Early Access 4 (EA4) launch

[Rugbygamer40]

Hi there,

Just jumped on to check the Fan Hub for player sharing , shared 3 players as a test - Cabous Eloff, Owain James, Charlie Turnbull. Hopefully people can download and also edit their appearance and skills if they wish.

On another quick note to raise. The Newcastle Falcons. Seems to be a big error with the appearance of Newcastle Falcons No 8 Callum Chick. This is not his real life appearance. Will spend time on the game in the next few days to look at various things on this update. Thanks guys.

[JNT_BA]

Oh, that’s concerning, I updated them myself. I’ll try to get this sorted ASAP since it’s easy enough for my team to do again, wonder why my update didn’t stick.

[Rugbygamer40]

Thanks for looking into it. I tried to look at the rest of the Newcastle Players quickly. Seemed ok with the scans. I will look at all the other teams later tonight.

[JBENJU]

First time trying to play the game today and my first impression is that its very disappointing. I couldnt finish the game because the ball was kicked into the stands and the N15 lagged trying to get the ball. Makes it unrealistic when he runs through the stand in the first place.

My N9 keeps throwing lob passes for some weird reason and cant get a constant flow going. Maybe something i need to get use to but still seems pretty unrealistic. Would expect it more from a Prop than a scrumhalf.

I hate to sound like a broken record but when you compare the game play to the likes of Madden, FIFA and the new College Football game, there is no match. The kit, players, stadiums, game play is insanely good in those games. Why cant Big Ant connect up with EA and make a proper rugby game. Im not saying for EA to completely take over and take all credit but they are doing something right.

Its well overdue for a proper rugby game, take some time away, connect with EA and create a rugby game that everyone will want to play. I would rather wait to play a decent rugby game than to play this one to be fair.

Appreciate the licensing of all the teams and international teams, great that there is a variety of different options who we can use but overall, very disappointed.

Major changes will need to be made for me to get carry on with this game.

[Rugbygamer40]

Just an update on Player scans that I have checked.

Player appearances seem all corrrect. Just issues with wrong player positions.

Sale Sharks - Bevan Rodd - Correct Position should be Prop

Saracens - Theo McFarland - Correct Position should be Lock

Saracens - Juan Martin Gonzalez - Correct Position should be Backrow - Flanker/N8

URC - George Nott should be a Lock for Dragons. Not a Fullback
Javan Sebastian a Prop for Edinburgh. Not a Fullback. Thanks Team

[Grizzlyboy]

The gameplay still afwul sorry to say it but as a rugby fan and the last the a felt a real rugby game was Rugby 08 and still the best game till today.
That Rugby 08 was a Rugby experience to be in the game…Well Rugby Union has change since then with Rule and tmo.Teams having gamplans like pods systems and more.

1.Gameplay Animations
Players animations mechanics player with the own style of kicking and running motion still looks clingy.
Players Bodies not accurate and realistic.The game is still one way and feels like you have no control over the game.Offloads still bad make it like Rugby 08 when a player gets tackled it give you a button option to press and then offload.Tackle a player and knock the ball forward .Goal Kicking still to easy like it more like a mini game more mechanics and players stance and different styles when kicking to post.There is alot to talk about of what is missing in the game.
Players stats and game stats
Showing the phases on the screen

2.Gameplay Strategy/Management
First of all Rugby has develop through the years and teams come up with differents setups

1-3-3-1
1-3-2-2
2-4-2

The games like Rugby 2020 and 22 those pods systems would be perfect to have on Rugby 25 but more fluent and controllable.
Bring in the full back in attack and on defence.
Whe have to ability to adjust your teams Attack shape wide,flat,deep or tight and same with the defensive system.
Adjust pocket for kickes or fly-halfs to set deep for kicks
Setplays move from scrums,line outs,rucks
Loops
8-9
Switch plays
Cross Kicks
Wide out
Miss pivot
Pocket
Miss Pivot 13 and 15 etc
And the rugby union rule and laws bring it to the game

3.Gameplay graphics and Enviroment
If we play a sport game it must feel like you in the game.
The graphics looks nice the grass look still artificial.
The crowd not like a rugby crowd the atmosphere should be rugby fans with the respective teams jersey singing cutscenes of post match crowd different reactions with somethings spectacular happening in the game.
Nice to see the refs with the license shirts but the shocks needs to be high he looks like a player but can we get Ben’O’keefe Luke Pearce and that blokes.Ball boys and cameraman alongside the field.refs talking to players,captains and give warnings,player injury, heavy injury with medic carts,minor injury help with water boys
Players fighting and scrambling
The field still looks empty and advert boards sponsorships to make it a game we would enjoy.

I hope the developing team will read this and make something out of it.Just asking why is it so hard to make proper rugby game as we can see EA made Fifa,UFC,Madden Next Gen

[SportsGamingZone]

@JNT_BA & @MattW

Thank you for the update. I think the reason why so many say they are disappointment is that we had massive hopes for certain game play features to be added to EA4. My personal opinion is that it isn’t that bad of an update, improvements are noticeable, but it wasn’t a major step up as most anticipated. And yes, there is also a few new bugs and things happening that is questionable. But we trust and hope that Rugby 25 will get more attention this month, hopefully we see some interim patches to address certain things and maybe some things get added before EA5.

For me personally, I need to see more of the Rugby Laws get implemented (I got penalized twice for being offside, but it doesn’t happen every time), as well as the rucking & maul system needs to be looked at. I cannot Steal/Jackal any ball when I am the first player to the ruck, even when the AI doesn’t add any players to the ruck, I still cant steal it. Then the other thing that I think is crucial is the option for player to be able to set their lines, line depth and width. Unless you are able to sneak these in before EA5, I think it’s best to delay “Online Play” until these are working.

I have played a few games, and although it doesn’t completely give the Rugby feel that we want, I can see that certain things are improving. Thanks and good luck to the Team.

[Saulman55]

Why would you compare the game to fifa/nadden/cfb? Series that have has 30+ years of development by a dev with infinite resources. R25 is awful atm, however if your expectations are a game that is on par with those listed then you will be sorely disappointed

Big Ant can’t connect with EA because EA obviously don’t see the value in making a rugby game. Ea didnt even develop rugby 04-05-06-08

[JNT_BA]

Yeah, this is true. As mentioned in the EA video, we discussed how the back-end systems were expanded. Unfortunately, sometimes we need a foundation to build upon. Most of the month was building out many parts of the game so we could continue bringing new things. The disappointment is understandable, adding to the lack of interim updates it may have appeared that it would be a massive update. While we can’t go over exactly what will come during the month we’ll always do our best to say what we can or show what we can with significant front-end changes, which we didn’t do much this month, going “10,000 lines of code added” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t see the fruit from those changes. I can see it cause of course I have a completely unlocked version and see all the tools and reports about each time a play happens on my screen. Much like the things that were in one of the Dev diaries when you can see some overlays on how some plays happen.

As well as really addressing lots of stability issues. Not everyone will appreciate “stability” I personally would take a much more stable build than a massive update that’s even more unstable any day. But that’s just me, dropping out during a great play just ruins my fun when I get really into a long session.

Is there more to come? Of course.

Clearly, some rules are not implemented, yep we know and that is one of the next steps is to get more of those sorted.

Not everyone will appreciate how development works and that’s ok. The game has come far for many of the systems that we worked on this month but unfortunately, those are not public-facing, you won’t see thousands of lines of code changes behind what could be considered a “small” graphics update and that can be a downer, it can look like we did nothing. People mentioned “Why would you even add a logo creator? Focus on gameplay!!” All I can say to that is… they’re not the same team, they also have been working on it for some time which I think is a good example of foundation, with the last EA the logo creator skeleton was there it just needed more work, it wasn’t completed like the next day it took quite some time to finish off by the UI team, again nothing to do with gameplay programmers. The team that does gameplay doesn’t do UI stuff like that. Someone working on gameplay works on that, gameplay. But they also need tools and a foundation to help work on gameplay.

Lots of skeleton was added to this update to assist going forward. There are things that get worked on that you may not even think about that can take time such as reporting and logging systems that help us diagnose gameplay issues, they have to be built and implemented as well.

Sure from the end user perspective, it may not look great and I get it. I read all these and the discords and the Reddits, the Twitter stuff, and Youtube comments in which we should check notes focus on updating TDU, you know, that game we don’t make but someone else does. Just because the changes that you would like to see don’t happen straight away doesn’t mean we don’t listen or they aren’t being worked on.

[sinbad06]

i think the general view is that the developers need to concentrate on gameplay now as a matter of urgency. Adding photo realistic faces etc is adding bells and whistles on what should be a foundation of core rugby gameplay, which it just does not have.

Adding line depth, width, set plays, pods on the fly (with the use of the D-pad) needs to be urgently implented as the basic gameplay is too simplistic with very little tactical nous.

Rucks need to be reformatted as well and i keep saying the player needs to hold the ball in two hands whilst sprinting.

it would be nice if the developers could at least explain whether they intend to add these features or not.

[JNT_BA]

I feel like I need to post this as a pinned comment across this forum, I’ve lost track of how many times we have had to say this.

The Art team does not program gameplay and the gameplay team does not make art. They are not even in the same area, they don’t interact and don’t share work.

[AndyPelser]

I think biggest thing probably was the lack of communication we had this whole month about the game, I understand we won’t always get these interm patches but it made us feel more involved in helping the game, I know you guys can’t always tell us everything, but would be nice to give feedback or atleast letting us know certain things we give feedback on is getting heard. And I think the smaller updates gave us that feeling because we knew we are testing something out to give feedback on. ATM no one likes the Rucks but each update there is not even a hint if rucks are getting reworked as almost everyone we want that reworked and it feels intern patches are good for us to test things out like that for you guys and help get in the right direction.

[SportsGamingZone]

Thanks @JNT_BA for the explanation again. I know you and Matt have already stated it in previous posts. And I am sure the end result will be a great Rugby game.

[JNT_BA]

I completely understand that, unfortunately, I do lots of the communicating with you guys, and I was on the other side of the world well I guess in most cases on your side of the world, the UK and Ireland trip was WILD. While others could come on, it means time will be taken away from development. That’s the lucky thing with my job is I could post memes all day the games keep progressing, but all my stuff falls behind but that doesn’t stop anything to do with the game. Even from the updates I got, I can’t hype code changes, we added a new tactics readout, and I can be like we did one thousand new lines and 400 updates today. Again that doesn’t mean much. I guess I could have been like I had 5 coffees and I miss coffee from even a service station in Australia cause it wasn’t nice anywhere I went. But apparently, I’m a Coffee snob, cause yeah I am.

[JNT_BA]

Keep it on topic, I don’t want your social commentary.

[JNT_BA]

Haha, Ok goodbye to you saying that when like 90% of this thread is criticism.

[JBENJU]

You just said it, EA has 30+ years of development, they have succeeded in their field beyond expectations, but a lot of people have been waiting for a decent rugby game for a very long time now and nothing seems to change. Again im not saying EA needs to take over but the gameplay is still not where it should be and EA could be the assistance required to improve it. In saying that, I dont know much about developing games but surely you would try using other recourses to get the game to where it needs to be.

Im not taking anything away from Big Ant, I have no doubt that they are working extremely hard behind the scenes to make this game better, but I do get why people are upset and want a decent rugby game.

Would be nice to have player authentication as well as with stadiums, grass, weather conditions, fans cheering, etc.

[Italeo48]

GoTBy

Thanks for the comments! @JNT_BA.
It’s just that we wanna know more ans a bit more often. We can just judge what we see and the progress on the update published.

I can’t wait to try the update now that return home!

[OCallaghan91]

Thank you @JNT_BA for your response and your patience with criticism. I would like to personally apologize because last night I was too harsh with you. The anger is linked to the love I have for your studio and the many hours spent on your games (AFL, RLL). I understand that your job is not easy and that there is a lot of pressure all the same. I remain supportive of you but it is true that the community expected something else because we had illusions due to the lack of communication.

my apologies for my irritation.

good luck to you

[Themadking]

Hey Here’s my first impression feedback after a couple of games

I see there’s been a lot of negatives feedback so let’s start with the positives

Game feels a lot more sturdy now and the stability seem far better, seem a lot of the small annoying things with animation glitches and mad passes are gone for the most part. So great job done on that

It seems to me at least that it’s a bit easier to great holes in the defence now if you know how to which is great. Looking forward to see the implementation of tactics !

Premiership graphics and players look great. Assuming you spend a bit more time on the super stars, players like Marcus smith look amazing ! And loving the little alternate looking graphics for the premiership

Also loving the amount of stadiums that’s are already in the game

Logo maker is amazing and honestly might be the best and most detailed logo maker in any sports game on the market, need to play around with it more but looks super amazing ( going able to have my own local club in the game which is fantastic ! )

In terms of criticism relevant to this update

Some of the stadium surroundings look a bit off, especially bath atm

9 sometimes goes on a little wander before getting to the ruck, also rucks seem to have became a little slower again

Already plenty of people pointing this out but miss placed passes are happening a little too often atm , happy for passes to go wrong sometimes and allow for the defence to jump on the opportunity it’s just needs to be balanced a little better

And one bit of overall feedback is I still feel as if the ruck needs big changes not sure if there’s plans for that but I do think that’ll better the pace of the game because the ruck is still super static and sucks the life out of the momentum of attacks atm

Game is improving every update and I know it’s going in the right direction !

All the teams involved and doing a great job and really listening to us to make a great game we all want to play

Good luck to everyone on the next update and thanks to @JNT_BA for all his Hard work so far !

Looking forward to see what you have for us next !