I’ve had the same experience. It’s absolutely maddening because it’s a crappy way to simulate difficulty. But EA does it as a matter of course — nerf player performance by slowing player movement or manufacturing a subtle delay between user input and player movement or increasing the frequency of random errors (e.g., poor first touches or off-target shots). I could go on.
All most users want is consistency and if I’ve labored (or paid) to assemble a quality squad I just want to know what to expect from one match to the next. If I’m facing a tougher opponent it’s fine if that opponent (whether human or AI) is faster, more aggressive, more skilled or just more creative tactically, but it’s not fun (or fair, I would argue) to cause my players to perform WILDLY differently from one match to the next as a way of simulating increased difficulty. To me that’s just lazy and unimaginative coding and EA ought to be able to do better by its users.
