6 things that we’d like to see in FIFA 19 Career Mode

Career Mode is one of the longest standing and most popular game modes in FIFA. However, with the recent addition of The Journey, as well as the huge success of Ultimate Team, Career Mode has been sidelined by EA Sports. This mode has gone pretty much unchanged for several years now. This means that the mode becomes stale and boring very early on in FIFA‘s cycle. Career Mode needs to change, and I, along with other members of the FIFA community, have some great ideas to improve the overall experience of Career Mode.

After playing Career Mode for the past month in FIFA 18, I have realized that there are some major flaws that would make this game mode even better than it already is if fixed. The Career Mode community is also crying out for some development/overhauls in their mode; it is about time that EA took action. FIFA 19 is certainly a “make or break” edition of the game. If Career Mode is not improved, then it may go down with the whole franchise.

1. Position training

The training feature in FIFA Career Mode was recently implemented. However, the feature is majorly flawed. It makes your young players extremely high-rated too quickly. This, unfortunately, makes Career Mode unrealistic. It seems that EA wants to make this mode as authentic as possible with license announcements for the new game, so surely this feature is going backward?

As well as implementing a complete overhaul of the original feature, they need to make some additions to it. A feature included in Ultimate Team that adds to the realistic factor to the game is position modification. This allows players to make small changes in their positions. This would be a great addition to Career Mode as this is what happens in real life. An example of this is Cristiano Ronaldo making the move from the left wing to a striker. It would be great to train players over a period of time so they can progress to a new position. Currently, if you play a player in an unfamiliar position, they do not progress in terms of rating. This is another feature that needs to be tweaked.

2. Simulation improvements

Content creators among the FIFA community have recently been playing Career Mode, to fill in the days until FIFA 19 drops. This has exposed a lot of issues in Career Mode gameplay that had previously not been brought to the front-line. One of these issues is the simulation in games. Players often like to simulate games to make it more interesting, as your team solely depends on your managerial skills, instead of your FIFA skills.

One thing that many players are asking for is a feature to allow players to watch the game that they are simulating. This is such a simple feature. In fact, you are able to watch AI-controlled games in the Kick-off mode. For some reason, this has not been implemented in Career Mode. You are only able to view line-ups and look at key events in the match. This makes it seem like you are following a report on the game, instead of watching it. This would be such an easy, but significant, improvement to make in FIFA Career Mode.

3. Staff management

This was a feature that was in FIFA from FIFA 07 to FIFA 11. However, they removed the option to manage your staff. This is something that would greatly improve the authenticity of the mode. Staff management is a key part of a real-life club and team management. Being able to manage things such as medical staff, training staff, nutrition, and other staff types could impact your team, in positive and negative ways.

This could also be a gateway to bringing in new animations and cut scenes. There could be things such as conversations between the manager and the medical staff. Finally, you could upgrade your staff. This could affect your team, for example, players would be less prone to injuries. This would, once again, improve the authenticity of the mode.

4. Media Interaction

There is already a very basic version of this in FIFA 18. You can take part in press conferences. In these, you can talk smack to the other team, or motivate your own team. However, this has absolutely no impact on the game and is only there because it seems realistic. There used to be news reports on what you said in press conferences, but there is now no result of your manager’s actions.

There should be a cut-scene type feature, similar to Alex Hunter’s interviews in The Journey. This could show your manager being interviewed before or after the game. You should be able to choose custom responses based on which type of personality you want your manager to have. This would also add to the realistic feel of the mode, which seems to be EA’s motion when it comes to Career Mode. It would also be great to see what your manager says having an effect on your players’ morale. Morale seems to be a feature that has been simplified. It used to be a huge part of the game and how your players played. This is something that needs to be implemented even more.

5. Manager creation/Play as a real manager

In FIFA 17, EA implemented a feature that allows you to have an actual appearance. This was huge in FIFA as we had never been able to visualize the person who was managing the team. However, the feature wasn’t as spectacular as it was imagined to be. There are currently several default skins that you can choose from; this means that it is not truly custom. In addition to this, the only piece of customization is whether you wear a suit, tracksuit, or a shirt and tie on match days. This is lackluster and lazy from EA.

There is no reason that we cannot create a custom manager, like you can create a custom player. They could even implement the game face feature that is already in the game. This allows players to scan their face on the website, then import that scan into the game. As EA has added real managers into the game in recent years, why can’t we play as one of these managers? I would personally love to be able to act as Pep Guardiola when managing Manchester City. This is another simple feature that they should implement. It would add to the realism of the mode, which is what the consumer and EA both want.

6. Updated Squads throughout the season

A final feature that EA needs to improve upon is updating squads throughout the real-life season. When you start a Career Mode, you have the option to use the latest squads. These squads should actually be the latest on that day. This is also strange, as every player has to update single player squads each day, since the release of the game. We currently only have the January squads as the “latest squads.” This needs to be changed as most players do not want to manually swap players from each squad.

What do you think of these new features? Which features would you add? We’d love to hear from you. If you want to check out some more FIFA 19 info and guides, check out our FIFA archives here.