August 4, 2023
Hey Madden fans!
Welcome back to Gridiron Notes, the series where we bring you information on your favorite modes straight from our developers!
Today, we are here to talk about the biggest year of Madden Ultimate Team yet. We will cover new updates and features in the mode, plus give you a sneak peek about what is coming with Season 1 and the MCS!
Plus, make sure to tune into our Good Morning Madden Special Stream on Twitch on August 14th at 6 PM ET for even more information on five programs launching early in Season 1 including over 100+ player reveals!
Last year, Madden Ultimate Team had more programs than ever, continuing all the way up to the release of Madden NFL 24. With new programs like Moldbreakers, Mission MUT, and Gamechangers, we aimed to keep the experience interesting and fresh all year long. This year, our team is planning seven full seasons of Ultimate Team which will enable us to have even more new and exciting programs coming in the post-Super Bowl half of the year.
Over the course of the year, Madden Ultimate Team puts out a lot of new players, programs and challenges. For new players, it can become a little difficult to know exactly what is new or where to focus. With the Live Events Hub, players will now be able to find all the components for a program in a single place. Solo Challenges, Sets, House Rules and even Store items can all be accessed from the Live Events Hub.
Additionally, the Live Event Hub will filter all the content to only show things that are relevant to the program you have selected. Select any particular program and it will automatically filter the items on the screen to only display the items related to that specific instance.
With Madden NFL 24, we have implemented a new and improved tutorial system to help players learn the deeper areas of Madden Ultimate Team. This brief tutorial will allow you to better understand the process of making your Ultimate Team. This system will also allow us to introduce new mechanics or programs throughout the year.
Dev Note: MUT veterans will have the opportunity to skip the tutorial at any step.
Have you ever gone up against an opponent in Madden Ultimate Team Head to Head and they have an item you have never seen before? Previously, there was no great way to figure out how to get that player for yourself. The Catalog aims to solve that. Every item that can be obtained in game, will appear in the Catalog and selecting an item will inform you where and how you can obtain that item. You will be able to view any Player Item’s Abilities, AP Cost of Abilities, and the Global Usage of any player available in Ultimate Team!
We are happy to introduce Cross-Play to Madden Ultimate Team. Players will now be able to challenge their friends across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC to finally determine who in fact has the ultimate team.
As the gameplay experiences continue to diverge between game generations, it is no longer feasible to have a Madden Ultimate Team economy that is shared across console generations. Separating the economies will allow us to include new features like Cross-Play into Madden Ultimate Team.
For users carrying over Rookie Premiere players from the last generation of consoles to the new generation of consoles, you will have those players available on either console as long as you are using the same account you completed them on. More details about this will come at a later time.
Speaking of Rookie Premiere, take a look at the Ultimate Rookie Champion Aidan Hutchinson coming in at 87 OVR.
All other 32 Rookie Premiere players will be at the launch Hero level OVR of 84.
In Madden NFL 24, the starting OVR for Champions at launch will be 87 OVR. This change will give us more ability to ensure that the player meta stays fresh and exciting.
The Competitive Pass has been revamped for Madden NFL 24. It will still focus on Solo Battles, MUT Champs and H2H Season. Instead of completely refreshing bi-weekly, each iteration of the Competitive Pass will now start on the first Friday of each new season and last the duration of that Season. To keep it fresh, there will be Competitive Pass specific daily, weekly, and season long objectives for users to complete.
Daily and seasonal objectives can be done across any of the three modes while each mode will receive their own weekly objectives. The daily and weekly objectives will be refreshed for each time period, varying in difficulty and random from user to user.
Dev Note: While users will be receiving random objectives weekly and daily, the difficulty of these objectives are deemed the same.
To raise the stakes even more, most weekly objectives will require users to win as well in order to gain progress. Daily and Seasonal objectives can be progressed in wins and losses.
Another change in the Competitive Pass will be with the exclusive Player Items. Each season, there will be two Competitive Pass-exclusive Player items to chase. Each player has two versions, Limited and Base. The base version will be similar to the items from Madden NFL 23 by being BND and having Champion level abilities (with a few extras). The Limited version of that player can only be obtained by the first 1000 users to reach the level that rewards the player. This limited version will have extra Champion level ability buckets and IS auctionable.
This year, MUT Champs will NOT require a token for entry. It will stay on its same weekly cadence but will refresh every Friday, allowing users to still have a week to progress through Champs objectives in the Competitive Pass. This change to Friday refreshes puts MUT Champs in line with the Competitive Pass as it will be the fastest way to progress through it and earn rewards!
This year, in order to make Champion Sets more accessible, we’ve changed some of these sets to require ANY Non-BND players of a given OVR, rather than requiring Heroes from that program. The first program this change will be visible in is Headliners. Rather than these sets requiring five Headliners Heroes to complete, it will require five of ANY 84-85 OVR Players.
The Madden Championship Series is returning to Ultimate Team for the Madden NFL 24 season. Now is your chance to take your MUT team and compete across six MCS tournaments for a piece of the USD $1.7 million prize pool.
Be sure to follow EAMaddenNFL_MCS on Instagram & Twitter to stay up to date with all the latest Madden Championship Series news & info.
Conditions & restrictions apply. See Official Rules at maddenchampionship.com/rules for details. Competitors may receive a maximum of five (5) Red Zone Packs during the MCS season, with a maximum of one (1) Red Zone Pack per EA Major.
We are excited for you to experience all the programs, players and action we have in store for Ultimate Team and look forward to celebrating football all year long.