The last straw

Something has happened in the last 3 days for sure, since the new season started and the PL TOTS promo. Like you, my defending has gone to pieces, I feel like 70% of the people I’m playing are all sweats and have mastered a mechanic or a patch I’m not aware of. My normal steady passing game is now too slow and exposed to aggressive press, my defenders have lost brain cells, bashing to each other, more rebound goals than ever before, more bounce back, players deliberately letting me tackle them because they know they can do ridiculous tackle backs instantly and open up scoring opps. I just can’t work it out. 

I was just in Div 1 rivals come the end of the last season, and my natural place is low Div 2, however since the season reset, I’m struggling to get out of Div 3. I know the reset will bring the top players down and it will take a week or two to level out again so I thought it might be just playing the uber sweats who I wouldn’t normally play.

However, I e done two round of Gauntlet, in both rounds I only managed 2/4 wins. I’ve never ever got less than 3 wins in a round before when I’m locked in but this time even the ones I’m winning they are unbearably frustrating. 

Something has changed. The only way for me to have a chance of winning is reduce myself to brain dead tactics and counter and basically not touch my defence at all, which is bad because I have been manual defending most of the game cycle.

I love fifa, but getting punished for manually covering passing lanes, getting punished for not spamming press, getting punished for not just relying on the AI, getting punished for making good tackles on the edge of my box. It’s BS.

I feel for you, I know exactly how you feel.

A word on the community - most people get pleasure out of trying to wind up their opponents. Fine, I do it too, you find an edge when you can, if you feel like you need it. But, when you come up against a player in round 4 of gauntlet, and when they play hard against you, score and then quit, just to make sure you don’t pick up a win, well **bleep**, there are lots of people out there who get pleasure from being utterly miserable to other players, hiding behind consoles and being sub-human, it really is a sad sad place full of sad sad people.

Unfortunately I love FIFA so it’s hard to know what else to do - no matter how good or bad the game is, the community has a talent to make the experience even worse. 

Yeah, I loved this game too. I’ve been playing it consistently since FIFA 06, but now it’s just a complete joke. You make changes that impact the game so heavily and you don’t even announce them. Instead of fixing problems, you make them even worse.

The other day I genuinely felt like the worst player. No matter what defensive settings I use, my defenders stay way too high up the pitch. My fullbacks, who used to help me a lot defensively when set to defensive and “fullback,” just don’t exist in defense anymore. On top of that, one of my center-backs looks like he’s being pulled forward every time there’s a long ball from the opponent. He gets bypassed by the ball and it goes straight to the attacker who ends up one-on-one with the keeper.

And I don’t get it. I actually improved, especially defensively because that’s where I had issues, but now I can’t do anything. And it’s strange because this problem doesn’t seem as noticeable for my opponents. It almost feels impossible to lose like this in every mode—WL, Rivals, Gauntlet, African League… it’s like everyone I face is top 50 in the game. But that’s because defensively I’m at zero.

Not to mention that sometimes my players make such weak passes and shots, while my opponents seem to have extra speed. It honestly feels like my account has been targeted and my “sliders” have been secretly changed.

Yeah you are literally describing my experience. I broke a control today, I was frustrated. That was my trigger to come and find out if other people were finding the same thing.

i deleted the app today and I won’t be playing the game again. I put 400 hours in to this game, embarrassed. Going to spend my time to do more productive and rewarding things.