It’s remarkable and very poor that Big Ant or Nacon haven’t made some sort of public announcement apologising for the state the game is in currently and how they are committed to fixing it.
Communication with the people who just handed you money (and are doing your QA) is free and it’s inexcusable they haven’t said anything to this effect.
It is a joke they haven’t improved passing to a good level over the nine months of EA.
We have to ask what research was done into the style of rugby union passing and what union games were played to research it for gaming to give us the quality they have so far.
They make good rugby league games, so why is the passing so poor on this game?
Even tackling and handoffs often look like a league game and not rugby union.
Change the other button to “Improved Stability” and you’re there. 
Thank You for the Difficulty Easiest it helped me improve my game. 
Played a couple of quick games and won a couple of lineouts against the throw for the first time. Doesn’t appear to be any skill to it, basically rock, paper, scissors.
Tried the tutorial to see if it would help me understand it better but it only seems to cover attacking lineouts, although I couldn’t say for certain, as when you try to progress through the Lineout Basics tutorial, you get stuck at the third bullet point in the instructions. The player doesn’t throw the ball, and just stands there until the end of time. Nice plane/bird sound effects though.
Guessing the some of the Ospreys weren’t in on the day they did photogrammetry in Swansea; some of them are looking a bit off
I do feel there’s been some incremental improvements since the latest patch but I might just be learning to play a bit better. Double tapping pass certainly helps, still can’t hit a winger out wide though. You don’t even seem to be able to change player when you’ve chucked a loose pass.
Kicker issue looks to have been solved.
Yea man. I don’t get how it’s not a simple matter power based passing system like FIFA. Tap it, it goes to the closest person, hold it, it goes further. Add complexity once the basics is sorted, such as back door options. They just need to make it as simple as possible. Support players??? Where are they? Support players don’t linger 5-10m behind the ball carrier. The lack of passing options and support play ruins any chance of this game being playable.
Fix passing and support play = game playable.
For now, nothing else matters.
Hi Team,
Since the patch deployed overnight on PS5 I can see that the game will no longer allow any licensed team to be edited with adding or removing players.
( Screenshot below - Edinburgh Team)
Can anyone please explain the reasons behind this ?
I appreciate the massive effort from Big Ant to update all team rosters with many additional players added in the update for URC and Super Rugby to boost depth across all positions. Well done 
I do feel a bit disappointed we can’t add players to teams or remove them. I hope this could change in the future? One thing I will say , players in many teams I have viewed do not look like the real life player. Some examples in Japan , Namibia. Biarritz (Johnny Dyer - Fiji - in real life a dark skin pacific island player ) photos below. I would like the freedom to update teams with my own creations if the correct player likeness can’t be created. Another example Pieter Labuschagne- (Japan) is a Caucasian player.
Thanks Team
Exactly this!!! Not even just adding created players, but why can’t we do things like add tuipolotu to Scotland, fickou to France, llewellyn to wales and so on, is this gonna be something we CAN do in the future? I reached out to support about this and they said it will most likely be a licensing issue, but that’s nonsense as those players all play for those countries, and on any other sports game on the planet you can put players where you want, they all have official licensing, but if I want LeBron James to play for the Bulls or Erling haaland to play for Newcastle there’s nothing stopping that
Couple of points. I think the main two things that need improved are passing and support play. The passing has improved slightly since the update I believe particularly with cut out pass buttons seem to be more stable and don’t change around as much just as you are about to pass the ball. Unfortunately the ball still goes out into touch generally on the last pass far too often and looks like it’s been grubbered as hard as you can kick also the player who is receiving the ball needs to be running onto it unless it’s the fly half catching and passing to a support line (this should also be less frequent) or in the pocket. Maybe a system like in Rugby league live where there is a double tap for a flat pass option.
On support play in Rugby the support player needs to be close to the ball carrier not 10m behind and needs to be running onto the ball not standing still when receiving it this just makes gaining any sort of momentum impossible. This happens when the ball is being passed normally as well. Having players run onto the ball and carrying momentum would go a long way to improving the game massively in my opinion.
If this isn’t going to be possible, I’m going to be hugely disappointed. Some really obvious ones for each six nations team just because of injury as you say (dewi lake, george furbank being others)
Rugby 25 Patch Notes
PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Steam
20 February 2025
Build Numbers:
Steam 2568
PS5 2566, PS4 2567
Xbox One 2569, Xbox Series 2570
For those of you seeking the Extended Patch notes, these can be found here.
I definitely agree with you. As a Wales Rugby fan myself I wanted to look at the Wales team and add more players now that they have a new National coach making changes to the squad for 6 Nations. I also wanted to put specific free agent players I am aware of into French Pro D2, Top 14, MLR and play with the players in those teams. It’s hard to understand why we have a Fan Hub to create players and now can’t edit teams of our choice to make Rugby 25 more enjoyable.
The rosters ain’t the problem at the min the gameplay is unplayable
Justice for Jarrod needed!
There are different teams: data team (rosters), art team (jerseys, photogrammetry…), development team (gameplay) etc…
Just played my first 3 games since the patch. I’m on PS5 and play on the side view. The side cam is slightly too low to show the depth across the field that you’ll see in games Fifa, it makes it very hard to read gaps that I’ve been able to read well in other rugby games.
I see the improvements to players and rosters which is good, but agree with others who think the lack of being able to edit or add in players from Fan Hub is very disappointing.
The rucks seem marginally better, but when I play as Ireland against Germany (ON EASIEST I MIGHT ADD), I shouldn’t go for about 25 phases of defence trying to get a turn over. The only reason it wasn’t 40 was because they scored. I’ve noticed it’s a problem that seems to get worse as the game goes on. Almost as though my side fatigues throughout the game, but the AI side isn’t.
The improved line-outs are better, you have a chance to win one, but it’s a guess and very little to do with timing it would seem.
Passing is still diabolical. I’m not one of these people who typically thinks a development team owes an apology to their customers all the time, but in this games case I absolutely do. The passing is the number one reason why and it has varying reasons, such as:
On easier difficulties, players from the best international sides should be able to fend or side-step almost anyone from 3rd to 4th tier nations. This often does not work.
Kicking is still ludicrously hard. Rugby World Cup 2011 had a simple option to put someone back into a good deep pocket (left on the d-pad). Some similar option has to happen.
As these patches are making such small incremental fixes to problems that should NEVER have been released as a finished game, I really think Big Ant needs to issue some reassurances that they intend to continue the fixes for however many patches or months it takes. I think that’s entirely reasonable.
I do appreciate the improvements that have happened, thanks for those.
Gameplay team need to get the finger out then it’s a total mess at the min
Gameplay feels relatively the same still bar a few little changes and to be fair is becoming very frustrating as I’m not sure why the game has been released if it isn’t finished because the passing and the ai is making the game very boring and not a challenge and not realistic I really hope the team get this game to where it can be
I spent over an hour and a half on this game tonight (once game had updated which took 20mins) and one good thing is, no crashes this time so that’s a positive :).
I was also managing to win turnovers but the AI was rushing up on me, I just couldn’t go anywhere and the passes aren’t any good either, especially with the AI so quick to get to the player with the ball 
. I get that is realistic but come on, at least let me pass or make a decent clean line break! I did manage to score a couple of good tries on the easiest difficulty (go easy on me, I’m new to this game so for now I’ll use that difficulty 
) but it was mainly with players just running down the wing and touching down, one was with Tom Curry too 
.
I’m not going to criticise because I fully believe that with future patches, the gameplay will improve and I’ll actually win a game (I haven’t won a single game in 2 days of game play 
), I follow what the prompts ask me to do, I just struggle to steal though I have at times managed that.
Any tips on how to win lol, I’ve tried the tactical kicking but more often than not, kick out on the full. Either that or an opponent picks up the ball and runs right at me. I’ve tried the bulldozing through the defence when picking up from rucks but, again I’m shut down as soon as I try and find a gap. I’ve even tried the passing game but passes don’t come off :(.
I have faith though so keep up the patches guys :D.
One small addition which could help with passing is to have a small indicator showing who the pass will be targeting when doing basic passes. Simple but would really help the user/debug passing issues.
