Definitely the authentic mode disabled and custom settings like speed and lower sprint, make the best game this year, I've played more than 20 hours already and the authentic mode, at least for me, is not the way, the players are very rigid, not the physics of the ball or the player
It is. AI doesnt attack appropriately. I've already tried everything, e.g. turned off authentic gameplay, turned on competitor and player based difficulty, tried lots of sliders, nothing makes AI challenging. I win and score goals easily. AI just try to pass, there are not enough aggression and shots from CPU. So shame. I cant have fun with that kind of difficulty. I dont want play FUMA, i wann a challenging Ultimate difficulty. It feels like AI doesnt have any scripts.I don't know how they can call it authentic mode if 90% of your team is not able to sprint at all
44 or 45 sprint speed and 40-44 acceleration and CPU is no longer passive in final third.
bro , i have mentioned this in prev ea FC also. attacking Ai is directly linked to CPU behaviour build up slider. Increasing this also , bring about more miss passes since AI will make more risky passes.
So much effort on it, wow! But as a conclusion, how to make CPU AI more challenging?
im still figuring stuff out BUT
Thanks mate, i will try. Authentic mode on, competitor and Player based difficulty on?
Try it with Authentic mode on, competitor off and Player based difficulty on
First game and the first draw against Helsinki after 7 games win streak with FC Porto. Not bad. Still AI could have shoot more, but they had their chances. Overall it was a lot better better experience .
Its not good, cause without this, AI cant really challenge you. As it is in PES 21, just the scripts makes the AI on Legendary really tough to beat.
i dont think it has any direct effects on CPU behavior sliders , it just layers and layers coding on top of each other , which makes AI behave in a certain way. example - if u increase the AI to legendary , they are programed to make less risky and less mistake in passes and there is a code for crossing chances depending on how closely players are marked , so on legendary they may not cross at all on high marking. But if u set the marking to 50 , on legendary , the crossing will become more frequent but at same time the negative its u might have to much space on dribble due to that change. To be honest , its really just poor programming from EA , its like they dont understand the core of football. And each new EA FC has the same coding and programme under it since the frostbite engine .
Exactly! I have noticed this when I tried modding FC25 with Anth's amazing Natural X series. The physics felt right, exactly how I wanted them to be, but I personally couldn't get AI to be dangerous enough, so I had to make a trade-off: using a faster gameplay that didn't feel as right to my taste as Natural X but at least AI was able to score. In vanilla FC26 it feels similar: the physics are better, but due to the gameplay being slower the AI is way less dangerous, especially teams that aren't top tier. I guess the base is way better this year though, so I'm hopeful we can get an even better experience after mods are released and improved. To be honest, the hardest thing is finding the right difficulty balance, because World Class feels too easy most of the time, but legendary can be very frustrating... On legendary, even the shittiest teams can get 70%+ possession and 90%+ pass accuracy and you just chase the CPU around, it gets pretty boring, but scoring 6-0 every game on WC gets boring too.
Settle in for an essay (or skip past this post, I won't be offended).
After speaking to a few guys about where modded FC25 is now, I spent this weekend playing it, alongside unmodded FC26.
I was surprised to find FC25 had more random "speed bursts" and moments of skating than FC26 did, and I just couldn't enjoy it.
However, I think they may be crucial to the gameplay balance, because after after three Career Mode games on Authentic, I noticed something that I've seen talked about a lot right now (even on YouTube - I've included one video in-particular at the bottom of this message which mentions it).
The AI on Authentic is crazy passive, and it feels endemic of the "quick fix" approach I'm so sick of seeing* (and Authentic needs much more).
*e.g. "we fixed kick off goals", by making the AI defenders good for 10 seconds, then dumb again, as opposed to fixing the actual issue which is how easy it is to press pass twice and score due to the deliberately broken defending - from statuesque AI to catching attackers being like catching an eel in a tornado
Because Authentic mode is so much slower - and because speed holds the gameplay together - it leads to a lot of unintentional issues.
The defenders locking into the "jogging animation" is one such issue, as pointed out by @Matt10 over the years, and...
Well, how long do you think that's been a problem for?
Have a guess, then click the spoiler button:
Wow, right?
In short, speed seems to be directly proportional to difficulty and if that's the case, Authentic mode will obviously be a lot easier.
I want to believe EA realise we don't just want an easier game, and that "realistic" doesn't just mean "slow AF"...
...but then I also believe that if they try to "fix" this with a patch, they'll simply up the Authentic speed sliders to default.
I mean, what a (frankly) depressing situation.
I genuinely think they want to appeal to us, but right now the effort level is, let's be honest, minimal, when it needs a huge amount of work.
---
Here's that video I mentioned at the start.
The title is bait - he actually says most things are good! Except Authentic mode:
I wish there was a slider just to make CPU AI take more risks. If you look at gameplay modding, there is a safety net for everything like through pass, sprint, lob pass, forward pass, etc and it's very static(so if there are x amount of players in front of you, always pass back). Traits do override but it's still not random enough. Thats why weaker teams have 90% pass completion. They always play safe passes. In real life, bad players make worse decision and tend to play the ball long, it's the opposite in FIFA/FC. They need to make it percentage based and use stats like their passing ability and composure to determine if they will make a dumb long pass or a smart through pass based on these factors. It's actually not that hard to make a good CPU AI for a soccer game. I wrote a CPU AI for my football game that's already much better in FC 26.
On this subject, the saddest thing for me is that - in this engine - there's no point playing in different ways (and the AI won't either). It's all just pass-pass-pass.
Wonder whether they could implement a similar logic to Football Manager - take into account player traits/attributes but also team instructions and individual player role instructions - can't be that difficult surely...
I looked through some of the decoded file in Football Manager and also the leaked source code of an older version, the match engine is a mess. It's obviously not physics calculated. They generate a lot of match events per tick and they also fall into the same problem of safety net AI decision making. But the code so spaghettified and everything touches/affect everything else that the sideeffect of changing something in the core code is not worth the risk. Most people can't tell that a lot of the attributes have little to no effect anyway. For me, Football Manager is more of a roleplaying game than a realistic football simulator. I don't want to say exactly all the specific things they get wrong(because that will ruin the fun for people that are still enjoying Football Manager and the magicness). The only game i wish was open source was PES 5/FIFA World Cup 2010. They got that aspect spot on.
You gotta set to "Custom" with "Authentic features" turned on
which difficulty?
