FIFA 23 has announced the innovations for Ultimate Team. Among them is a fairly violent upheaval: the old chemistry system is being canceled and a new one is being used. And that brings a lot more freedom. A new mode is also coming.
The “old” chemistry was so important: Chemistry was the basic system by which you had to build your teams in Ultimate Team. Individual connections, which could vary in strength, existed between all the players who were standing next to each other on the pitch.
The chemistry got better the more of these 3 factors the players have in common:
The stronger the connection between the players, the higher bonuses on the stats they got. At the same time, the values went down if the chemical connections weren’t right. There was also overall team chemistry, which also brought bonuses.
This chemistry system severely limited which players you could put on your team in which combinations. As a result, it has defined how teams in Ultimate Team have been designed for years. But that is now being completely rebuilt.
FIFA 23 Ultimate Team: How the new chemistry works
This is the new system: Chemistry will not be completely abolished, but will be significantly relaxed. So there are no longer any connections between the players who are standing next to each other on the pitch.
Instead, it is only important that a few of your players share the values of nationality, club or league – but where they are exactly positioned does not matter for the connection. Then they increase in chemistry level, where each player can reach three chemistry points.
In addition, all negative effects for your players will be removed if the chemistry is “bad”. Instead, your players will now always play at least as well as their stats indicate on the map – they won’t be weakened just because they have the wrong teammates. There are only positive effects for good chemistry.
This means that if you get a cool new player who doesn’t really fit into your team, you can still try him out fairly risk-free.
In addition, the position system will be adjusted a bit. Your players now have fixed alternative positions to which they can switch – there is then a specific consumable item for this. This had already been leaked in advance and is now official. You can find more details here:
FIFA 23: Leak shows important detail that Ultimate Team could do much better
What does this mean for the teams? With the new system, it is conceivable to build a team with three players from the Premier League, three from the Bundesliga, three from Ligue 1 and two from Serie A – or something like that.
So you have much, much more freedom than before, and you can field powerful players across leagues and build insane teams. Chemistry can no longer stop you from putting absolute top strikers like Mbappé and Ronaldo in a team. The problem is that it will probably continue to be difficult to obtain.
In addition, it will probably also be easier to integrate “unusual” cards. There’s a really good player in the Portuguese Liga NOS, but you mainly play Bundesliga players? You can probably install it anyway.
At the same time, the new system also harbors a danger: the chemistry has forced players to get creative to a certain extent. Now it could happen that everyone just tries to get and set up the “strongest” players – without having to make sure that it still fits together well.
What about heroes and icons? These cards were very popular precisely because of their chemistry advantages.
Heroes and Icons will also return in FIFA 23, but they will be slightly changed: Icons will give a chemistry boost to players of the same nationality, while Heroes will give a chemistry boost to players of the same league. But as a real “link” you no longer need them.
New mode promises fast rewards for little game time
What is this mode? In addition to the chemistry change, FUT also gets a new mode called “FUT Moments”. It effectively consists of small game scenes that you have to replay with suitable players.
It looks something like this:
Depending on how well you do it, you will then receive “stars” as a reward, which you can redeem for rewards such as packs and players.
These game scenes will be significantly shorter than normal matches and are partly based on encounters and moments from real football. This is a bit reminiscent of Score Hero, a popular football mobile game.
This mode could be an interesting change compared to the usual Rivals, Squad Battles and other modes.
What do you think of the innovations in FUT? Are they something for you, or do you not care for them? Tell us in the comments! And our complete overview of the FIFA 23 release can be found here.