I have posted this in OS forums a few weeks ago. I figured some of you may be interested to hear about this and tell me your thoughts. I was reading AJ's PES online master league findings, some of the stuff they made sounds little similar to what I suggest below.Can the next FUT be the Massive Multiplayer Online Career Mode? Having played Ultimate Team for FIFA 11 and NHL 11, I have come to the conclusion that EA has brilliant components in hand for the next Ultimate Team version of 2012 or 2013. If EA manages to put together all the ingredients in hand successfully, there’s potential for a great Massive Multiplayer Online Career Mode for the next FIFA, not to mention this is also potential for a separate title on the shelves to sit next to FIFA 12. I am a big fan of FIFA Soccer games. Since FIFA 10, I have also become a fan of FIFA Ultimate Team. My favorite parts in FIFA games have been the Career/Manager/Franchise Modes over the years, along with online gaming. Both modes have great features as well as weak points that people complain about amongst many forums online. People bash on EA for faults and not fixing and such. I’ve had my part in this as well. Every year I am disappointed that a friend of mine can’t join me in a Career Mode online where we each manage our own teams, and each of us take control of the opposing computer team’s control in each match day to be an obstacle for him on his way to glory. Over the years this has been possible in limited ways, offline in custom leagues on some versions. With the introduction of Ultimate Team, I’ve come to realize that FUT is the closest thing to an online Career Mode. You manage your squads, meet certain requirements to attend tournaments, improve the club by adding staff and other resources through the trade card system. With the latest version of the game, there have been complaints about the Career Mode such as player growth not functioning correctly, problems with selling and signing players and so on. Since I am also a fan of the NHL series of EA, I also got to enjoy the Ultimate Team in these series this year. Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) was introduced to NHL fans with very similar structure to FUT but also having little differences in some areas. Thinking about all the complaints I hear about FIFA 11’s Career Mode, what FUT has to offer and not, plus the extras that HUT brings on the table, I started thinking about the perfect Massive Multiplayer Online Career Mode. If we were to combine certain components of several EA titles, I believe a great product for this MMOCM title could be on the way. Next I will try explaining my ideas about main sections of such a title using existing modules from current EA titles. The Season To have a Career Mode, you need to have a season. In the offline world this is easy to generate, with almost identical structure to its real world version. You can have a league schedule, FA cup and League Cup drawings plus schedule generated for each season, and the team you manage along with all the computer managed teams use this real world like schedule. Sadly enough, as straight forward of a logic and structure this is, I’ve seen EA even fail generating this authentically. When you want to adapt this to real world, it’s even harder. Over the years, I myself trying to run a few online leagues, I’ve learnt the hard way that having a league structure where every team plays each other at least once, ideally twice is almost impossible. It’s pretty much proven to expect a number of people (not to mention the huge numbers on the bigger scale) to commit to a schedule at the same level is unrealistic. Realizing this there has been ranking systems instead of online leagues on many different platforms. From the titles I’ve played, in my opinion, the best fit ranking system used to this day that’s suitable to create a season/franchise mode for Ultimate Team format has been presented in FIFA World Cup 2010’s division system. For those not familiar with the game, this system separates a span of your 10 online games as part of a season. Within these 10 games, if you collect a certain number of points, you get promoted to the upper division as well as face relegation if you fail to collect enough points. The next FUT can use this structure to move clubs up and down the divisions to create a season feeling. Include tournaments to this like it is in the World Cup game. There can also be a few different type of seasons present at the same time to allow you to compete with different kinds of squads. Just like the current tournaments in FUT, you can have divisions of different season types with only GOLD players, SILVER, maximum 4 nationalities on a squad, 4 clubs presented at most and so on. Each game can earn you coins, as well as your standing at the end of the season which can be 10 or 15 games, which could also be varied depending on season type. The Board I like the idea of the board in FIFA 11 Career Mode. Rather than earning money and spending that, more realistic for a manager, you’re given a budget to work with for transfer fees and salaries. HUT includes salaries per player and salary caps. This can be implemented into FUT. Depending on your performance in each different season type, a board can assign you additional total salary cap for the division you will be competing in next season, or give you extra cap space mid season if you’ve already collected 9 out of 9 points in your first 3 games. They can also take salary cap away if you get relegated. This would be salary caps per division but each team could have little differences of salary cap depending on the way they reached that point. This would give the user a “managed by the board” feeling. Player Cards and Development The player card structure in FUT is sufficient, but can be improved with the features that HUT player cards have. In FUT, you can train your players with training cards, and their respective attributes will be improved for the next game. In NHL, training cards work in a different way. These two ways can be combined. NHL player cards have a lifetime. Your player can’t last forever, which I like the idea. After certain number of games played, your player card retires. This is definitely useful for a MMOCM. Each player card has a number of training slots in HUT. I look at these training slots as development slots. While older players have less slots like 2 or 3, younger players can have 6 development slots. These slots mean that you can only apply that many training cards to your player in HUT. I would call these development cards in the next FUT. And the improvements in attributes achieved by these cards are permanent to the player. Each player has a potential overall that they can reach. And you can let them reach their maximum potential by applying the best development cards, which could cost a lot of coins. I think this is a great system. You can lead each of your players’ growth in the way you desire. Make them faster, more skilled or defensive, in the direction you want them to develop. In the meantime, FUT training concept can also be kept in parallel to player development. You can even boost a player with a training card for the next game. Development opens up a lot of possibilities. Everyone can develop their own version of Messis, Rooneys and so on. Each one would have different attributes. This would also create another concept of developing your own no name superstar and put him in the market. With 6 development slots and the right combination of development cards, any player card can be made into a very useful star power. The Staff I think the staff structure is sufficient the way it is. Same concept can be kept to have a manager, head coaches, fitness and such to improve these areas for your club. Stadiums Stadiums can have more effect on the amount of coins you earn from a match. Crowd size of the stadium you use for a game can earn you more coins. This would make stadium cards more valuable in the trade market as well. Transfer Market The trading system works great as it is. For a Career Mode feeling a new feature can be added, but this may come with a price like heavier loads on the EA databases. If you could browse through other clubs’ squads and explore talent that’s not listed in the trade pile, you could feel more like a manager. It would be realistic to be able to knock another club’s and offer a trade or bunch of coins for a talent you need that they may have. Even when the player is not listed on the market, you may be able to grab him for the right price. It would be an equivalent of some small club developing a player to a star and a bigger club with cash coming in to make a generous offer. Conclusion Combined with other FUT features that already exist, in my opinion this scenario I’ve presented above would create a game that gives a good feeling of a Massive Multiplayer Online Career Mode. I tried to put together what I can remember from ideas that came to me here and there. I might be forgetting some, I may come up with new ones. I hope you enjoy the idea, and I hope we get a product similar to this from EA to make the experience even better.
I think the PES Online Master League is close to what you described here. Although not entirely the same but very similar. What you describe sounds great and I don't honestly know what the FUT feature really is since I've never ventured into that as of yet but hopefully at some point I can. All I really want is a online career mode!! You wouldn't think this would be so difficult to figure out but apparently it is. Hopefully next year they can figure it out but yet again I do say that every year.
