FIFA Ultimate Team is the marquee mode of EA’s football game franchise. Tasking players with setting up a team of players using digital trading cards, which can also be purchased in booster packs using real cash, the mode has garnered EA an unfathomable amount of cash since its introduction in FIFA 10 back in 2009. However, an investigation by FIFA 16 players appears to have uncovered some damning evidence, which suggests that the hugely popular mode has potentially been broken for the past seven years.
FIFA players have always been suspicious that something was not quite right with Ultimate Team, with there existing a conspiracy theory that more powerful (and expensive) teams actually performed worse than their cheaper counterparts. Now Reddit user and YouTuber RighteousOnix has added more fuel to this fire, by seemingly uncovering a glitch pertaining to players’ chemistry ratings. The glitch, which RighteousOnix outlines in the below video, indicates how the stat boosts that should be granted to players with higher chemistry ratings are only applied to day one cards, the cheapest cards available in the game. Chemistry ratings, which are increased when players are placed in their correct positions or are linked up with teammates of the same nationality/club, are seemingly not applied to more expensive and rarer cards.
Considering chemistry ratings are vital to a team’s success in FIFA, that only day one cards appear to be given the boosts afforded to them by a higher chemistry rating effectively means that they’re therefore more valuable than rare and more valuable cards. When you take into account that the pursuit of these cards have seen thousands upon thousands of pounds being pumped into the game, things become considerably more questionable and downright suspicious.
RighteousOnix highlighted how these stat boosts appear to have no impact upon cards of higher value, by showing how the “no touch sprint step over” skill move – which requires a dribbling stat of 86 – was only able to be utilized by day one players who had received a chemistry boost. Other cards were not able to pull off the move, suggesting that their stats had not been boosted. This therefore means that an Ultimate Team with less valuable cards but a higher chemistry ratings will more often than not be more valuable than one with an abundance of rare cards, as a result of the latter not being able to take advantage of the stat boosts.
Chemistry ratings having no impact upon non-day one cards isn’t outlined by the mode, meaning that if RighteousOnix’s outlined theory is correct, many players have been working towards building an expensive team that may not actually give them any discernible advantage. Considering how much money is piled into this mode, if true this will no doubt raise the ire of many players, with this discrepancy believed to stretch all the way back to 2009.
Check out RighteousOnix’s video below:
We have reached out to EA comment. We’ll update this story if we receive any more details.
