EA Sports games

Ok I'm fairly new to all this stuff so if this sounds dumb, I'm sure one if you will tell me. I played a lot of NCAA, madden, mlb, fifa back in 2005-2009. I had a couple kids, put it away for a few years. Wife got me a PS3 last year and now it seems like every game has completely changed.

One of My favorite things to do was to create a team and create a uniform/stadium blah blah blah for any of these games. Everything used to be in the game itself. Now for all the new games, you have to spend like $50-$60 to buy the game, then buy a pass and go online and create everything then upload it to the game. Why do they all seem to have this now? Is there any game out there where it's still in the game (no pun intended)? I like mlb the show but it looks like 13 is online too. Am I just being a little bia or does this frustrate anyone else?