I’ll be telling you about 7 things you should really know before you even play a minute of EA Sports FC 24.
1. You No Longer Have To Play Training Every Week!
The first thing I think you should really know is about youth development and how player training has changed for this game.
Last year, the biggest change was that you didn’t have to play training every week if you wanted your players to develop and this year. The biggest change is that you can now invest FC 24 Coins in coaches. The better the coaches, the faster your players will improve.
Of course, most people never used to train every single week. But this change is going to make things a lot more realistic and honestly give you another little FUT 24 Coins sink. So, you’re not gonna get these massive budgets in Career Mode anymore.
You can also switch between sharpness and fitness for every single player, which means that your reserves and substitutes won’t be useless for three games every single time you want to bring them back into the starting 11.
Training plans can be assigned either individually, so that’s per player or you can do it to groups of players, which includes the starting elevens substitutes and reserves, which makes this a way better solution to player development. And it’s a really good way of keeping players sharp even when you aren’t using them.
I haven’t actually played enough seasons in the beta to tell you if player development is overpowered this year. But usually, with changes like this, that will be quite overpowered for at least the first 2 games.
2. Try To Avoid Improving Too Fast
So, this also helps with a second thing you should know, which is to try and avoid improving too fast at the start of your career mode saves.
A career mode can be up to 15 Seasons long and there’s no point signing that for 75 rated Mexican free agent while you’re still in League 2, just to go unbeaten and have the Mexican guy score 55 goals. You should really take your time and try and enjoy the process of rising up the leagues, slowly strengthening your squads, and maybe adding challenges if you think the game is too easy or going down in difficulty if it’s getting too hard.
While you’re at it, I’d also recommend that you limit the amount of free agents you’re signing as well. Both of these things can really help you avoid improving too fast. And that will make the game a lot more challenging, a lot more fun, and you’ll be able to spend more seasons enjoying the team that you’ve built.
3. AI Can’t Build
While you’re talking about building a team, the AI still is really bad at doing this. I’ve played the beta quite a bit and so have a lot of people on our Discord. And we’ll all agree that the AI is still making the same mistakes when it comes to signing players.
You’ll see squads where they either have absolutely no one in a certain position or they’ll go out and sign 10 left backs. You can kind of fix this if you have a second controller or a keyboard if you’re playing on PC. You can switch the keyboard to be on the AI side. You can fix their team before the start of the match and then you can have a bit more fun playing against a functional squad.
Tactical Styles are a new thing on EA Sports FC and they kind of help with this because the AI is actually able to sign players that fit into their chosen tactics. I’ve seen some bizarre things on Career Mode over the years. I’ve seen a team with Giroud running in behind Ben Yedder as the target man.
Hopefully, the changes to Tactical Styles and Scouting will actually help the AI to be a bit more of a threat long term and give you a bit more of a challenging and dynamic opponent.
4. Set Objectives
So while we talk about tactical plans, you should also know that everyone enjoys Career Mode in their own way. So, before you actually open EA Sports FC 24 or even if you before you buy it, have a think about what you’d like to do during your first save.
Set yourself some goals and objectives, so you always have a target in mind. Otherwise, your save can get old pretty fast. Some of my favorite cremos over the past couple of years have been based around doing certain objectives. I have always given myself a specific challenge to try and beat. This can make the game fun even into Season 8 or Season 9.
So, if you’re using these and also using the new Tactical Styles to create a Tactical, you can easily use Moneyball thanks to the new scouting filters as well. If you combine the Tactical Styles with giving yourself certain objectives, either playing in a certain league, a certain team, or a certain style, then I think you’ve got that instant start of a really good and fun Career Mode.
5. There Isn’t A Huge Amount Of Randomness In Career Mode
You should also know that there isn’t actually a huge amount of randomness in Career Mode. Of course, they have added some new features, such as player interactions. So, most of the time, you will be managing a stable club.
Storylines are a great way of adding a bit of unpredictability to the game and there are tons of them out there. You can look at Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. If you just search in FIFA storylines, you’ll get a ton of different mini challenges that you can do.
There can be things like dropping a certain player or signing someone making someone captain, or maybe not playing someone for a certain amount of games for a certain reason. These mini scenarios really can add a bit of randomness and predictability into your save, which I think is actually a really cool idea.
6. Winning Isn’t Everything!
You should also know that winning isn’t everything. Career Mode can be more fun when you’re fighting for points rather than crushing every opponent’s six nil.
I always recommend you go into competitive leagues where you’ll have multiple teams fighting for titles or continental competitions, whereas leagues, like Scotland, have really only two horse races.
You can still have lots of fun in these leagues if you’re playing someone like Hearts, Hibs or Dundee, but if you can accept not winning the title for the first couple of years. You will have sort of an end boss there with Rangers and Celtic.
There’s a lot of very interesting leagues out there, which unfortunately aren’t the most competitive. Of course, you have friends, which is fun if you’re playing as anyone other than PSG. You also have Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
I’m sure some people would even say that England is now in a situation with Manchester City where there’s just one team that isn’t fun to play, while any of the other teams are actually a lot more fun. This is just because you won’t be winning every single match.
I’ve had loads of fun saves with teams where I’ve tried to qualify for Europe with bad teams. Even a 7th placed finish can be fun if you pick the right team and the right challenge. I’d recommend doing something like turning the difficulty one level up, picking Luton, and seeing if you can actually manage to survive.
While some of the games at the start might be a bit of a blowout, you might be losing six or seven nil. If you do it throughout an entire season, the games where you do manage to fluke a one-nil win. They will mean a lot to you and it’ll just be a really satisfying career.
7. Try Create A Club
The last tip we have is that create a lub is probably one of the most underrated ways of giving career mode a breath of fresh air.
For sure, check out some real teams in your first few saves on the game. But the real fun comes from creating abandoned, forgotten, or now different teams that will never be on FIFA again.
Over the past couple of years, I recommended a team for every single league, using the FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 Create A Club system. While there are a few changes now, I think some of the kits now have sponsors and there’s maybe a few more stadiums first pick.
Once you start getting bored with career mode on EA Sports FC 24, I really do recommend you give Create A Club a go!
