- Dexerto’s Games Editor Lloyd Coombes has suggested that FIFA can adopt Warzone’s approach
- Instead of having the multiplayer blocked behind several paywalls, he proposed making Ultimate Team a separate game
- Coombes believes that this will benefit both the game, the community and EA itself
According to a suggestion by Lloyd Coombes, FIFA can benefit a lot by making Ultimate Team a separate game like Call of Duty did with Warzone.
How Warzone Changed Call of Duty
FIFA 22 is the last entry in the popular virtual football franchise. It improves on almost every known aspect of the previous games and is definitely one of the best sports titles to date.
Yet, for all its benefits, FIFA 22 has had some controversy tied to it, mostly in relation to its Ultimate Team mode. Because of the mode’s chance-based paid card packs, people have accused FIFA of promoting loot box-based gambling.
Dexerto’s Games Editor, Lloyd Coombes, has made an unorthodox proposition by suggesting that Electronic Arts can get some inspiration from Call of Duty Warzone.
Before Warzone’s release, fans had to buy a new Call of Duty game each year if they wanted to play competitively – a format that is much similar to FIFA’s. Each game cost $60 and included a multiplayer mode, a cooperative mode, and most of the time a single-player campaign.
Call of Duty Warzone was released in 2020 as a revolutionary title that changed this format – it was a completely free multiplayer battle royale title. Warzone’s mechanics were the culmination of everything Call of Duty players had seen until now. But most importantly, people who bought the latest mainline Call of Duty title were able to drop their loadouts into Warzone.
FIFA Can Take a Lesson or Two
Coombes suggested that FIFA can adopt a similar approach and make the Ultimate Team mode a free standalone game, instead of forcing people to buy a new title and new card packs each year.
This will make it more appealing to the broader audience. EA can then keep the microtransactions and still have Ultimate Team as a lucrative title. Moreover, even if Ultimate Team is a standalone game, people will likely still buy the mainline FIFA titles, as evidenced by the fact that most hardcore Warzone players still get the new Call of Duty titles.
Opening up Ultimate Team will also likely bring a lot of new people to the franchise as people who are reluctant to pay for a title they are not familiar with will be able to experience virtual football and decide whether they want to invest more in it. This approach has yielded Warzone over 100 million players in a year, so there isn’t a reason why it won’t work for FIFA.
Other than becoming more newcomer-friendly, FIFA will leave its veteran players a breather as they will no longer have to pay both $60 dollars for the game and up to several times as much more for card packs. Coombes added that implementing a battle pass system will be another way to keep the game monetized without having it prey upon its users.
Finally, the author mentioned that since this year’s title has introduced HyperMotion, it means that FIFA has upgraded its engine. Because of that, now is the perfect moment for FIFA to adopt Warzone’s approach.
Despite Call of Duty and FIFA’s evident genre differences, there is no reason Coombes suggestions wouldn’t work. If else, he provides a curious and thought-provoking analysis on how to improve an already beloved title and open it up to a larger audience.
