Well, based on the quote I posted in the demo discussion thread, I now believe the final feature set will be something similar to NHL 10's "tuner sets" which will allow EA to make gameplay adjustments based on feedback without having to release a patch.

About the NHL 10 feature,(from a post on OS):
The tuner set allows up to update various gameplay parameters to tune the game. For online play their is no choice but to get the lastest version (since everyone has to play with the same settings). For offline we plan on maintaining a version history so that you can opt to stay with an earlier version if you prefer how that one played -- so on day one there will probably be a V1.00 (which is basically the demo) and V1.01. If you download the tuning set and do nothing else you will be playing V1.01 because the default is "Latest".

The idea of the whole thing is that we can fine tune the balance of gameplay in response to how the game is being played and any issues that are discovered along the way. Not all problems can be fixed this way, but since we can do this sort of update much more quickly than a title update (aka patch) it should prove to be a useful tool and a number of improvements have already been made based on feedback from the demo.