Eduardo Oliveira has gifted us an interesting article, which leads us to think about FIFA players prices and what good would come from an eventual scarcity of the most popular players in the market. Good reading!
FIFA Players Prices
A Very Particular Look
When the question “what does the community think about the market prices?” emerges, the answer is almost always the same: “Absolute nonsense, the way it is today I’ll never have my own good team! That’s a privilege for the traders, you see, since I only play on weekends I’ll never have the time.” Okay, that’s all very true but maybe the solution we have is pushing it harder, making the best players of the game even more expensive and rare. I’ll explain myself in the following paragraphs because I really don’t want to sound as crazy as these first couple of words might suggest.
Because of Squad Building Challenges, the cards we used to discard without thinking twice were given a new purpose, I know, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimate Team, as I recall, has over 10.000 different NIF cards, and approximately 10 million users around the globe, which is an expressive number (there’s 1 card for every group of 1000 users), but instead of exploring this vast universe of possibilities we limit ourselves to just 5% of these cards, maybe not even that.
It’s sad to know that, in all these years, starting from November (perhaps earlier), the Russian, Turkish and North American leagues become useless, they’re only used for starter teams and soon go extinct from squads. People that don’t discard these when opening packs are looking forward to seeing a SBC that might never happen or that eventually won’t even be worth it.
Let’s imagine that the scarcity of the best FIFA players available in packs is even bigger, which by definition means their prices increase even more, something similar to what happens to the market on the first couple of weeks. In this scenario we would be forced to explore the alternatives, using a bigger variety of players. The diversity of squads would increase drastically, our capacity to combine squads that match our playing style would be strongly challenged.
Click on the image to be redirected to the original articleAnother effect as a result of there being more low rated players in people’s squads would be a more meritocratic game, because bear with me… In Formula 1, a few decades ago, the best pilot (in terms of skill) would normally win the championship no matter the situation (weather condition, for example), but nowadays the car and its technology solve a big part of the pilot’s problems, leaving little space for the actual one on one competition. This is exactly how I see low rated players in FIFA, it would depend much more on each one’s capacity than on which players they’re using.
And to think there are even more underrated leagues such as the J-League, Hyundai (AUS), Samsung (Korea), Scotiabank (Chile) and Postobon (Colombia)… In the current scenario I wonder why these leagues even exist. They’re practically born dead on day one and there are no interesting SBC related to them. Justifying the existence of these leagues by saying that Marquee Matchups are their only use is total heresy, we’d be taking for granted the work of developers, observers and graphics specialists that worked for 12 months in order to reproduce these leagues in the game.
And let’s not forget about silver and bronze players, how long do they last in people’s squads? One week maybe, or until a determined Cup or WL with special requirements comes up. If FIFA players prices really increased at some point we would get to see these players more often, and not just as substitutes for your gold squad (if you believe lower squad ratings are good for something).
My idea here is to make the game experience more unique, because today in FUT 17, starting from February, it’s almost certain that your next opponent will use a BPL or a Calcio squad. And if it’s a BPL squad, you should expect Kante to be in the midfield. Facing Ligue 1 and Bundesliga squads becomes something rare as time passes, and when you’re on the highest divisions don’t be surprised when you turn up against a full-on Barça-Real squad with eventually a Griezmann or a Godin as intruder.
I don’t know about you, but for me, having a player that represents my team and that for some reason I’m one of the few people who use him creates a nice bond between me and the game.