We hope you enjoyed the new cosmetic changes to the player helmets and facemasks from last patch and we just love seeing all of the awesome customizations from the community! If you've made something cool and want to show it off, post it in the forums here or on our Discord!
Anyways, let's get back to business. This week's focus has returned to the gameplay side of the house as we continue to build upon the previous updates to the "on field" gameplay. One of the major focuses was with the blocking engine because it still felt weak in many areas, especially when blockers were running outside of the line or upfield to support the ball carrier. There were issues with blockers getting stuck not blocking the correct defender or just running some odd direction giving defenders a clear path to the ball carrier.
Now, blockers are much smarter and will seek out defenders threatening the runner. They will run the play route and look upfield to intercept a defender before they can tackle the ball carrier. It's much improved and were excited to see what you think! Just remember, blocking is one of those things you feel you're always working on, so we'll be tuning as we hear more feedback from the community.
So now that blocking has gotten a bump, we had to turn our attention back to defense because they needed a boost as it's a balancing act or else one side will overpower the other and ruin all the fun. So defender IQ to seek out the ball carrier is much improved with hopes of limiting missed tackles and making the offense earn every single yard!
In addition, we made sure we helped those defenders on the other side of the field far from the ball. They use to simply run directly towards the ball carrier and be completely out of the play allowing huge plays to occur. Now, defenders far from the play will take more conservative angles in the outfield in order to support any missed tackles which helps limit those big plays. So offense and defense is getting love and the game is coming around fast.
As always, lots of changes in this update, read on for the full patch notes:
Gameplay Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed issue where player would get stuck in hurdle or another state when ball bounces into player on punt or kick.
- Fixed issue where ball carrier can't be controlled by user after fumbling ball.
- Increased speed of replay camera to correct lag issue when zoomed in 100%.
- Fixed issue where ball carrier tip toes out of bounds and the ball gets marked a few extra yards ahead of where he first went out of bounds.
- Fixed issue where kickoff defender would stop moving when cycling through controlled players.
- Fixed issue where you can't cycle through kick return team players while ball in air.
- Added color values when editing team colors to more quickly match colors up without needing to solely rely on color matching.
- Cleaned up blocking scenarios where blocker is blocking thin air due to double team blocking issues.
- Fixed issue where wide receiver would take a four point stance when should be in receiver stance.
- Adjusted touchdown boundaries to improve accuracy when ball is caught on edges of touchdown zone.
- AI kicking distances tuned based on field goal distances to have a better chance at making longer field goal attempts.
- Run blocking improved for better blocking up field and less missed blocks.
- Defender AI covers the field better to avoid the frequent big plays for a touchdown.
- Fixed issue when flipping plays and players would share the same space during line up causing game to get stuck and delay of game or timeout is needed.
- Fixed issue where defenders would leave their assignments to go after quarterback without proper justification.
- Fixed issue where schedule errors after playing a playoff game and returning to career schedule screen.
- Camera no longer stays zoomed out when unpausing game during pre-snap while previously zooming out to check field play art.
- Changed end of match music to be same as intermission music.
- Smoothed out fade in between play music to blend better with play calling phase.
- Tuned spin and shoulder charge ball carrier moves to be less effective as they were overpowered.
- Quarterback fumble chances increased so be careful if your QB gets tackled.
If you experience any bugs or issues please report them here or more preferably in our Discord where you can chat with the community, report bugs, or give feedback on the game.
As always, if you've enjoyed the game so far and like what you're seeing out of the game it would be great if you can leave a review on Steam!