Where To Winter Upgrades Of FIFA 15

Do you know what happened and what may happen with upgraded cards.fifa15

Despite most of the focus being on TOTY, Winter Upgrades in FUT are right around the corner, likely taking place in February and early March. There have been a lot of threads on /r/FIFA asking about winter upgrades and which cards will or won’t be affected, so I decided to look back and remind myself of what actually happened last year and try to draw some conclusions about what may happen this year. I put this into a Reddit post which seemed to help clarify things for the community.

What about In-form cards?

Last year was the first year that IFs received a commensurate upgrade to that of the NIF. That is to say that an already-released IF card for a player whose NIF received a 1-point upgrade was also upgraded by 1 point. As an example:

  • Arturo Vidal started the year as an 85-rated card,
  • Vidal then earned an 86-rated IF in TOTW 19
  • He then received a 1-point winter upgrade, so his UP NIF was now an 86-rated card. The 85-rated card was removed from packs and could no longer be pulled.
  • His 86-rated IF card was also raised 1-point to make it an 87-rated IFfifa15

What if a Card is Upgraded to a Higher Quality Tier?

IF upgrades only occurred if the NIF upgrade stayed in the same “quality” tier (Gold/Silver/Bronze). In EA’s own words from the FAQ, this was done in order to:

preserve the value of the IF and ensures your Bro/Sil squads aren’t negatively affected
This is a little confusing, but here’s an example of how it worked:fifa15

Andros Townsend started as a 72-rated silver NIF, earned a 73-rated silver IF in TOTW 5, was upgraded to a 74-rated silver NIF, so his IF was also raised to a 74-rated silver IF with better stats than his upgraded NIF

With the above in mind, I have a few thoughts:

If you have a Gold IF for a player, an upgrade could only help you last year, and would likely do the same this year.
If you have a Silver or Bronze IF that’s near the upper limit of the quality band it’s issued in (74 or 64, respectively), an upgrade may not have helped you if it put the NIF in the next-highest level. As an example for this year if last year is a guide:
70-rated silver Nabil Fekir may get an upgrade, but if you’re holding his 73-rated silver IF, you’d better hope that upgrade is no higher than 4 points so he ends up like Andros Townsend and not like Ross Barkley.

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