Got a Kane in my intro packs but he’s worth very little. Not sure what team to go with this year, getting a bit bored with the same one if truth be told.

Day one team:



Loaded up. Rattled the new moments mode. Hey, it's not bad. Got up to 64 tokens and took the jumbo gold players pack for that amount. Got Vlahovic.

Got my preorder points and on my 6th premium gold I got Kingsley Coman who went for a tidy 35k-ish which then paid for the Di Maria SBC, which thankfully had zero chemistry requirements. Nice!


Gameplay then. I like it. Overall, feels smoother, slicker. I like the ground passing, driven passes, and AI runs. Through balls feel a bit weird though. Shooting is honestly great imo and they seem to have nerfed certain cheesy dribbling moves which is welcome. The "extra box pass" meta looks to still be prevalent but they've made nerfs and buffs in mostly the right areas. Keepers are weird though. I can see them going up and down all year via patches.

We move. Gaventus are staying in the protected climate of Squad Battles for this week before I venture into the wonders of matchmaking (which is now cross-play by default)

afgavinstan wrote:

That Andy Pirlo manager card was honestly in my first pack on console. It was fate *cries*

Oh god.

How is it Gav? I’m too tight and rational minded to pay and extra £20 for three extra days but it’d go good to get a first impression write up when you’ve got a mo.

Okay, second week into fut and tonight we had our first major fuckup. I'll try and explain this as quickly and as easily as possible to folk that know nothing.

So every card in FUT is either tradeable or untradeable. And the ability to put a card on the transfer market means that packs and rewards marked tradeable are always desirable, because, what if you pack a belter?

Aside the Icon cards, which are tied to a players national team performances in their careers, last year saw Hero cards introduced. The idea being that these are awarded to players that left an indelible mark on a league. The Hero cards have stats and market value broadly similar to icons, plus a lil "ooh its new!" tax of course.

Basically, tonight, by mistake, EA had a tradeable Hero Card Pack on the store, for the princely sum of 25k coins. Any hero card would usually cost you multiple hundreds of thousands. The one I'd die for, Claudio Marchisio, regularly goes for around 900k.

6pm the daily content drops happen so within a couple mins, my WhatsApp group was abuzz with it, and I managed to get in, get the pack, and list the card on the market before EA took it down. So, um, sorry to Mr Rudi Voller but off he went for 472k and I'm feeling very happy with myself.

The traders out there, the weirdos that just do that and run whale accounts, god help you lol. It's a tiny thing but it's impact on liquid coin being moved about and then being reused to upgrade teams could be seismic, especially this early in the year. Wooft I do not want to be the guy in EA responsible for this.

That’s an entirely different fucking genre to whatever it is I’m playing that’s calling itself FIFA23.  Literally no idea what he’s on about.  I’ve just lost 5-2 when I should have gone to bed after my 5 game win streak.  Always do it.

Right so I'm going to go on a rant here, more in the hope that I'm just getting it out my system as my WhatsApp group don't seem to be too bothered by it, but I'm losing my mind. Hopefully someone here can follow, I'll try and explain best I can.

So a week before Qatar, they launched the big World Cup 2022 update. We have some good stuff. There was the "Path To Glory" cards that upgrade based on that national teams' performance. There's been the "WC Heroes" which are boosted versions of the Hero cards, which are mostly good. There's also the actual non-FUT world cup mode where you can go play whatever to your hearts content.

But within FUT, basically each participating nations squads all have temporary red World Cup cards. EA are being quite generous in dishing them out too. You'll get a few as a bonus for opening any pack you get just now, really. The idea being that you collect them then at the end of the tournament you get rewards based on how many you get.

But it's all well and good getting these cards just to collect, what about somewhere you can build a team with them and use them? They pretty much all have the same rating and stats as their normal silver or gold card, but it's WC fever and omg they're red!!!!, let's do something with them eh?

Don't fret. They also launched alongside it all a "swap token" program. This is common in FUT over the years. Complete challenges, earn tokens, then use those tokens via Squad Building Challenges to get something spicy. For instance, 40 tokens will get you a special WC Icon version of Patrick Viera, a meta as fuck midfielder. Or 30 will get you a WC Cafu. There's also big ass jumbo packs too, we call them fodder packs. There's players to get all the way down to 3 or 4 tokens, so yeah, lots of options, lots to do.

But here's my issue, and what I'm really getting at. In releasing these tokens, EA have put the vast majority of them behind challenges that require you to play a competitive online "friendly" mode where first goal wins. Yep, it's golden goal. And the challenge is, you have to use six red WC cards from the same nation, for every nation. Yes, thirty two tokens are in here, one for each nation, and with each nation you need six golden goal wins to get the token.

Doing the math, that's 192 wins in total you need for 32 tokens. Six Qatari players, then six Saudi, then six Ecuadorian, and so on. Max four nations in each team. But, what if you've got six Saudi, and they're all attackers or midfield, or even worse, fuckin 40 pace defenders? Tough tits, gotta use them. Pad out the other positions with what else you've got, using a max of four nations across the XI&subs, and hope for the best. Got Mbappe? Cool, you're set cos EA made him the most broken attacker seen in years. Well, I don't... Seems everyone but me has him...

But because its Golden Goal, there's zero consequence to using the much-maligned Constant Pressure tactic. In a normal game, your players stamina would be done by HT, but it's GG, so why not use it? What that means on the pitch, for each game, is you have zero time on the ball, constantly being pressed and tackled. In "friendlies", your squad remains unaffected from one game to the next, so fuck red cards and suspensions, doesn't matter! You can just hack and press and sweat with no detriment to you. It's so unbelievably toxic and has me ripping my hair out as I try to score with some Canadian jobber. Sure, it gets easier when you get to the bigger nations but even Spain has some donkey fut cards. Pique with 42 pace, anyone?..

This is kinda unprecedented as previous years' swap token grinds also featured tokens behind daily SBC's, with just some being earned via actual gameplay. Here, all but 3 of the fifty are in gameplay (thankfully some are in offline modes where it is much easier). But that all takes time. A lot of fucking time.

Then!!! Because their account-banning automated software started softbanning people as they had so many "quitted" games on their record that were actually just GG losses, EA introduced a limit to the number of attempts you have in this mode to just ten a day. Ten. Ten times you can load it up, matchmake, load in, kick off, have some twisty turny demon rip you apart, watch them sweat one, then watch the celebration, then the end-game cutscenes, then go thru the post-game menus, then load back to the menu, then start again. After sizeable backlash they increased it to sixty, but people are still being softbanned.

I get that in live service games there can be time-limited content. Sometimes you're right into a game and get it all, sometimes you come to it late and miss out. But to actively limit how much you can actually play something, when it's also actually in a mode that actively rewards the most toxic gameplay, is just maddening to me. This is something I'd expect in a bogstandard Asian mobile game with twelve different currencies and shady mechanics. But in a game I've already paid £70 for? I now don't have a choice to how much I want to play it? What in the fuck?

"Build your ULTIMATE TEAM and take them to victory online!" - but here's the thing, EA. My actual team, my ULTIMATE TEAM I've built and grinded for hasn't been touched or played in two weeks cos you've got me grinding out this absolute nonsense in golden goal with utter donkeys. Haven't been in the modes with weekly rewards that are meant for your main, so no pack supply coming in. Got no fodder in my club to do the SBC's with decent players you've been releasing, so my options are either: grind GG to get a fodder pack from Swaps, or buy fifa points lol. In December. Sure.

And its not like the swap token program is some niche mode only hardcores will know about. Its on the main splash every day when you log in, SWAP TOKENS OUT NOW! GET A VIERA! A CAFU! etc. It's a main tenet of the WC update. The WC is the biggest footballing event, and Fifa the biggest football game played by hundreds of millions, so it's there front and centre. Can you imagine watching the WC on TV, deciding "hey, maybe I'll get the new fifa cos that's where the World Cup is", buying the fucking thing for fifty quid them being presented with that? Here's a mode that, and I'll repeat, actively rewards the worst aspects of online gameplay through the ruleset that they've chosen. Earn those WC players and get cracking. Use those three Costa Rican left backs you've got in your back line vs Mbappe and Haaland and R9. Enjoy. And after every defeat, will we put in a quick rematch/re-matchmake option? Nah, go through all the menus again. Welcome to Fifa 23. Oh! You managed to somehow fluke one? Well done. Do that another five times. Then do THAT another thirty-one times. Then maybe, maybe, you'll get something. Oh, and we've limited the amount of tries you're allowed because our automated banning software is fucking useless. Wonderful community fostering content and rollout from the lads. Well fucking done.


Now, to kinda wrap it up, I'm not being salty about losing. If some cunt is clearly better than me, then so be it. There are a multitude of issues with the actual gameplay that I could write another essay about, but this is solely about the content and it's release, and their decision to put it in that mode, and then apply a limit of attempts to it. Its absolutely mind-boggling. I paid hard earned money for this shite and I should be able to choose how and when I get fucked by it, for fucks sake.


Right, that was an enjoyable work poo.

Please understand.

I dunno what others would call "griefing" in fifa, but there's a lot of dickish behaviour one can indulge in. It's everywhere though, it really is the worst of the worst in the game modes tied to a grind elsewhere. At least in weekend league, the weekly ranked online mode with real skill level based matchmaking involved, its just simply no. of wins = packs. When specific cards or special packs become the grind, it becomes more a test of will than anything.



I've actually been playing some weird Konami eFootball mobile card collecting battler gacha shite on my phone this week. It has mildly scratched the itch that fifa hasn't went near this past wee while.





And after all that, I've done enough of the GG mode to get what I want and am happy with. Moving on and forgetting it ever happened.

I would echo that FIFA, outside of FUT, is a really great comprehensive package that will let yoy play football all day long.

The issue is that FUT is front and centre and plays a huge part of FOMO around FIFA online when it is a great game to just play. So if you can disengage, what a time you'll have

Yeah they were the days. I'd take a switch ML remaster with me everywhere.

Not to be a dick - but I’d disagree with the idea that single player career-mode FIFA is fine. It isn’t. There’s legacy bugs in there that haven’t been fixed in nearly a decade - bugs I remember from FIFA 11-13 that still existed in 20-22. The career mode had had fuck all improvements and it’s clear that’s not where their heart is.

If you want a single player Football game ala Classic Master League Pro Evo, don’t waste your time on FIFA.

Not a dick at all, it's been apparent for years Frostbite has been terrible for fifa. Should've ditched it long ago, game is kinda like a big ol' frankenstein jenga. Each patch in danger of toppling it all.

You know, in following all sorts of fifa accounts, and keeping up with whatever we're all complaining about that week, I've never seen anyone bring that up. Doesn't make it any less shit. In FUT, there's just a running "recent results" part when I invite someone in my friends list to a game.

But I don't do that any more since Chaz broke our "no sweats" gentleman's agreement.

We’ve had fifa 23 a month or so now. Frame rate issues on PS5 are still a thing for me, and notable graphic glitches particularly when taking free kicks / corners. The most annoying is like a banding effect, I initially thought this was a broadcast camera effect - where horizontal lines will slowly run up the screen but this seems to be happening all the time now.

Can’t find anything online about it so thought it was my tv but I don’t have any issue with any other games.

Odd.