FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

FIFA 18 wishlist: what we want to see in career mode

Gamescom 2017 is almost upon us, and that means FIFA 18 career mode news is just around the corner. Running from 22-26 August, Gamescom is traditionally where EA shows off new FIFA features in depth (as opposed to the teasers we get at E3). That means we should get a peak at what’s cooking in FIFA 18 career mode.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the five career mode features we most want to see in FIFA 18. From new additions to important tweaks, there are plenty of things that EA could do to improve the next version of FIFA. Don’t forget to tell us what you want to see in the comments below!

Now here are our top five most wanted career mode features in FIFA 18.

A youth league/U-21 teams

FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

The youth academy in FIFA 17 feels a little one-dimensional

The youth system in FIFA 17 is decent, but it feels rather one-dimensional. Instead of feeling like your team is running a real youth setup, if feels more like your youth players are sitting in a box waiting to be let out. Where’s the interaction? Where’s the immersion?

It needs to be more realistic, and one way EA could achieve that is by adding some sort of youth league or under-21 setup. We don’t expect you to be able to actually play matches with your youth team (that would be too much for most people), but we need more interaction. Give us a league table to see how our youth team is doing against other youth teams. Give us reports from our assistant saying how our youth players are performing, and who is ready to be called up to the senior squad.

Adding a feature like this would make the youth system feel like a living, breathing organisation, rather than just a temporary holding pen for your young players.


Fix skill moves/weak foot/work rates

FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

So many good players have been ruined by low skill moves and weak foot ability

We’ve all suffered it. You have an amazing prospect in your youth academy – ridiculous potential, great stats, high starting OVR – only to promote him and see the worst. You freeze up, your eyes glaze over: he’s got a 1 star weak foot, 1 star skill moves and low/low work rates. What a waste.

This kind of nonsense is frustratingly common in FIFA 17 career mode. The only real players who have 1 star skill moves are goalkeepers, so why do so many outfield youth players end up that way? Skill moves and weak foot ability should be tied to OVR, potential and position – amazing players shouldn’t be held back like this, as it breaks the immersion. It’s OK for defenders to have 2 or 3 star skills, but wingers and attackers should be much higher than that. Low/low work rates should also be much rarer.

It’s a simple change that would stop the immersion breaking – and save a few broken controllers, too.


Let us upgrade our club’s facilities

FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

We can see how much we earned from ticket sales in FIFA 17 – letting us upgrade our stadium would make this more immersive

FIFA 10 added an interesting feature to career mode: staff upgrades. Your backroom team included people like a stadium manager, a transfer negotiator and a fitness coach. Upgrading these would bring various benefits – your players would recover from injuries more quickly, or you could make more money from selling tickets, for example. It was a neat way to add more flavour to career mode.

Unfortunately, EA has since scrapped this whole system from FIFA career mode. We want it back. A manager is not an island, after all – he has a team of people to help him at the club. Being able to upgrade your club’s facilities and staff would make it feel like you really are running a club, not just picking starting lineups every week. And if you take a team from the depths of League 2 all the way to the Premier League, it’s just wrong to have them playing in the same tiny stadium that they had at the start of your career.

This is a feature that has been requested by the community pretty much from the day that EA removed it from FIFA career mode. It’s time to bring it back.


Make growth linked to form

FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

This player is in good form, has scored plenty of goals and isn’t too old – so why isn’t he growing at all?

‘Road to glory’ tales are the bread and butter of career mode. We all have memories of the team we helped climb the league standings, and the players who helped us get there. So why don’t players grow accordingly? We often find low-potential players who end up performing miracles on the FIFA pitch, so why don’t their stats improve to reflect their achievements?

Players’ potentials are too rigid. If our striker only has one point to grow until he hits his potential, but then scores 30 goals in a season, he should be rewarded with a growth spurt. Similarly, if he’s been underperforming for a long time, his growth should slow down until he finds his form again – at the moment it’s too easy to grow high potential players, even if their form is abysmal.

It’s a small change, but a realistic one. Players rise above (and fall below) expectations all the time, and adding that to career mode would improve the level of variety and make it a more realistic experience.


Add more variety to scouting

FIFA 18 news and career mode wishlist

We need more options when sending our scouts to look for players

And while we’re talking about variety, let’s have a word about scouting. At the moment you can tell your scouts to look for certain player types – playmaker, attacker, physically strong, etc. The problem is that this system is very limited. What if I know that I need a centre back to improve my team in the long term? I can’t tell my scout to find one – I have to tell him to look for physically strong players (defensive minded, weirdly, won’t find you centre backs) and just hope that he comes back with a good central defender and not 5 million strikers. Letting us scout by position would save us all a lot of headaches.

Those player types also need to be tweaked, as they’re too vague at the moment. When you tell your scout to look for attackers, you’d probably expect to find strikers, right? Not so – he’ll come back with a bunch of wingers. We could also with a few more categories to allow us to be more specific, like ‘ball-playing defender’ or ‘target man’. Or let us combine player types with positions, so you can tell your scout to find a ‘physically strong central midfielder’.

The whole point of scouting is to find the next generation of superstars to plug the gaps in our team, but how can we do that when the scouting instructions are so vague? This needs to change in FIFA 18.


Now it’s your turn

That’s our FIFA 18 career mode wishlist – what’s yours? What features do you wish EA would include in FIFA 18? Is there something that used to be in career mode that you want brought back? Share your thoughts in the comments below!