To the FC Development Team,I wanted to provide some rare, positive feedback following the January 13th Hotfix (v1.4.2). As a 30-year veteran of the series who was ready to walk away last week, I can officially say: You fixed it.The difference in gameplay integrity is night and day. Specifically:Offensive Responsiveness: The "Mud" is gone. Left-stick dribbling and transition play feel dynamic and 1:1 with my inputs again.Defensive Integrity: Thank you for restoring the Manual Interception hitboxes. My defenders actually feel like solid objects again. When I read a lane surgically, I am rewarded with the ball instead of it phasing through my player's legs.Goalkeeper Logic: The "Bi-line Trickle" goals seem to be addressed. Keepers are making logical, physical blocks rather than getting stuck in frozen animations.I have no immediate recommendations for changes—this build feels like the best the game has been all year - and maybe since 2013 and 2017 games. I’ll be testing this against the AI in Seasons/Career to ensure the logic translates across all modes, but for now, please keep the gameplay exactly where it is. Thank you for listening to the veteran community and restoring the skill gap.- amnesty457

lol what? The game is still terrible- defensive AI is ridiculously bad and it’s now just arcade like scoring.

I haven’t dived deep into Career Mode yet, but I've heard the same—Ultimate can feel broken and passive this year. I just ran a 20-minute (short in-game minutes) test in Kick Off on Legendary, and it’s nice. No mud, the passing is fine. I scored one goal and possessed most the time so didn't get to try defense except for once really - not enough time to comment on CPU offensive or overall skill. Thanks for bringing this up, I figured they'd be the same. I'll test Career Mode soon to see if I can identify what you're talking about.

I agree with your post but I am very curious to hear your opinion on career mode. I find the AI in career mode games to be really poor in comparison to a regular kick off mode especially when you play competitive/custom sliders. The kickoff CPU AI attacks far more and offers a challenge. Career mode I keep winning 5-0 every game at ultimate difficulty

I hear the frustration, I had that before this latest fix to the patch. I think fifa 13 was my favorite and fifa 17 was good too - back when they had cleaner code and didnt layer year upon year of updates. Right now, ea is going private so maybe the non-yearly demands of being a public company can help the devs actually clean out the code (which I think this last patch is actually aiming to do). Ultimately, I think Ea should have half a team working on cleaning the code for fc27 and have the team working on a ground up game for 28 and beyond. 2k is likely to enter the space of soccer sims and I think they could do a really good job if nba2k26 and pga2k25 are an indicators. I think ea could make a really cool ground up game too but i think they'd need to abandon catering to the FUT aspect so hard, it kills authentic style football in exchange for money and card packs, etc.

I played career and find the build up play AI is very pass heavy. They value possession over attacking so it usually results in a million passes and can get quite boring to defend. Once you figure out the AI logic, it can become somewhat easy to break down. I do hear there's a bug where Kick-off is different than Career in terms of difficulty. I played both on Legendary difficulty and didn't really feel a big difference. Legendary I find better than Ultimate bc they possess less and are more vertical. I find Legendary center-backs almost impossible to beat up the middle though. I mainly play online bc playing against the AI is somewhat predictable. Sorry I cannot give more feedback at the moment.

Forum Discussion

amnesty457

Seasoned Rookie

1 month ago

Title Update 1.4.2 Appreciation - Logic and Skill Gap Restored

To the FC Development Team,

I wanted to provide some rare, positive feedback following the January 13th Hotfix (v1.4.2). As a 30-year veteran of the series who was ready to walk away last week, I can officially say: You fixed it.

The difference in gameplay integrity is night and day. Specifically:

Offensive Responsiveness: The "Mud" is gone. Left-stick dribbling and transition play feel dynamic and 1:1 with my inputs again.
Defensive Integrity: Thank you for restoring the Manual Interception hitboxes. My defenders actually feel like solid objects again. When I read a lane surgically, I am rewarded with the ball instead of it phasing through my player's legs.
Goalkeeper Logic: The "Bi-line Trickle" goals seem to be addressed. Keepers are making logical, physical blocks rather than getting stuck in frozen animations.

I have no immediate recommendations for changes—this build feels like the best the game has been all year - and maybe since 2013 and 2017 games. I’ll be testing this against the AI in Seasons/Career to ensure the logic translates across all modes, but for now, please keep the gameplay exactly where it is.

Thank you for listening to the veteran community and restoring the skill gap.

- amnesty457

13 Replies

EA_Vendcera
Community Manager
1 month ago
Appreciate the feedback and glad to hear that you liked the changes amnesty457!

There are definitely still other areas of the game that are being worked on and could see further improvements. But it's always nice to see some positive reactions after such an update, and it's good to know that we're on the right path!
Nalin_Dan
New Rookie
30 days ago
Night and day change, agreed! Update 1.4.1 introduced so much input lag. This 1.4.2 fixed it and is now better on responsiveness than on FC 26 launch.
vundulips
New Traveler
30 days ago
One of the best replies, for a very long time.
Your second paragraph sums up this game, perfectly!!!