Early Access 2 – Interim Update 2 - Feedback

[simnofear]

Hello Big Aunty !!

I hadn’t played since the first major patch that definitely had killed it for me but i had read good critics about first interim, got the surprise of interim 2 on my way back to the game.
So yeah, the game is playable again, and i even enjoy some plays now and then . But there is still lots of work of course. There are still many bugs ( IA mauls not getting the ball out, players not lining up for line outs…) and game crashes, but i was still able to play some whole games without crashing or having to quit.

• Rucks are still not clear, i don’t really understand the mechanics. I guess you are keeping the 3 on 3 mini scrum animation for the rucks, I’m not found of it but why not, but please how does it work. I don’t understand under what conditions can it be overturned, and i don’t feel like the tackle that caused the ruck impacts the outcome of the ruck.
  Players near the ruck should bind faster. There often seems to be a delay where players stand still in front of the ruck before entering it.

• Passes with held button after the ruck work better, i can usually pass to the designated player, but i still cant control the direction of the receiver. And often he runs nonsense, running towards the ruck rather than in front of him.
  In open plays, when passing normally, by pressing lb or rb, sometimes i pass to the runner close to me, sometimes in his back because he is running ahead of me. Support runners cant be running in front of the ball receiver.
  In open plays, i can pass normally using lb or rb but cant hold those buttons to the select another button to pass to while running at the same time. I wish we could double tap to skip pass. When support runners run better routes, skip passes will be indispensable.
  Still after the ruck on first catch its usually hard to pass again as the ball receiver runs directly into the defense and doesn’t seem to pass even though it seems he has space to.
  Alss Offloads almost never happen even though i try every time and very often its seems as arms are clear and support players could be there but the ball holder just gets tackled without trying to pass.

• Linebreaks: we need some linebreaks obviously. The bump using RS down works at times but the animation is very short, the bump not very impressive, and the defenser is still in play. RS up never works for me, i can only use RS left or right to avoid defenders, which is cool when it works, but at the moment it’s only an avoiding game. You run the ball to gain speed and find a hole to outrun the defense or eventually just beat one defender one on one with the sidestep. We need to be able to play in close gaps with contact as well. Bumps are nice, but we could use shoulder charges and fend offs to break the tackles at times, or gain advantage in contact to better be able to offload (cant offload on a dominant tackle, but can on a defensive tackle when offense has either speed and strength advantage or used a dominant skill move as a fend off or shoulder charge ).

• Mauls are pretty buggy during my games, Ia not using the ball usually. I still don’t really understand the mechanics yet, have to have more tries on those, but i think left stick should be used to drive the direction of the maul, and have a button to give the ball to number 9 rather than him running directly maybe.

• Kicking is getting better, just wish we could position someone behind the ruck to kick safely.

• Goal kicks could use a bit of wind to add some difficulty maybe.

• Referees don’t blow much whistle, don’t think I’ve ever seen any cards or high tackle calls.

• Running feels heavy. Even with wing players. I wish i could change direction a little bit more when running.

• Tackles don’t seem to reflect the impact, as in speed and power of the colliding forces. Some heavy tackles out of nowhere at times. Can’t wait to see plenty of new animations when you add the tackle breakers (shoulder charges and fend offs).

Still plenty to do but its getting better so i cant wait for next patches.
Cheers !!

[AndyPelser]

Been playing the competition mode and all honesty some off the most fun I had, been a few games where AI on hardest was hitting gaps side stepping, just had game where score was close I will be going down the field score a try and than AI will do the same was a really fun contest Ai won due to scrums being to strict on early hit.

Keep up the good work BA

[simnofear]

small bugs: when tackled close to the line out, i have had several plays were the ball carrier and support players coming to the ruck would all make the effort to remain on field, but the scrum half puts a boot into touch when passing the ball. That’s infuriating. If the tackled player was able to avoid the touchline, support players in the ruck should be able to, and so should the scrum half, cant have him put a toe in touch when everyone else managed to stay in field.

In competition mode, i created a custom league. I find it hard to select the round i want to play because when i slightly push a direction to go to the next round, game acts as if i pressed the direction 3 times… so kinda hard to select the rounds right now.

Thanks, cheers

[AndyPelser]

Issue that I have found in my most recent game is when ai have scrum on their own 5m line and wins it they pass it to the fly half than fly half kicks out but games says out on full but than gives them goal line drop out

[ViCe_ZA]

Most fun I have had on this game so far. Passing and AI certainly much improved.

Would like to see more distance on the punt kick, but maybe its because we dont have enough time to kick the ball away that we cant fully charge the kick power and hone the direction. Would like to see tactics in the next big patch, including positioning the kicker for the kick.

Also would like to see players playing in their correct position, example being scrum half, and for the scrum half to get to the ruck much quicker. It is his role to religiously follow the ball, whether it is to play support running, or being available for quick ball from the ruck.

The ruck animations still looking a lot like a scrum, which is not great, and I feel like it is near impossible to counter ruck or steal the ball now. Eventual sliders will help.

Some of the rules not 100%. This could be a quick fix. Just read through the rules manual and set accordingly. My guy would pass back into the in-goal area, then put the ball down and we get a try line dropout, which is wrong. Should be 5 min scrum, attacking ball.

Would like to see knock-ons and penalties in the next big update as well.

Coming on nicely now, but the big updates really need to bring big improvements and much more content. Keen to start using the community creation tool and hopefully stadium creation will also be available with the next update.

Edit: It seems that offloads are still not a thing, as I am unable to quick offload and it seems the AI also struggle. When it is AI vs AI and there is a maul, none of the players commit to the maul and its just a 1v1 maul. Saw a glitch where an AI player hits a gap in center field and then suddenly glitched by running sideways until he ran into touch.

Supporting players still standing in strange positions and facing the wrong way. Their position should be fixed to the ball or the ball carrier, facing or running in the same direction, so they are a good option or in a good position to receive the ball

Tactics would include:

Attack

1. D-pad left - Set line close, with pods close to the rucks to receive short crash ball, with support runners for the offload. Mostly forwards on close support lines
2. D-pad right - Set line wide, with support runners in the backline for the quick offload in contact to hit the gap. So forwards and backs run support lines for the backs
3. D-pad down - Set line deep for the kick.
4. D-pad up - Set line flat to chase on the box kick from the ruck.

Defense

1. D-pad left - Set defense close to ruck
2. D-pad right - Set defense wide
3. D-pad down - Set defense for kick with wingers slightly back and also full back and possibly 10 well back
4. D-pad up - Normal

AI players would often pass the ball after hitting a gap. They should hold on and keep running. This, combined with introduction of penalties would mean that the AI can score against each other, as currently they seem unable to.

[BonnotXV]

Hi all,

The game goes on, but still miss … the game ! To be clearer, I mean that there’s still no possibility to create a breach or to orientate the way you pass and attack, as far as the receivers are statics, and the button assignated to them is random / unpredictable.

I bump on the best idea i read here, was to preset the two first passes, in order to create “free” set plays after rucks. ( Ex . RB + A then B)

To obtain a real control of what we decide, i suggest to use the real disposition of the A/B/X/Y buttons (and equivalent symbols on PS5), as if the buttons were players, like in the further scheme. Of course, this will be combinated with an earlier run of the player concerned, which will create movement:

Hope this is clear (I’m french) and can help

My two cents

[JoJoFlix]

Hi Team

Thank you so much for the update, definitely improvements all round and becoming more playable.

Just a small issue that I’m not sure has been brought up or not.

Logo graphics are sometimes pixelated while others are clear, especially when creating a tournament and the logos are minimized for selection of teams.

Also might just be me, but when selecting a team, they all have clear backgrounds, but the springboks have a green square around the logo. Honestly feels like the bok logo should look like the rest without colour blocks around them. Or a colour coded square around every logo could work, but just one or the other.

I know this is a small issue but thought it was something that can easily give the game a cleaner look.

Still many areas that need improvements but I know that will come with time.

[Rugbygamer40]

Hi Team,

Just feedback on the patch. Didn’t get a lot of time on weekend to play but I managed to play 2 matches on Hard Difficulty. I can see the improvements with Ai behaviour.

The Ai have improved with more passing between themselves , some break tackles, side stepping, these things definitely made it more exciting to try and defend against the Ai and made them unpredictable at times.

From what I can see, if we had offloads working for the Ai and support runners lt would really help them score or make more line breaks or put a user defence under pressure. Same as controlling a team as a User. It’s just still very hard to do any offloads and passing still seems delayed unless you press a specific pass button when running the ball. I noticed The Ai passing is at times passing back to some Ai players deep in the line so they sometimes lose ground because they can’t offload at the moment and get tackled.

Also once we get “kicking in play “ improved for Ai and User it should open up attacking options more. The line depth or pockets. At the moment we just can’t use the complete attacking “Box of Tricks” at this time to make opportunities for more Try’s scored on both sides by the Ai and User but I am sure you are all working hard on these things behind the scenes. Slow motion kicking or something to that effect to allow the user or Ai to make tactical kicking decisions for field position or pressure to cause a mistake such as a dropped ball from a bomb.

We are moving in the right direction so this new patch is encouraging for the game. Thanks for all the hard work. Also from two matches I had no game crashes.

Looking forward to the Player Creator. Hoping we could somehow see some stats in the next major update of some top players in either France , Australia or Argentina to get an idea what is the level of skill for each of their skills attributes. For Example Antoine Dupont , what is his kicking and passing stats score ? Rob Valentini his strength or break tackle ability score ? These stats would help as a guide or benchmark when creating players with lesser skills as in real life. I am mindful to not want to make some players too skilled above the Worlds Top Rugby Players.

Thanks Team

[initroot]

I don’t think we’ll see stats soon, until the gameplay is sorted. I think to track gameplay issues etc, if you have too many differences with stats etc, it might result in too many edge cases and not a solid baseline for gameplay. Same reason they not looking at sliders yet.

[Hugan099]

Everything apart from gameplay looks good .

I haven’t seen one front on bump off or even a hand off . There’s only 3/4 tackle animations . Gameplay does not look and feel like rugby . Mauls is poor tbh as well as line outs . Passing is unrealistic . Kick offs looks bad . The way the players run is too upright . I don’t see enough penalties in the game , come to think I haven’t seen one penalty .

Here’s alot to improve on , but hopefully you guys get it done

[Valhalla_Vagabond]

Hi JNT and BA,

Another couple of pieces of feedback (apologies if these have already been mentioned). For context, I always play 10-minute halves on the hardest difficulty.

1. When committing three players to a ruck, it’s very rare to achieve a successful counter-ruck. While I understand this should be challenging, I spent an entire half on defense because the opposition never kicked the ball away and kept recycling possession. There should be a small percentage of rucks that are vulnerable to a counter-ruck, even when well defended.

2. When I only commit one player to a ruck, the CPU almost always over-commits with three players, clearing out my single defender and leaving the ball exposed and available to pilfer. The CPU should be less inclined—or not inclined at all—to attempt a full clear-out when they already have possession and there’s no real threat of a turnover.

3. The X-Steal Ball option seems to be completely missing. On occasions when the CPU player has been isolated and I’ve attempted to steal using X, nothing happens. Additionally, the game often hangs and becomes unresponsive, preventing further progress (I’ve already raised a separate ticket for this issue).

Thanks for your time, and keep up the awesome work!

[Saulman55]

Only managed a few games of the latest build, all 3 ended in crashes there a few improvements, but on the whole the game is still in rough shape.

• passing feels the best it’s been, when you can actually get passes away.

-tackle radius/pass responsiveness still need major tweaks without spamming the pass button it’s incredibly difficult to form any sort of attack.

-rucking feels incredibly slow and unresponsive and are poorly animated

• in addition to improving pass responsivenes/lowering the tackle radius id like movement speed to be slowed down. Allowing more time for decision making. There should also be a greater disparity between slow and fast players. Mismatches can be hugely impactful we have all seen a back receive a pass and spot a gassed prop in front of them.

• there remains no semblance of attacking formations, or even players lining up at a sensible depth the amount of times I’ve been unable to exploit an overlap because my winger has decided to line up 5 yards in front of the inside player. It’s absolutely asinine

• multitude of glitches, players teleporting to rucks, I’ve had the ball teleported 25 meters back to the kicker after punting downfiekd, commentary glitches etc

Please focus on passing responsiveness/tackle radius and fix how attacking players line up

[ViCe_ZA]

Really need to see better back line positioning in the next update. When on attack, the support runners need to be much more flat for strong running lines and momentum, versus them currently standing too deep. Get them locked on the ball carrier with a shallower depth.

Offloads also need to happen in the next update

[Reds1121]

Will there be another intrim update or will it be a major update?

[Valhalla_Vagabond]

Major update end of week mate.

[Lionmaul]

Game has improved with last patch, less game hangups, but number one issue with the flow the game (lack of offloads and last ditch passes) can not emphasize this enough, in order for the game not to feel clunky or static offloads must be added, practically non existent. Also, we should have control of how many players go into the ruck, and if you set a limit make it 4 not 3, I know most rucks only have 1-3 players but we should be able to control this, I would prefer up to 5 on special occasion, this again is the risk reward system for being patient at the ruck. It is a huge part of rugby. Even if balls go to ground on wild passes or offloads, maybe a window can be implemented and you have to press separate button for the offload, I don’t know but the offloads in every other rugby game has been better. Game is improving but needs Offloads and last ditch passes and better control at ruck, these things are the heart of flowing Rugby, looking forward to continued improvements, particularly in those fields mentioned above.

[Saulman55]

Played a few more games last night. Have noticed most of the in game crashes come when I’ve kicked the ball in to touch

Also had a lovely linebreak with ramos, he looped around the back of the pod near the ruck and took a pass flat and at full speed straight through a gap. This should be the norm, players attacking from deep, at pace with pods set up flatter to carry in to contact.

Adding visible running lines similar to those in the rugby league live games would be really helpful

[MaD_Dragon_Rugby]

Hey guys, im a little late to this one. I wasnt around weekend of release so only had 2 days with it. But wanted to jump in on the feedback side of things. Ill try to avoid cross overs with what others have said, but im later than usual on this one so some may have been mentioned.

Positives:
Lots of small improvements making this patch the best version of EA2 for me.

• AI Playing the game really well, great passing options, passing far more often, and running dangerous lines
• Kicking has returned due to the timing decrease and feels so much better on all areas of open play.
• Mauling off a lineout has had improvements in being able to get the ball out quickly and not have to complete the full maul with is great.
• Addition of Argentina and Chile in the game is great, dont know if i just missed that being mentioned, but couldnt see it in patch notes outlining those specific teams were in.
• Stability feels better, only had 1 crash from the opposition never throwing the ball in and the game broke on what penalty I should get. (have noticed portions of frame rate drops in game, but cant find consistent causes for this.)
• Have not had any issues with clipping behind lights or rafters in this update which is great.
• Have not had the game soft lock from the ref saying “use it” and nothing happenning
• Defensive line no longer runs away at maul time which is great.
• Much better functionality at lineout to either pass from linout or go for the maul, prompts workign every time.

Areas expeirencing issues:

• Players stopping after pass - with the increased passing ability of the AI (which is great) ive been encountering small delays in control input when I switch to a defender to stop the attacker that just been passed to. The delay is short maybe half a second. When play testing, the player I swap to either remains stationary OR can only run in a straight line up the field. No matter whether I tell the player to change direction or to tackle. Due to the aggressive pressing of the AI though, that half a second delay means they just walk past your player who either stands like a statue, or tackles air 5m beyond the player. This is also more prevalent when using the sideline camera rather than the end camera for some reason.
  
  I just captured this clip which demonstrates it well (i am yellow and red just passed the ball to that player) My first guy just ran straight passed without tackling. I then swapped to N10 (who tackled air because the input for the 1st guy didnt get recognised until i swapped to N10) then I swapped to N13 (who is on the right hand side of the screen), and you can see the second I swap to them they just stop dead even though im holding down the direction towards the player. And then I swapped to N15 who turned a bit and then just stopped. Before starting back up again to chase. All 4 changes just allowed red N15 to march through my defence because the delay stops me from being able to defend.

• Side line camera - Something I dont think a lot of people would notice because they only play 1 way. But the game plays very differently depending one whether you use the “side” camera or the “end on” camera. When playing end on, the game takes a noticible drop in difficulty for me. AI leave huge gaps in defence and dont close space, they dont commit men to mauls, they kick the ball to you more often, and they also hang back on defence giving you HUGE time to get kicks away. I thought maybe it was team dependant or I was having bad games, but when using the side camera the AI is so much harder to get around. I tested it by swapping the camera back and forth mid game. And went from 10 minutes of rucks on sideline camera, to sprinting through huge gaps and kicking for 50/22’s as soon as I swap the camera, Im not sure what would cause that.

• tap tackles - Ive noticed the animation choice for tap tackles seems to be priority when tackling someone from behind. You can kick over the opponents full back, and when they pick up the ball facing their own try line, rather than CRUNCHING them in the back with a huge tackle, my chaser will dive on the floor and tackle his his heels and it never results in a tackle. Im guessing the tackle success % has something to do with the speed the ball carrier is travelling as it works when stopping a player who broke the line. But when doing it on a player collecting the ball stationary Ive never seen a single one work.

• Passing Issues - Something I would disagree with in the patch notes was the passing improvements as the human player. I am still having a lot of issues with the pass not going to the player I selected, passes being really slow, animations of the scrumhalf passing one way when I told it to go the other way. One of the biggest issues with passing is the Attacking line player depth. I am finding my players are just never where they need to be, they are either 10m too deep behind me, or actually infront of the player with the ball and cant be passed to. When the players are deep and you pass the ball, the player stands stationary, with no momentum, and you lose so many meters. Once again, this is more prevalent when using the side camera, as opposed to the end camera. The AI attacking line actually seems to look reallly good, and ive seen them do great attack patterns and get through my defence, im not sure why their attacking line seems to be so much better at default that the human player’s.

• AI able to do things Human cant do - Ive seen a number of things happen in the game that the AI can do I just cant. They seem to have much better kicks from hand (both in distance, and in time it takes to get a kick away) They are doing full power kicks miliseconds after catching the ball, and getting kicks away while being tackles. On conversion kicks they can curl the ball to the right whereas I can only curl left as default. Their players can serpentine when running in a much tighter turning circle than my players, they slalom through my defence while im tackling air. Their defence is laser targeted to stay man on man (again on side camera) and ive seen defenders avoid a tackle because ive pressed pass and the AI know the pass is coming before the animation starts. They are also able to pass like they are playing hot potato. Ive added a clip below (apologies for poor quality to fit it in the FAQ page posts) But you can see they pass around like its nothing, whereas my guys cant string 3 passes together before being tackled.
  

They are also still able to use the “bump off” mechanic, and even get under their own up and under kicks. Dont get me wrong, I actually like all of these things, I just wish that I as a human player was also able to match the AI. The above clip was also captured on Easiest difficulty, and they were passing so fast I couldnt get a tackle in.

Things to look at for next patch:
A couple of things I think really need to be hit in the next update.

• ref still stood infront of the camera on conversions on halfway line so cant see the posts

• length of game - the matches feel like they go on for ages. And when testing, a “5 minute half” game is taking 25 minutes to finish when it should be about 10. I have noticed a number of issues with the clock in match. The clock stops during set pieces and when making decisions with penalties. Even though in rugby union the clock normally runs on. Ive also noticed issues when after a set piece, the clock will slow down to real time for a huge duration. either until the maul is complete or some times beyond, and wont go back to normal speed until the ball goes dead again.

• Kicking trajectories - I know its not mentioned in the patch noted. But ill keep mentioning it, the kicking arcs and sensitivity, feel way too limiting for you to make tactical decisions. Kicking being locked to a 45 degree arc really takes away from tactical kicking. The graphic of just the circle on the ground is so much hard to comprehend than the trajectory graphic when kicking at posts. I personally would much prefer a full line showing where the “intended kick” will go based on power and th eplayer’s stats, but after that the balls line is effected by the wind and whether you kicked it too hard, and will land generally around the existing circle that exists now. The sensitivity is also WAY too high at full power from hand, you can be kicking for corner flag at full power, and realise its going stright out, so move the analog stick 1mm to the left, and suddenly your kicking trajectory is now aiming at the posts because its shifted so far.

• Clearer instructions on what the mechanics are - Ive had a lot of issues during EA2 as a whole trying to understand what the game wants me to do in some areas, and whether or not im controlling things. In this interim patch I have had mauls barely move even though ive got 7 players in the maul and the AI has 1. My players will stand at the ruck until 3 are available to enter at the same time and turnovers are much harder to achieve. At scrum time i can hit the QTE prompts at the perfect time and it says “too late” and awards a penalty.
  And my most recent one is at lineouts. During a 3 man linout, you can move the pods backwards and and forwards as seen in the clip below.
  
  But I have no idea if thats ME doing it or an issue in the game, it seems to react to the left analog stick, but it always move my guys forwards and theirs backwards, and theres nothing in the controls to suggest im in control. I like the idea of moving pods to beat opponents, but its not clear in controls if it is me doing it.

Overall this patch is the best EA2 has been so far for me Im really lokoing forward to see what EA3 is bringing along with the player creator in the academy editor. Hopefully that will coincide with a small taste of what the career may bring, or if we can add our created players in to existing teams.

[TheOtherGuy]

Good feedback. Wonder if the academy will come with the new update it seem like the video was removed from the Nacon channel.

[Rugbygamer40]

I forgot to mention.

When goal kicking it would probably be good if we had random wind conditions at times or certain wind conditions throughout a match or a pre match weather setting that we can choose. It will also influence in game kicking possibly from each end of the stadium. I noticed this a lot in Rugby 22. Sometimes you played a half with a strong wind behind you for kicking and the second half you would swap ends and the wind would be blowing towards you and your kicks would go a shorter distance.

Also I noticed when you line up for a goal kick you can actually hear your player’s footsteps on the pitch as he moves to kick the ball. I thought that was a cool little feature.