Month: March 2015

There are a lot of discussions on new transfer system called Price Ranges, which was been released by EA Sports a few days ago and may help save FIFA 15 Coins when buying a player in Transfer Market. Some gamers thinks this update would be a great change and others do not agree.

Anyway, FIFA 15. Specifically, FIFA 15’s Ultimate Team mode. EA managed to whip up quite frenzy of anger earlier this week when they introduced changes to how the transfer system works in that mode of player. Previously, players could be listed at any price. Now, there are minimum and maximum price caps for all players and items (contracts, and so on.)

This week, the IncGamers Poll is going to canvas opinion on these dramatic changes. From laissez-faire to a fully regulated virtual economy; what does this mean for the FIFA 15 Ultimate Team transfer market?

So, the question is pretty straightforward: “What do you think of EA’s changes to the FIFA 15 Ultimate Team transfer system?” Your options range from “They’re terrible” to “I don’t really care.”

As usual, the poll will close in roughly one week’s time and the results will be put up in a news item. You can read about last week’s results (asking about Valve’s GDC announcements) over here.

Vote in the poll below, or over on the right-hand side bar there.

What do you think of EA’s changes to the FIFA 15 Ultimate Team transfer system?

Terrible. EA have basically ruined FUT’s transfer market.
Not sure yet. The new system needs more time to develop.
They’re fine, FUT players are over-reacting.
FIX UR SERVERS EA

The new update have been released by EA Sports already, but it seems that many FIFA 15 fans are not satisfied with this update for Ultimate Team, which is called Price Ranges and may help saving FIFA 15 Coins when buying a player in Transfer Market. EA thinks that this “Price Ranges” ensure a level playing field to all FUT gamers, it’s good changes for all gamers.

When the new feature of the association football simulation video game is activated, all items in the FIFA 2015 Ultimate Team including players, in-forms, consumables, and club items, shall have a Price Range.

Apart from setting the highest and lowest coin prices that each item can be sold on the Transfer Market, the Price Range shall also restrict illegitimate coin transfers on the same market, notes EA Sports in the FIFA 15 website.

Developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts, FIFA 15 was released to the last gen and next gen gaming consoles and the PC on September 23, 2014. It is the first game in the FIFA video game series to be fully licensed by the Premier League.

Level playing field

EA Sports disclosed that while the Price Ranges for every FUT item will differ from the current prices, their relative value to other player items on the Transfer Market will remain consistent to ensure a level playing field for gamers.

The developer also said that all Price Ranges will be universal across all gaming platforms. Once a player puts an item on the Transfer Market, the range at which it can be sold will appear. This price range will be set by the FIFA team based on trends of previous Transfer Market prices.

Open bid transfers shall become unavailable after Price Ranges have been activated. So if a player wants to list an item on the Transfer Market, he has to set a ‘Buy It Now’ price within the Price Range.

The Price Ranges for each FUT item will be set wide enough for gamers. The feature for certain players may also be adjusted in the future as EA continues to improve it. Meanwhile, new ‘in-form’ FUT player items will receive a Price Range upon its release.

Fun and fair

While EA Sports see that there will be some period of adjustments among fans and gamers on how the Transfer Market and Price Ranges will take effect and impact the game, the developer sees long-term benefit on the change as it will make the video game more fun and fair for everyone.

Still, the developer is open to accepting feedbacks from fans and gamers despite the fact that it is confident that the balanced benefits of the Price Ranges feature will be more appreciated in the long run.

While changes on the Price Ranges are being effected, the Transfer Market will remain inaccessible from the web and companion apps, explained EA Sports.

A new feature called ‘Price Ranges’ has been released by EA Sports on Monday, which brings great changes to FIFA 15 Ultimate Team. Gamers may save some FIFA 15 Coins, because there is a minimum and maximum price of players in Transfer market, which helps the purchase.

Let’s push the brakes a little first for those who have no idea what the above sentence means.

Ultimate Team is EA Sport’s ridiculously popular cash-cow game mode in FIFA 15. The players in FIFA Ultimate Team are represented by cards which the user can pull from a pack (similar to Premier League stickers back in the day) which can be purchased with real money or in game coins which are earned through playing matches and trading players on the market place. The cards are either bronze, silver, or gold players depending on the player’s overall rating.

Since the introduction of Ultimate Team to FIFA back in FIFA 09, there has been no minimum or maximum price that you can sell a player for which has meant that users could shop the market for bargains and re-list them for their actual value. That value is normally determined by how effective each player is, not their overall rating, and a lot of that comes down to pace. If a player is fast, chances are he’s worth a bit of money. Trading has almost become more important than playing the game, as this addictive stock-market-style activity can build up your coins to spend on the best players, thus ensuring you have the strongest team available.

What you should be aiming to do is play some games with your crap players at the start, earn some coins, and start trading. Look for a bargain, buy him, sell him on for profit. Slowly you can build up your coins and better players become available to you.

But not every FIFA player has the time to sit there watching the market for hours a day, looking for bargains and buying in bulk to sell on, so how does the average Joe get a squad with Ronaldo, Messi, and Bale as his front three? Well, he pays for it. EA Sports understand that some consumers will pay for a helping hand, so they made FUT Packs available in exchange for FIFA Points which you buy from the Xbox/Sony marketplace with real money. The problem with these packs is that they are entirely random. If you go buying packs looking for Messi, you will be waiting a long time. It’s much more likely that you will end up with Richard Dunne. (That’s no disrespect to one of Ireland’s best ever players by the way, it’s just that Richard is the slowest player in FUT and therefore completely useless to you.)

Understandably, users are not willing to plough thousands of pounds into opening random packs or countless hours on the maket, so third party websites (there are hundreds of them) have began farming FIFA coins from the market to sell on at fixed price, for example, you can pay €10 for 100,000 coins which will buy you a strong team to start out with. The method of delivery for these coins is that you list one of your worthless players from your club on the market for the amount of coins you paid for, and they buy the player from you. Consumers undoubtedly prefer this method as you now can do what you want with the coins you bought, but it’s not all good news, as more and more people buy more and more coins, the prices of players can reach ridiculous heights. As a player who doesn’t spend money on packs or players, you have almost no chance of getting the likes of Ronaldo or Messi in your team.

The Price Range introduction effectively means an end to coin sellers, as you can no longer list a cheap player and have him bought for a high amount of coins. What EA Sports want to do is level the playing field, making it so that the elite players are not priced way above what the majority of their users can afford. Also, they want you to spend money on packs to get your players, so it’s not like they are swooping in to the aid of their fan base. In fact, EA Sports have listed the three things that they hope Price Ranges will ensure:

– Help FUT gamers understand the value of the players in their Club.
– Make high-rated players more attainable for all FUT gamers and ensure a level playing field.
– Further restrict illegitimate coin transfers on the Transfer Market.

But are these goals really going to be achieved?

Yes, players will now immediately know the value of the players they have in their club, but previously all you had to do was look at the market to find out what they sell for. There was no problem there previously.

Are high-priced players really going to be more attainable? If Leo Messi’s price range remains as it is in the above picture, from 5 million to 7.5 million, and the only way to earn coins is by opening packs that I’ve paid EA for or by playing matches, then how the hell is he more attainable? Essentially, rather than paying a coin seller around €100 to pick the best players in the game to choose from, I now have to pay EA Sports to open a random pack and cross my fingers in the hope that I pull a good player? Surely that can’t be right. As it stands now, I know that if I want Messi in my team, I have to pay a few hundred euro or sit on the marketplace all day every day farming coins. With price ranges, it seems that if I want Messi, I’ll have to pay EA Sports for the chance to possibly pull him from a pack, or play more games of FIFA than is humanly possible, considering you get about 500 coins for a win in a match.

The third reason is the most truthful, this will definitely hurt coin sellers. The EA Sports forums, as well as the FIFA Ultimate Team community on twitter and YouTube in particular have been very vocal in their displeasure with this new system, and many think it is EA Sports simply trying to squeeze more money from their customers.

What is far more likely, is that the company have implemented this system near the end of FIFA 15’s life cycle in order to trial it for a new system in FIFA 16, which would include fair prices for players from the start. If that is the case, then it would be a positive, but it remains to be seen whether the trading aspect, easily one of the most popular and arguably defining features of Ultimate Team, will be rendered pointless.

At this moment in time it looks as though EA Sports want the Ultimate Team marketplace to be less eBay, more Amazon. They decide what you should pay for the product you want.

It’s a radical decision by EA Sports. They are hoping that FIFA Ultimate Team price ranges make them more money while stopping coin sellers, and make FIFA Ultimate Team a more level playing field for everyone, but in reality they will count it a success if only one of those two things happens, and it’s not the former.

What’s your opinion about the Price Range? Do this is a good modify of FIFA 15 Ultimate Team or bad?

Most of FIFA 15 players love Ultimate Team, the most popular game mode on FIFA 15. But some players are not happy now because of the join of #RIPFUT, which was added to Ultimate Team after FIFA 15 1.05 patch. This new game mode will be a chance to all illegitimate FIFA 15 Coins transfers, the Ultimate Team will do better actually.

While EA has been planning to implement methods in order to prevent unofficial coin transfers from taking place, the news still hasn’t gone down well with FIFA players, with some even posting photos on social media of their game discs snapped in half, or threats to play Pro Evolution Soccer instead, FIFA‘s closest rival.

Many believed these changes would make their way into FIFA 16, but it appears that EA has chosen to introduce them in FIFA 15 in order to soften the blow for when the next game comes around. Here’s how the addition of price ranges will impact upon FIFA 15‘s Ultimate Team mode:

All Price Ranges will be universal across Xbox, PlayStation and PC.
When you list an item on the Transfer Market, the range at which an item can be sold will appear. These price ranges will be set by the FIFA Team based on analysis of past Transfer Market prices.
Open bid transfers will be unavailable after Price Ranges have been activated. In order to list an item on the Transfer Market, you will have to set a “Buy It Now” price within the Price Range.
The Price Range for each FUT item will be set wide enough for you to still enjoy trading on the Transfer Market.
The Price Range for certain players may be adjusted in the future as we work to improve this feature over time.
New ‘in-form’ FUT player items will receive a Price Range upon release.
Many have pointed to this being an example of EA’s money-grubbing, with websites selling FIFA coins being a huge part of the game’s community and a source of income for many YouTubers who specialize in FIFA gameplay footage. Now that these unofficial coin transfers have been taken out by EA, this will now mean there is once again a larger emphasis placed upon packs, which offer a very low percentage for acquiring rare players, let alone Team of the Week/Month/Year cards.

With so many being of the opinion that this could effectively destroy the transfer market as we know now it and spell a big dip in popularity for Ultimate Team in general, EA will perhaps need to do something to coax players threatening to quit the game to return to it, perhaps by increasing the percentages of obtaining rare players from packs.

Then again, it’s likely that this is another case of people insincerely threatening to boycott a game/developer/publisher, only to come crawling back when the next iteration in the series rolls around.

There was a mysterious new feature in FIFA 15 Ultimate Team in EA Sports’ earlier announcement, which a maintenance period for FIFA 15 and the Ultimate Team and have been teasing for a long time. But now it’s price range have been released, so it’s time to get your FIFA 15 coins ready now.

Developers are aiming to make sure that all games will be able to quickly know how much the players in their own teams cost while giving them more changes to pick up the highest rated stars that can be used to boost any line-up.

EA Sports is also trying to make sure that all illegitimate activity linked to the FIFA 15 transfer market becomes even harder to conduct in order to make sure that as many members of the community abide by the official rules.

The official announcement explains that, “Although the new FUT item Price Ranges will differ from current prices, their relative value to other player items on the Transfer Market will remain consistent in order to maintain a level playing field for everyone.”

EA Sports explains that across all platforms the prices that it will set will be the same and that extensive analysis has been used to determine them.

Trading will remain fun because, as the examples in the images attached to this article show, the range if open enough to make buying and selling an exciting moment for gamers.

The studio also says that it will tweak the values based on the way the market reacts in the coming weeks.

At the same time gamers are expected to delivered their feedback and to explain how the Ultimate Team transfer market can be improved in the future.

The Transfer Market also remain inaccessible from the app and the web

This decisions is designed to improve overall security, especially given the increasing number of accounts that seek to take advantage of players and access their accounts without permission.

It will be interesting to see how the community will react to the announcement of the new Price Range concept for Ultimate Team.

The most hardcore of fans will probably be disappointed with the restrictions but for most of the fans this is a good change because it will make it easier for them to get access to better players in the coming weeks.