Hahaha it was a big one and I got an update saying don’t post someone has replied.
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Difficulty is one of the hardest things to please everyone. Keeping it easy so that everyone can pick it up and play should be the baseline. When it comes to the harder ranks, it gets complicated as it comes down to each person. “Expert is too easy” and “Expert is too hard” happened throughout the early access period. “It’s too slow” and “No you’re wrong it’s too fast” in sports titles this is not a simple thing to make everyone happy, as it can come down to just how individual people want to experience the sport they love, which is a valid thing to want. I read over some feedback on the difficulty where someone explained they play this other title on hardest but on your title I can’t play on hardest I can only play on hard, but different games are not based on each other, especially from other developers/years.
So balancing is an ever-changing thing when it comes to difficulty. I play some Final Fantasy XIV in my downtime, which helps me unwind after playing sports titles all the time. With an update, people were up in arms saying “It’s too hard!!!” So they made it easier, a few years go past they get more accustomed to things “It’s too easy now, make it harder!!!” The game gets hard then surprise Pikachu face.
Difficulty is an ever-ongoing battle in any game really. No one is immune from it. Occasionally I’ll review a ticket from… I want to say AO 2, or maybe TWT2 I can’t remember exactly. Where they literally can never win against the opposing AI it’s just too hard. Cause yeah it was very hard on very hard, but sometimes people want that sense of accomplishment of beating the best player on the hardest cause it feels good. I get it I play games on hardest all the time cause I want that rush and feeling sometimes.
When I’m wandering through different internet spaces for our titles I’ll see a post where it’s like “Oh if I do this every time it seems I win in this 10-year-old game. Ruins it for me, it’s too easy!” OK so maybe stop doing it? Or with things like reloading single players saves to not lose a match or get caught out, people will be against people doing that but the option is there… you can just choose not to do it in your single-player save that’s ok, it’s single player there isn’t just one way to play, the entire speed-running community is always looking for that new challenge and that’s where emergent gameplay is amazing, I’m a little jealous of how insanely good people are at some titles.
Difficulty is something that is hard, as simple as that. We put sliders into Cricket so people can tune as much as they can to provide how they want to experience that insanely complicated sport. They want to play it how they see it, but they also don’t want to lose. It’s a fight that will never end across all games.
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You speak nothing but facts JNT. Difficulty and speed of game is definitely a personal thing.
What I took from your message is … sliders confirmed in Rugby 25 
Edit: And thanks for taking the time to respond and clarify about difficulties.
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Absolutely bang on when it comes to difficulty. See it accross so many games. People who master the game and find things that basically cheat the AI then claim its too easy (but dont just stop doing the cheating thing). Crossed over with people who dont put time in with the game to master but try putting it on the hardest difficulty and then complain its too difficult.
A lot of people dont seem to have the ability to make the game compatable to their own skill level.
I play rugby 22 exclusively on legend difficulty because ive got 100s of hours poured in to it and anything less just isnt that enjoyable for me. But in that same beat, I almost never play as any of the top 5 teams in the game except for videos because I know you will just dominate. But ive heard from plenty of people that legend is too difficult for the because of the pressure at the rucks being too mych for them. But they also dont play games against lower rated teams, or even enjoy the challenge of learning that you have to find a way to win without being the dominant team. They just want to win on hard, but cant so claim its too hard.
Same goes for Rugby 2011, I know my skill level means I will win basically any game on there first shot with the top 10 teams, so i just dont play them. Instead i will take on a world cup as namibia on the hardest difficulty, knowing i will have to cheese any opportunity i get or just not stand a chance at winning.
I agree with Val, i think “hardest” (or whatever the top difficulty will be called) should be a real challenge even for veteran players. I want to be scoring a drop goal in the 80th minute to win 3-0 because I just havnt been able to get anywhere against the best team in the world as a mid table team, and it took all my hours in the game to get me to that victory 
There is a wonderful achievement in rugby 2011 called “hardcore rugger” where you had to beat NZ as a >79 rated team on Hard in 20 minute halves. And it was brutal as a teenager to play it. But had a massive sense of accomplishment when i finally did it. So im hoping really hard challenges like that are in there for the next generation in rugby 25.
I really like the idea of difficulty sliders. Only ever seen it done in a couple of games before. But gives a much broader range of difficulty.
One of the big things for me with difficulty, is i never like games where the higher difficulty just means the AI can do things you cant do. I.E. a player will break through 9 tackles in a row on every carry, or wind doesnt effect their kicks at the posts, or they win a ruck by default even if no one is in the ruck for their team.
Its a really tough task to achieve, obviously will never make everyone happy. But the hardest difficulty should have a really high ceiling in order to keep players entertained for many years to come.
POTENTIAL IDEA:
If the creation center is broad enough, would it be possible to add in teams that are purely there for challenge purposes with no stat cap. And the players on the team all have attributes above the baseline game?
So where a player like Will Jordan may have speed of 95 in the normal NZ team. Could we create a challenge team for NZ and that version of him has speed of 110.
Mackenzies kicking range goes from 90 up to 110.
Savea carrying goes from 95 up to 120.
And the whole team has their players have 1 attribute over clocked, and the only purpose is for veteran players to take them on as a challenge?
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Seen it mentioned before on here but was wondering if there is work happening to alter the bodies of players? They’re currently quite oddly shaped, particularly with regards to shoulders and arms looking rather out of proportion and unnatural. Players on RLL4, for the most part, look quite realistic so sure this won’t be a hard fix.
Similarly, still not enough difference in body types and sizes between players - particularly props. Hope this is just a simplification of early access.
Enjoying the progress of the game and appreciate the efforts of the team, keep the updates coming and this could be the best rugby game to date
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Hi there,
Is there any patch deploying this week. I am off on leave till next Monday so was keen for Rugby 25 gaming if a patch comes through to stop the game crashing which has hampered us all I think.
Also I hope the Fan Hub is arriving soon ? It would be good to get an idea if there is a need for the community to possibly create players or focus on certain teams that might not be face scanned for a while ?
I used to do a lot of player creation on Rugby Challenge 4. About 1700 players over the last 4 years I shared onto their server.
Thanks
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There’s been a fair amount of activity on steam dB so expecting a patch today or tomorrow, unless the QA team find any glaring issues before the patch release
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@JNT_BA : thanks so much for the information about the difficulty… sliders to modulate the difficulty levels baseline is an excellent idea !!
About the next update timing, I would be among people who have preference for a increment, where all necessary time is taken to address gameplay improvements, in priority #1.
My wheelhouse is clearly playing with various set plays + defensive/offensive tactics (for the backs AND the forwards 
). Usual stuff that brings all the variety and beauty to rugby union, so. And if this is for the next increment I would put a €50 banknote on the table + sign with my eyes closed since now 
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Definitely no update today there hasn’t been anything happening today on steamdb today
Thanks for the Update, can seem to get the ball out the back again however passing still seems a bit more off than it was before the EA2 update
Now I’ve been able to play a bit, I do like how natural the mauls feel, however they do need a bit of better balancing for me and I feel like momentum should play a bigger role, if I get on top early it should be harder for the opposition to stop me
I also feel like there should be a way to delibretly collapse the maul with it resulting in a yellow card and penalty ( penalty try if it’s near the try line) as that’s something I’ve never seen properly implemented in a rugby game before
I did notice a couple of glitches in the maul one being when I was pushing back the AI they 1 wouldn’t get the ball out of the maul despite losing 10s of meters and 2 the law states that that should result in a free kick if the ball isn’t being used when the attacking maul isn’t moving forward
Lastly on the maul I noticed that the ball got stuck in the maul and the ref correctly gave a free kick however I’m not sure what caused the ball the get trapped ? Is it random or a result in the player dominating the maul ?
Other than the maul as I said before passing seems to have still taken a backwards step from EA1 although I assume this will soon get better
Ruck is feeling a lot better however animation need be a lot more realistic
And lastly one pet peev is when scoring a try I hate when the player dives with the ball in one hand, unless they’re doting it down or trying to score under pressure in the corner 99% of rugby players will score with two hands on the ball or having it tucked safely under their hand/s
Looking forwards to see the next update when it’s ready !
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RE: Difficulty,
Thanks so much @JNT_BA this was super insightful and do agree.
I like the idea, perhaps if BA can consider sliders we players can adjust simple things like:
Opposition Defence Line Speed, Ruck Speed, Stamina Drain (think this could be interesting) etc. Similar to rugby challenge. What would be excellent is a stat overclocker that only applies to the hardest level. e.g. overclock any opposition stats automatically by 10, 20, 30. This can also be done on a position base e.g. front rowers gets overclocked only on stats that make them good, back rowers etc.
That would apply to all teams you play against, and being able to set it would be excellent and give longevity to the game. As long as there is no game breaking issues like on RC4, the stamina drain for example, was just too excessive and almost destroyed the late game. That ruins longevity. But having a game that is subjectively too easy to many players will do the same. Sliders really puts the power into the player’s hands, and as difficult as it can be, I think it’s also unique in rugby where you could do some interesting sliders that increases the difficulty.
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I don’t know if it’s planned, but it would be nice to add 2 or 3 different ruck animations because all rucks are identical. We should be able to choose the number of people who go into the ruck and also animations where we can see the player scratching the ball. According to his statistics, the stronger he is in scraping, the more likely he is to recover the ball.
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hello everyone!
I hope the whole team is doing well.
I had a question regarding the future update.
Will there be an interim update before the big update at the end of August or will it be included in the big update?
Good evening to you.
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I think I’ve already mentioned it in a previous post - that basically sliders are on the agenda, but it’s really helpful in this stage of the Early Access process to have everyone playing as similar of a game as possible, it helps us minimise how many unique factors there are.
So that just means that until we have a solid baseline, throwing sliders in could make it harder to get to that point, as you’ll have some players using the extremes of some of them and triggering edge cases, while others will be more default and not see them, leading to inconsistent feedback about what things are problems.
The other aspect is that while it’s in fairly active development, the underlying values that a slider would balance between would be changing a lot, so you might find the number on a slider that is good for you, but then we might rework the system to make the default experience better, and then your slider value won’t feel the same, etc.
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As for updates to the game, as those who are snooping our steam have already identified, we’re testing out a candidate for an interim update.
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I take offense to the word snooping … I much prefer stalking tbf
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Just saw player and team creation trailer @JNT_BA is that a sign we getting it with this weeks update or is it still with big one next week hopefully
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What!? You saw part of my Early access video! Unacceptable.
As mentioned in the road map the foundation of the academy will be brought in!! This will be in a major patch not an interim as it is a major feature.
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I saw the video on YouTube and the creation center looks very very complete and really great. Just a quick question, will there be the possibility of putting headsets on players as there are none in the game currently?
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Can we expect to see an interim patch this week?
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