EA Sports has released a deep dive into Ultimate Team for FC 24, the next game in the franchise formerly named after FIFA. Ultimate Team for 2024 will include a handful of new features including player Evolutions and PlayStyles, as well as community-requested updates, as well as the addition of women’s football for the very first time in FUT. Here’s everything you need to know.
Evolutions
Evolutions is a brand new feature in Ultimate Team that will allow you to customize and upgrade players, with the potential to make a lower-rated player one of your top performers. Evolutions will allow you to upgrade overall stats or specific attributes, and can even involve customizing or upgrading skill moves, playstyles, work rates, alternative positions, or a player’s weak foot. Evolving a player will also add unique visual upgrades.
A limited selection of Evolutions will be available every season, with some freely available and others requiring coins, or a mix of coins and points to unlock. Some Evolutions will also be time-limited across the season. Each Evolution slot will have specific requirements for what players it can be used to upgrade, from broad categories like “any Silver player” to specifics like “a left back with 3* skill moves,” as the examples given by EA.
Once you commit a player to an Evolution slot, you’ll have to complete challenges to get the upgrade. Again EA has given a few examples of Evolution challenges, from “play 5 games where you score with this player in your starting XI,” to “win 10 Ultimate Team Champs matches with this player.” You’ll only be able to work on one Evolution at a time, but you can freely switch between them, with your progress saved every time.
Players committed to an Evolution will become untradeable, and once committed to a slot can’t be withdrawn or forfeited.
Women’s Football
The introduction of women’s football to Ultimate Team has added five new Leagues to the game, with every club and player from the following Leagues available at launch:
- Barclays Women’s Super League (England)
- D1 Arkema (France)
- Google Pixel Frauen-Bundesliga (Germany)
- Liga F (Spain)
- National Women’s Soccer League (United States)
A select number of clubs and players from the UEFA Women’s Champions League will also be available from launch. The addition of women’s football leagues adds around 1600 players to the game, with male and female players able to compete together on the same pitch. New Chemistry links have also been added across the men’s and women’s football Leagues and affiliated clubs.
PlayStyles
PlayStyles is another new feature that has been added to supplement overall ratings, giving a more nuanced view of each player’s strengths. While every player will have a selection of PlayStyles, a few top players will also have PlayStyles+, essentially signature moves performed at an elite level–for example, Sam Kerr’s power header or Haaland’s acrobatic ability.
PlayStyles will be useful both in putting together your own team, or sizing up an opponent’s pre-match, giving you more of an intuitive idea of the team’s overall playstyle. Players with PlayStyles+ will have an icon on the face of the item, giving you an idea of a player’s special skills even when you’re not familiar with them or their League.
Only a small number of players will be launched with PlayStyles+, though more will be added over time, and players will also be able to customize PlayStyles through Evolutions.
Objectives
Objectives are being given a refresh in FC 24. As well as a visual refresh to make the page more appealing, Objectives will also be spread across multiple tabs so they’re a little easier to keep track of. In a major quality-of-life upgrade, you’ll also get a Claim All button to redeem all your Objective rewards at once.
Quality of Life Improvements
EA has included a number of QOL improvements based on player feedback for Ultimate Team 24. Items have been given a visual redesign to make the information easier to read at a glance, as well as introducing aesthetic upgrades that make special items feel even more special.
Position Modifier consumables have been removed from the game completely, allowing you to move players around in your squad as much as you want.
In upgrades to Club Search, loan players will now be hidden when you’re squad building in SBC. Position searches in your Club will now include primary and alternative positions by default, though you can also choose to only search by primary positions.
In order to align them with Heroes and regular players, Icons will now only have a single base version at launch, with more versions to be released over time. Each Icon in your squad will also give an additional Chemistry contribution for every League represented in your squad. This bonus will stack with Nation Chemistry.
The way items work has also been streamlined–you can now equip customization items directly from the new items screen. You’ll also be able swap duplicate untradeable items in bulk with tradeable versions in your club.
The final quality of life upgrades include new menus designed to make it easier to navigate through Ultimate Team’s various features, as well as reducing Squad Battle match length from six minutes per half to 4 minutes.
EA Sports FC 24 launches September 29 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Players who purchase the Ultimate Edition will receive early access on September 22.
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