Rugby 25 Megathread

[FilthyBandit]

Hi Big Ant,

Will we still be getting the Womens RWC? It’s a real shame that both the mens 2023 RWC and the Womens 2025 RWC have both been announced, and both have missed their target. The amount of work thats gone into stadiums, teams, cutscenes etc only to see these not released must be a real kick in the teeth for the team.

As a consumer of a product that has promised both, its extremely dissapointing not to see this realised.

You’ve provided some info on what the gameplay team is working on, could you please give us some insight into what the presentation team is working on now? Could we finally see advertising in stadiums next?

It has been 2yrs since the inital release date, and 8 months since actual release. Theres been a lot of helpful insight provided by the community (and unhelpful abuse). It’d be good to see a structured plan/breakdown/priorities of future support for the game.

[JB198]

Good post

Maybe licensing makes it impossible, but even 2 years after the event, I’d have loved all the 2023 World Cup content in there still. Was lucky enough to be at quite a few games and would have been amazing to replicate it on the game

[Bapean]

Brace yourselves, October 115th is coming

[Rugbygamer40]

Hi Team ,

Any ETA on a URC Patch Update for players and kits ?

Will the squad sizes increase if we can’t remove players ?

I been creating some URC players here and there.

Thanks

Update - Additional question - Also the players that don’t currently have an accurate appearance screenshot example below “Gurshwin Wehr” for Sharks. Will he be updated or can we edit the template player to make him look more realistic as a real life person ? He has dark skin and a moustache.

[Gothenqcowboys]

Exciting times ahead. Crossing fingers for Samoa to get the last spot. Any chance we could get the custom league changed to allow us to recreate world cup schedules?

[keo15]

Yes, please.

Here is the whole explanation: Men's Rugby World Cup 2027: All you need to know about draw, format, pools and dates

[tigersmad]

Looking good RG always helps the game tbh

[Aussie13]

@JNT_BA so next update next week? Rucks???

[Tigersmad83]

I’m hoping for roster and kit update as the top 14, pro d2 the urc and Gallagher Premiership have all started

[D.1984]

Me too. Has @JNT_BA mention anything about it yet?

[Tigersmad83]

Not as i’m aware of, but only the man himself will be able to tell us, or is it going the same way as the men’s and women’s world cups?

[Lionmaul]

Nice, would be good if Big Ant con officially explains the mechanisms of play. Bring back the old manuals that explained things well, and at the back had tips on how to play better. I understand that the game is constantly changing, so why post mechanisms until they are established, I guess? I think developers do themselves an injustice when they do not explain what their intention of the mechanism is. Having said this, I think they did post somewhere about what they were trying to achieve with the up and under mechanism. Sounds good, now explain the up and under in Rugby league 26, why not use the same mechanism? Up and Unders are up and unders, doesn’t matter if League or Rugby. Although the sidestep has improved some, it still needs work to be more instinctive and not so planned to get it right.

On the South African License , that may be the greedyness of todays time, So now any game we purchase has a limit of how long you can use official teams, what a bunch of BS, I imagine its not BA fault, but come on, use some common since , I understand if BA where to launch a new version, then you have to renegotiate the license but, to rip it our of a game that was advertise to have a certain license? So now we have to analyze a game before we buy it and see how much time we have before they rip the license team out? Come on now. I understand how the re-release of Rugby Challenge lost the license , that makes sense, but not this in Rugby 25 case.

[tigersmad]

Anybody fancy doing Newcastle Red bull sponsor and logo, ?

[Deker79]

Came back to the game after a few weeks away and it’s by far more enjoyable to play, but there’s still a lot of things that are effecting the gameplay being really good, those being:

Rucks - still have no idea whats going on with regards to how I can win turnover ball, how I get an effective pushover, why I can’t win a ruck wheb I’ve got 4 players to 1. It’s just a button mash, hopefully its getting updated soon, RC4 system/animations at the ruck was very good;

Forward pick and go from rucks/mauls - it’s hard to get decent forward play on the go, and being able to use someone else other than the scrumhalf would definitely be an improvement, and if pods could be included it would be even better;

Scrums - just dont work, getting a good initial hit, hook and 4 good timed pushes shouldn’t result in a penalty against me, really struggle to get the ball out;

Side steps need worked on, just don’t work and aren’t effective as they should be;

Kicking distances - mentioned all the time, punts, either in open play or from penalties just don’t go far enough, and there’s no apparent difference with which player kicks the ball, eg every drop kick off goes the same maximum distance no matter which player takes it;

Squad management - let us sort and save reserve players so that they are in order by position, not just in a random order, to make easier to manage squad rotation.

Full back - I still feel like the full back positioning is off, especially in attack, they’re just not joining the line enough to be effective.

Think everything has been mentioned before, but since it’s still not fixed I’ll mention it again in hope!

[IanOM]

An excellent analysis, to which I would add my desire to see the contested catch mechanism added to kick-offs (maybe with some kind of weighting system against the kicking team). At the moment, it’s literally impossible to recover a kick-off.

[Madcap2110]

@Tigersmad83 JNT did mention a few weeks back that he needed to check in with the leagues and that he had a whole load of roster and kit updates being worked. Didn’t specify when they would be done or which leagues are included

[Rio10]

@JNT_BA you should also please fix the injuries and injury cutscenes, on my way to score the winning points, at full time, an injury occur and it stops the game, then the ref blows the whistle and the game is done. Can we also get some kind of working button for jackling please, after all this time we still dont know how the rucks really work

[Madcap2110]

@Rio10 yeah I agree about injuries. The only time an injury should stop play is if it’s really serious. I made this suggestion a few months ago but don’t know if it will make it into R25 (maybe R27)

Have three levels of injuries. The first being a minor injury, indicated by a green cross below the player. The player is able to keep playing but for a short period of time has reduced stats and generally stays out of play. There’s a chance they may make the injury worse but that is the risk you take. At the next stoppage you could have a cutscene of them getting attention and then they play on and no longer injured. Next would be a game ending injury. Player would be lying on the ground injured with an orange cross and on the next stoppage a cutscene of him being helped from the field. The player would then be out for a few days/weeks. Finally the most serious injuries, indicated with a Red Cross. Depending on the severity of the injury the game is stopped immediately or player is seen lying on the floor. Player is substituted at the next stoppage and then out for months, I.e. season ending

Think this would add an extra layer of realism to injuries. I’m not a fan of the ref stopping play for every injury. This isn’t realistic to actual rugby as teams normally play a man down when there are injured players.

[JNT_BA]

Thats quite literally how it works. Without the additional green ui. It’s three levels and the cutscenes that end the match are actually only the highest level of injury in the game. The low ones don’t get a cutscene. While the cutscene may not look “severe” it is classified as that which is why it does end.

Edit: now thinking about it may be the two top classifications as we do separate severe. I’ll double check tomorrow.

The reason I didnt want scene’s in for all injuries is cause in testing it was insanely dragging out matches.

[Madcap2110]

@JNT_BA oh right, well thanks for confirming that it’s already sort of like that in the game. Guess my only thing then would be whether it’s possible for injured players to lie on the ground for more severe injuries instead of being able to play on. Looks a bit odd to see a player catch a ball perfectly with a dislocated shoulder

Fair enough about cutscenes. I guess if they were skippable cutscenes then that may sort that issue out