Madden 18’s Ultimate Team player overall formula gets major overhaul

EA Sports is making major changes to player overall inMadden 18‘s Madden Ultimate Team.

“Arguably, the number one piece of feedback collected last year was that players did not receive enough of an individual ratings boost to justify a 2-to-3 point OVR jump,” EA explained. “This made players feel like they couldn’t tell much of a difference when playing with the upgraded player.”

To address the issue, EA has made changes to MUT’s player Overall formula.

“In the simplest terms, player OVR is calculated in a similar way that the salary cap value is. Each position has a formula catered specifically for it. From there, we identify what ratings mean the most at each position and assign a weight to them.”

In layman’s terms, it will take more individual rating increases in order to increase a player’s Overall. The goal is that even a one-point Overall increase will feel like a major difference in performance. The catch is that now you will see lower individual ratings at the beginning of the year.

“The benefits of this OVR philosophy shift really come when factoring in how much “better” a player will feel after an increase in OVR, and later in the year when the player OVR’s start to get a little higher,” EA justified.

For a simpler look at how things have changed, here are some player comparisons of Overall and ratings in Madden 17 vs Madden 18.

MUT 17 vs MUT 18 Player Overall Comparison

And just for good measure, here’s a comparison of Le’Veon Bell’s OVR Signature SEries from Madden 17, with a hypotehtical 99 Overall Bell in Madden NFL 18. EA points out that simply porting over the Madden 17 version of Bell, his Overall would be a 97 in this year’s game. Here is the bare minimum it would take to make Bell a 99 in Madden 18.

Player Overall is just one of the changes in Madden 18’s Ultimate Team mode. EA has also adjusted the cards found in Packs, whichyou can read more about here. This includes abrand new “Team Tokens”form of currency.