I started a new clubs team and my teams cpu hasn't updated when we go up a division and are all still 80 rated. We are coming up against 84/86 rated cpu teams and always at a disadvantage.A fix would be greatly appreciated.
@SniffyOnSims
Divisions don't directly impact Ai level anymore.
You need to gain "fans" to improve your ai which will take a few months to get them to a level that they aren't just human shaped static cones in my experience.
You gain a few fans for wins but nowhere near the amount you need to level up.
You gain the most from promotions and playoff positions.
Our club picked up the game a couple months after launch and we are just now getting the 10 million needed for 86 ai.
It's going take a ton of games for you to level the ai up, with the majority of those games against teams with slightly better or significantly better ai.
It's likely to be months of frustration if your experience is anything like ours, losing tons of games through no fault of our own.
Gooner B, thanks for your replies in general, always well written and knowledgeable.
I totally agree the new ai level up system is bad. We know the old system and it was better. At the end of the day few people keep one team going for several months. I don't know what plan was from EA . Were they wanting to stop people going for record clubs and making new clubs constantly when they took one defeat?
Was this causing there to be too many clubs on the server? If so, I'd suggest to ea that:
Don't make club "records" such a big deal to begin with.
Pro Clubs is differnet because you need several people to play. This means you often have to get randoms in at the last second because it's actually hard to pre plan 3+ people you know and trust to play fifa on any given evening. The changes to Pro Clubs have seriously affected the "pick up and play"-ability of the game mode. This works ok for single player modes where all you have to get organised is your self. Pro Clubs isn't conducive to this.
I'd also suggest EA just improve their servers. They are a huge profitable company after all and their servers run like diarrhea.
Also, it just takes too long to get "fans" (I also don't like this 'social media-ification ' of the game mode. Fans- especially fickle online fans who dip in and out- don't matter as much as victories.)
The play offs aren't regular enoguh and you don't get enough fans from them.
The way they are Win or don't count is also bad. What if you fight back from 4-0 down to 4-4? Is this not worthy of something? Ib football contexts a draw is often a good result. You can win cup finals after just drawing the match! If you win the penalties!
I've gone roughly 50-5 wins losses into div 1 and my bots were still 80, just went 82 as we got to elite playoffs. It just made for an extraordinarily frustrating experience as our bots were godawful and our opponents were tending towards having 84 and 86 rated bots. Even using ANY or full 11 isn't really a solution as ANY means you still control 80 rated dogs and full 11 is difficult to manage, difficult to get chemistry going, people keep dipping in and out, etc.
I feel this bots situation is like the levelling up in fifa 22: just badly thoguht out. It took WAY too long to get to max level in 22 (about 350-500 games iirc). I feel next year they'll sort this bot levelling up situation.
This is just one thing that's bad about Pro Clubs this year. There's honesty countless other problems with it.
@Cheerspal179
People not constantly creating clubs is about the only upside I can see to this new system. How that is supposed to translate to a positive for the end user I can't get my head around.
We'd often have a side club to help get newer players up to speed with our club & tactics/style, and building a second club really isn't an option anymore because of this either.
I suppose the flip side of that is that almost every game you play feels practically meaningless anyway so introducing new players at whatever level really makes no difference - it's a painful slog with just poor ai regardless.
About 10 days ago I wrote "we are just about on the cusp of getting 86 ai".. well, we are still just on the cusp of it, and haven't broken the 10m threshold yet. We've played nearly 75 games since I posted, in the exact same loop, over and over like groundhog day.
- 3 points for promo matches
- 4 straight wins required for promo from 4 matches
Inevitably, during one of those 4 promo matches we either:
- fight hard for a draw
- face meta park the bus tactics playing someone who just needs a point
- face teams abusing crossing/giants/'insert other boring meta here
- face teams with significantly better ai, who probably also abuse game mechanincs
.. and then round the loop we go again.
Unlike a lot of clubs, we play slow, possession based football. We don't abuse any mechanics, we don't call for the ball, we play our positions and not try to cover the entire pitch by sprinting everywhere.
We try to play realistic football.
With the new system this is extreamly difficult, borderline impossible with ai coded the way they are.
At least with the old system, there was an extreamly high chance you'd be playing against people with the same level ai, and when playing essentially 2v2, 3v3 etc, the ai level is extreamly important. These games felt more even, and that the majority of the time, the better team would have at least the potential to win.
With the new system, we have to hope we don't face better/outmatched ai, hopefully don't come up against people who just want to abuse crossing mechanics/OP long shots/’insert other boring meta here', or any of the other game breaking anti football ways of playing.
We also have to hope that if we do concede to some goal from comically bad coding, that we then totally outscore them as draws just don't exist.
It's the most repetitive, unsatisfying, mind numbing clubs gameplay experience we've ever been served.
BAP drop ins/Lobbies with real players at 85ovr, and no leagues at all was less repetitive, and that was a whole year of playing meaningless games over an over - yet somehow were more enjoyable and less repetitive than this loop we've been given this year.
On the flip side, it's extreamly boring and somewhat pointless when we have the better ai and play teams with 80/82. The difference in AIs ability between levels is so vast the difference is obvious. We'll often go 3-0 up in those games in the first half, the other team quits - we hope it counts - and then on we go.
A total waste of time for us & our opponents.
As I mentioned before, we picked up the game late.
Been playing now in this same loop over and over for months, and already we are at the point that it's a struggle to want to boot the game.
We are club veterans. We've played them all & would often put in thousands of games a year. If we get to 1000 games played this year I would be shocked. We just hit 500 and are already looking at other games to play for the rest of the year.
Not exactly value for money, and that's with us paying less than half price.
I fully expect us to do the same for next year's game - likely waiting even longer for a bigger discount as if that game is anything like this one there will not be any point in playing it for more than a couple of hours a week.
As with almost all the "updates & improvements" to pro clubs, it's been extremely poorly thought out.
Almost like 1 person suggested it and it got green lit for implementation without anyone stopping to think "but what impact could this have".
Instead it feels more akin to some child saying to his school friends "I've got an idea!" and them all being so excited that nobody actually thinks what it might mean.
Masks and the other stupid cosmetic items probably had a similar meeting structure, and that idea has been taken so far that the game visually looks like a complete joke now most of the time.
"We don't want to spoil immersion" one EA Dev said to me.
Well guess what, you did, you are and with every release, the game gets further and further away from being something this community wants to play - let alone buy.
I don't want to derail the thread, it's just really tough not to as there are just so many frustrating things with this game mode now.
I say it every year, but I'm not sure how many more years I can financially support this endeavor.
I've purchase this franchise purely for clubs for 15 years now. It's going backwards, the world 'potential' can only be used for so long, and EA have been dining out on that world for years now.
It's becoming clearer and clearer the mode is dead, development in any meaningful way stopped a long time ago, and EA really have no interest in listening to the user base to improve things, as our feedback and requests have been ignored for well over a decade... A decade!!
Anyhow, rant over.
To summarize - while the new format could work if implemented properly, it hasn't been and doesnt. I highly doubt anything meaningful will happen to this mechanic for the next release - it'll either be the exact same or completely removed - I'm guessing it'll be the exact same.
If EA don't really step up next year with clubs, I'll be hanging up my boots. They've had my money every year for 30 years, and even paying $20 for the game on sale 60 days after release doesn't even feel like value for money any longer.
I'm literally an addict for these games. It's taken a Herculean effort from them to make me not really want to play, but when the fun stops, stop.
If EA wanted to, they could've really made this mode something, but I think 15 years is long enough to test the waters, and if they don't have a clue after this amount of time, it's clear they absolutely never will.
