 Hey guys, it's Nate, A.K. the Foot Account, and welcome back to the channel. We have a little bit of a different video today, guys. I am away for a day, and I'm not able to get the normal content video out where we look at yesterday's content, look at today's content that is upcoming, but I still want to get you guys a video, and I think this is one that I alluded to a couple of days ago in one of my uploads that I said that I think I have some reasonings, and I think I've seen kind of the reasons why this game is in the state that it is in. Now, this is not a rant video today or anything like that. This is just, okay, I'm going to take a step back and look at what has happened in this game in the past couple of weeks and honestly a couple of months, and I think we have some reasons, and it's actually right there in front of us as to why a lot of people are feeling very frustrated with the game right now, and it's really because EA made the content too good, too fast, and yeah, you're like, what? I'm going to talk about that and break it down today. So again, this is not a rant video. We're going to look at the bad, we're going to look at some of the good, because Future Stars has been kind of solid for some aspects of the game. So I'm going to break it down today and talk about some of these things and we'll be back with a normal episode video upload, looking at the newest Future Stars content and everything again, looking ahead tomorrow. But since I'm away today, I still want to get a video up for you guys. So if you're excited for it, drop a thumbs up and subscribe if you're new. Now, I know here's the problem, right? Let's talk about the problem first and then the reasonings behind it. The problem is this game after Team of the Year has really been on the decline, right? The Team of the Year cards being as unpackable as they were, it started to frustrate everybody, but Team of the Year did not start in a frustrating way. Team of the Year started really, really good. When the positional releases were out with the SBCs that were happening, content leading up to Team of the Year, we were very excited for it, right? And honestly, like I was saying, Team of the Year started incredible. Everybody was excited to start off this Team of the Year promo. I remember putting out this tweet right here saying, this Team of the Year pack grind is about to hit different because the cards looked packable on the market. I remember when Sophia Smith was like 1.5 million coins and Sam Kerr was like 1.2 mil before they absolutely exploded and EA changed the pack weight, right? The pack weight was decent. We had insane player SBCs and we were like, oh my goodness, the menu grind opening pack during Team of the Year, this is going to be one of the best Team of the Years we have ever had. It's going to be so much fun. And it started off that way, but that is not how it ended, of course, because EA made those changes, right? The pack weight. But one thing that I think is really hurting the game now more than it did before is because of the SBCs. And that's the biggest point I'm going to bring up today, guys. And I think this is the biggest reason right now, one of the two biggest reasons that this game is really kind of in a downfall and it's kind of falling off because of this content in SBCs, guys. And I'm looking at a couple of SBCs specifically. I'm looking at the icon of SBCs. I'm looking at Sawa. I'm looking at Rude Hulet. I mean, you could argue he is too overpriced and not as many people did him, but it's come into the meta that he is so good. But specifically Sawa, George Best, Ziko, Terry Henry, and these icon SBCs, guys. EA, I think, released cards in icon SBCs that boosted so many of our teams and boosted the power curve and gave these cards out to so many people that it transformed our teams so much during Team of the Year that now as we've gone past Team of the Year and the content has not continually improved our teams, we are left kind of, I guess, underwhelmed, right? Think about all the cards that have come out recently from road to the final cards. Yes, they're live. Some of them have two playstyle pluses, but they were hard to pack. Future Stars, I got very lucky packing a Trinity Rodman, but other than that, none of the other ones that I have packed and really none of the other SBCs besides Cloudy Opinia really get into my main team, right? That's kind of the problem, I think, with the menus that this game has at the moment is that so many people upgraded their teams like crazy around the team of the year timeframe with all the SBCs that were out, it's now like that power curve progressed too fast and now we're feeling the downside effects of that because we're not able to upgrade our teams after a couple of weeks or maybe a month or so with cards that feel like they should be good enough to fit our team. I mean, here's a great comparison. This is my team right now, right? We got the Mbappe, we've got the Davies, which is an absolutely insane SBC. We have the Bruno on the bench, brand new card that just got done, Sawa, right? Absolutely insane card. The Hulets been there, the Mbappe's been there. But this is my team before team of the year. This is actually around the start of Winter Wild Cards. I took a screenshot of my team here. I have Gold Kyle Walker, I have Blanc. I've got Player of the Month, Harry Maguire. Yes, Basha and Mbappe are in the team. I think Mbappe is the only card that is in my team still from this team that was, I think, middle of December or maybe early December. And I know that's like three months and it's like, okay, that's a long time that your team should progress. But look at the levels to which my team has progressed, right? I'm looking at an 87-rated Kevin De Bruyne Flashback that I have upgraded to a 93-rated Sawa. You know what I'm saying? And I'm going to an 86-rated Player of the Month, Harry Maguire. And I now have an 89-rated Evo, Chris Richards. But I'm really actually playing Kim Min Jae in the team. Adama has been updated to Rodman. Declan Rice has been updated to Hulet. I mean, so many of these card and these SBCs that we have had during the past two months in this game, boosted the power curve. I bet a few guys went back and took a look at your teams and realized how many of the players via SBCs or maybe from a Icon Player Pick SBC or a Hero Player Pick SBC that you got kind of lucky from. All those SBCs that we did during Team of the Year exploded our teams up into the meta so much and made them so good that the cards that have been coming out don't meet that type of level and they aren't as good or as grindable that our teams are not improving. And that is what the problem is, right? The last couple of promos, albeit decent. I mean, road to the final, everybody was like so mad at EA during this promo because the pack weight was bad again. Yes, the playstyle pluses on the double PS Plus cards here were cool and they were good and these cards are alive and everything, but they were so unpackable and it just was like, wow, this game sucks. Everybody arrived for Team of the Year was super disappointed and it just kind of left us in this not so fun state. But I think it's guys like, again, just to look back over the insane SP, I wonder how many of you guys have at least two of these players or did two of these SBCs during Team of the Year? Ziko, Kaffu, Best, Sawa. I mean, not to mention Alfonso Davies, Bruno Fernandez, so many insane SBCs during Team of the Year and those were like, that's why we were so excited. Like that's why looking at this tweet, I was so excited about how the menus were gonna be because that content was so insane. It was gonna be an amazing Team of the Year, but what we didn't think about after that was how the content was gonna go. We talk about all the time in this game on how EA kind of makes this content move in like mountains and valleys, right? Team of the Year was a mountaintop experience for like crafting and all of that and now we're kind of down in the valley, it seems. It's gonna come back up again. There's gonna be insane boosted power cards, probably thinking like foot birthday type of timeframe. Well, where they will release probably a huge boost to the meta, but until we get there, it just feels like we're in this kind of valley as we upgraded our teams crazy, crazy, crazy and now it's just kind of like, this is a whole lot of mid or a whole lot of L aspects to it. So I think that is problem number one with the menus right now that is making people frustrated. All these new cards that are coming out. Yes, the Paul is cool. Yes, this Jota card is cool, but it doesn't get into most people's team especially if you grind the menus a lot. Doesn't get into your team. Now, if you're somebody who maybe just started the game during Team of the Year, if you're a newer player of the game, if you just got it recently, you're probably like, okay, this is still pretty dope content. I'm still grinding through these icons. I'm still crafting. Whereas a lot of us who have been playing the game for a long time are looking at this and saying, dude, we need more. We need another big Future Star icon to craft. We need another big SBC to craft because after Team of the Year, we had all of these which most of us have completed the ones we wanted to do and now we crave that again. Like we want a Cruyff Future Star icon, SBC type of thing. You know what I'm saying? Like we want another expensive icon player SBC that we can grind towards and craft towards because that is something that has given us a very good outcome. We've seen that incredibly. And like Sawa, Ziko, all these, it's been incredible so far this year. We want that again. And since that has kind of expired, it feels like it's been taken away from us a little bit. I would even wrap evolutions into the conversation a little bit as well. Not really during Team of the Year, but I mean, you look at that team that I showed you of my squad back during December and evolutions have kind of crazily, you know, snuck their way into a lot of people's teams as well. Now you have to have a little bit more passion to use an Evo. They're not as meta, but like it is nice that the Future Star Academy attackers, defenders and the midfielders, like those are good, good Evo's, right? The Academy Evo's, those are nice. But even during Winter Wild Cards, a lot of people were getting Evo's that were going straight into the team with like Pep's legacy and that's what helped me create this insane Ryan Sesson Yone card and a lot of people are still using these sorts of Evo's at least as Super Subs in their teams too because those evolutions boosted the power curve so much on those specific cards. It just feels like the power curve in terms of SBCs and the players that were able to craft through evolutions went up so much during December and January on this game that now in honestly, February, late January, early February, we're feeling the effects of like, okay, it went up too fast and now it's kind of like, okay, this sucks because it's not going up any further and we're getting a little bit of a low period. But I will say, with some of these new cards that are coming out, Future Stars Team 2, we're still seeing some pretty good cards come out guys. This Zyar Emory card, like those stats, that to me is something that is, we're getting close to like, team of the season level. I know that team of the season every year looks different but just look at this Zyar Emory card with two playstyle pluses, 90 pace, 90 dribbling, 85 above in every of the important stats. Of course, 80 shooting, okay, he's more of a CM center defensive mid. That's fine, right? But like, we're almost getting to 90s in a lot of these different stat categories for a marquee card and a promo. Take a look at Kefrem Taram's Tots card last year. This is a card that came out in, oh yeah, almost May by the way, team of the season started last year, late April, very early May. This card was 400K. He didn't have a stat in the 90s but he had all 84 above stats. A lot of 87s, couple 88s, couple 89s. Like this card is not far off from that and that I think is a testament to how much the power curve has gone up in the recent weeks on this game and especially what team of the year started with those big boosted cards. We knew the team of the year cards were gonna be insane, obviously. They are every single year but it just seems like the power curve in terms of the players stats this year went up so much that EA has to try to keep building on that and they're right now just building on it in very small incremental values which is causing us to be a little bit not as happy because it's smaller changes and not the big jumps like we saw around the team of the year time frame. So I think that's the menu content. I could show you a couple other examples like this Basha card. That's an almost TOTS level left back for sure, right? Now for team of the season this year we're thinking maybe three play style pluses is a part of the cards they're gonna release which is gonna completely change the power curve when we get there for sure but like high 80s stats and 90s on a card. Same thing for like Cold Palmer. Like this is getting crazy, man. We are getting to the like almost end game level stats so early on this year. It is absolutely wild. So that's kind of the menu conversation that I wanna have for today. I don't wanna make this video super long because I think I've gotten my point across already but the other thing I wanna mention too is a problem that's been here since the beginning of the game is gameplay opportunities and gameplay abilities. Like in other games when you think about I don't know like GTA you think about Fortnite. You think about even other games like Call of Duty where the gameplay is the central thing. Same thing for FC24. The gameplay is really the backbone of the game where you use all these cards, right? It's just we don't have anything new and fresh in gameplay and the gameplay has gotten old this year. Maybe it's, I don't think it's for a lack of updates. I just think it's for a lack of way that people play the game and even the modes that we have to play in, right? For the way that people play the game obviously it's the cutbacks. Obviously it's that sort of meta. The AI defending this year being so OP that you just have, it seems like eight defenders in the box or near the box at all times if you're even trying to dribble down and work in and around the box. Like the AI this year is so OP and it sits back so far even without crazy laid back sitback tactics on a squad. It's just like the AI does that itself. That's been a complaint the whole entire year and that has not helped the grindability of this game. It doesn't make you wanna log on each week and say I gotta play the game to get my rivals rewards. Like I get my rivals rewards on weeks where it's convenient for me and when I need the fodder because the menu grind is good. I played rivals this last week because the 80 plus player pick was there and it was like, okay, I need all those golds to put into this player pick. That gave me a reason to play the game a little bit more. It was a combination of the menu content with the gameplay content, right? But the gameplay by itself is just not holding its own this year. And I think you can tell by just the number of matches played by maybe a lot of you guys. I mean, there's so many things we could dive into here. I think they could utilize friendlies a whole lot more. And I really think there's got to be a big change coming for FC 25 with the gameplay mode, guys, because I don't know if they're gonna get rid of one and add a new one in. They're gonna bring back tournaments of some sort. But I think that's been the biggest gameplay complaint this year is that there were no updates and refreshes to the way that we play this game. It's just rivals, champs, squad battles for evolutions and friendlies. And I'll say this, too, EA is gonna come out after a couple more months and say, FC 24, there were the most matches played ever of any ultimate team. Well, yeah, that's obvious because they added in the biggest new feature of this game, which does involve gameplay. It is evolutions. But for this gameplay, guys, I mean, we're not going out and just grinding games because we want the rewards of the gameplay. We want the rewards of the menus, which are the cards that we're collecting through evolutions. That's what we're chasing here. They've given us an opportunity to play, to upgrade. That's what we value the most. It's not the actual fun of playing the game that we are going and playing those games for. It is the playing to upgrade the card, which to them is more people interacting with their game, more people playing their game. But for us, it's just like we're getting a task done. We're not enjoying the task while we are, while we are tasking, I guess, if that makes sense. So I think that's one of the biggest changes that they need to make for FC 24 as five as well. It's just giving us more ways and more reasons to actually play the game more so than just to get a task done. So that's probably the most common criticism with the menus as well. But that's kind of the conversation I wanted to bring up, guys. How are you feeling? I want to read through some of these comments. I'm still going to be active a little bit on social media today as I'm away and stuff. But I want to see you guys's comments and how you're feeling about the game at the moment because I know a lot of you guys have logged off and you've said, oh man, this is not for me right now. And for a decent reason, right? It's fun to take a break from the game 100%. There is no problem with that. But it just seems like that right now is in one of those, we're in one of those valleys. And yeah, Future Stars is not bad. The content in the menus, the SPC content last week of Team 1 was fantastic. The player picks, the pack grind, the objectives solid, right? I'm not going to complain. It's really, really good content. But it's just we're still the team of the year kind of negative vibes and the fact that a lot of these cards, albeit packable for Future Stars, don't necessarily get into our teams is a little bit of the problem. So I want to know your comments down below guys, but that's the video for today. I will see you guys for a normal upload tomorrow. And yeah, please share your comments down below because I love hearing from you guys. I love hearing how you're feeling, the positives, the negatives because I know everybody's in a different spot and that's what I enjoy hearing. I want to hear from you guys down there. So again, if you did enjoy it, drop a thumbs up, subscribe if you're new. See you guys in the video tomorrow. It's been Nate the Count. Peace.