Zero Chill ruined the game for me

I've made millions of coins off this promo, mostly just buying and flipping cards, made over 4mil buying J Ramsey around 1mil and flipping for 1,5 + making 350k+ but gotta be patient

peatrick said:

This^^ so much this, it pains me each and every single time I hear kids discussing "OVR" ratings on cards. Thank you for trying to educate the community. 

Abilities are EVERYTHING. That is why Zero Chill saved MUT, there's 90 OVR cards for under 100k coins that are better than every single Golden Ticket from M24. You can field a competitive squad if you just got the game for Xmas on 1 - 1.5M coins... and play against the top tier teams, filled with every Present player.

💯% saved MUT, we finally have a chance on defense. Holy.

I agree you both make good points. These Zero Chill cards definitely lowered the cost of a competitive team and changed the gameplay dramatically. At least temporarily. Those are factors I need to consider more in my previous point. Though I think it still holds true with that consideration. I believe a large part of considering the factors you bring up is the transition from Zero Chill to the next main promo and season. If the value of zero chill cards has or will diminish significantly enough that the average has to spend $$ to revamp, rebuild, rechem or otherwise recompetitivise (made up words but hopefully it makes sense) their team would you still consider Zero Chill as successful? Same question, If the gameplay returns to a state where you can’t play defense or is otherwise unenjoyable? I guess we will see how things play out.

To add to your low cost team statement my lineup is what I believe is a competitive 94 ovr with a total value of only about 500k. I love that even if it’s only for 5-6 more days.

Personally I thought Zero Chill was crazy good... 

Campus Heroes 2 was just a filler promo... but I'm curious to see what the Playoffs and Super Bowl Promos bring to the table.  Zero Chill squads will still be very good after Jan-9th so EA is gonna have to do something to get people to move onto to something else.

I added some great pieces to my theme team with snow BNDs, Sean Taylor is an amazing user, but I feel you.  

I definitely took a step back in playing time recently do to my team being outclassed. Teams with full offensive and defensive line abilities, tank on the RB, & TE, and master tact aren’t the most enjoyable match ups. You have to play perfect while someone just throws a vert to Calvin Johnson over the top or has their RB take a simple stretch to the crib. I could add some more pieces to my defense to match but ima hold on to my coins for later in the game cycle.

I'm 53 and literally brand new to MUT. Not Madden obviously but years ago I only ever did quick play games with friends. I play offline mostly. Every time I go online I get throttled but I feel like I'm getting better so y'all watch it cuz one of these days......😂. I love this site for all the info and reading all the threads has been extremely helpful in most cases. I see both sides on this one. Not knowing what I was doing back in early September I bought packs in the store and paid little to no attention to coin stack/training/season tickets/etc. I did that for nearly a month. Needless to say I got behind quick. Lol. Between this site and YouTube I learned the ways of MUT but was obviously still behind. The Zero Chill Promo and specifically Christmas Day market stuffs allowed me to catch up, fill out my team and stack about 4 million coins so at least I feel like I'm where I should be if I had known what I was doing in the beginning when I spent a few hundred bucks and more in the store. Lol. 

All the abilities have been a blast for me as well. I can't tell y'all how much I've enjoyed how much better the players respond to stick input even against the CPU. I struggled so badly in the beginning with even stuff like the easy challenges with the lower OVR cards and I had no idea until ZC how much abilities mattered. Wow! Personally I'm gonna miss them.

KenFJohnathy said:

I’m free to play, and normally I get by just fine. I’m not a fan of the overall boosts and the insane amount of super meta cards in the promo this year. It feels like July but my team is stuck in January. I’m curious what others think of this promo? Perhaps it’s fun if you spend. But I dont like the idea of endgame coming before 2025 did.

Zero chill was nice to me. Better than m24 and 23 in my opinion at least

Zero Chill saved MUT…

Made the gap between offense and defense better, that’s all people wanted…

with how much the community loved it, the question is what do they do.

People will be upset if Playoff/Superbowl is zero chill run back, making zero chill players useless. (Look at CH2, they’re terrible)

only option they have is to add discount to all players at champion and LTD level. Would make the game playable beyond 1 month.

Odog123 said:

I agree you both make good points. These Zero Chill cards definitely lowered the cost of a competitive team and changed the gameplay dramatically. At least temporarily. Those are factors I need to consider more in my previous point. Though I think it still holds true with that consideration. I believe a large part of considering the factors you bring up is the transition from Zero Chill to the next main promo and season. If the value of zero chill cards has or will diminish significantly enough that the average has to spend $$ to revamp, rebuild, rechem or otherwise recompetitivise (made up words but hopefully it makes sense) their team would you still consider Zero Chill as successful? Same question, If the gameplay returns to a state where you can’t play defense or is otherwise unenjoyable? I guess we will see how things play out.

 

To add to your low cost team statement my lineup is what I believe is a competitive 94 ovr with a total value of only about 500k. I love that even if it’s only for 5-6 more days.

Perhaps this is a unique take, but I felt that I could play defense pretty good all of fall until zero chill. Maybe it’s my team that has fallen behind, but I just can’t do much about 4 97 speed receivers running crossers, or a full ability oline making way for name whatever zero chill back. Even when my best corner was Latimore and the first 2 Zero Chill drops happened it was doable. But now there’s so many good cards pumped in which I just can’t afford to match as I have neither the time nor am I willing to spend the money.

KenFJohnathy said:

Perhaps this is a unique take, but I felt that I could play defense pretty good all of fall until zero chill. Maybe it’s my team that has fallen behind, but I just can’t do much about 4 97 speed receivers running crossers, or a full ability oline making way for name whatever zero chill back. Even when my best corner was Latimore and the first 2 Zero Chill drops happened it was doable. But now there’s so many good cards pumped in which I just can’t afford to match as I have neither the time nor am I willing to spend the money.

That is true.

TecmoEagles said:

"Zero Chill ruined the game for me"

Disagree.

The team Diamond 95's killed the game for a bit. People who had great teams still couldn't compete with the SUPER MEGA GOD SQUADS that had multiple 95's when they where 4-6 mil for each cards. So you saw some drop off in players playing in H2H, and thus facing more of the Teams that where in another class vs any previous MUT releases.

Then Zero Chill came along and had cards that where better that the 95 OVR Team Diamonds, the top end cards where the "Normal" Top End prices. Basically 350k-800k for the new releases and LTDs at 580k-2+M. IMO the Zero Chill cards needed to be OP to make the 95 TD teams not a thing. As the ZC boosts expire and now we are getting the 94 Champions and 95 LTDs, these cards without any special boosts should be competitive vs the 95 TDs and their price will come down to earth, only thing that'll make the cards hold their price is  for the 3x Team Chem.

Conclusion, Zero Chill saved MUT.

You’re free to disagree, but it is my opinion and it is unchanging. The cost of entry for the team diamonds was so High that the whales who used them were far and in between. The gap between those and the 90-92s people were running was less than name almost any non zero chill cards versus zero chill cards with their stat boosts and good free abilities galore. I can understand why you would like it if your favorite part of MUT is June and July, but I’m not a huge fan of many of the MUT abilities that make the game feel far less organic. Not to mention this Year they went above and beyond when it comes to pumping meta cards into the promo. They added dare I say most of the best performing player models into the game at once, while giving them good boosts and abilities. It Makes the field smaller on offense, and on defense makes certain strategies work routinely while others now completely don’t work. It made the game more spammy and harder to stop the same thing again and again in my opinion. Granted my view is also from a casual lense who doesnt have the time nor is willing to spend the money to field a full team. From this lense it is impossible to stop any person with such a team so long as they run match and some version of crossers and a single good run play. In my opinion while all the new cards are cool to look at, it’s not good for the game to rapidly make everyone’s teams not only 3-4 overalls higher but also significantly more meta. I did not miss abilities being the cost of entry to make the game so much as barely playable.

peatrick said:

This^^ so much this, it pains me each and every single time I hear kids discussing "OVR" ratings on cards. Thank you for trying to educate the community. 

Abilities are EVERYTHING. That is why Zero Chill saved MUT, there's 90 OVR cards for under 100k coins that are better than every single Golden Ticket from M24. You can field a competitive squad if you just got the game for Xmas on 1 - 1.5M coins... and play against the top tier teams, filled with every Present player.

💯% saved MUT, we finally have a chance on defense. Holy.

I see now that saved MUT means returned it to the endgame. I guess I’m in the minority when I say I like it when the game feels more organic. I had no issues on defense before zero chill, as often times you could adjust and the offense would have to adjust and you could force mistakes that way. With abilities the game is more absolute. Why ever adjust coverage when almost any match defense plus KO’s does the job just fine? Why have any diversity in offense, when the whole line has abilities so the same run will work every time? I can see for those who were craving this experience, this was a much needed change, but I did not miss needing certain abilities just to be able to play the game. And sure you can say what you want about boosts, but making everyone have 97 of every stat while simultaneously pumping many of the best player models into the game at once with those stats (and abilities) didn’t help either, unless you like it when it plays like madden mobile.

Who tryna buy chris gamble on Xbox?

Odog123 said:

I can see your point and I would agree the Team Diamonds are what started the ripple effect. I’m not sure if you are implying it was a mistake by EA or not but I would say it looks intentionally designed to me. In reality regardless of design or not your point that zero chill saved MUT holds merit but I don’t entirely agree.

As you suggested the only way to devalue 95 TD and get users to spend again was to put more value in the new zero chill cards. They choose to accomplish that through two primary means temporary chem boosts and temporary 0 AP abilities. Do any of us believe that was on the fly thinking or content? Considering we’ve seen them do this exact same tactic already this year I don’t believe that for a second.

My point is this while these temporary boosts better encourage cycles of user activity and spending that more consistently last the duration of the games life cycle they may not be good for the long term health of our game. As these are the exact pay to play/win tactics that we see driving people away from our game and causing inconsistencies in user experience for those who remain. Regardless I admit I enjoyed Zero Chill and it seems a lot of people did.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

There is a very fine line to thread here.

First - Let us assume I spent a ton to get those 95 TD players on my roster (I didn't) and a few weeks later I'm getting it handed to me on H2H by a bunch of boosted ZC squads - I would not be happy.

Secondly - Let us assume I have no money to spend (I don't) and I managed to stay competitive in H2H games by sheer strategy, grit, and craftiness - and a few days later I'm getting it handed to me a a bunch of squads loaded with 95's - I would not be happy.

I believe that EA made a mistake by dropping the 95s when they did - the man behind the curtain isn't the wise man most believe him to be - but it does not mean they didn't already have the ZC event ready to go;  I honestly believe that the 95s were supposed to drop after Jan 9th.  The 0 AP abilities would be gone and we would be going back to the best "base" cards.

I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but since I'm new to MUT - I was shocked to see EA skipped the natural progression to 99s by releasing 95s before we had the 93-94s.

xXLethalDose89Xx said:

I'm 53 and literally brand new to MUT. Not Madden obviously but years ago I only ever did quick play games with friends. I play offline mostly. Every time I go online I get throttled but I feel like I'm getting better so y'all watch it cuz one of these days......😂. I love this site for all the info and reading all the threads has been extremely helpful in most cases. I see both sides on this one. Not knowing what I was doing back in early September I bought packs in the store and paid little to no attention to coin stack/training/season tickets/etc. I did that for nearly a month. Needless to say I got behind quick. Lol. Between this site and YouTube I learned the ways of MUT but was obviously still behind. The Zero Chill Promo and specifically Christmas Day market stuffs allowed me to catch up, fill out my team and stack about 4 million coins so at least I feel like I'm where I should be if I had known what I was doing in the beginning when I spent a few hundred bucks and more in the store. Lol. 

All the abilities have been a blast for me as well. I can't tell y'all how much I've enjoyed how much better the players respond to stick input even against the CPU. I struggled so badly in the beginning with even stuff like the easy challenges with the lower OVR cards and I had no idea until ZC how much abilities mattered. Wow! Personally I'm gonna miss them.

Welcome, welcome! 47yo myself, first MUT was around this time during M23... but same as you, not my first Madden. Been playing video game football since Atari 2600 generation. Thrilled you found your way here. 

Our beloved Madden franchise is in such a poor state, more pay to win than it's ever been before and it's only going to keep getting worse before it gets any better. As long as you know what you're getting into, it can find enjoyment... the online H2H grind WILL get better. Keep at it, keep learning. The mere fact that you've already figured out that abilities are almost literally everything in that game. Most everything is based off minimum stat thresholds, for example 90 Man or Zone Coverage (MCV/ZCV) will help your DBs play significantly better, but nothing improves reaction times or pass knock outs such as Mid Zone KOs all around. 

Learning which abilities even work, versus which are truly elite and how/what/where to invest limited AP is serious skill gap stuff. Lots to learn, you'll be competing in Ranked play in no time. Please let us know any questions. Compile a roster to share if you're feeling sassy. This community is filled to the brim with toxic sludge, but there's also a ton of really cool guys who have decades and decades of experience and love to bullshit about the game, most are happy to share it. Avoid buying ebooks, most knowledge can and should be started freely.