Fresh revelations have come into the limelight regarding the new Manager Career mode for EA SPORTS FC 26. Although exciting new things are being introduced, EA shines a bit of a glare of doubt-and partly resentment-onto this new title of EA SPORTS FC 26. The official Twitter account for EA SPORTS FC had listed three major features for the mode: Manager Live, Manager Market, and the revamped analytics system. However, rather than hype, the replies exploded with skepticism, frustration, and hopeful-requests.
Let’s look at what those new features might be all about. Manager Live could be a constantly changing method of career interaction, maybe real-time challenges and events, such as “score 10 goals in the group stage,” or some other unusual managerial dilemma. Manager Market should perhaps keep some semblance of reality for managers jumping from club to club, while the analytics overhaul will give you stats on steroids to make better decisions.
Well, not surprisingly, that did not sit well with EA’s player base. A user named @mattyclark10 referred to the additions as “shameless,” insisting that Manager Live is just a new guise to push microtransactions into Career Mode. Others surrounding the same circle pointed out that it had been “stale for years,” with Ultimate Team getting all the attention and Career Mode tossed scraps.
Realism now. @AquamanFCB wants to see Manager Market implemented but still begs for decent transfer logic since “Tired of seeing Messi to Bilbao or some stupid thing like that.” @RWossink found that funny by joking about giving CR7 a laughable €3M a year in-game. Meanwhile, @kofi_ankamah wants to be able to manually change the position of players in formation-should be simple; still, complacency rules.
Player Career Mode fans also felt ignored. @ViktorHris70375 asked pointedly, “No facking thing for Player Career Mode why??????” EA even confirmed to one user, @EastneyJosh, that Player Career Mode is getting Archetypes and Origin Stories-but that seemed to open yet another flood of “what about us?” comments.
Another claim was made, probably the harshest, declaring New features to be “pathetic useless lazy devs” work and “dead-on comparison” to NBA 2K’s story-laden career modes. Yikes.
That said, a handful of hopefuls did exist. Quite a few, including @jhojawa88 (tweeting in Spanish, “Igual ya viene el player mode como Alex Hunter, eso es lo que queremos,” meaning, “Now come on the player mode like Alex Hunter, that’s what we want”), keep hoping for the deeper narrative, while @Denimbart24 fantasizes about Online Manager Career-a feature that could actually be a game-changer should EA actually hear.
But are the new Manager Career of FC 26 really going to charm back such cynics? These new features are an old-yet-new tryst for an already skeptical player base even from what happened with EA originally. If the studio really wants to treat Career Mode well, they need to bend their tools towards fixing some of those long-standing annoyances that have plagued it: janky transfers, boring cutscenes, and lack of customization-just tell players about the cool new stuff afterward.
Pre-orders are out for now but, judging from Twitter, a lot of gamers are going to wait and see if Career Mode 2023 is worth the hype or yet another disappointment.
