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.
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.
