In regards to the Physics engine that would make sense since you can only truly come to a conclusion about its new 'feel' by playing it first but in regards to Connected Careers and the restrictions of Franchise Mode features for those of us that play OFFLINE, there is no need to play it first...its pretty straight forward, you cant edit, create teams, players, play ANY GAMES around the league in your Franchise. This is all pretty clear and doesnt require playing the game to experience these changes to the game.....For many of us it is truly a TERRIBLE DESIGN decision.
And let me clarify this, I personally applaud the many improvements and added depth to Connected Careers Mode that EA made for those that love to play online and even those that don't....
...BUT what I feel was COMPLETELY UNFORGIVABLE and just a POOR DESIGN DECISION was the fact that they didnt have enough sense to break out Connected Career Mode and Franchise Mode into 2 separate MODES to allow a large consumer audience the same flexibility that they had with EDITING and CUSTOMIZING their Franchise experience all these years...and more importantly, the way they want to play the game when their playing it offline.
There was absolutely no reason to cater to one type of audience and completely alienate the other when they could have just as easily included BOTH and made everyone happy to play the game the way they want to......As it is now, we cannot.
That is why I feel that EA made a really bad design decision. I dont even think this is an arguable point regardless of which play style you prefer or how often or not you edit players, teams, etc.