The matches play out in an incredibly unfair way

Bro, the exact same things are happening to me—conceding headers where I can't even move my defender; he just stands there like an extra in a movie, staring blankly. You can tell right from the corner kick that the opponent is going to equalize with it... Then there are the back-passes: I try to pass to the opposite flank to launch an attack, but instead, the game passes it backward to my opponent so they can score. It’s the exact same story for me... I don't know what happened to the game, but it's not working the way it should; the character often does something completely different from what the user inputs... It needs fixes—and big ones, too.

Yeah, it’s bad. In H2H, it’s super obvious within minutes of kick-off what the match is going to be like. It used to have everything to do with ping (which often didn’t feel fair), but whatever they've done to try and level the playing field is not working well. The hand of the AI is just too strong in certain matches and, despite nearly identical ping, in some matches my players feel crisp and responsive and I seem to be a step ahead of my opponent in every phase of the game, while in other matches the shoe is entirely on the other foot and nothing I do seems to be able to overcome unseen forces working against me. I play every day and I know the difference between user skill and the unseen hand of an algorithm and this is definitely the latter.

Loads of other folks have commented on this recently and, although some have asked for the autoplay/AI to be turned off, I don’t think this is the answer. I simply think it needs to be further refined. No one wants to feel the victim of crappy ping, but neither do we want to feel like an algorithm is having more say than we are over whether we win or lose (and right now that’s how it feels in at least 50% of H2H matches and in many VSA chances). All that’s missing is for EA to acknowledge the problem and tell us what they plan to do about it.

Unfortunately, the game has become truly unplayable due to these bugs; they’ve been left unresolved for weeks or even months, with no one fixing them. They severely compromise my attacking chances by triggering so many errors—even if you don't want to attribute it to malicious intent, the sheer frequency with which it happens makes it hard to ignore. My player regularly kicks the ball aimlessly forward into empty space five times a match, right when I’m just one pass away from a goal; it happens constantly now. I hope that once the Champions event ends, they’ll sort it out—they’ve certainly had enough time. They need to dial back the "assist program"—or whatever system handles the passing and chance creation—because it’s excessive and makes the gameplay on the pitch unenjoyable.

I don't know if they tweaked the gameplay or not, but every second match where I was about to advance in rank—after the game kept dropping me back down just as I was on the verge of moving up—left me in total shock wondering what on earth was going on. It feels like I’m forced to stay in the same spot, unable to progress, as if the game is actively working against me; the gameplay is becoming increasingly hard to stomach. Whenever I score a goal, the opponent immediately gets an identical chance to score, or they net a goal from a completely absurd, impossible situation...

Today my opponent got a chance to attack and their striker was rushing forward along with my defende chasing the ball with him, now my defender was ahead of my opponents striker so my plan was to just take the ball and pass it to my goalkeeper then clear it somewhere. But the entire opposite happened, I didnt even press anything and my defender touched the ball and just gave up running and then my opponent scored and I lost. I was genuinely just shocked like what kind of scripting is this?