Yes I don’t hold much hope for Thursday patches, Tuesdays seem to be the best and bigger ones.
Hey you never know, could surprise us today, but the games moving in the right direction for me on the PS5, I just wish they’d sort out the support runners and floating passes and for me that would be a massive, huge, gigantic (lol) move in the right direction.
Also the forwards going where they are supposed to go into rucks and the backs in the backline as at rucks I have a lot of backs in the rucks and standing in the 10-12 positions are always a prop and lock.
@JNT_BA Is there a reason for the lack of signage in stadiums? Is it something that is yet to be added, or something that BigAnt is unable to do due to some sort of copyright/advertising restrictions?
Also, are there more stadiums coming? Theres a lot there already which is amazing, just crossing my fingers for North Harbour Stadium for Moana Pacifica
1 Need sliders
2 Need better support runners
3 Need player skills/attributes to reflect better in game and make an impact(at the moment it feels like skill levels dont really have any impact)
4 Need AI teams to play differently (all teams feel like the play the same…should be like real rugby ,some teams play more attacking backline oriented fastpaced running game others use a more forward oriented kicking,teritory type game) This needs to start reflecting in the game
5 Plese stop the player dropping back in pocket from running onto the ball!
6 Need to get forward to do what they should and backs to do what they should …theres too many times where forwards are in the backline as first or second receivers completely killing momentum.
7 Please make it possible to add custom players to teams in normal game modes.
8 Passing around ruck needs to be faster,this als kills momentum and gives defending team lots of time to get into defensive posistioning.
Hope to see changes on all these points fairly soon
Can someone explain the benefit of sliders too me? Like, would we be able to increase AI kicking/passing etc? It seems like the ‘logic’ would have to be there first to this be useful to us.
Yea sliders won’t help if the actual core mechanics simply ain’t in the actual gameplay yet. I mean the ai don’t tactical kick , they have 1 attacking play and even then they have winger on there shoulder and don’t utilise them . Sliders allow you to tweak gameplay but you can’t tweak what is not in the code . But I will say big ant have some if not the best sliders out here so if they can get the core gameplay working and add sliders like afl then the game could be great…
I agree with you. I think the request for sliders is a bit premature. I think the core logic all needs to be in a solid place first and then sliders added last to let individuals make tweaks. I think adding sliders too early could also potentially make identifying bugs and their fixes more difficult. This way everyone is playing with the same logic or settings for now.
Just played one half, noticed some new stuff, both good and bad.
The good: tried to dive before the try line, animation got interrrupted because of a tackle, but was still able to score, with the player extending his arms to ground the ball ! That’s what we want, more of those please, with different scenaris, that is awesome.
The bad(s):
Seemed like i had a lot of passes to the ground and a few more bullet passes than usual from the scrum half at the ruck, with the ball zooming to the endzone.
When passing, receiving players often stop their run on catch. That’s a killer.
The awful:
Unresponsive tackles. After an offload, the ball receiver can be in the middle of several defenders and no one seems to be able to tackle.
Chasing tackles feel unresponsive online. You can have players almost colliding but the B tackle doesnt work, only the Y diving tackle even though you are very close to the ball carrier.
On defense, the “closest player selection” with A often selects the defender on the outside shoulder of the attacker. That is wrong. You should defend with the defender on the inside shoulder to prevent a line break, and so the outside defender can still cover outside. AI has the same issue. If you hit a gap with a good pass after the ruck, AI will defend with the wrong defender. Defenders close to the ruck should rather try to cover the gap cause right now the defender on the outside shoulder of the ball carrier runs back towards the ruck to fill the gap.
Had a few advantages on penalties, that’s good. A lot of dropped balls unsanctionned, that’s too bad. Overall it felt better yesterday because the pass receiver stopping his run is a real pain.
So new update added something pretty cool. As shown below. Now you can actually get tackled when scoring a try. But instead of just being Held Up, it now actually awards the try and your player does a animation to actually score the try
I know the difficulty was not any focus for this update as it would have mentioned so in the patch notes, but Big Ant, please try to focus on it for the next few updates. See below screenshots of an average “Hardest Difficulty” game I have. Even when playing as Portugal against Ireland, score is about the same. AI Attacking needs to improve drastically.
Then the AI still only chooses Scrums like 95% of the time. Please also try to focus on that.
Otherwise, I like the new try addition. Thanx Big Ant for that! But now we need to focus on other core game mechanics to make the game more enjoyable. (AI difficulty, AI Attacking and AI always going for scrums)
Absolutely agree. That’s a great summary of the new update. The ability to ground the ball when tackled is a fantastic addition.
Looking ahead, alongside the focus on difficulty as mentioned, I’d love to see some improvements to the breakdown mechanics. My biggest frustration right now is how slow they feel. No matter what combination of buttons I press, I can never seem to get quick ball and attack with momentum when the opposition is on the back foot. It makes the game feel somewhat one-dimensional, as the defense always seems to have a chance to reset due to the constant slow ball.
I always thought Rugby Challenge did the breakdowns really well. There was great depth to how rucks worked in that game. It introduced an element of risk and reward when committing players to a ruck. After a successful carry, you could choose to commit more players to the ruck to increase your chances of quick ball and continue attacking with momentum. However, this came with the risk of leaving yourself vulnerable if the opposition managed to get a turnover. Similarly, when defending, committing too many players to contest the breakdown could leave you exposed to overlaps and attacking opportunities for the opposition. That balance really added depth to the game and made the breakdowns feel more dynamic.
Overall some nice changes this week, looking forward to what’s next.
