EA has finally removed fitness items from Ultimate Team for FIFA 21
Phew.
EA has finally removed fitness items from Ultimate Team for FIFA 21 - a change the community has called for ever since Ultimate Team began life back in 2008 with FIFA 09.
In FUT, your players suffer stamina fatigue as they play games, and fitness cards are needed to boost their fitness back to acceptable levels (to prevent them from being knackered halfway through a match). This system is pretty much unanimously hated by the FIFA community as it has to be dealt with so frequently and is seen as a punishment for playing the game. Fitness cards and others like it also contribute to "pack bloat" - the idea packs are full of rubbish you don't want instead of the cards you do.
For FIFA 21, EA has pulled fitness and training items completely.
"Fitness items have been a light management element in Ultimate Team since the very beginning," EA said. "The decay of players' fitness was put in the game originally to encourage rotation in the squad and to simulate some of the management decisions that football squads have to consider.
"However, we've evaluated these mechanics and have decided that it wasn't creating the desired effect in rotation and players were spending time doing a management action that was frequently required and, ultimately, not very fun.
"So this year, while Fitness and Player Stamina will still be important factors inside of a match, dictating, for example, how much you can sprint and for how long, you will no longer have to manage that mechanic in the menus as well."
So, all players in FUT 21 start every game at full fitness.
As for training items, this legacy staple provided one-off stat boosts to players. The problem here is hardly anyone actually used them, and you'd end up getting loads of these types of cards in packs instead of the kind of cards you actually wanted - the aforementioned pack bloat issue.
"This mechanic was not something that was being used in-game by the vast majority of players so we've decided, rather than to continue with this feature and give people items in packs that they're not using, to remove it and simplify this space in-game," EA said.
"As a result of these two changes, we're also removing Fitness, Training & Healing related Staff Items from the game."
EA has simplified healing items for FUT 21, so they will no longer be targeted at specific injuries. There are only two healing items in the game: gold common and rare items. These apply to any injury type and reduce the injury duration by two matches and five matches respectively.
EA said packs in FUT 21 have been rebalanced around all these changes, and it's added a suite of new licensed club customisation options, for example club Tifos and stadium themes for major clubs in FUT. You will also continue to get the kits and badges you already find in packs. Expect a slightly increased chance of getting chemistry styles, EA said.