Difficulty Limbo (Help!)
I'm a career mode player, and always have the same issue with difficulty every game.
I play all semi controls, precision shooting, advanced defending, simulation mode, 6 minute halves. I'm an Arsenal fan so I enjoy a good career mode with them.
My limbo is this, I have 2 options:
1) Legendary Difficulty, but literally every single game is the same, 2-0, 1-0, 1-0, 2-0, I got 25 games in and had conceded 4 goals, 16 points clear at the top, it just doesn't challenge me enough.
2) Ultimate Difficulty, where the CPU are better and I like how they play, but my team also becomes insanely worse. I get I'm not going to get to every ball, not have things as easy as Legendary, but suddenly all of these sort of things occur:
- My wonderful organised defensive line in Legendary becomes a complete wave with people dropping for no reason while others step.
- I square a ball to Martinelli 5 yards out with an open net and watch him pass it wide for no reason
- Raya decides instead of diving side-to-side to save shots he'll start turning and diving forwards instead.
- My passes that rarely went astray before start locking on to other players. I'll have the ball with Saliba, tap X (and literally tap) to pass into Rice and watch as it goes past him straight to an opponent CM because for some reason it thought I wanted to play it to someone else.
- I'll hold L2 to shield, or X to muscle with Gabriel or Rice and get outmuscled by Ward-Prowse or Neto. On Legendary it was accurate, why is it suddenly like that?
My issue comes because if my team was the same as they are on legendary but with the improvement to the CPU Ultimate gives it might be close to my sweet spot. But instead I'm constantly met with a battle of it being too easy or trying to beat a game that feels like it's breaking just to make it harder.
That being said, I'm open to hearing I'm wrong, if the above things are what you may expect from a CPU playing better and it just seems my team is worse because, you know, the CPU is better. Maybe I'll just try and accept it. Alternatively, if anyone has ANY tips to try and find this "career mode difficulty sweet spot" now please enlighten me and I will be forever grateful!
Have been attempting to navigate this same conundrum for over ten years. I only play Manger Career mode offline (disconnected from EA servers), and switched from Legendary difficulty to Ultimate in FIFA 17. The main problem is that EA manipulates gameplay the same way across all gaming platforms (FIFA, EA FC, Madden, EA College Football 25, etc.), in that at higher difficulties, both the CPU opponent players receive enhanced capabilities (maximized values in their terminology), and user players are 'dumbed down' (often denominated as scripting by users, not my categorization), however, they will never admit that. In addition, for the past four of five years, to add excitement to the FIFA and EA FC series, developers have been trying to incorporate last minute goals (45th and 90th minute) for the CPU to further elevate the difficulty. For experienced and 'professional' players, these tactics are often the only chance the CPU has to win, or even draw a match; using Ultimate difficulty, many players worldwide can start a career mode save with the worst team in any league, and finish the first season in a Champions League position. While this scenario does partially work against the best players, the other seventy to eighty percent of 'above average' players, who use Ultimate difficulty, are penalized. The image below in this post illustrates the first part of EA developer tactics, where the capabilities of CPU opponent players are denigrated, based on the user difficulty selection level. To combat the second developer tactic, the only 'solution' is to incorporate slider adjustments to equalize both the user and CPU gameplay performance. A number of users begin with disparate slider adjustments between the user and CPU, giving a slight edge to the user, then after time, begin to bring the values together. I have been experimenting with slider adjustments in Operation Sports (https://forums.operationsports.com/forums/ea-sports-fifa-sliders/1023974-ea-sports-fc25-os-community-sliders.html) and other forums for nearly ten years, and have reached a point where any slider adjustments configured, are the same for both the user and CPU, and in general, only use sliders to implement 'normal or realistic' gameplay with errors, lowered possession, less goals, etc. Other than giving every advantage to the CPU through sliders, Ultimate difficulty with even sliders (50/50 default), is the hardest level in the game.
