UK: Gameplay even worse after update and server maintenance

Completely agree. EA are of course just over 4 months away from pre-release of FC26 so every issue we currently have is low on developer's priority.

I ran ping / packet loss test from command prompt multiple times during a 2 hour period. Consistently 9-11 ms, zero packets lost.

I even went back to playing FIFA23 via Steam. One squad battles match finished with the pauses in game that I'm used to and then same message appears "unable to connect to EA servers" just before half time.

They have changed something within the server protocols that is dropping our connection to their servers when something is delayed slightly instead of the usual pauses that we encounter.

No-one in their right mind is going to pay full price for FC26. I'll wait until its in a sale.

game is playable for max 1 week until a new update arrives and broke the game again and their toast servers what a waste of money this game is

For a laugh (knowing that the servers would be absolute garbage for the PL TotS) I played a Rivals game this evening.

One example of how poor it felt to play: My opponent had 115 tackles, 35 of them slide tackles, and my players (many TotS from the France/Netherlands promo that I was testing) moved so slowly that by the time I had moved away from the slide tackle, their player had already recovered and was putting in another tackle. They felt like a Bronze team. Which was great fun for trying to get through the 10 players who were consistently back defending every time I tried to attack!

The players kept becoming detached from the ball so it would just pop loose from between their legs and roll off, I kept getting auto switched and never mind trying to use RB switching because that was impossible. On one occasion, I was autoswitched off of the player I was controlling while I had the ball! 

Players had to take a good two extra touches before passing or shooting the ball and it was impossible to consistently get the right power for any passes whatsoever. I'd tap the button and it would lock on to a player on the other side of the pitch. And the ball rolled so painfully slowly half the time. Then, for periods of 1-3 seconds at a time, at least 10 times throughout the match, I lost control of the players entirely and it felt as though AI took over the player I supposedly had control over. Often when the opponent did a skill moves, especially the speed boosts, my players would judder and get shunted to a new position.

I have a nicely growing collection of how horrific the online gameplay is from these past few weeks, but I think, "What's the point of downloading and editing it to send in?". There's consistent denial that there even are issues, so it's not like video proof will do anything. It's as easy to ignore as any other post. Like others have said, the best approach is to just stop buying the game, so that's what I'll do.

It is horrific. Unplayable. Every update makes the game worse. 

With it being the weekend, I had the chance to test playing the game very early, just after dawn, which has typically been the main time where I've ever managed to get decent gameplay. While it was worse than, say, a month ago, it was noticeable better than at other times.

What I think is also notable, though I don't know what it indicates, is that there is something for my gaming experience about the time around the Rewards drop hour that definitely and noticeably makes the gameplay worse.

At the moment the time for rewards drops in the UK is 8 a.m. on various days. Regardless of if there is a reward drop that day or not, it is very apparent in both feel and visible increase in animation issues, extra touches and so on, that the gameplay degrades when you get to that time. It can even happen mid-game, and I'll feel the gameplay change, check the time, and realise that it's hit 8 a.m. This is notable in all modes for me, including Squad Battles.

What on Earth that means, I have no idea.

Great post, wish EA would see it.

Every match I play the opponents have at least 70+ tackles my players are constantly moving out of the way,  when my players go into tackles " I attempt about 18 a match and win on average 12"  they stretch a foot out I can see when I miss the tackle. So how is the opponents going into tackles and winning the ball without me even seeing the single leg stretch out.  It's usually because every tackle is automatically made by EA and how do they to make multiple attempts at it if my player misses the tackle the animation takes him out of the play and can't recover in time.

I made a post of my own mentioning ball control and Interceptions for normal gameplay it's far too op. It should be lowered because for anyone with delay it doesn't work.

It does feel like shouting into the void, to be honest, but my frustration finally got the better of me and a post to vent was needed! 

The tackling animation thing is so frustrating. Like you, if I miss a tackle, my player gets stun-locked and takes a second or two to recover, but my opponent in many games will just be spamming and recovering from tackles in a split second. 

I sometimes feel in this game something which can only be described as a sense of being de-synchronised or out of sync with my opponents' gameplay, and that the weird animation glitches, slowing down of players, and just not seeing animations in opponents' actions is the games' output trying to "explain" what has happened.

I made a recording or two earlier where I noticed that the ball was called for being out of play when, on my screen, the ball had not crossed the boundary line of the pitch. This again makes me wonder if there is some kind of half-second:second whole game experience lag/desync between opponents sometimes.