The Psychology Behind Ultimate Team's Success

[Poke]

I'm surprised to see so many people here like me who do not use this crap. If I do dabble a little (like 5 games) I ONLY use VC that I earn from playing. I would never use real cash to play this mode.

[Bowinkle08]

convincing millions of people to contribute dozens of dollars and devote hundreds of hours towards the pursuit of 'dream team' lineups that could have been built at no additional cost, in less than ten minutes, by simply backing out to the main menu, and instead, clicking on the 'roster edit' option."
-Amen
-although i feel like they are slowly getting rid of the "edit roster" features. soon you will have no choice but to use ultimate teams

[raysanti]

Ultimate team represents everything wrong with Madden in the last 5+ years to me.

Never touched it. Never will. And I'm pretty sure I hate you if you use it.

[ThaLiveKing]

I love Ultimate Team, I just started in Live 14, and it's addicting, it is more like Gambling, but fun because they have all sorts of challenges. When playing dudes online with their super teams, half of them don't even play real basketball, they just try to spam to win. You really gotta spam when you've built a super team? LOL. TitanFall just introduced buying and selling Burn cards, and it's pretty much the same concept as Ultimate Team, but at least the packs have good items in them. In UT I'd open a gold pack and get a scrub that's rated 71 and he's the best player in the pack. Happened more than once too, I'm one of those 10k pack, I got mad, at least give me one legend lol. But overall it's a good experience, and you don't have to spend money if you don't want to, but sometimes it makes you do impulse purchasing

[charter04]

I personally can't get in to Ultimate team modes. I've dabbled a little. I usually win the games because your playing against guys with teams that are about the same level as your team. I just can't find the fulfillment in doing something that only takes time and money to build. I can't see the skill involved. Winning the games require some skill but, so do the other modes. I've never spent one dime on these modes and I'm happy I haven't. I've never had the desire to gamble either so maybe I just don't have the personality to enjoy the gamble style of UT. It just feels like a huge waist of time and money.

I'm not knocking guys for loving it but, I do feel like these UT modes are a big reason why we don't get the innovative games we want. If you spend hundreds of dollars on this mode I don't know what to say.

[JsMcbain]

I am part of the minority here but I love Hockey Ultimate team. I do not play UT modes in any other sports games, but for hockey, I love it. It gives me a chance to make a team of my favorites hockey players without ''disturbing'' the essence of the real NHL. I still play franchise mode on the side (yes, I play a LOT of NHL, I am still around 5 hours a week on NHL '14 and will stop the day before '15 comes out). Just need to be careful about spending money. I don't. With the EB games preorder and ultimate edition(ok I spend an extra 10$ here) I will have 2 gold packs a week for a while to get me started. There are more offline choices (single team game, 7 or 8 different offline tournaments, offline game against team of the week) that all give ''pucks'' so if playing online is not what you prefer you can still do it. I am not trying to convince anybody, I understand why most of you would prefer franchise mode. I personally play both.

[dghustla]

GREAT READ!!! an article like this has been long over due on OS. Now how to get ppl to stop spending on these modes until we see reform? It's crazy that the new madden is only weeks away and ppl are still spending money on MUT.

For the $60 price tag to buy the game whether you play MUT or not you should be given at least a few premium packs to start your team.

It really goes to show that without competition (2k and Madden) the consumer is really at the mercy of the companies greed. Those PC games have so much competition they have to be honest and actually do things for the customers. How ever 2k and EA have little to no competition in their genres of sports titles and can make any rules they want.

[dghustla]

GREAT READ!!! an article like this has been long over due on OS. Now how to get ppl to stop spending on these modes until we see reform? It's crazy that the new madden is only weeks away and ppl are still spending money on MUT.

For the $60 price tag to buy the game whether you play MUT or not you should be given at least a few premium packs to start your team.

It really goes to show that without competition (2k and Madden) the consumer is really at the mercy of the companies greed. Those PC games have so much competition they have to be honest and actually do things for the customers. How ever 2k and EA have little to no competition in their genres of sports titles and can make any rules they want.

Oh an my biggest pet peeve is when ppl go online and thank these fools for pulling rare cards. As if these companies actually care about who get's what card. Truth be told they are rooting for you not to get rare items so you can keep spending on impulse until you've literally spent every dime you are willing to on the game. Then the game company retweets that crap to get other ppl to pop more packs. I play MUT and got some really nice pulls this year but I would never under any circumstances thank EA for giving me something I paid for.

[ursaguy]

I've played myteam in nba and UT in hockey and Madden briefly but the experience ended up the same.

Step 1: Commit to not spending money
Step 2: Enjoy some free stuff early on
Step 3: Play for two weeks
Step 4: Realize I can't be competitive without spending money
Step 5: Go back to franchise

If you think about it, these modes only make money off of the amount of people that panic at Step 4.

[cepwin]

Excellent article. I have played FUT and MUT but rarely, if ever, spend $$ on packs. With FUT it's a non-issue as I preorder it so I get a number of packs already (as with MUT.) Besides, I too prefer franchise mode. That being said, I recall after playing FUT the first year I told someone it' was fun, like baseball cards on steroids.

[bennybledsoe]

I hate all these modes since all they do is take focus off of core gameplay. I doubt any of the money these things make goes back into development.

[ballymenasteve]

Never played Ultimate team in FIFA, Madden, NBA. Will never spend a single penny on them either. Hated them since they 1st appeared. They should spend more time improving the game rather than treating their customers as money pits that they try to squeeze every last dime from. Personally I think that UT is pretty sad

[Beelzebot44]

This is a great article. I don't see anything remotely appealing about these modes. I'm a GM type player in most sports games; I love rebuilding teams and simming seasons. So I usually end up with a "fantasy team" anyway, without the frustration of having to unlock card packs.

[sroz39]

As well-written and in depth this article is, it's very one sided. It almost makes you feel guilty and like scum if you enjoy these modes. Do I? I did, with the early versions of HUT that had a salary cap. The latest versions in all of EA games has devolved into the worst kind of pay-to-win model and it's unfortunate because the appeal of the mode is undeniable.

It's a lot of fun to try and build YOUR team and take it online. Especially taking players with high potential and using your best training cards on them. The article compares an offline Franchise Mode as an UT counterpart but I feel they are so different it's not even fair to compare. One mode occurs entirely in a vacuum and the other is almost what makes online play so enticing to begin with: human competition. Except now it goes beyond who's just the better player...it's also about who can build the better team. Again, this was a lot more fun back in the early days of UT.

I feel maybe instead of denouncing the enjoyment of these modes and attributing almost disease-like traits to people that do, the article should have presented a side of UT that would make it enjoyable for the sim crowd. Instead, it takes a get-off-my-lawn attitude, with the writer probably fully aware these modes aren't going anywhere. All it served to do was stir up the usual sentiments shared on these boards when it had the opportunity to start a great discussion about what these modes need for the sim gamer to enjoy them.

[jmaj315]

Amazing article. This is why I dont play ultimate team modes. Also because its stupid when you pay nothing and you play against people who've "invested" 100, 200, 300+ dollars into their team. That's no fun