Has EA Sports Killed Theme Teams?

Bengals tt need an offensive playmaker rn my best receiver is 93 aj green

LoonyGoon said:

Lions tt is struggling bad. It’s been a month since it got anything useful💀

We got an 87 RG in weekly wildcards which was better than the 80 we had

Glensport said:

while yes I do agree that TT(theme teams) this year has had a drop off because ea refuses to upgrade current players and only gives legends new cards, I think that the larger problem for me is the lack of x2 and x3 team chem. from my count, no players in the game get x2 or x3 team chem which makes TTs so much harder to run. Last year ea went all in into T's. We got Team Diamonds one and two which gave x3 team chem, Team Captions which gave x3 chem, and Stocking Stuffers which gave x2 for some reason. That's also not to mention all of the NFL Draft players that we got last year that gave team chem up to x4. I think that ea saw how players were easily able to make 25/25/25 TTs and still have slots left for the best players at a given position, and decided that that was too overpowered and wanted to make TT more balanced by removing the 25-team chem speed boost and making it 40-team chem to get the boost(which doesn't really make sense if they think that they're op if because adding a legends tt defeats the whole purpose of running a TT)

Overall I just think that other than running legends, you can't really run any other TTs at 50/50 because the team chem just takes up too many spots. I hope that maybe ea will give us some x2 and x3 team chem players in the future or update the current players.

yeah I agree, last year we got a lot of x2 and x3 chems. This year so far it's just the one team diamond player per team with x2 chems, and then Gronk with x2 chems. I know this year we have a x5 chem strat Item, but last year we had x3 and then the 3 chems from jerseys and stadiums. Other thing I realize is last year we had way more all team chem players or NFC and AFC chem players, this year there's only one of each.

Edawg7 said:

I have an interesting take on this. I feel like this is the dead spot for TTs right now, the legends TT is only better right now because there is still a gap to 99 Speed. When we start getting 96 or 97-speed players, they are endgame on a TT. The problem becomes when we get 98-speed legends that are maxed out with 3 discounted ability slots. Then the game is just all legend TT because you need 99 speed to compete.

yeah theres always a dead spot, but last years playoff content was so much better, and I'm worried with TOTY in march now some key players wont get their upgrades in time. for example, stephon diggs is a 92. If I'm EA and know TOTY is in march, then I would have given him a 95 or 96 in the last month. Jefferson is another example, 93 for 3 months and we should have got a 96 card for him. They better have Joe Burrow in an upcoming promo because giving him a 93 is disrespectful. 

I think EA has realized what guys will pay to have a legends theme team so the prioritize that this year, and don't really care about the regular teams.

I run a 40/50 bill tt and it’s pretty good but although josh Allen has had his struggles he was named an mvp candidate and deserves more than a 92, same with diggs has had his struggle but is still a top 5 receiver and deserves more than a 92, I can keep going on with players that need an upgrade. its disappointing at the least.

when do tvps come back out?

I run a legends plus an Eagles theme team.  I like having legends in the team because I am older and watched all these players growing up but in retrospect I don’t like the idea of having a legends theme team.  I have no incentive for picking up newer present day players that are released .  I prefer how it’s been in the past so I can put together a team with past and present players along with my Eagles team.

I'd agree, a few maddens ago I would run random theme teams and it was super fun because all teams randomly got cards and not just the +2 upgrades to certain players or the countless players that get all team chems for free. Since then I've stopped and have started running college based theme teams, as a Michigan fan I've been running a Big Ten theme team which has been tons of fun.

featuredsteak said:

We got an 87 RG in weekly wildcards which was better than the 80 we had

i mean yeah but in a game where abilities are then main deciding factor can that really be considered an upgrade? guards you can kind of get away with it but they don’t have an Lt or Rt with discounted abilities so the cheesy blitzes people send are gonna get home even quicker then they already do. If the game wasn’t so ability centered and cards actually played like they had brains then id say yeah but it’s really hard to say that in madden 23

Moderator Sevein131 said:

If they're not going to make it a point to ensure all themec teams are viable, I think they should do away with them completely.   The point of theme teams should be to drive variety but that only works if all are viable and every promo addresses a different gap for each team.

Hit it right on the head. TTs allowed you to not see variety of different lineups and abilities/schemes but now with the introduction of legends tt, most teams are the nearly identical.  Makes me feel like im playing at a disadvantage every game cause my TT has a ton of holes.

steemer119 said:

I run a legends plus an Eagles theme team.  I like having legends in the team because I am older and watched all these players growing up but in retrospect I don’t like the idea of having a legends theme team.  I have no incentive for picking up newer present day players that are released .  I prefer how it’s been in the past so I can put together a team with past and present players along with my Eagles team.

yeah I obviously love legends players that played for my team, and others as well. I want to get legends players on my team, just don't like the idea of a full legends team, it's not even like they all have a connection playing for the same organization or something like normal theme teams do. Most never played together or for the same team.

I'd say it's been a slow process over the last few years that has reduced the viability of TTs. This year has by far been the worse. The lack of consistent weekly content from Flashbacks, Heavy Weights, Vets., Rising Stars, and LTDs in addition the Legends having their own TT boosts really killed it this year.

i personally dont think that the addition of the zero chill, legends, and other non real tt's has helped. without these tt's it forces EA to look at the current tt's and say oh shoot this team is only a 90 while this one is a 94. i mean im not gonna argue that my fav tt is a 94 but still it isnt fair to the rest of yall to only have chiefs an eagles gettin cards

i just switched to Legends TT from a 40/50 Falcons team. Just not enough players for the Falcons.  I don’t try to keep the best players all the time, so it wasn’t too much to switch (95 overall team) especially since most of the good Falcons players were Legends as well.