We got our first Gridiron Notes of the new features coming to Madden Ultimate Team. Here is a quick summary of the highlights:

• Field Pass
  • New "Battle Pass" style system, where completing objectives will progress you through the Field Pass.
  • Three types of Field Passes
    • Season
      • 60 Levels of rewards
      • Season will run for roughly 60 days
      • Rewards: Coins, Packs, High OVR MUT Players
    • Competitive
      • Progress by playing competive modes (Solo Battles, H2H Seasons, Squad Seasons, MUT Champions).
      • Refreshed bi-weekly
      • Rewards: Coins/Packs, High OVR Mut Player as ultimate goal
    • Program Specific
      • Comes out with specific programs, with unique objectives/goals

• MUT Champions
  • Rebrand of "Weekend League"
  • GAMES CAN BE PLAYED MONDAY-MONDAY, NOT ONLY ON WEEKENDS
  • Champs Entry Tokens
    • Earned through Competitive Pass
    • Give you entry into MUT Champions
    • Tokens are items in your binder and never expire
  • REWARDS WILL PAY OUT IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOUR GAME IS COMPLETE

• SETS 2.0
  • Reduction of number of clicks needed to fill out sets
  • Sets are now accessible inside Item Binder
  • You can Filter Sets by postion or program
  • Game will automatically check your inventory for the lowest cost, unused, and non-favorited items needed to complete that Set.
  • Items used in sets will now be returned to the binder as "Account Bound Items" with the BND tag (with reduced quicksell value)
• COMPETITIVE PLAY
  • Solo Battles
    • 4 Solo Battle games to play each day
    • Rewards will be through the Competitive Pass as opposed to the Battlescore alone
  • H2H Seasons
    • Reduced games to 8 per season
    • Reduced divisions to 6
  • MUT Draft
    • Ranked has been removed
    • More regular updates to draft pool
  • Salary Cap has been removed from Ultimate Team
• PLAYER ITEMS
  • Starter teams will have higher OVRs so they are more viable early
  • Power Ups LOTS OF CHANGES
    • Overall: Dialing back the use of power ups
    • Lower OVR Elite players will have ability buckets based on their archetype
    • Higher OVR Elite players will have custom ability buckets built for that player
      • e.g. Discounted abilities, cross-archetype abilities etc
    • TEAM CHEMS WILL BE ON ITEM, NO POWER UP NEEDED
    • NO MORE PURPLE POWER UP ITEMS
    • Still will be tiered player builds inside programs (e.g. collection all versions of a Legend to build it to the highest OVR)
• STRATEGY ITEMS
  • UI improvement to see what attributes are being boosted
  • 3 Strategy Item Slots
    • Offense
    • Defense
    • Team affinity
  • NO SPEED BOOST ON CORE STRATEGY ITEMS
  • STRATEGY ITEMS WILL BE AUCTIONABLE

Whew, what do you guys think? Big W? Some Ls? Let me know in the comments!