FC 26 Gameplay Feedback – Core Systems Are Fundamentally Broken
This isn’t a tuning issue. It isn’t “early patch adjustments needed.” It’s a foundational intelligence problem. Right now, FC 26 does not understand football at a systems level. Multiple core mechanics actively work against logic, positioning, and player intent. Below is a breakdown of what’s going wrong. 1. Passing Logic Has No Spatial Awareness Passing feels disconnected from player input and football fundamentals. The engine consistently selects the wrong target. Pass down, it passes up. Pass right it passes left. Simple or obvious passing lanes are ignored. Through balls are to overpowered and normal passes to underpowered. U got people that just exploit the mechanics of the game spamming the incisive pass with no logic other than its too strong. The system shows no awareness of angles, pressure, or body positioning. It often feels like the game overrides your decision and chooses chaos. This isn’t difficulty. It’s just broken. 2. Bounce-Back Tackles Winning the ball cleanly should end an attack. Instead: You time a tackle perfectly. You clearly win possession. The ball ricochets instantly back to the attacker. The attack continues like nothing happened. Repeatedly. This creates artificial pressure and removes defensive reward. Tackling is reduced to a minor inconvenience instead of a skill-based action. 3. Overpowered Tackles From Behind Defenders can: Stick out a leg from behind with zero body position. Magnetically hook the ball away. Win possession with no foul called. Meanwhile, attackers lose the ball from the slightest toe contact as if the defender’s boot has superglue on it. Skill dribbling is punished. Blind tackling is rewarded. 4. Defensive AI Centre-backs: Randomly step up to follow attackers into ur box creating space instead of holding line putting them in offside. Abandon the defensive line with no trigger. Create massive gaps for through balls. Full-backs tuck in when they shouldn’t. CDMs don’t track runners. Defenders don’t understand risk management. There is no consistent defensive structure logic. 5. Corners = Instant Counterattacks (Again) After a corner: Your players are out of position. One clearance turns into a 3v2 or 4v2 sprint. No recovery AI logic activates. This isn’t realistic counterplay. It’s systemic imbalance. 6. Attacking AI Is Either Static or Brain-Dead Forwards: Stand still next to defenders. Make runs directly into marked areas. Sprint into offside like a blind buffalo in a stampede. Ignore obvious gaps between centre-backs. There’s no timing, no staggered runs, no reading of play. 7. Dribbling and Creativity Nerfed Into Oblivion Dribbling has been reduced to: Clumsy collisions. Coin-flip animations. Random dispossession. Creative play is punished. Exploit mechanics are rewarded. Anything that requires skill rather than abuse of mechanics has been systematically weakened. 8. Goalkeeper Inconsistency Keepers: Concede from impossible tight angles. Fail to react to near-post shots. Miss routine saves. Then pull off superhuman saves from point-blank range. There’s no logic curve. It feels animation-driven, not physics-driven. Certain angles should not be 100% goals. 9. “Impossible” Solo Goals Players can: Run straight through multiple defenders. Ignore physical pressure. Score from unrealistic shooting positions. Meanwhile structured build-up play is unreliable. The balance favors chaos over football. 10. Reward Structure Punishes the Average Player Example: 24 attempts required. 20 wins needed for full rewards. That locks a large portion of the player base out. Instead of scaling rewards fairly, the system demands near-perfection. It discourages participation. 11. Pack Weight & Progression Frustration Whether intentional or not: Pack luck feels heavily unrewarding. Progression feels grind-gated. Rewards don’t match effort. If gameplay is frustrating and rewards are underwhelming, engagement drops fast. 12. Server Instability & Input Delay Especially during objective tournaments: Heavy gameplay. Delayed inputs. Inconsistent responsiveness. Skill gap disappears when responsiveness isn’t consistent. 13. Rubberbanding & Objective Quitting When players: Rubberband to complete objectives. Intentionally lose to avoid playing… That’s not a community problem. That’s a gameplay satisfaction problem. People avoid playing because the experience isn’t enjoyable. Core Issue: The Game Doesn’t Reward Football Intelligence Right now: Reading the play isn’t rewarded. Tackling cleanly isn’t rewarded. Creative dribbling isn’t rewarded. Structured defending isn’t rewarded. Patient build-up isn’t rewarded. Exploit-heavy, chaotic play is. This isn’t realism. It isn’t difficulty. It’s low-level decision logic across multiple systems. What Needs to Change Rework spatial awareness in passing. Remove or drastically reduce bounce-back possession immunity. Tone down behind-the-back tackling magnetism. Fix defensive line discipline AI. Balance corner recovery logic. Improve attacking run intelligence and offside awareness. Restore dribbling responsiveness and reward skill input. Stabilize goalkeeping logic based on angle and distance. Overpowered females outmuscle big guys. Just seriously. Just give evryone pink hair and pink boots allready. Adjust reward systems to scale more fairly. Fix server responsiveness before adding more content. If this is the intended gameplay direction, then it’s deeply concerning. Because right now, FC 26 doesn’t feel competitive. It doesn’t feel realistic. And it definitely doesn’t feel intelligent. A great example is when my midfielder just runs past the guy with the ball to go to his position instead of going for the ball Tactics are terrible... It feels like a football game that doesn’t understand football. U also have negative game mechanics. The game is full of them, like ur player slowing down, tumbling for 4 seconds, or the best way to prove it... If u try to pass at the back ur passes come unprecise and the first touch becomes difficult even from a small pass. So yes game is actively trying to make u worse. Many more things as well but all these are core problems with the game. But the really tragic part is... This is not at all fun or enjoyable. Ping used to average around 30ms. Now it’s sitting at 38ms. Either half the player base quit overnight, or the servers have somehow gotten worse. And honestly? It feels like the latter. Gameplay is completely off. The connection feels delayed, heavy, unresponsive. Whether it’s bad ping or just broken mechanics, dribbling has been absolutely nerfed into the ground. Players turn like trucks, skill moves feel delayed, and responsiveness is nowhere near what it should be. This isn’t “competitive difficulty.” It’s input lag and clunky gameplay. Right now, it’s borderline unplayable. Fix the servers. Fix the responsiveness. Because this? This isn’t it. On a scale of 1 to 6 this is a clear 1. Its a really really terrible product and should never been released. This reeks of lack of understanding, lazy solutions and a complete lack of care about football or your customers. Just horrible If i ever want to just destroy and take everything thats fun out of something i would hire EA. Sry for long post, but its just so much wrong with the gameLet’s all be honest with ourselves - EA FC 26 is terribly bad.
I am going to outline some points below in which I believe makes this year’s game horrible to play. Feel free to give your opinions on these points as well, as I’m genuinely curious to see if anyone else is on the same wavelength as me. Keep in mind these are my own opinions from playing the game quite a bit since early access launched. I’ll also add that I’m a Division 5 player on Ultimate Team - offline I play Legendary. Nothing special by any means, just a casual player. 1). Defending: This year, defending and the point I’ll detail in point 2 of this list are the main factors as to why this game is so terrible to play. If you’re left-stick dribbling, it is impossible to win the ball from an opponent. It just seems like the speed of tackling animations is too slow to handle the dribbling animations. Rarely am I able to time a tackle perfectly and win the ball cleanly and fairly. Vice-versa if I’m on the attack, as all I need to do is some tiki taka passing and left-stick dribbling to be through on goal. AI defending is equally as bad, with defenders making alien runs tracking back nowhere near the passage of play, leaving players wide open to receive a pass. Does anyone else get that weird animation when committing a defender to a challenge, the attacker can manage to get past, but your defender is trapped in a force field (like 2 opposing sides of a magnet) and can’t not within a yard of the player? 2). Too many goals: I don’t think I’ve played a game of UT this year which didn’t have a minimum of 8 goals. I had a Rivals game end 11-9 yesterday (I will attach the proof)… 20 goals in one game of FIFA? Come on man. It is way too “arcade-y”. Pass, dribble, shoot, score. On repeat. Is anyone like me that enjoys a well fought, well defended 1-0 or even a 0-0 which is hard to split? I understand it’s not meant to be super realistic, but the amount of goals, whether nicely worked or just plain BS, makes this game so boring and predictable. 3). Goalkeepers: Where do I start with goalkeepers, man? Again, I don’t think EA nailed the goalkeeper animations this year. Any keeper without the ‘footwork’ play style? Good luck getting anywhere near a low-driven, or for that matter, any shot aimed below the belt line. I feel like one game, your keeper can feel like a prime Buffon, then the next can’t get a hand to anything that comes his way. I think this has to tie in with the high scoring model for UT, which EA seem to be promoting and not willing to change. Very frustrating. Even the goalkeeper save / deflection animations are way off, like when a keeper saves a pretty tame shot and it ends up flying into row Z at a million miles per hour. 4). Kick off goals: Yeah, I’ll leave it at that. 5). Patches: This one I’m most interested in to hear your different opinions on. I just feel like you can play the game for a while and get used to the way it plays, but when a patch or a gameplay update is released, it feels like a brand new, totally different version of the game. Nothing ever feels the same and is drastically different to what you’ve been used to for the previous however long of playing, so you need to spend ages trying to figure out how to adapt as the change feels so drastic. To me, it feels more like an overhaul of changes, rather than subtle tweaks to genuinely improve the gameplay experience. Formations and custom tactics take the biggest hit for me with this one, and a full rebuild is required almost always. [CM edit - formatting]
FC 26 draft cheaters
Wasted coins in draft game mode in ultimate team due to cheaters instantly disconnecting me in my first game, I spend like 5 minutes attempting to build a solid squad and then every 2-3 draft games I play I'm going up against a cheater, how can a multi billion dollar company still not manage to sort out their anti cheat and that's not even the worse thing, I can't even let support know about this because their help websites sucks **bleep** and trying to get in contact with someone is impossible, so I'm making this post in hopes that this reaches a staff member who can potentially pull their finger out and bring this issue up. Playing on EU servers on pc, I've turned cross play on to try and limit the amount of cheaters I come across. please leave a comment below if you have had this issue too hopefully this will boost this thread to the top.Daily reminder on how bad this game is
This gameplay has rock-bottom football IQ. Not “needs tuning.” Not “rough around the edges.” Just flat-out unintelligent at a foundational level. Nothing in this game understands football. Passing logic is brainless—constantly selecting the worst possible option, firing the ball straight into opponents like the engine has no concept of space, angles, or basic decision-making. You’re not misplaying passes—the game is making catastrophically dumb choices on your behalf. And the bounce-back tackles are the clearest proof this was designed without thought. You read the play, time the tackle perfectly, win the ball cleanly… and the game immediately gifts it back to the attacker. Over and over. Tackling doesn’t end attacks anymore—it politely inconveniences them. That’s not realism, that’s low-IQ system design. Defensive AI is embarrassingly stupid. Centre-backs randomly abandon the line to follow attackers, deliberately creating space behind them for no reason whatsoever. No awareness. No shape. No understanding of risk. Just defenders actively sabotaging their own team like they’ve never seen a defensive line before. Corners turning into instant counterattacks again is pure incompetence. This was already a known issue. Already criticized. Already “fixed.” And somehow it’s back—unchanged. That alone screams how little intelligence, memory, or accountability exists in the development process. Attacking runs are equally clueless. Players either stand completely still or sprint directly into defenders. There’s no timing, no anticipation, no reading of play—just random, low-effort movement that looks like a placeholder AI that never got replaced. Dribbling being nerfed into uselessness finishes the job. Creativity is punished, skill is irrelevant, and everything devolves into clumsy collisions and coin-flip outcomes. The game doesn’t reward thinking because it clearly isn’t doing any itself. This isn’t difficulty. It isn’t realism. It definitely is not fun. It’s a football game built on bad logic making bad decisions at all times. The most shocking part isn’t how broken it is—it’s that someone, somewhere, looked at this and decided it was acceptable to ship. That level of football illiteracy being signed off on is honestly staggering. Breaking passing, defending, tackling, dribbling, and attacking AI simultaneously shouldn’t be possible—yet here we are. If this is the intended experience, then congratulations: you’ve successfully created one of the dumbest-feeling football games ever released. Edit: Forgot to include the insanly stupid overpowered tackles from behind. Or the just stick out a toe that has superglue on it and your winger loses the ball. They have nerfed any fun out of the game. Anything that requires any skill that isnt a exploit has been destroyed.ADD EGYPTIAN LEAGUE AND EGYPT NATIONAL TEAM
I believe that the egyptian league and egypt national team should be in eafc 26. I understand the license issues but you guys should contact them into renewing the license so they can be in these games. Clubs like Al Ahly are one of the best clubs in african football. They were in the club world cup this year and previous years and were in the CAF Champions league. I think that our egyptian and african fans who would love to see these teams and play with them so we are more satisfied . Thank YouComplaint about FC26 gameplay (serious feedback)
Complaint about FC26 gameplay (serious feedback): Honestly, we’re extremely tired. Every week you promise to fix and improve the game, but the reality is completely the opposite. You keep saying “we’ve made improvements,” yet everything keeps getting worse. The kickoff glitch is now worse than ever, the signals are even more broken than last year, and the corner glitch is just ridiculous — press a few buttons, shoot, and somehow it’s a goal. The game has completely lost its fun. Attacking is way too overpowered — anyone can score from almost anywhere. Goalkeeper reactions inside the box are embarrassing, and defending feels unrealistically difficult. As for the balance between male and female players, it’s completely unacceptable. Any female player can easily knock down Van Dijk, Haaland, Stam, or any top male defender — that’s unrealistic and ruins the gameplay experience. We’re sick of empty promises and broken updates. Please, listen to the community and fix the gameplay before this game completely loses the players’ respect.Ea Servers...
With a 1000/1000 mb 10 in answeartime and absolute no problem with my connection i logged into Ea to test a game and i was stunned, whats wrong with Ea servers folks, this is madness, take a look at the pictures i posting, every game is riddicoules high ping and a horrible serverconnection. No there is no problem with my connection it is super stable, every test i take it got 970 mb, every game working fantastic... Until i logged in to Ea servers !?FC 26 feels like a broken physics experiment sponsored by a casino.
Gameplay is ping-pong chaos, tackles bounce back to attackers, passing is RNG, and 95 pace gets caught by defenders running in mud. One match your team is prime Barca, next match they’re bronze cards in quicksand — but sure, it’s “my connection.” At times AI teammates have the awareness of traffic cones, opponent AI defends like Maldini with wallhacks, and tactics are just decorative menu options, unless u play 4-5-1 offcourse. Meanwhile FUT in the background is a full slot machine: flashy lights, “<1%” odds, FOMO promos, and endless grinding for duplicate 82s. They control the probabilities, you carry the risk, and kids are in the same ecosystem — but it’s “surprise mechanics,” not gambling. The immorality of this game is so shocking i cant believe its legal. No consistency. No football identity. Servers are just horrible... on a good day i get 30 ping. And dont get me started on mystery ball and other stupid concepts they come up with. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Use ur time improving the actual gameplay instead...I bought a football game for normal football. Not this arcade crap... Just chaos gameplay feeding a greedy casino model exploiting peoples love for the game of football.Broken game
Im deeply shocked at how bad the gameplay is. The overpowered breakthrough passes. Overpowered countersttacks. Overpowered tactics I just had a guy wip the ball up from 20 meters 2 times and score on me. The defence mechanics are horrible. The work rate your players to to come back. At this state im only playing for rewards but dont want to. Like really dont want to play. If u are listening to the players then listen to this. The game is broken and you need a serious fix. Just reload the Fifa 17 game engine. Cause u are losing players. This is NOT fun and NOT what u advertised.
To h*LL with this game and EA
For how many years would we have to beg for a decent game? It's not as if we get this game for free. We pay for it. Yet, we can't get a decent gameplay. PC has been having graphics issues from Launch, which EA has totally ignored. EA has nerfed everything. The gameplay is messed up. No passing speed. No pass accuracy. Counter attack feels like 90 year old men running with diapers. EA sold a false dream of competitive gameplay. After all the nerfs, I don't even know the difference between competitive gameplay and authentic gameplay because they both look alike. All the speed and joy is gone. This is a new record. People are regretting buying the game after a month plus few days. EA deserves an award for **bleep** customer service and destroying the dream they sold us. The game is gone.