Hey guys, apologies for late feedback since the game went live on Friday, but thought its not worth adding to the pile of feedback until the patch was out and things had changed. No doubt there will be cross over with other peoples feedback so feel free to just ignore any points im sure you have read before, I just want to be thorough.
Want to start out with the positives.
Visuals - Personally I think the photogrammetry has been worth the time and effort, the France and Australia team look great. And the kits overall seem like a massive step-up from Rugby 22. Cannot wait to see more implemented to all of the other teams across the game. I also like the visuals in the menu, colour scheme much better than Rugby 22, everything seems sleek and modern which im a fan of.
Music and Audio - Big shoutout to the Sound team on this game, I think its something missed off a lot of feedback, The sound team have done very well. The choice of music in the menu is awesome, having multiple songs is great (rugby 20 and rugby 22 on had 2 songs and after 100 hours you’ve had enough of listening to them). I’m a big fan of the incorporation of the music in to the match aswell after a player scores a try, really adds to the feel of a try being scored in a stadium and music plays over the speakers. Sound effects in the menu and in game all fit well, havnt heard anything that sounded wildly out of place. Ive been enjoying the commentary team in the game, seems like a decent variation in the spoken lines and im sure more will be added later (only small gripe this early in the game is commentary lines can be misplaced, like smashing a kick completely wide of the post will still hear the commentary team say “it only just gone wide”. But im sure this will be fixed with more lines over development.
Last thing to mention on music which is very niche. There is one song, that gets flagged on youtube for copyright called “party is a good idea”. Its the only song Ive noticed youtube will hit a video for. And its nice that as a player you have the option to turn it off. But the only time the song plays is during the players walking on to the pitch during “competition” games. So its unavoidable, and means anyone making videos, either has the players run on in silence or will have to cut that part of the video out to avoid the video getting hit. As I said very niche, but showcasing sports games on youtube is a massive thing and it might impact coverage of competitions you add in to the game later if that same song takes videos down.
TMO - Love that this is added in to the game, pretty hard to get it to pop up, seems to mainly focus on scoring in the corner, but the inclusion is great and look forward to seeing it more refined and be an exciting watch to see if a try will get disallowed or not.
Replay Camera - YES!!! Thankyou Bigant for finally adding a proper free cam in the replay camera, something a lot of us have been asking for, for a long time! (I know it may be a big ask, but I think it would be great if at the end of a match you could go back and watch the ENTIRE match on the replay camera so you can go back and watch the best parts again from different angles, rather than needing to break the pace of the game by pausing to view it on the replay camera. Ive seen this done in racing games such as forza, and I think F1 has it too. But not sure how hard it s for a rugby game, as there’s a lot of transitions to different set pieces.)
Patch Update Thoughts.
Pros:
- For me the quality of life improvements that came in the patch have been useful. More tackles being complete, the rucks have now lost the glitch with the ball getting stuck from passing to early. Label changes to things like the side camera make the menus better.
- I had my 1st start to finish counter ruck turn over today and it was great to see. The AI players got stuck and only bound 1 player to the ruck, I got 3 in, and a full animation played of my players performing a huge counter ruck and clearing out. And it looks GREAT, its nice to know this is in he game, and as the game develops we get to see that more and more. Its the only 1 I’ve had in nearly 10 hours of play. So once rucking flows more smoothly I think that will be a fun mechanic.
Cons:
- Ive noticed in every single ruck that there is no one ready to play the ball in the scrum half position, I know its been mentioned that roles aren’t yet in the game, but after every single ruck you sit and wait 3-5 seconds for someone to run up to play the ball which adds a lot more stagnant time for the player.
- Ive noticed on “hard” and “hardest” the AI will now match the number of players bound to the ruck to exactly to what you do as the player. If you put 3, they put 3, if you put 0, they also put 0. Meaning rucks are always even and therefore turnovers just never occur.
- ive noticed a lot more long hang time passes, and the AI is picking them off with interceptions really frequently.
Broader things in the game that need attention.
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Control scheme. I know its been mentioned before but wanted to add my thoughts to come crucial areas. (I play with an xbox controller for button letterings mentioned below)
Kicking - I really think Punting and Up and Under’s need to be on separate buttons. Tactically you would use those 2 actions at very different times during the game, and having them locked to the same button takes that away from the player. I’ve seen a lot of peoples videos and something that is in everyone’s video is the line “how do I kick the ball” and I imagine this must be the experience for every person picking up the game. “X” is fine for up and under but should just be power decision to hold down the button for longer. From play testing, the “A” button does not do anything when your team possesses the ball, and as such it would be much better to have punt moved to the unused “A”, which is what most players expect the kick button to be on.
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Player changing - I think it should be looked in to, to change this to either LB or LT, currently in defensive open play your left hand doesn’t seem to do anything even though the controls say there are actions, whereas the right thumb is responsible for changing player, B tackle, adding players to the ruck, and analogue stick tackle. Moving player change to either LB or LT gives the left hand something to do constantly throughout defensive play and means you don’t have to take your thumb off the tackle button to swap players.
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Adding players to the ruck. If the rucking system stays the same to full launch, I think binding players needs to be swapped to “A”. Once the analogue stick tackle is fixed, its much quicker to then slide to “A” to add player to the ruck, rather than skipping a button and going over to “B”. At the minute the currently used buttons in a ruck are “Y, B and X” which are all bunched together and is pretty tricky to get from one to another at speed without error. Just holding the controller in your hand, its hard to cover all 3 of those buttons with your thumb without having to remove your thumb, you basically have to lay your thumb horizontally across them. Whereas if it switches to “Y, X and A” your thumb can sit naturally across all 3 buttons and different parts of your thumb can hit each button as you need it, without removing your thumb fully. This is doubly apparent if you tackle using the analogue stick, you just slide off the stick to cover “Y, X and A” but including “B” means needing to fully release and jump over to hit B.
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lineouts - lineout controls still don’t do what the control scheme says. The controls say “B” is middle jumper, but in game it is “X”. And the Controls say “X” is for a maul, whereas im yet to get “B” to fill that slot.
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Obviously a lot of people have mentioned the tackling and rucking, so don’t want to add to much to the pile. Im sure fluidity of tackling and extra tackle animations will be added over development. At the minute it feels very 1 on 1, if passing speed could be increased and getting more offloads I feel this could help improve the sensation of being 1 on 1 all the time. At the minute it feels if you get in a certain radius of an opposition player you cannot pass and you are destined to be tackled and go through another ruck. I also imagine once set-plays are added this will help you to break the line more.
Glitches:
- There is still a glitch where an opposition player becomes IMPOSSIBLE to tackle, this is caused when a analogue stick tackle fails, or your player misses a tap tackle. The opposition player then proceeds to do small bursts or running and stopping completely. And no matter what you do, that player cannot be tackled, and they slowly march up the pitch to score. You can also swap sides and play as this player and the AI just walk around with you, I can supply video clips of this if you want a full look.
- Walking through posts. Ive had a number of tries where the player dives through the post to score. I have tested it with kicking, and it seems everything from the crossbar upwards has collision. But everything below doesn’t have collision. Would like to see the posts become solid, and even a mechanic where running in to the posts could make the player drop the ball or get knocked over.
- Still a lot of players teleporting to rucks, especially since the patch, the tackler seems to complete tackle then stand in place and then zip to the ruck if you press bind.
- Placing the ball for goal kicking, your kicker seems to just stand beyond any point of you kicking, think it would be better to just have the kicking Tee move on the pitch and drop the player model when choosing where to set up the kick. If you go back to the 50m line to take the kick, there is a ball of players all running in to each other.
- Interceptions - Since the patch im noticing a lot more incidents where I try and intercept the ball, my player even does the catch animation but the ball goes through his hands to the next opposition player.
- If you select a player away from the ruck while its still going on, and repeatedly tap “X” your player does a funny dance (i almost want you to leave this in because I found it very funny but it should be fixed)
General Improvements:
Goal Kicking - At the minute its very easy, you just line up the trajectory and slot it through from anywhere on the pitch, you cant miss unless you go out of your way to. No accounting for wind, no power bar, no way for you to mess it up be getting something wrong. So would like to see this system changed.
Rucking - Having seen the counter ruck animation work properly, I think there is ways to keep the style of rucks but make them more interactive. And this would be to have 1 button to add players to the ruck, and another button used for button mashing to be your players pushing in the ruck. My suggestion would be to look at Rugby 2011 and the way you had to tap the “A” button to compete for the ruck. You had to compete at every ruck, but pushing too far would penalise you. If you add that to the Rugby 25 mechanic, you could choose how many people bind to the ruck to support it, then add the button mashing to attempt/defend the counter ruck. And if you see the AI havnt competed for a ruck you could very quickly add players then button mash to compete for the ball and perform the turnover.
Inclusion of more rules - obviously at the minute there is no offside penalty, but I have also had times where a free kick after the buzzer still needs to be played out, even if its not a penalty.
Scrums - A lot of people seem to be struggling with the scrum mechanics, Ive pretty much got them down. But there are some strange occurrences. The first bar during the “bind, set” action seem to have no impact, you can just wait for the “hook” mechanic and nothing changes, so not sure the purpose in the first set of bars. I have noticed an issue with “early” popping up when hitting the triggers to push the scrum, even with the bar 99% full, and any time “early” pops up, the scrum just collapses instantly granting the opposition a penalty. Even when you steal an oppositions scrum and drive them back loads, 1 wrong hit and the whole thing crumbles and gives a penalty. There is also an issue where sometimes neither team seems to hook the ball, and the entire scrum rotates like a tank on ice, and just collapses and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Scrumhalf stuck - I know the roles of scrum half may change this one. But when in side camera you pick the ball up from a scrum or ruck, the scrum half player will run directly into the ruck/scrum and get stuck before actually running away and getting tackled instantly.
Sideline camera confusion - Currently on the side camera there are some issues with positioning. When performing a kick off, after the kickoff happens the camera jumps to where the ball is going to land as opposed from tracking from the kick off position. And can be quite disorientating having to make players run in to shot from a static camera until it is caught.
The sideline camera also has some issues with the lineout and scrum orientation. The camera only wants to be locked to 1 shot, however depending on which side of the pitch you are on or where you are on the pitch, the camera has to do a full 180 degree spin. And often you can be running one way while the set piece is happening and then when the camera goes live, you are running the opposite way. The sideline camera should stick to being on one side of the pitch. So lineouts taken facing the camera should stay the same. But if its on the far side of the field, we as the player should be looking at the players backs when jumping rather than the front to keep the camera orientation correct from our perspective.
Setplays - Im sure setplays will come as the game develops, but the ability to drop in the pocket needs to be one of the first actions to get a safe kick away. Along with the ability to change player spacing and depth to arrange your defence in a way to combat the harder difficulty AI.
Kick trajectory in open play - Im not a massive fan of the way the graphic onscreen shows where you are kicking. The way the players kick feel nice. But there need to be a better graphic to tell the player where you are kicking. My best feedback for this would be to add the kick trajectory line like in the goal kicking, to open play kicking, to show a line where you are kicking and then end with the circle to show the general area the ball will land, maybe the circle can grow the further the kick goes. At the minute I hold down kick, point where I want and just hope it goes where I wants. Very often it goes straight out even though it looks like it should be staying in. The current graphic also sometimes flashed on the screen and actually disappears rending my choice of kick useless.
Bit of a funny one but probably needs fixing before full release, in the “replay” mode, as you change your camera angle, the Stadiums television screens also change live to show exactly what you as the player is looking at through the replay camera, which you can probably get away with, but in some close ups with the stadius television screen in the background, would require the camera man in the stadium to be 2 inches from a players face which im sure the crowd would be frustrated about.
Sorry for such a long post. Wanted to try and get as much down as possible. I thing the game absolutely has the opportunity, to become really solid by the final launch, looking forward to future updates and seeing the game develop. If you want any video clips or a further breakdown on any of the points raised, feel free to drop me a line.
Even when someone scores a last minute try or a drop goal that was added in Rugby 06/08 was cool to see. Some of the hand down tries dont seem to real, having the one hand plant down or the classic dive try is nice. Ariel tries on the corner post aswell. Simple double tap aswell.
