I've "measured" the input delay and here are the results

Yesterday, when the game felt heavy for me, i decided to record a minute of gameplay to try and figure out what's actually going on.

What i did was measure the time from button release to ball contact as well as the lag between client- and server-side registration of input. This test is by no means perfect but i hope it'll provide a little bit of insight that might shine a light on whatever we're experiencing.

Method:

• Marked the exact frame of button release in Premiere.
• Counted the frame until ball contact. In a 60fps video every frame is 16.67ms.
• Noted the amount of frames x 16.67 so get an estimate of the total time from button release to ball contact in game

Things to consider:

• This measures from the moment the game registers the input, not from the moment I physically press the button. So the actual perceived delay is even greater and depends on your setup.
• It’s hard to separate what’s due to animation time and what’s due to input delay, especially when actions are triggered mid-animation. Also i have no way of determining when an animation actually starts. I've included the time it took for the indicator to show that the server has registered my input but i don't know how reliable it is
• This is only sampled from one minute of gameplay. A larger sample size and a wider selection of actions would give a clearer picture
• Test would have been better if i had also done this during what i find to be good gameplay. That way there would be a reference to compare to.
• Since we’re counting frames in a 60 FPS video, each measurement can be up to ~16.7 ms later than when the event actually occurred

Findings: 

The amount of time from button release to ball contact in game in the clips varied from 250 to 683 ms and the time between client- and server-side registration varied from 33,3 to 67 ms on a 20-24 ping connection.

• Clip 1 - Release→Contact: 17 frames (283 ms) - Client→server lag: 67 ms
• Clip 2 - Release→Contact: 15 frames (250 ms) - Client→server lag: 67 ms
• Clip 3 - Release→Contact: 41 frames (683 ms) - Client→server lag: 67 ms
• Clip 4 - Release→Contact: 24 frames (400 ms) - Client→server lag: 33.3 ms
• Clip 5 - Release→Contact: 16 frames (267 ms) - Client→server lag: 33.3 ms

My thoughts:

This "test" has its limits and flaws. It doesn't actually show the amount of raw input delay but rather delay + animation timings. Some delay is to be expected. I don’t know if 233–650 ms is what FC 25 “should” have, but based on how sluggish the game felt during the test, I’m going to assume it’s not great.

It's also important to note that this isn't always the state of the game. There are times when it feels really responsive. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often.