FIFA 21: Why I threw in the towel - with video

FIFA 21

I love FIFA. Over the past 12 years, I've always bought the latest offshoot when it's released. If you put all the parts together, I've probably sunk well over 1000 hours into the franchise by now. I collected platinum trophies, took part in the virtual Bundesliga and played against professionals from FC St. Pauli in Hamburg's Millerntor Stadium in front of a live audience. Since I started at PC Games in 2018, football simulation has been driving me around professionally: the annual reviews are now on my cap. So it's not an exaggeration to say: FIFA has played a central role in my life. Until now.

Table of contents

1 Too much time, too little value 2 Who sleeps, loses 3 Other mothers also have nice games Because recently I made an almost drastic step: I threw FIFA 21 (buy now € 19.99 / € 56.99) from the hard drive of my PlayStation. And shall I tell you something? I couldn't be better! It's almost like an invisible load has fallen off my shoulders.

Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. In the last few weeks and months, FIFA has almost developed into a kind of work and thus into unbearable agony for me - especially in the Ultimate Team mode. There are, of course, many reasons for this: the toxic community, for example, which, after winning a game, happily wishes you cancer on your neck. Or the gameplay, which has remained almost unchanged for years, which leaves you feeling disaffected and wondering: Why do I still regularly spend money on this.

Too much time, too little value

What, just bronze 2? Of course it doesn't smell! If you want the really good rewards, you have to invest several hours. Source: pcgames.de The unbelievably competitive nature of the game has been particularly problematic for me recently. FIFA just takes a hell of a lot of time trying to get serious about it. If you want to keep up with the rest, you have to be online almost every day: After all, 42 games in Squad Battles mode and another 30 in Division Rivals want to be played every week. This is the only way to rise in the global ranking and collect rewards. And of course there is also the Weekend League with additional rewards on the weekend. You can work up to 50 hours, which are then beaten through in sleepless night shifts. This excessive grind is an apparently necessary evil: This is the only way I can finally get packs and coins, with which I can in turn buy new players, with whom I can then play in the in-game competitions for new rewards. And so on.

As a player, you are quickly caught in a vicious circle. You no longer play for fun, just to work towards the next reward. The beautiful moments become indifferent relatively quickly. You can no longer look forward to beautiful goals, but rather skip the time-consuming repetition. Wins no longer feel satisfying, but defeats feel more frustrating. Everyone seems to have conspired against you just to annoy you: the soccer gods, the algorithm, the servers - everything! Swear words and controllers fly through the room once. And to top it all off, the rewards are pretty crap in the end: If the best player from my Ultimate Pack has an overall rating of 82, the time spent on it feels absolutely wasted.

If you sleep, you lose

Only seven days left, then your weekly task will expire! FIFA 21 can be quite stressful with all of its time-limited content. Source: pcgames.de That doesn't get any better in other areas of the game: Especially this year EA Sports has outdone itself with in-game tasks that you have to laboriously rummage through. For example, there are free packs based on the number of days you have actively played. Anyone who has logged into Ultimate Team once every day since its launch will receive better bonuses than a sporadic player. There are also team-based community events, during which you can collect points for your site, staggered weekly goals that should be completed within 14 days, season milestones that you unlock with XP collected over months, new squad building challenges, icon swaps, Lightning Rounds and and and. Everything with a time limit, of course. So if you are not fast enough, you will get nothing.

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Electronic Arts has given an update on the EAGate scandal surrounding the soccer game FIFA 21. var lstExcludedArticleTicker = '1373093,1372376,1371003,1368603'; A worst-case scenario that one naturally wants to avoid at all costs. The FOMO strikes coldly, the fear of missing out - the compulsive worry of missing a satisfying event. Before leaving a free item, a pack or a few ragged coins, it's better to add a few more games to it. It would be annoying if you could use the bonuses later. How many times have I caught myself struggling through a round of live friendly matches with a wildly thrown silver team in order to get a tempting free player. Only to find out, and then later, that it's not that great at all. That he wasn't the missing piece of the puzzle that suddenly made my team perfect or the gameplay really entertaining again. The dozen hours of grind, just for the cat. Especially since all hard-earned progress from October onwards will be obsolete anyway. The community of players moves on to the next FIFA, the pointers are turned back to zero and the cycle starts all over again.

Other mothers also have nice games

Tired of Ultimate Team? Then just take a look at the career mode! It's still fun. Source: PC Games I have therefore decided for myself that I am no longer in the mood for this run in the hamster wheel. The constant pressure, the stress, the nagging feeling of having to play FIFA have become too much. I pulled the emergency brake.

I have realized that with my limited time I can do far more meaningful things than blow them away with virtual football, which gives me no lasting memories, no added value, no positive emotions . I prefer to sit down and play something with a creative game design or an exciting story. Or maybe the other modes of FIFA: I don't want to demonize the game in general. You can still have fun with your career, for example, if you build your dream team without using any real money. And the seasons are also fun, because it is your playfulness that counts and not the size of your wallet.

But for now I will avoid Ultimate Team. And I can only recommend that anyone who feels just as burned out or frustrated as I do. Your sanity will thank you!