Have you found success aside from those types of players particularly so far?

I have.

I have.

So we'll start at fullback, though, because I packed John Onorisa out of that base hero pack.

And he is sensational.

He doesn't really stand out in any particular attribute, but he's big.

And because people refuse to defend and spam off sidetrap, you can literally just get the ball with him by his own cornflag and just run down the line the whole length of the field.

Yeah, what rewards have you been taking and kind of how are you feeling about the token approach?

Like, in terms of those changes, is there anything that excites you in terms of the, you know, now being able to almost choose your own adventure within an individual evolution rather than just in general?

There's, there's, there's a lot there.

I, I first wanna talk about the campaign items.

If they do do something like make a player with really high dribbling who's terrible at passing there, is that not just gonna create a world where we have these, like, imbalanced players through Evos eventually? Because if you've got, like, an 85 rated or 88 rated campaign item that's got really high pace and really high dribbling, eventually you're just gonna be able to Evo up the other stats and then boom, you've got yourself, like, a really, a really top-tier card.

In terms of the, the kind of cr- take your path thing, I, I think this is one of the things that I'm gonna really enjoy with, like, my Arsenal team or whatever, because if, for example, there's a really cool Evo and I'm playing, let's say the big man meta is back and I can fit Bukayo Saka in it, or maybe he's too high rated.

Like, I can fit Madueke in it.

And there's like, oh, you either take him as an inside forward, which 98% of the community will do, or you take them as a winger with whip pass on them.

[laughs]

Now, as I say, they hadn't told any of the content creators, so when this came out, there were a lot of content creators who were unhappy, um, and I'll, like, hand over to Nep at this point to kind of talk about the fallout and then what's happened since.

Yeah.

So, uh, uh, obviously it sounds horrific straight away, but I just wanna relay it to people that will be listening and relay it in an Ultimate Team sense is how I would view it.

This is like EA, because it's not, like, EA has their own, you know, Ult- you know, FIFA that has their own, like, modes like this, like Josh explained.

But, uh, for, for Ultimate Team, it's like EA next year putting world-class, legendary, and Ultimate Squad battles behind a paywall, and every time the week resets, you have to pay again to unlock them.

But they're still putting out objectives that are like, "Play world-class or higher difficulty to unlock this objective." That's kind of, that's how snakey it is.

Like, they've taken something that was already in the game and just put it behind a paywall.

... kind of make sense?

Mm

... always had the potential, and he absolutely gets underappreciated.

And, and, you know, there's always a lot of social media stick around what does he do? And, you know, much like Pedri- Like Pedri's had a bit of a slow World Cup but people still sort of talk on actually what he's done is he, he keeps Spain ticking.

And I d- I don't think you can look past that.

I think Ødegaard's output dropped significantly last season 'cause he had a shoulder injury like back-to-back games, didn't he? And then another impact injury on his knee.

Um, and he was out for a long time, and it was hard for him to really get into the team.

And by the time he was back fit the rest of the team was just absolutely shattered.

Yeah.

So, um, in the break actually, Nev, you were saying it's interesting because packing player on goals, for example, feels kind of different to Ultimate Team for various reasons, and there's maybe a, a little, little add-on point we can make before, before moving on.

Yeah, yeah.

I was, uh, I was kind of just, uh...

I, well, I asked 'cause I didn't know if I was allowed to talk about goals on here, otherwise I would've said it j- you know, before the break.

But, um, one thing that I really like about what they have in their game is that when you open a pack, you get, like, a player.

It could be, like, a 46 plus player or a 70 plus player, but the player that comes out has random stat dist- distribution, so they could have 90 pace with, like, 99 acceleration and 80 sprint speed or whatever.

Or they could literally have, for example, like, 60 dribbling, but 99 close dribbling, and I, I really like that in itself.

Mm.

I think it's a pretty ginormous change to a very core principle of how the game is played.

I just, I just want to touch on my interpretation of that sentence you read.

I read it as skilled players will be able to get 1,000 tokens from squad battles or live events or rivals and then SBCs and objectives.

Like, because they use the term or between the second and third game mode, it basically says to me, if you're able to get the top reward in one of these three categories, the others will kind of complement the rest of the tokens.

So, and that's why I actually think people might play the game less because there will be a most efficient hour per token grind, and especially that division five is 400 tokens and division one [laughs] is 400 tokens.

I'm sitting in division five to get 400 tokens, and then I'm going to squad battles and having three hour, three hours of gameplay to get my elite three to get 400 tokens, and then I'll just finish off with whatever little I need to.

And now all of a sudden I could probably get my 1,000 tokens in about six hours of gameplay, which I could never achieve if I wanted to get all of the rewards for live events, objectives, you know, rivals, and squad battles.

And I suppose my question to Nep would be i- is, is this a step towards a new series of the, of the same TV show or is this a, is, do you think this is a spinoff entirely?

And then what are your base play styles?

Base play styles, jockey and block for obvious reasons.

Um, for, for me, I think pinged and long ball are super, super valuable.

And of course bruiser would have to be in there.

At this point, honestly, you just pick what you want.

[laughs] Like, that, that's it.

Everything's covered.

There are games that attract both audiences, and I don't think it should just be a case of like, "Oh, because you're old, that's why you're not enjoying this game." I think, I think there are deeper issues than just that.