Hey Guys, long time no see.
Saw it was a 20GB update today! So played a few games last night and then more tonight to get a broader view on the changes, before any videos or anything. But thought I would do a long feedback on here, as havnt done one in a while.
Positives.
- Sliders - Love the sliders, glad they are finally in to create a better custom feel for the game.
- Slider profiles - Awesome Idea, the ability to save a set of settings to pick in the difficulty section before a match start is great. If that could be taken further to be able to share Profiles over academy, so as the community fine tunes the settings people can easily download the best setting without manually making all the changes.
- Scrums still working perfectly is really good, picking up with the 9 works well now too… still not getting any passes though is weird
- Personally mostly liking the new changes to ruck. Game feels fast paced, rucks are no longer safe. Feel like you need to get on with the game.
- Jackal ability can now feel smooth, player isolated on a break is really likely to be turned over, meaning you need to stick near support players.
- New animations at rucks is great. Seen my own team driving over a ruck that was already my ball, forcing the ball to pop out of the ruck and making me panic passing before the AI can get on it. AI now pick up the ball with a ruck player if you commit 0 players at the ruck so you are forced to engage (bit of a shame you never get to do this as a player as AI never commit 0)
QoL Suggestions
Would be nice to be able to set up the match settings including difficulty settings as a default somewhere, rather than having to find it before every match
- Add a small lock button to “Base Difficulty” in each section of the sliders. Its quite frustrating to change 30 sliders, and accidentally nudge the analogue stick changing the Base Difficulty from Hard to Medium, and in doing so all the sliders you just changed, change back to default. Maybe the need to press A on Base Difficulty before you are able to move left and right to avoid accidental changes, as you cant possibly remember all your own manual changes to 3 decimal places.
- Allow LB and RB to increase the sliders by 0.001 or 0.010. because the LT RT jumps are large, and the analogue stick tiny nudges can jump by .0150 at a time, and seems some changes are bigger than others, and tricky rto get a small change
- Have seperate sliders for different types of kicks. Running kick from hand, drop goals, grubber, chip kicks, kick to touch from a penalty
(I increased Max General Kick to 1.150 and open play is fun, but now im nailing drop goals from 60m out, and can kick 70m on a kick to touch on a penalty. So if each area of kicking could be changed the best levels could be found for each.)
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Change the buttons at ruck time. B and X are on opposite sides for your thumb to hit. With the game now requiring you to HOLD B in order to add additional players its really tricky to attampt a jackal while also adding support players. But the AI can perform both actions at the same time. Pressing A to remove players can occasionally not remove players, but instead swap which defender you are selecting outside of the ruck entirely as they are both on the same button. Y is an unused button. So suggestion would be to swap
A - Add Player
X - Steal
B - Remove Player
Y - Select a player outside of the ruck for you to act as a defender (when you give up on a ruck you know you will likely lose) I know LB+RB is meant to do that now but rarely works.
X and A are next to each other allowing your thumb to hit both buttons at once. And the way jackaling works in new changes, you need to swap player after tackle anyway for success, so it being on the same A button adds utility as opposed to an opposition contradiction button.
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Interception animations - could it be looked at when interceptions are allowed to happen. AI can grab interceptions mid pass, but my players cant. Scored this great interception length of the field try. I swapped out of the maul to the scrum half, lined up my interception line and iimed my run as the scrum half perfectly, it SHOULD feel like a great try, but looks a bit dumb he doesnt grab it, it bounces off his head and then picks it up to run.
Issues Encountered so Far
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Inconsistency in losing rucks - There is still a partial “logic” flaw in why some rucks are lost. Some times you can hold on to a ruck for 10-15 phases and build an attack. Then sometimes on a ruck where you have 3 people guarding the ruck. The AI is able to add 2 players and for some reason win a turn over multiple seconds after youve secured it before your scrum half gets there. I dont know what the AI is doing to suddenly win a 2 v 3, especially as you cant jackal from that position. In the screenshot below I had all 3 players in first, and was even holding X to hold on to the ball, the AI added 2 players as my scrumhalf arrived, and instandlty turned it over.
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Hands in Ruck Penalty logic - Experiencing a lot of “hands in the ruck penalty”. There is no visual or audio cue to tell you to stop attempting the jackal, like a ref saying “leave it”. And sometimes you just tap X once and you give away a penalty. Might need to be looked at as to WHY the penalty is being blown. I know i could turn down ref scritness settings now, but its a logic issue not a ref strictness issue. I have had multiple Hands in ruck penalties, for the 1st man picking up the ball, with the correct animation. Both screenshots below were penalties, even though there isnt even a ruck.
Passing is loopy - noticed a lot of issues with the passing back to being floaty or players super deep. Slowing down momentum, and AI just winning the collision every time. Tried looking into it and noticed on quite a few of the floaty ones, the ball rotates in the players hand and jitters just before the pass, not sure if thats a cause or a symptom.
Pllayers not picking up bouncing ball to touch - seems to be if its going to bounce in to touch they just watch it go out again, even though this was fixed not long ago.
Ruck Hud isnt true - Turned on the HUD to keep track of whats going on, the bar looks like its reacting to who is winning a ruck at the start. But can for almost no reason go from me winnin 90 / 10 on the bar, to an automatic 0 / 100 and AI gets a turnover out of nowhere even though nothing happenned. Sometimes the Bar jumps to say the AI has won, but if I press pass quickly enough it switches back to a full blue bar to me and im allowed to pass. The bar seems just just do its own thing after 3 seconds, and the outcome of ruck can be random. No ideaif bar is a cause or a visual symptom of issues at ruck time.
On screen prompts never show X or Y anymore - @JNT_BA said in an earlier post about “displays when option is active” . but ive never seen any option flash in all games combined. But if you press them anyway you can win turnovers
AI Double tackle - had quite a few instances where an AI player commits a tackle on your ball carrier, and when you offload the AI breaks out of tackle animation, your offloading players drops like theyve been tackled. And AI runs freely to make a 2nd tackle to new receiver of the ball.
Autosubs breaking the game - Had my number 2 yellow carded (from hands in the ruck too many times, who wouldve guessed). And in the next Lineout for the opposition. The game subbed off my 15 for the 16 replacement hooker. Then Number 2 was moved to 15 position. After the yellow card “sin bin period over” came on screen (which is nice). But then game froze, im guessing it didnt know how to sub him back on as 16 was already on, and it wanted to put 15 on at the same time, but 2 was now in 15 position. All of this was done with NO input from me, the game made all these decisions on its own in the background during cutscenes forcing autosubs.
Pathing issues on losing an AI ruck turnover. Seen about 3 of these, after AI wins a turnover your players bunch behind the ruck. And seem to get stuck on the players on the ground, causing a huge gap in the defensive line for AI to run through as first player picks up the loose ball for them.
Tackled player able to get back to feet with no ruck forming, ball teleporting to hand and carry on running.
Invincible Player after turnover at ruck.
Im also interested in the ability the AI has to shake off tackles. I turned down the effectivness and amount of the Evasion abilities the AI has. But they seem to have an extra ability where you just fall off tackles. They dont perform a side step or a hand off, you make the tackle but they kind of fight through it, or your players grab them on the shoulders and fall off, it can happen on stationary players so isnt to do with momentum. Difficulty doesnt seem to effect it, and it NEVER happens with AI players falling off tackles. But quite often if the AI makes a break, your 15 misses their tackle and they score a try anyway. There doesnt seem to be any build up animation, the AI isnt performing a move, they just shrug you off a tackle.
AI Ability to enter ruck ages before you on higher rated teams. Your players can sometimes just stand there while AI loads 5 effortlessly. Once this happens its a guaranteed turnover, but doesnt happen until your players join. So they stand there building up to 5 players, enter the ruck and instantly lose a turnover, and you also lose 5 defenders. When this happens the (either an animation issue or the AI have the ability to eject 2 players from the contest) the front 3 players drive over a turnover, and players that were in the ruck pick up the ball faster than anyone, so even though they overloaded on the ruck, there is no consequence for the positive of the over commitment. They get the turn over, suck in 3 defenders, pick up the ball faster than normal, and forwards bump of next defender generating a minumum 5m gain (and defenders can get stuck on bodies on the floor) all through playing in a way you cant control. If a player wins a turnover with 5 players, all 5 should be trapped in the animation, meaning you win the ball, but then have less attackers.
- Sill cant pick up the ball with the 9 at a ruck on side camera when playing left to right
Lineout being thrown by hooker at back of the lineout because number 1 is yellow carded. 9 moved into line too.
Ai is still not able to kick the ball off the field to win the game, ball was kicked lightly and caught by another player, I won a turn over and ran the length of the field to score a try and win the game. AI needs to either box kick to touch or pass to pocket and kick out with power to avoid, looks very weird.
On HARD with custom sliders have noticed AI can win lineouts without the scrum half moving. And can even steal Lineouts without scrumhalf moving. Not the worst thing as you arent sure where AI is going to jump. But does look weird when front jumper steals the ball, then throws it backwards over their head 15 feet to the scrum half’s hands.
3 Red Cards is the limit for cards. After that you cannot receive a yellow card or red card for any penalty. 15 high tackles. first 3 were red cards and everything else was just a warning.
Ill post this for now and keep playing, will edit and add as i go.
MD
