FIFA 23 has arrived, with many fans praising the gameplay changes and championing the new AcceleRATE archetypes.
One such element of FIFA 23 that hasn't received much love is Career Mode, with the offline management experience feeling more hollow than ever before.
As we've said before, there are many good ideas in Career Mode this year, they are just poorly executed.
Continuing that trend, we want to take a look at how the FIFA 23 Stadium Developer tool in Career Mode represents a major missed opportunity.
FIFA 23 Stadium Developer
The stadium developer tool was introduced in FIFA 22, allowing teams with unlicensed stadiums to feel a little more unique.
The ground itself, name, pitch pattern, net colour etc. can all be changed with this tool and its implementation last year signalled a positive step forward for Career Mode.
However, whilst Ultimate Team places emphasis on being able to develop and customise your stadium, a mode like Career Mode has seen no further improvement in this department.
Instead, the stadium developer has remained the same and is another point of frustration for fans of the offline mode.
Lost Potential
The Stadium Developer tool could be so much more than the basic elements that already exist.
Presently, you can customise the following:
- Ground name
- Pitch pattern
- Grass colour
- Net meshing
- Net colour
- Stand colour
- Seat colour
- Line colour
Whilst these customisation options are far better than what we've seen in the past, we still feel like a truly customisable stadium editor is the way forward.
For instance, we'd like to see the ability to change the colour of walls within stands, alter certain stands names or even attach extra logos within the ground to further push your club's brand.
The arrival of the pre-match fan hubs in certain cutscenes could also lead to further customisation, giving you the chance to create an ecosystem around your club that could increase revenue and free up more funds.
Not only that, we'd like to see the Stadium Developer enable you to do things like increasing certain stands as more money comes in or even allow you to make drastic structural changes without having to select a completely different base.
Ultimately, the Stadium Develop could offer so much more and with EA Sports FC on the horizon, we hope that EA is planning a major overhaul to make Career Mode feel more personalised than ever before.