What Is It?
Oh, by the way, before I go into too much depth, let me get one fact straight: In no way, shape, or form am I talking about real life scenarios that people may possible encounter. I'm talking about inside the game, FIFA 15. For those who don't know, I also like to game. However, I am not one of those people who get glued to a digital screen 24/7/365, I merely enjoy the thrills. FIFA 15 is a real-life game that is based on soccer (for those who don't know), and there is one section of the game that I am focusing on today: FIFA ultimate team.
Ultimate team is a nice feature, allowing players to create their "dream team", and get all the players that they desire, whether it be from opening packs (which players pay with virtual coins), or buying people off the transfer market (which people bid on and buy with virtual coins; These coins are earned from playing matches and selling players). Recently, EA, the developer, announced a new feature called Price Ranges. These ensure that certain players must be sold within a specific price range that EA set. For example, if the price range of a player is from 150 to 5,000 coins, then it is impossible to sell that specific player anywhere higher or lower than that price. The question is, why?
Image Credit Here
The Reasons
This action certainly riled up the FIFA gaming community. EA cites important reasons for imposing such a restriction on their game, like the process of selling worthless players for much, much more than what they're worth in order to gain coins from other people quickly and easily, without losing anyone good on their team. However, in doing so, EA have overlooked many aspects of their game that makes it so successful.
Issues
For starters, it is in fact very easy to bypass this restriction. Let's take a random player who agrees to give coins to his friend via buying their players. What the seller would do is simply get the most worthless crap they can find and sell him for their maximum price. The seller would continue to do this until they gain the net profit that they are looking for. Also, price restrictions have severely weakened the transfer market, one of the key aspects of the game.
How The Market Is Utterly Destroyed
The FIFA 15 Ultimate Team transfer market is perhaps the #1 most critical element in making this game successful. It is similar to our global economy. There are items that are selling, with prices that people list them up for. This can be compared to stocks. The prices rise, and fall, but generally maintain a specific average throughout the season. Price ranges however, have absolutely butchered the transfer market. I remember just last week there were about >1 million items listed, but these days there is less than a third of that amount. In the real world, the ideal capitalist follows one of the most basic rules to generating profit: buy low, sell high. Well, that tactic is thrown out of the window now, since with price ranges, people will know for sure what the lowest price is and the highest price, so they are aware of whether or not the price is fair. Congratulations, EA! FIFA 15's transfer market has effectively been killed (hopefully it will be better next year!).
Oh, by the way, before I go into too much depth, let me get one fact straight: In no way, shape, or form am I talking about real life scenarios that people may possible encounter. I'm talking about inside the game, FIFA 15. For those who don't know, I also like to game. However, I am not one of those people who get glued to a digital screen 24/7/365, I merely enjoy the thrills. FIFA 15 is a real-life game that is based on soccer (for those who don't know), and there is one section of the game that I am focusing on today: FIFA ultimate team.
Ultimate team is a nice feature, allowing players to create their "dream team", and get all the players that they desire, whether it be from opening packs (which players pay with virtual coins), or buying people off the transfer market (which people bid on and buy with virtual coins; These coins are earned from playing matches and selling players). Recently, EA, the developer, announced a new feature called Price Ranges. These ensure that certain players must be sold within a specific price range that EA set. For example, if the price range of a player is from 150 to 5,000 coins, then it is impossible to sell that specific player anywhere higher or lower than that price. The question is, why?
Image Credit Here
The Reasons
This action certainly riled up the FIFA gaming community. EA cites important reasons for imposing such a restriction on their game, like the process of selling worthless players for much, much more than what they're worth in order to gain coins from other people quickly and easily, without losing anyone good on their team. However, in doing so, EA have overlooked many aspects of their game that makes it so successful.
Issues
For starters, it is in fact very easy to bypass this restriction. Let's take a random player who agrees to give coins to his friend via buying their players. What the seller would do is simply get the most worthless crap they can find and sell him for their maximum price. The seller would continue to do this until they gain the net profit that they are looking for. Also, price restrictions have severely weakened the transfer market, one of the key aspects of the game.
How The Market Is Utterly Destroyed
The FIFA 15 Ultimate Team transfer market is perhaps the #1 most critical element in making this game successful. It is similar to our global economy. There are items that are selling, with prices that people list them up for. This can be compared to stocks. The prices rise, and fall, but generally maintain a specific average throughout the season. Price ranges however, have absolutely butchered the transfer market. I remember just last week there were about >1 million items listed, but these days there is less than a third of that amount. In the real world, the ideal capitalist follows one of the most basic rules to generating profit: buy low, sell high. Well, that tactic is thrown out of the window now, since with price ranges, people will know for sure what the lowest price is and the highest price, so they are aware of whether or not the price is fair. Congratulations, EA! FIFA 15's transfer market has effectively been killed (hopefully it will be better next year!).