FC 26 Ultimate Team doubles down on one of FC 25's best changes

Picture the scene - you're in a high stakes match in Rivals, the most competitive experience there is in EA FC Ultimate Team. The score is tied, and your opponent has just given away a late penalty. It's an easy opportunity for you to nab the win, but your outraged adversary quits the match, stealing that inevitable victory away from you. The majority of FUT players will have gone through this pain at least once, but FC 26 is going to launch with some new protections in place that will grant you victories in certain scenarios.

I somewhat understand EA's hesitancy to award players a win if their opponent leaves a match. Early, unintentional disconnects could result in undeserving victories, and it's a system that could potentially be abused. However, EA FC players like myself have been calling for a solution to this issue for years - we're talking way back into the FIFA era of the series. It's been a plague on Ultimate Team's competitive experience, and midway through FC 25's cycle, EA took its first steps towards curing it. In FC 26, however, it's doubling down in an attempt to make it one of the best sports games in recent years.

If your opponent quits while a match is tied, you will still be granted a win if you meet any of these three criteria: 45 in-game minutes have passed, your opponent just got a red card, or they just conceded a penalty. These are similar to the conditions that were brought in with that aforementioned FC 25 update, but the effect of that update wasn't really felt. Why? Because the win protection would only trigger if your opponent quit via the in-game pause menu. In FC 26, any form of a disconnect will be recognized as someone 'quitting.' This should include hitting Alt+F4 to close the game on PC, 'dashboarding' on consoles, or your system simply losing its connection to the internet.

While some players would've hoped to see this expanded even further, with the first half of matches covered or other scenarios (such as being clean through on goal) included, it's still a huge step forward. The pause menu was rarely used by players looking to crash out of matches, so now this safety net for Rivals players will be much more useful and widely felt.

This win protection system will cover FUT Rivals and Champions games, as well as the new Live Events competitions EA is introducing in FC 26.

In more good news for Rivals players, no longer will you have to endure the frustration of Champions qualifier matches. EA acknowledges that "at times, qualifying for Champions through Playoffs was a tougher competition than Champions itself," so now you'll earn direct qualification through reaching the required Rivals division and spending your hard-earned Champions Points.

If you're closer to the bottom of the rankings than Division 1, then EA is also providing a new competitive experience for you. While the best players in the game fight it out in Champions, a lower tier of weekly competition called Challengers. It works very similarly, but the rewards won't be quite as spicy as those earned in Champions.

For the full lowdown on what's changing in FC 26 Ultimate Team, head to the full Pitch Notes article here. In the build up to the FC 26 release date, check out when the FC 26 beta is set to start and how players can get involved with it.

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