Early Access 4 (EA4) launch

[Jamdarv]

Game is SO much more playable, have finished a comp for the first time and enjoyed all the games. Few bits of feedback on player creator for now, as the gameplay is going in a good direction:
Stats and ratings make 0 sense so I hope these are in development and can be added to/fixed. When adding specific stats to a player, he is stuck at a 78 rated when majority of the stats are in the high 80s and don’t seem position specific, so a back with high scrummaging shouldnt really impact the overall rating.
When using the overall rating tool, to jump to a quick rating, half of the stats are 0 and some are 99 and when trying to amend they just seem quite inbalanced. From what I have gathered, a higher rated player shouldn’t rely on 99 goal kicking, 99 strength and 99 acceleration.
I think some more stat areas would be a good way to make players play more like themselves, and add more depth to them. Such as more kicking stats, chip, grubber, Drop goal etc (allowing high rated kickers to knock them from at least 40 out). Could lineout be a stat alongside scrums? Add a carrying stat, whereby they gain more meters in the carry (similar to the drive mechanic in RLL4).
Moving onto the player creator, this is really good but do not see any stubble on players which is VERY common for a lot of players and am struggling to see when creating players.
MORE Strappings! Like the Tom Curry or Sam Cane head strapping, again not sure if this is in progress but there are so many areas for strapping on the arms too with white and black tape. Also more leg straping like the tape on hamstrings, and lifting blocks above knees.

Again thanks for all the hard work and the recent updates, love having more teams and am really enjoying gameplay

[simnofear]

Hello Big Aunty,

thanks for the interim, being able to pass again is enjoyable, we can try the game a bit more. It is still not enough for me to join the hype train, as i don’t feel like i have enough control over players when receiving a pass. Running routes are still pretty messy, support runners almost non responsive (when passing to a pod, the other 2 don’t react instantly when the receiver is sucked into a tackle animation, delaying the ruck and so on…), number 9 still takes too much time to get to the ruck or to be replaced by another player. Still too many support players waiting around the ruck before entering, all lineout players stand still for a few seconds while the ball is already being played. When passing to the player right next to me, sometimes i will pass it to him where he is a few meters behind, sometimes i will deliver a flat pass, but i don’t get to choose when to use which and often times i would have loved that last pass to be different. So still no control over the type of pass nor the running route of the receiver, so attacking feels kind of like random passing until you can run around with your hookker left alone on the wing. I’m a bit exagerating of course, since inside passes actually work pretty fine as the AI defense gets confused pretty easily.
And of course, rucks are still the huge concern, as people have been saying for months now, but have still never been mentioned by BA as a focus for future updates. And still lineouts are pointless (no contest possible other than luck), mauls useless, and close to no rules applied.

It may sound harsh, but if we are to play online by the end of the month, gameplay needs a handful of updates.

And following are a few minor things that could brighten the experience pretty easily without impacting the dev team working on gameplay:

-with the camera behind, the ball chaser after a kick is offscreen. There should still be an icon on the bottom of the screen to indicate where our player is so we can chase in the right direction

• playstation controls inputs please, it’s very confusing with only xbox buttons displayed atm
  -In competition mode, we should only be able to select one team at the beginning of the season and play only its games rather then being able to play any team on any game day

Overall even if it’s nice to be able to pass the ball around, more controls and tactics will be deeply appreciated. Thanks for the effort, keep up the good work !

[MaD_Dragon_Rugby]

Hey Guys
Little late to the party on the feedback due to time constraints. However, this is the most time ive put into the EA major updates so far. Because the game is playable, and can actually have some great moments.

Again ill try my best to avoid covering too many of the points covered already by people but may be some cross overs, have certainly seen some colourful discussion so far in the FAQ

Positives:

• Music, once again song choice of new songs coming in is great, thouroughly enjoying all of the songs in the main menu, got it on in the background now while typing this, another big tick to the audio team. (just a quick note, newer songs have odd titles like “FrontEndMusic_song name”, which is fine for now, but will want to be sorted before release, im guessing the game is just registering the name of the music files as the song name"
• Quick fix @MattW mentioned to stop the passing issue, worked great! It was the most annoying thing about EA4 so the fact that got sorted in a week has made the game much more playable and enjoyable experience.
• New teams ,staiums and kits added in to the game is always a great bonus
• Competitions working smoothly, no crashes, still an issue with the Simulate button not working though
• Like that the 9 is the main guy to the scrum half position now, looks much better (can have issues though where they run away from the ruck, or take too long to get there and so you get penalised because the game only wants the 9 to do it, even if unavailable)

Gameplay feels better ( I would like to make a point here of saying, “HARDEST” difficulty, is absolutely the best difficulty in EA4 for me.) the AI seem to change their style of play as you increase the difficulty. And easiest-medium is a very long drawn out game of rucks not going anywhere. However on Hard and Hardest, the AI open up so much more, defensivley more gaps appear to create overlaps and send a man through, under pressure they kick more so the egame feels more open, and on attack they are aggressive and always looking to find a hole in your defense and feels so much better. I recommend everyone giving the hardest difficulty a go from a purely entertainment standpoint.

Negatives that came with the patch:

• Maul Issue - an issue has returned when during a maul your defensive line will completely run away from the maul leaving a huge open gap.

• Interceptions - The AI really enjoy occasionally not even attempting a tackle and seem to track passes coming like homing missiles to intercept the ball and charge 50m up the field, 1 or 2 is fine in a match, but once you get in to double figures it can be frustrating, when you dont have a lot of options as a player over the pass.

• new glitches - there are a host of new glitches ive not encountered before.

1. “Quick Throw” goes wrong 9/10 times, resulting in your guy just holding on to the ball, passing it off map, or another player beating you to the ball and just standing there with it.
2. Mauls will now go on forever if you spam the buttons, meaning you can drive them back the whole length of the pitch over their on dead ball line
3. Clock stops comepletely during a maul and wont restart until the ball is played or gone dead.
4. Scrums can just completely disappear, all of the players vanish but the scrum continues, and the players pop back in to existence once ball is played.
   
   
5. performing a high tackle on a player over the try line will always result in the ball being held up
6. actual offside penalties being awarded in a ruck, but for absolutely no reason
7. AI players occasionally hammer the ball 80m in a kick and easily hit the crowd on my try line, from their own 22.
8. when an opponent does a goal line drop out, if you respond immediately with a drop goal by the player who catches the ball, they will kick the ball back to the try line where your hooker will collect the ball and score a try instantly
   

Broader Points:

• Breakdown - The rucks have become SOOOO much harder to turn over, it doesnt feel like a difficulty increase, it just feels like the AI is able to add their players in to a ruck before you can and theres nothing you can do, even as a much better team getting a counter ruck might happen 1 in 20 rucks no matter if the player is really isolated.
• Supporting players non existant - as mentioned in the patch notes, there would be supporting runners when you make a break away, I cant say Ive seen a single instance for me or for the AI where there was an obvious supporting runner, maybe thats because the default distance from player to player is too deep, or the players just dont seem to comprehend you have made a make, but its always better to go alone than look for a pass.
• AI tackle after kicks - very annoying especially when the tackle is clearly late when making a grubber kick and the ball is already well on its way, and they drag ou to the ground to stop you chasing.
• Ball grounding - Feels like you as the player has absolutly no impact on a loose ball on the ground. Settings say to press X to dive on the ball, but it just doesnt work. Sometimes I just want them to pick it up and press nothing and they dive on it stopping them from scoring a try, because by the time they get back to their feet, they have already been tackled. Cant seem to kick the loose ball on after a grubber kick either, and most times results in the AI just picking it up.
• kick off recovery - one I dont think ive mentioned before, but its very weird on kick off’s how sometimes players running back to your own try line collect the ball with an outragous 1 handed catch above their own head, rather than a player running forwards on to the ball to collect it and then charge up the pitch.

Final point (rant incomming, appolgies in advance)

Logo Creator…

Boy oh boy, is this thing a b**** to use. Ive got a video coming out tomorrow going over more thoughts on EA4, so ill try and put a link to it on this comment with a time stamp going over the logo creator in person because theres almost too much to type out. Time stamp 05:43!

RUGBY 25 Early Access 4 PART 2 - Best Settings To Play With - Full Gameplay - Feedback & Thoughts

Short version, it is WAY too hard to use, its so fiddly and so uncomprehesible what it wants you to do to use it correctly. A logo/emblem creator should be this super easy system where you can kill 30 minutes designing some funky characters or recreate profesional team emblems. In order for it to appeal to a broad audience it needs to be super simple otherwise players will drop off rapidly.
All the elements are there it just needs overhauling to be more user friendly. Keep all of the shapes and letters and so on as options, even keep the colour change options the same. But the layers need to be visible at all times, and the player allowed to just select a layer quickly and edit that 1 asset on that layer.
I would drop the 200 points of contact on each symbol, and just have the option when adding a layer to select the shape/letter, and then XYZ options to change legth, height and overall size, and the ability to rotate the shape.
If people want complex curvy letters they can just add curvy shapes in more layers and move the layers around.
Ive put a good 3 hours into the logo creator now, only got as far as making utter garbage, followed by the entire thing breaking because touching any of the options with the mouse seems to break everything.
I would also make the UI completely interactable with a mouse, it seems so strange to navigate the creation tabs and selection with arrow keys when I have a mouse right there to just click them.
Why are we choosing colours using “GHYJ” keys, rather than just clicking on the colour wheel with a mouse exactly at the colour we want?
Why do we have to use “A or D” to switch shape styles, rather than just click the next page with a mouse? And why does hovering over those page swaps with a mouse make it rotate constantly making it impossible to select when we could just do 1 click at a time?
Why am i using the middle mouse button to draw a box to move a shape, as opposed to just having 1 major node, that you can left click and hold and drag wherever you want?

The customisation options in RUGBY 25 are fantastic, the player and team and kit creators all have so much promise, and im looking forward to spending a lot of time using them, and making a bunch of custom stuff. But the Logo creator is nowhere near the same level for me unfortunately.

Overall, im actually really enjoying EA4. The logo creator boils my blood But the gameplay itself is gaining some real direction, and this is the first EA version im sat down in my spare time knocking a couple of games out on and actually working my way through a competition.
Think a lot will need to be done before online play is going to feel solid. Really looking forward to the eventual set plays and ability to change player line depth and widtch, and personalise the matches a bit more.

Thankyou @JNT_BA and @MattW for fielding the feedback threads, having read through a lot of the thread myself, cant imagine its easy dealing with so many people having such strong thoughts every single stage of the way. You’re both doing a solid job dealing with it all. Hopefully the general feedback has been useful accross the EA.
Im looking forward to what the next update brings.

[Sabercat]

I echo pretty much what others have said about the need for changes to the ruck and maul (mauls can be driven back to be dead in goal if your team is strong enough, no chance to steal or for a breakdown to occur), as well as the need for different speeds depending on position (thresholds and caps could work here, a 99 speed lock is just not the same as a 99 speed back) and for better offload opportunities. I will say, though…

The logo creator sucks unless you just import an SVG file. It’s quite possibly the best thing you could have done for designers with loads of logos already made/taken from Wikipedia, and you’ve given us the opportunity to use the tools of a real design software to execute. I’d like to see the scale of the custom logos increase in the presentation, maybe going from a 256x256 to a 1024x1024, but I just wanted to say that I greatly appreciate this feature.

Another thing that I appreciate, albeit with reservation, is the introduction of more penalties. High tackles and more consistent offsides are nice, but the cutaway to the ref just glitches the players on the field, oftentimes making the CPU run through the back of the goal. I’d rather just see the penalty and advantage signal on the scorebug, instead of a cutaway to the ref mid-play.

[AndyPelser]

agree with all your points, with Rucks I have played around a lot of it join ruck and tackle contest does nothing and means nothing will not help with stealing.

However, just pressing stealing button will give you counter rucks as players will join the ruck when there is a chance to steal. I feel it gives you pretty much almost as much you see in a real match, but also it doesn’t matter if ai have 1 or 3 players in the ruck I had turnovers with AI having 3 players in a ruck while I have 1.

So try a few matches with just using steal button and than a few where you use tackle contest and join ruck and you will see there major difference

[MaD_Dragon_Rugby]

@AndyPelser

few matches with just using steal button and than a few where you use tackle contest and join ruck and you will see there major d

I only use the steal button at this point, might be the consequence of playing on the harder difficulty, that even the steal button tactic doest pay off. Finding a lot in EA4 that my players dont actually interact with the rucks. Sometimes my players will just stand there until until the AI have all 3 players in, and then join, and in the time for my guys to get in th eruck, the opposition 9 is already passing the ball away. In EA3 you basically stole whatever ball you wanted from any ruck.
I do like the counter ruck animation, just wish it was more consistent at what you need to do as the player to have a higher success opportunity.

[Rugbygamer40]

I tried using the Logo creator the other day and it just seemed way too complicated to use. I was trying to work it out and got nowhere. I rather put my time into player creations until the logo creator gets more simplified.
The SVG menu also seems to trap you there once you click into it and go to file screen. I have to shut the game down to get out of it. Nothing responds.

Good points made by someone also on player skills scores. In my experience I have only got my highest skilled player as a centre up to an 82 overall and that’s with many skills sets in the 80s and 90s. Forwards I think the highest I ever got a forward overall was around 78 for many skills that a high quality forward would have. It just seems like the rating system relies on “all skills” to be in the 90s to have a player rated overall in the 80s or 90s. I think this needs to be looked to improve down the track if possible. Thanks

[AndyPelser]

After few more games I feel player control needs to be looked at because it can feel like your player is on a train track and you need to fight with your player to actually go where you want to go

[Rorydn]

In agreement with majority that new passing update is a huge improvement - other points I / many others have raised about other gameplay points remain relevant for next update.

Since the update, I am seeing:

• 9 is more often away from ruck and no way to pass, get penalised
• maul defence is wide
• tackling player is getting stuck on the opposition side of the ruck when trying to retreat after rolling away. This does not effect gameplay but is more awkward visually
• one time kicking conversions, I confirmed the angle and distance, but took a long time to lock in and start the kick
• players running in circles under posts when opposition takes a conversion

Lastly, is there a way to keep the players in possession for the opposing team as well as own team? Good way of learning other team’s players

[ron21]

Any updates on console release?

[jsquared]

Have to commend the improvements from EA1 to EA4. I can see the potential in the game and like the progress. Although I feel this should have been the EA2 state. Hopefully there is several more EA releases.

I can confirm majority of the bugs mentioned in this thread so not wanting to rehash and focus on the items I saw during my play and some other notes.

Playing France vs Croatia at Stade de France.

• Line out jumping animation is unnatural
• Opponents did not release the ball from a maul. I pushed the opponents from the halfway line back over the dead ball line. I would expect some release or collapse. But hey I dont mind the occasional 50 metre maul to score a try.
• Still no idea how to win a scrum. Need better tutorials.
• Not sure if this is a real bug but keeping the ball in play I extended the first half to around 80 minutes.
• Support runners too deep not running with the attacking player.
• Receiving player running along a track and doesn’t respond to directional change.
• Bomb kicks target moving randomly. Would prefer more of a slow motion during the kick in open play.
• Non responsive/delayed reactions from actions e.g pass, tackle etc.
• Scrumhalf makes unnatural shuffles to rucks, causing the ref to call the ‘use it’ rule
• A note for the player creator. If the position are assigned as pedantic as left or right wing and not wing then we should have four positions and one backup. example Kolbe… Left Wing, Right Wing, Fullback, Flyhalf and backup as a Scrumhalf. Many players like that. So unless you can set a General Wing or outside back position, we need more available positions. A minimum of three + one backup
• in the player creator. Does not zoom into face fir every single facial manipulation option.
• Still no offline mode for single play / steamdeck.

Copying this from another thread I pasted it into.

@JNT_BA A note for the developers as a low priority at the end of the cycle when the game is polished. What about options to replicate the amateur or pre pro era. For example settings to limit to 22 or 16 players like in the ‘old’ days or reducing the scoring to the 0 or 4 or 3 for a try era.

[MaD_Dragon_Rugby]

Couple of other things noticed today.

If you tackle an opponent over their own try line with the ball in hand. The referee awards you a penalty. (think its my first penalty in the game) but it should only be a scrum awarded for taking the ball over their own try line.

Subsiquently, on a penalty, a completely different player will take the kick instead of your normal kick taker. And the stats that will appear on screen will name another completely different player again, that is neither the kick taker, or your normal kick taker.
Ive noticed that stats pop up bit, have the wrong name in tries and conversions aswell.

Box kicks going backwards have also returned. Seems to be exclusive to holding down Y before the scrum half gets to the ruck, and it cant be cancelled once it starts.

Also, issues with being tackled over the try line doesnt count as a try, and you place the ball back for another ruck.

[Paradox]

I would like to talk about goal kicking, which is a fun mechanic but not challenging enough. It is not difficult to deduce the trajectory, and there is no difference between the kickers of each team.

Here’s my proposal: Between FIFA 20 and 22, the mechanic in penalties and free kicks consisted in directing a circle in the place where you want to connect the shot. The trick is that the circle always returns to the center if you don’t keep it in place manually.
In Rugby 25, if the lateral trajectory of the ball tends to stay in the center, it will require more practice at long distances or tight angles, and the sensitivity of the movement will depend on the stats of the designated player.

[FSRU95]

Hey everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well and that development on the game is progressing smoothly! I wanted to point out something small that I noticed regarding the South African logo in the game. It seems a bit off compared to the other team logos, which look more like clean PNGs without backgrounds. The Springbok logo currently has a green border around it, and I was wondering if there are any plans to update it to match the others, without the background? I know it’s not a major issue, but it might be worth tweaking at some point in the future.

On a positive note, I also wanted to mention how much I’m enjoying the game’s soundtrack! It’s got a great vibe that really brings back memories of the old-school FIFA games.

I’ll attach some images for reference.

Thanks for all the hard work, and I’m excited to see how the game continues to evolve!

Current logo:

Suggested update for the logo:

[JNT_BA]

When it comes to art work and really anything to do with teams it’s very much a partner effort. We work closely with each licensed team for kit or player updates to make sure they’re as close as possible.

As we mentioned in the EA video some teams will still use their 23/24 kit while we work with our partners to bring in the new ones.

Much like we do with our Cricket title to keep it updated as best as possible with the new designs.

I’ll make sure to pass this one on to the licensing team to look into it, if they aren’t already.

[JNT_BA]

@MaD_Dragon_Rugby

Music, once again song choice of new songs coming in is great, thouroughly enjoying all of the songs in the main menu, got it on in the background now while typing this, another big tick to the audio team. (just a quick note, newer songs have odd titles like “FrontEndMusic_song name”, which is fine for now, but will want to be sorted before release, im guessing the game is just registering the name of the music files as the song name"

Yeppers those will be updated to be correct. Good catch.

@MaD_Dragon_Rugby

Competitions working smoothly, no crashes, still an issue with the Simulate button not working though

I see this has been updated on our end as I kept hitting that as well when trying to work on the videos. Will test this one myself to be 100% sure cause it certainly is annoying.

[Rugbygamer40]

Hi team,

Just in relation to offiside penalties. This 2nd screenshot is an example when referee decided to issue a penalty.

I find at times if my players running back to defensive line they sometimes get issued a penalty when they are far from the ruck. In this instance I do have 1 player (Number 4 Lock) that was running through the ruck to get back onside after making a tackle. So I not sure what exactly the penalty was issued for but I thought I share these screenshots to help. Perhaps my player should try to move back on side to the side of the ruck after making a tackle. This can be a common issue sometimes. But either way I see penalties issued for both these things regularly.

[edsup]

I think more effort need to be put when the players are kicking the ball close to the defence.he is stoping himself on last second, It’s just feel very unnatural,Whereas the defence should be able to counter the ball with their arms or have the ball bounce off them. It would be cool to have these two options depending on the situation. unnatural

[tigersmad]

Just watched you Video MD Hardest level looks the way to go and the Penalty lol great work

[edsup]

Also the TMO need to be use when the try really seems to not be obvious. Most of the time it’s really not necessary.