Highlights
- EA's partnership with FIFA has ended, and the upcoming football game will be called EA Sports FC 24, but this change doesn't affect the game's content significantly.
- The implementation of modding in EA Sports FC 24 will be a game changer, allowing players to import logos, kits, crests, and more on all platforms.
- Adding mod capabilities and customization features, such as the ability to create custom game faces and import kits, will enhance the gameplay experience and provide players with more creative freedom.
Given EA's change in relationship with FIFA and their partnership now at an end, what fans would typically recognize as FIFA will now be under the name EA Sports FC 24. While this does not change much considering EA's acquisitions of the biggest and most popular leagues, teams, and players in world football, there is still an essential factor for EA's title and many of the upcoming football titles fans anticipate.
Before Konami changed direction to prioritize online play for the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise now known as eFootball, players on all platforms had the capability of importing logos, kits, crests, and much more that were not officially licensed, with PC players having even more in their arsenal. With the release of EA Sports FC 24 now on the horizon, the implementation of modding in one form or another on all platforms will be a game changer.
5 Longevity/Player Retainment
Aligned with the issues of yearly releases that many fans have maintained over the years, the non-mod-friendly nature of EA's football titles, especially on PC, has left players frustrated. While fans can create game face mods for generic faces, update kits, and rosters to where it currently is within the world of football, every EA update or slight change can completely destroy this.
Since the title can not be played without updating, PC players are forced to wait for modders to work around the updates before proceeding with offline modes, eventually searching or waiting for a new game. To alleviate this issue, EA and most other publishers and developers for upcoming football games should follow in the footsteps of Konami, allowing players to actively import or modify anything to their liking within their offline modes.
4 Creative Freedom
With the prospect of creating a mod-friendly title, it introduces an element of creative freedom that prior FIFA games have lacked entirely. Mostly for console players who do not have any modding capabilities whatsoever, an addition of a modification feature such as the aforementioned importing of kits for unlicensed teams, or the custom game face feature that was present much earlier in the franchise, should most certainly make an appearance on this occasion.
Giving players the possibility of adding their own face in-game, or adding the game face of another real-life player who has a generic one in-game, will enhance the experience like never before. Fans are often left frustrated by the lack of customization options there are for both real and created players, so this will add another layer of incentive to play the game.
3 Less Dev Work For Offline Modes
While arguably the majority of FIFA's player base is more inclined to play within the online modes, more notably Ultimate Team, there are also a great deal of players present within offline modes. For players who are looking for the most realistic football simulation experience in one which allows them to control either a single player or all players on the field, modification features for Career Mode, Kick-Off, and much more are increasingly becoming an important requirement.
Because developers have only been shown to have updates adjust in-game sliders or bugs, and sometimes new player faces, if players could change these for the offline modes only, it would lead to an overall satisfying experience, encouraging other football games to follow suit.
2 Authentic Roster
One factor that can make or break immersion as previously mentioned, is real players, team crests, or names standing as generic ones rather than authentic. While it is important to mention that EA has a plethora of licenses for clubs and many of the other integral aspects of a football game, there is potential for a select few to be missing, especially game faces for certain players.
Playing with a team or a set of players that do not have authentic face captures or inaccurate styles can very quickly pull players out of the matchday experience, so ensuring that players can change this at any given time is a critical factor. Acknowledging that modded game faces or kits may come with bugs or other issues, its presence is still more than enough for players to get the best out of their playing experience.
1 Gameplay Adjustments
As well as EA's updates to sliders, along with the ability for players to do the same changes, more can be done in this region. Rather than adjusting sliders alone, some gameplay modifiers can either provide more of a weighted and slower-paced gameplay experience or perhaps keep movements at the same speed with multiple other tweaks in mind.
A huge deterrent of EA's football franchise for many football game fans is the unrealistic feeling that comes with the aspect of on-field performance. Whether this is directly related to the AI's high level of performance regardless of the team's rating, or the arcade high-speed movement that players move in, giving more control to players' adjustment of the on-field experience could remove most issues and concerns once and for all.
EA Sports FC 24 is set to release on September 29, 2023 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.