If it's not broke don't fix it. The old kick meter worked great for how many years? No one was complaining "God this kick meter is terrible, EA really needs to do a brand new kick meter" It doesn't fix the lag when you're kicking, it doesn't add anything positive to the game. It made it worse, no one likes it.
Defense is totally broken. It's been bad since the most recent generation of consoles. This year it's exceptionally bad, and I mean exceptionally. Priorities for this game are completely off base. We add a kick meter that everyone immediately turns off, and you go and require it for H2H now. Don't you collect metrics on this stuff? No one uses the new kick meter.
I've stuck this out for the last couple of years, but the tone deafness is just unreal at this point.
I usually play a couple thousand hours, and I'm done after about 5 hours this year. As much as I used to enjoy playing this game, it has just wrecked my hands. I'm going to save my hands, and I'm going to just put the game down. I am beyond frustrated.