EA SPORTS FC™ 26 | November Feedback Update

Intro

Hey everyone, welcome to the latest FC 26 Feedback Update. In this article, we’re diving into your feedback from the past month, what we’ve heard from you, the changes we’ve made so far, and what we’re planning next. Thank you to everyone who has been providing feedback across our feedback streams including the Player Feedback Portal, Discord, and across social media.

 

 

Table Of Contents

• Goalkeeper Movement Will Be Less Effective
• How We’re Using Your Recent Feedback
• AI Defending Recap
• Controlled Sprint Dribbling Speed Recap
• CPU AI Difficulty Adjustment - Recap And Future
• PC Feedback Survey Update
• Multi-Swap Issue Addressed
• What’s Next In 2025? 

Goalkeeper Movement Will Be Less Effective

We’ve been looking at Goalkeeper Movement for a while now, finding more ways to make it more balanced.

We’ve heard varied opinions about this mechanic from your feedback across all of our sources. One thing that’s clear is that there’s an opportunity to find more of a balance between shooting and goalkeeping.

With that in mind, we’ll be adjusting Goalkeeper Movement to be less effective in a December update. We’ll share full details on this change closer to the update.

How We’re Using Your Recent Feedback

We’ve seen community discussions that we’re making design decisions  based on the feedback of those with the most powerful voices online. We consider many feedback sources for every game issue or update, including the Player Feedback Portal, social media, Design Councils, EA Forums, Steam Community Hub, the FC Pro Discord, the Global Discord, and more.

When we use platforms such as Discord polls to get feedback about certain features, we’re getting a quick pulse check of your general opinions. The polls themselves are one aspect of the overall feedback we review before committing to any updates. 

To learn more about the feedback process and the best ways to let us know your thoughts, check out our Feedback Deep Dive.

AI Defending Recap

The below change was made in FC 26 v1.2.0:

• Slightly reduced how tightly AI defenders will mark pass receivers on the edge of their box.

We made this change after the improvements to jockeying because we saw from your feedback that you felt that user controlled players could sometimes sit back on defense and let AI teammates do the hard work in some scenarios.

This is an area of the game you give us a lot of feedback on, and similar to Goalkeeper Movement, it’s the type of feedback that can vary significantly between different types of players.

We’re continuing to watch this space closely, if we make further tweaks they’ll likely be incremental so that we don’t completely shift the balance of the game with a single update. We’ll let you know of any changes in this space ahead of making any updates.

Controlled Sprint Dribbling Speed Recap

In the past few weeks a change was made to Controlled Sprint Dribbling that slowed it down, the magnitude of this change was unintended, and we quickly reverted it once we saw how it affected the game across the wider player base

We’re committed to ensuring movement in FC 26 feels as responsive as it can. Thank you for your feedback that enabled us to do a quick Live Tuning Update.

CPU AI Difficulty Adjustment - Recap And Future

In FC 26 v1.1.3 we updated the CPU AI* to: 

• Look for passes more often and make quicker decisions about them.
• Dribble more effectively with sharper turns, less straightforward movement, and less dwelling on the ball.
• Switch players on defense more often in situations where trailing the runner is not beneficial.

*The term CPU AI here is referring to the virtual user controlling the team you're playing against in offline matches. This update did not affect the player versus player experience.

The full breakdown of the changes can be found in the following social thread and we’ll  continue to monitor your feedback on this topic.

What We’re Doing Next

We’ve seen your feedback that the CPU AI in Squad Battles can hold the ball for too long and plays an overly possession based game at times. We’re planning to make the Squad Battles CPU AI further focus on moving the ball forward and creating chances quicker. 

The intent here is to create a more fun gameplay experience in the defensive phase, reducing frustrating off the ball moments where you previously had to chase CPU AI defenders and midfielders passing the ball around without much attacking progress.

We want to make sure we take the time to get this balance right and will be targeting an early 2026 update.

PC Feedback Survey Update

We recently ran a survey where PC players gave us more direct feedback on the technical issues they can face. Many thanks to everyone that participated.

We’re in the process of carefully reviewing your responses,looking for commonalities and trends behind the issues reported that can help our ongoing internal investigations.

While we don’t have a more direct update to share at this time, we’ll continue to share information around PC improvements as they happen.

Multi-Swap Issue Addressed

Recently we investigated your reports of Multi-Swap in Football Ultimate Team causing potential stability issues, and we released FC 26 v1.2.1 which addressed some stability issues that could have occurred, including the Multi-Swap one.

What’s Next In 2025?

We recently released a small stability update, and we’re planning a larger update in early December.

Our next title update will address certain issues, introduce new additions, and bring some holiday cheer to FC 26. We’ll share more details in the next few weeks.

Thank you for checking out the November Feedback Update and for continuing to give us your feedback. We’ll keep tuning into what you’re saying, and we’ll do another one of these Feedback Updates in December.