The Defending Debate in FC26
Excitement for something 'fresh' has heavy bias and so initial praise for FC26 should be taken with caution. It's easy to agree with your favourite content creator in a bid to be part of the cool club and it's easy to just be a keyboard warrior complaining for engagement. For me, i'm a games design grad and have worked in software 10+ years so it's more about nerd analysis.
Big defending changes in FC26 are brave and deserve praise but the downside is you've drastically unbalanced the game and created a big adaptation gap which will be a struggle for many.
An ultra competitive fanbase + sudden changes that take time to adapt to = frustration and toxicity. We'll get there... but it's gonna be ugly.
Here are some specific points...
- AI isn't cleaning up in defensive scenarios where it has to otherwise it's just a chaotic mess. Players can't be expected to micro-manage 4 players at once and although we might hate auto-blocks and interceptions, it is needed in quite a lot of cases.
- Physicality is useless as a counter to agility right now. Defensive and supportive movement is sluggish and chaotic.
- Without Playstyle+ level passing abilities, ball speed is slow and simple passes fail often. This one sort of makes sense in the long run but as of right now players who rely on a solid passing game and don't have a playstyle+ level budget are going to struggle.
- Slowing the power curve is a really tricky thing to get right. Personally, slowing the evolutions curve this much initially is a mistake. The idea of creating your early key player with a carefully chosen evolution was fun last year and right now evolutions feel uninspiring.
End on a positive - The Live Event feature is awesome!
