It's because player speed is still tied to defense jockey bug where they just jog backwards. Authentic gameplay also adjust sliders. One thing I know from past experience is to never touch player speed as it will literally break defense.
Completely agree, I think it's a fact. Speed is directly tied to difficulty because of this, which is a horrible situation because you have to choose between sane speeds and a totally passive defence, or insane speeds with a reactive defence but also unbearable gameplay (the AI ping-pongs it around like a pinball machine).
All comes back to the core of the game, and the fundamentals on top, being the issue - the game isn't recreating football, it's so "Competitive focused" (or "gamified") that it's speed/reflex based with insane pass/shot accuracy.
As a result, half of actual football is missing, e.g. no fouls, no free ball, no 50/50 balls because the ball and players are on rails - which renders half the tactics pointless (long balls don't cause panic because the ball is always locked onto a target) - for the sake of "competitive" equality.
I just hope (and there IS hope) that the Authentic Mode team can deconstruct their gameplay model enough over the next few years to fix this situation - because (as
@Anth James has proven with his PC mods) you can salvage a really good game out of this engine... but it needs someone determined to give us that, on the inside of the company.
I've had some nice games after the last beta update - I'm enjoying it more than FIFA 19 now, which is the first time I've preferred an FC to any FIFA - but man, you have to overlook a LOT.
(Which you had to in latter PES titles too in fairness - Game Boy level AI, stiff animations that resulted in gameplay issues, etc. - but it felt more "human".)
authentic world class difficulty is easier since the recent beta update. AI doesn’t pressure you as much. Annoyingly, I can’t figure out why some players don’t sprint but seem to run in slow motion when I press the sprint button.
I find all players "reposition" incredibly fast under AI control, but when you control them their actual speed attribute / stamina matters and they move at the speed they should.
Which all plays into the above (another horrible, required "programming shortcut" to make the game difficult, and the game can never be realistic with all of these horrible fudges).
In 2025, with the hardware we have now, you'd hope for a massively physics-based football game with brilliant AI. But the reality is, every dev's focus is "what sells", not "how do we break the mould".
This is why now I prefer to play for fun on professional difficulty in FIFA 18-19-21-22 with full manual controlling, because the game doesn't annoy or unnerve me, and also match goes slower temp than on high difficulty.
