EA will be bringing some much needed changes and new features to Ultimate Team this year in FIFA 19. For starters, Online Season has now been replaced with Division Rivals. Instead of aiming for a certain number of points within 10 or less matches, your division ranking will now be determined by a skill-based system which will go up or down depending upon the result. Similar to Squad Battles, there will also be a weekly competition of sorts, which will allow you to earn packs or coins.
Performing well in Division Rivals also gets you champion points, that can be used to obtain a Weekend League token. There is no compulsion to play on that particular weekend and you can use it whenever you want.
EA is improving custom tactics by allowing you to map specific formations and playing styles to the regular tactics options on the d-pad, such as attacking, ultra-attacking or park the bus. Supposing you want to play all out attack, you can map an aggressive formation to it along with tactics to play in that manner. It is an extremely helpful QOL tool that lets you further customise the game flow and get more control over how you want to play, without spending a lot of time in the menus.
A new player pick pack is also being introduced, which will let you pick a player from a handful. In addition, Champions League items will be making their debut. They also took the opportunity to showcase the pack opening animation as well as some of the icons for this year, which included the likes of Lampard and Gerrard.
Given the list of changes, it makes me believe that FUT 19 is all about giving players more options and freedom. Division Rivals is the right step towards making the weekend league qualification much more palatable and also increasing the rewards of playing the main online mode outside of the weekend league.
