do

[01:14:10] with some of those players

[01:14:11] because there hasn't been that many sort of

[01:14:14] standout players or standout teams in Serie A this year

[01:14:16] so it'll be interesting to see how they nerf them.

[01:14:19] La Liga I reckon will be absolutely cracked

[01:14:21] and then we'll be onto Ultimate as well

[01:14:23] which it'll be interesting to see even with Ultimate

[01:14:25] because in the past some of the Ultimate teams

[01:14:28] haven't always incorporated the best players

[01:14:31] from each league so it'll be quite interesting

[01:14:33] to see how they kind of move on forward

[01:14:34] because the top cards are just unreal at the moment

[01:14:37] and it's hard to see how they kind of go

[01:14:39] any better than this.

[01:14:43] Yeah, and we've had a few SBCs out

[01:14:45] particularly as the time I'm recording this,

[01:14:47] foot bins falling over.

[01:14:49] But we've had the likes of Mbembe

[01:14:51] who's very, very cheap.

[01:14:52] I think if it's into the same camp as Simmican last week

[01:14:55] if you need a cheap defender

[01:14:56] if you're starting a new account,

[01:14:57] go and do him otherwise,

[01:14:58] you probably got better.

[01:15:00] The big sort of marquee ones that we've had out at Shaq

[01:15:02] in the last couple of days,

[01:15:03] we had Alexander Lacazette coming out,

[01:15:06] a four-star, five-star player,

[01:15:08] 93 rated, three play style pluses.

[01:15:10] He's coming in around half a million

[01:15:12] and we did have two icon SBCs.

[01:15:15] This shows you the state of this game

[01:15:18] in that it has taken us an hour and 15 minutes

[01:15:22] to mention that there is an R9 SBC

[01:15:25] for you to go out and complete along with Camille Abilé.

[01:15:29] So any of the SBCs taking your interest, Shaq?

[01:15:34] Not really.

[01:15:35] I think at a stretch I could probably do Abilé

[01:15:38] but I'm not really that interested in her

[01:15:40] and R9, I wish I was more interested in R9.

[01:15:44] Look, he will still do a serviceable job

[01:15:47] and I think he's probably...

[01:15:50] I wish he was slightly cheaper than he was

[01:15:52] but I think it's just a grind

[01:15:53] of doing 27 segments of an SBC.

[01:15:56] That's the part that I don't really think

[01:15:58] I have the energy for.

[01:15:59] It's just a lot of grind to actually get an R9

[01:16:02] with one play style.

[01:16:03] It will still be amazing in game, don't get me wrong

[01:16:06] but I just don't have the energy

[01:16:07] and the other ones, Abilé, not really.

[01:16:11] I haven't used her.

[01:16:12] I've come up against her.

[01:16:13] She seems pretty good but I'm not really that fast.

[01:16:18] Yeah, she's got both of her,

[01:16:20] I think it's the Future Stars icon out.

[01:16:23] You can do the five star, four star

[01:16:24] or the four star, five star version.

[01:16:25] Both very good CMs whether you're looking for the...

[01:16:27] Again, it depends if you want the kind of attacking one

[01:16:29] or the defending one, which one do you do?

[01:16:32] Again, decent value SBC

[01:16:34] and she'll be a very good player.

[01:16:35] Same with Lacazette.

[01:16:36] Lacazette looks like an absolutely fine forward.

[01:16:39] I can't actually see that many problems with the card.

[01:16:42] It's just, again, we've just got to that point

[01:16:44] of the cycle where you have to be really excited

[01:16:47] by a card to want to do it

[01:16:50] and these cards don't quite excite me.

[01:16:52] I mean, Nathan, are you going to be taking the plunge

[01:16:54] on R9, Lacazette or Abilé

[01:16:56] or anybody else that we've seen SBC wise?

[01:16:58] Nah, that R9 I had last year

[01:17:00] and having a card with the one play style

[01:17:03] and who Stamina means that he's going

[01:17:06] for a help path at halftime, just doesn't do it for me.

[01:17:09] Abilé as well, you get so many better...

[01:17:11] I know you get the French icon links, which is nice

[01:17:14] but I think there's a lot better cards

[01:17:16] for a lot cheaper than the 1.2, 1.3 mil

[01:17:18] she's coming in at.

[01:17:20] Lacazette as well.

[01:17:21] I actually probably would have done Lacazette

[01:17:22] if there were slightly different play styles

[01:17:24] if you had Ariel, Finesse plus.

[01:17:27] Power shot's nice but it still takes a wee minute

[01:17:29] for them to get the shot away

[01:17:30] so it'd be nice if they had

[01:17:32] slightly different play style.

[01:17:33] So Lacazette's disappointed me.

[01:17:36] Like you say, it's fine.

[01:17:37] These SBCs are fine.

[01:17:38] There's nothing wrong with them.

[01:17:39] I just think at this stage of the game

[01:17:40] is also a lot better options out there

[01:17:44] for a lot less coins or a lot less cards.

[01:17:46] Yeah and also we have had

[01:17:48] the Tots Mix Squad version three,

[01:17:51] our good friend, Lionel Messi,

[01:17:53] the headliner of that three play style plus version

[01:17:56] that you can get for the cheap, cheap sum

[01:17:58] of 12.8 million coins.

[01:18:00] But lots of...

[01:18:01] Actually I think there are lots of good fun cards in this.

[01:18:04] Sergio Busquets looks awesome for 150K.

[01:18:07] I wish I'd sold the tradeable one I packed last night

[01:18:10] for 290.

[01:18:11] I'm literally just looking at this now

[01:18:13] and my heart sank.

[01:18:15] It's on my second account though

[01:18:16] so maybe I'll just keep him now.

[01:18:18] Aldusari has a very good, nice looking winger card

[01:18:21] for 300K, 99 pace, five star weak foot,

[01:18:23] four star skill moves.

[01:18:25] Jamie Varley's gonna have a party upfront, 70K

[01:18:28] for a player with basically 99 shooting in most places.

[01:18:31] You got like, you know, again,

[01:18:33] that looks like a fantastic card

[01:18:35] with some great play style pluses as well.

[01:18:37] So I do like the fact

[01:18:39] that there are some more fun cards coming out.

[01:18:41] Shaq even Toby Aldavelle at 250K

[01:18:44] looks like an absolutely outstanding defender as well.

[01:18:46] So again, I like the fact

[01:18:47] there are some more new fun cards coming into this game

[01:18:49] and there's good stuff.

[01:18:51] And these cards all seem quite packable as well

[01:18:53] except for Messi obviously.

[01:18:55] Oh, more than Mario.

[01:18:56] I think some of these cards are really fun.

[01:18:58] I think even if you pack a Podolsky,

[01:18:59] it'll be fun to use any of these cards.

[01:19:01] There we go.

[01:19:02] I wasn't even trying to lead into that

[01:19:05] but Nate's actually packed Podolsky so well done, Nate.

[01:19:09] But some of these cards are really fun to use.

[01:19:11] I think the only trouble is it's just about,

[01:19:13] if they don't have the actual right links,

[01:19:14] it's really hard to fit them into your normal squad

[01:19:16] and there's no other game more to play.

[01:19:18] I think one of the things

[01:19:19] that's really starting to bug me as well

[01:19:21] is in the cup competition

[01:19:23] where you can actually try some cards

[01:19:24] which is good and bad

[01:19:25] where you can't really have any card

[01:19:26] that's over 9100.

[01:19:28] Even if you pack a good card that's 9100,

[01:19:31] you can't really use them in the cup.

[01:19:32] For example, I'm blanking on his name,

[01:19:35] the center back from Lenz, Medina.

[01:19:41] Last year he was such a crack team

[01:19:42] of the season card

[01:19:43] that I really wanted to try him

[01:19:45] in the cup competition

[01:19:46] but I can't use him because he's 9100

[01:19:49] and I don't see him fitting into my normal squad.

[01:19:53] So that's where I'm feeling a little bit limited

[01:19:56] with these squads

[01:19:57] but I think more than Marya gave it to us

[01:20:00] and I love seeing those blue flares pop up.

[01:20:02] So yeah, I'm happy to see them.

[01:20:05] Yeah, and loads to get to.

[01:20:08] I'm very, very, very excited to go Shaq.

[01:20:11] One last bit of content

[01:20:12] that we haven't really spoken about

[01:20:13] is the Deani SPC who was Instagram for me.

[01:20:17] Haven't really used much of her

[01:20:18] but she's pretty good.

[01:20:19] I'm still trying to get to the grips with her

[01:20:21] but yeah, happy to hear your thoughts.

[01:20:24] Yeah, again, I think it's a very good card.

[01:20:25] I'm not doing it just because I've done Chloe Kelly.

[01:20:27] I think they're quite similar.

[01:20:29] I think, again, it's funny

[01:20:31] because in a week where, you know,

[01:20:33] a weekend especially where we've really gone in on EA

[01:20:37] took, I think very justified reasons.

[01:20:38] I don't think the content has been that bad.

[01:20:41] Again, I think this mixed team is good.

[01:20:43] I think the Ligue 1 team had that good mix

[01:20:45] of top tier players, medium tier usable players

[01:20:50] and cheap fodder that was easy to pack.

[01:20:52] And I think the SPCs like Lacazette is good.

[01:20:54] Abilé is a very good SPC to go and do

[01:20:56] and could easily sit in your midfield

[01:20:58] for the rest of the game.

[01:20:59] And R9 is R9.

[01:21:00] It's great, even though we're not gonna do it,

[01:21:02] it's great to have an R9 SPC out in May

[01:21:05] and with the exchanges and upgrades,

[01:21:07] very, very grindable to do as well.

[01:21:09] It's just a bit of a shame.

[01:21:11] It's his lowest version

[01:21:12] and for most of us hardcore players

[01:21:14] and actually for the casuals as well.

[01:21:16] I can't see many casuals sitting there doing 27 squads

[01:21:18] including however many 92s.

[01:21:22] And I wish that, but with every passing minute,

[01:21:25] I know I'm taking John away from the swimming pool in Crete

[01:21:28] and the man deserves a holiday.

[01:21:31] And we will be back next week

[01:21:32] and we can talk a lot more sort of content wise.

[01:21:34] Maybe we'll even try and pop up on Friday or something

[01:21:38] to do a little bit of a show,

[01:21:39] a bit more of a content focused show.

[01:21:41] But I'm gonna wrap it up here just to give John a break

[01:21:47] and because if you have still listening to this point,

[01:21:49] we've listened to nearly an hour and a half of us talking

[01:21:51] and you're probably fed up with us by now.

[01:21:53] But just before we go,

[01:21:54] Nate is there anything you wanted to finish with?

[01:21:56] No, like you say,

[01:21:58] I think we've been venting a little bit.

[01:22:00] We've kind of tried to summarize

[01:22:03] what we're seeing in the community as a whole.

[01:22:06] From a positive point of view,

[01:22:07] there's still decent things to do.

[01:22:09] There's still quite a bit of fun that you can have.

[01:22:12] It's just a shame that some of it's sort of

[01:22:14] married by some of the discrepancies and the errors.

[01:22:17] But people aren't right or wrong

[01:22:20] for how they approach the game.

[01:22:21] We recommend obviously not spending points.

[01:22:23] We can't tell you what to do.

[01:22:26] We can advise you about our approaches and our thoughts,

[01:22:29] but at the same time I will still be doing the objectives.

[01:22:31] I'll still be finishing off the cup.

[01:22:33] I'll still be trying to get my seven wins in rivals.

[01:22:36] I might do qualifiers.

[01:22:37] It depends if I get the ump for it.

[01:22:40] But at the same time,

[01:22:41] let's spread a bit of positivity as well

[01:22:43] and try and if you disagree with folk,

[01:22:46] disagree with them constructively.

[01:22:47] Let's not go down the abuse road.

[01:22:49] Let's just kind of say,

[01:22:50] like I hear your point, but X, Y and Z is what I feel.

[01:22:53] So I think that's a big thing to go on for all.

[01:22:56] But at the same time,

[01:22:57] if you play the game, play it and have fun.

[01:22:59] Let you know that that's the main thing.

[01:23:00] We all play the game to have fun

[01:23:01] and a bit of escapism from reality.

[01:23:04] Shaq, you're a fellow Man United fan

[01:23:06] and it's probably as bad as it...

[01:23:07] Well, it's as bad as it's been in my lifetime

[01:23:10] for sure.

[01:23:11] Not quite sure about you,

[01:23:12] but so it's a good way to escape that.

[01:23:14] So let's try and start rebuilding the positivity as well.

[01:23:20] Yeah, very, very well said my friend.

[01:23:23] And go back to what I said at the very top of this show,

[01:23:26] take the positives out of this game,

[01:23:28] the friends you make in the experiences,

[01:23:29] the shared experiences you're having.

[01:23:31] If you're enjoying the gameplay,

[01:23:32] don't feel bad for enjoying the gameplay.

[01:23:34] You know, that's great.

[01:23:36] If this is a game you really enjoy,

[01:23:38] fantastic, brilliant,

[01:23:40] like from the bottom of my heart, great.

[01:23:42] And look, I have lots of fun playing this game.

[01:23:45] I have lots of frustrations playing this game.

[01:23:47] We all just want the best game possible.

[01:23:49] And my message to anybody in EA who,

[01:23:52] wow, if you've sat through this entire podcast,

[01:23:54] but again, we are not out to victimize

[01:23:58] and abuse any one particular EA employee,

[01:24:02] any particular team within EA,

[01:24:03] anybody, any executive.

[01:24:05] We have always said,

[01:24:06] we very much understand the need

[01:24:08] for a business to make money.

[01:24:09] We very much understand that there are decisions

[01:24:11] that get taken out of other people's hands

[01:24:13] and strategies that are made up by panels

[01:24:16] and all sorts of stuff.

[01:24:18] So, and I very much like they said,

[01:24:21] please do not send abuse to any one particular person

[01:24:23] because they're doing something you don't like.

[01:24:25] Try and engage with them.

[01:24:26] And that is what the final message of this show is to be.

[01:24:28] We want engagement with EA.

[01:24:30] We want them to listen to us

[01:24:32] and to show that they are taking our concerns on board

[01:24:35] and they don't have to do everything we say.

[01:24:37] We don't expect them to do everything we say.

[01:24:39] You know, you can't please everybody,

[01:24:41] but please get to a stage where the feel good factor

[01:24:46] returns around this game

[01:24:47] because long-term we want the game to grow.

[01:24:50] We want it to be a friendlier environment

[01:24:53] and yeah, no other better place to leave it.

[01:24:56] Look, as I mentioned, Crete is ongoing.

[01:24:58] There is a tournament that is literally about

[01:25:00] to kick off an hour away from

[01:25:01] as we record this on Tuesday lunchtime.

[01:25:03] There's gonna be loads of content to get through

[01:25:05] and I can't wait to have John and the guys back over

[01:25:08] I'd say over here, but back to their respective homes

[01:25:11] for us to talk all about it.

[01:25:13] We will be back with a Tuesday crew,

[01:25:15] hopefully on Tuesday.

[01:25:17] Otherwise we wouldn't really be the Tuesday crew,

[01:25:19] but you know, sometimes life does get in the way.

[01:25:22] Until then, you know where to follow us.

[01:25:24] One thing left for us all to do, Naith.

[01:25:27] Drop it.

[01:25:28] Shaq.

[01:25:29] Drop it.

[01:25:30] We are going to drop it.

[01:25:32] Take care everybody.