Is CFB25's CUT Pay To Win?
With Ultimate Team developing into a very popular game mode in Madden and undoubtedly making EA lots of money, it was inevitable that the return of college football video games would see a big Ultimate Team push. Due to the developers focusing on Road to Glory and Dynasty, there was not a ton about UT that was changed. This is basically just MUT copied and pasted into CFB25; which means this has many of the same strengths (and weaknesses) as MUT.
Related Article: Is CFB25 Ultimate Team a Copy of Madden Ultimate Team?
5 Tips to Playing CUT:
1. Do the challenges
2. Do your dailies
3. Get your program challenges online as fast as possible
4. Sell players you don't need
5. Take advantage of solo seasons
1. Do the solo challenges
This game uses the word challenges a lot, so try your best to stick with us. These challenges are accessed via the big "CHALLENGES" button at the bottom of the main Ultimate Team screen. They consist of bite-sized tasks you have to complete within a game environment. For example: Score 3+ points and complete 4+ passes while performing a celebration run.
Doing each challenge will reward you with a certain number of stars within that set of challenges. Earn enough stars and you get some gold, packs, and upgrade tokens for select players from select Programs. The easiest way to take your team from the initial 68 overall it starts at to around a 78 to 81 is by doing as many of these challenges as you can.
Be warned, though, some of them are extremely RNG dependent and very annoying; such as break 3 tackles or force a turnover.
2. Do the daily objectives
The daily objectives can be viewed by navigating to the Field Pass screen and pressing Y (or triangle). There are 3 of them and as the name implies they reset every single day. One of them will always be to purchase a pack from the store, which is an ethically questionable business tactic by EA to make sure players are always incentivized every day to go and look at the store.
However, you don't have to spend any money to complete this challenge. There will always be a pack available for 100 gold or 1 gold; just buy that one. The other 2 challenges are always going to be something generic and easy like gain 250 yards or play 1 game. Something like that.
These daily challenges give a decent amount of XP relative to the amount of time they take to complete. If you're someone who doesn't have an insane amount of time to spend playing video games but wants to play CUT, these daily challenges will be your best bet on busy days to try and hop on and get some XP quickly and easily.
3. Get the Program challenges setup as fast as possible
Programs in CUT are tags on certain players such as ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) or Legends. There are challenges that require having 2+ of these programs in your lineup. These challenges provide absurd amounts of XP and should be heavily prioritized. The first few players you buy for around 10 to 20k gold should be to get these challenges online as quickly as possible.
The sooner you're earning progress towards all of these Program challenges, the sooner you're going to be leveling up the Season 1 Field Pass and getting all its great rewards.
4. Sell players you don't need
This isn't going to be a lucrative business when you first start playing but quick selling (or selling on the auction house if the player is worth enough to make it worth doing) players you don't need is an easy way to slowly get some training and extra coins.
While each player may not be worth much individually, it will eventually start to add up and there's no upside to just leaving them in your binder doing absolutely nothing.
5. Take advantage of solo seasons
Solo seasons are a new mode introduced in CUT that does not exist in MUT. It allows you to play full blown seasons against the AI while choosing one of 3 difficulties. The higher the difficulty the better the AI will play and the more coins you will earn if you win.
If you're a more casual player and are intimidated by playing online, this is an easy way to get some coins while still competing for the glory of a national championship and getting more comfortable with how Ultimate Team works.
Related Article: Is CFB25 Ultimate Team a Copy of Madden Ultimate Team?
Ultimate Team is Pay to Win
There is no way around this. If you're looking for the best way to win Ultimate Team, the solution is to spend money. Buy packs until you get all the good players and then win the majority of games you play because your team is mathematically better than everyone who didn't spend money. That's how Ultimate Team works. Ultimate Team is insanely pay to win.
The best players in Ultimate Team are the ones who wield the mighty power of "Mommy's Credit Card" which is a legendary weapon with 0 downsides unless you use it too much and incur the wrath of its former master.
At the end of the day, there is skill involved in Ultimate Team. Players who can recognize certain offensive or defensive formations and know what play calls will work best against those formations will have a better chance of winning. Players who are good at user'ing their linebackers on defense to cover crossing routes and bait the QB for User Lurk interceptions will have a better chance of winning. Players who make good use of WR hot routes and custom stems will have a better chance of winning. There is a skill ceiling and skill gap to this game. It does exist.
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That does not change the fact that people who pay real money have an insane advantage. Good players can find ways to get wins against higher overall teams if the person with the higher overall team is bad, but it's not consistent. You can outplay your opponent the entire game, but if his players are just 5+ overalls better than yours then he's going to get more contested catches, more pass breakups, have a higher chance to force a fumble or interception, a lower chance to fumble himself, his OL is going to give him more time to pass, your OL is going to fold and give up more pressures or sacks against his way better DL, etc.. There is only so much you can do when your opponent's team is just mathematically superior at every single position.
Ultimate Team (both CUT and MUT) are designed to be as pay-to-win as possible. They are designed to be as predatory as possible. As mentioned above, there's a reason why one of the dailies always involves you going to the store to buy the 100 coin pack. They want every player to always go and browse the store every time they log in to play the game. When you first get into the game's main menu after launching, the first thing that shows up is some sort of promotion for a new series of players or a new legend card.
The only thing EA cares about is getting as many players into Ultimate Team as possible to get as many people visiting that store every day, to maximize the amount of people who end up buying packs. It's horrifically pay to win and it's never going to get better or be changed.
If you're willing to put up with that and try your best as a No Money Spent (NMS) player, you can have a decent amount of fun in Ultimate Team — at least until all the insanely broken 95+ cards come out.
BEN FITZSIMMONS