Building on the the last update, v.14.3 gives some much needed attention to how the AI runs the ball, especially when making their way through interior holes. Now with better ground and air attacks, my hope is that you will start to see more balanced and competitive games against your AI opponents. As always, custom skill sliders are there for you if things start to feel too punishing, but either way let me know how it goes!
Additionally, changes have been made in a number of areas to bolster gameplay, including improved defender breaks on passes, much better edge blocking, a new touchback system, and some cleanup to tackling. Hopefully we've seen the end of whiffed tackles, with way more bumps and bruises in its place!
Looking forward a bit, I intend to continue work on the gameplay side of things for a few more weeks, hoping to improve and expand on the way running and catching works in the game. Once that is in a good place, I'll shift over to building out Season Mode, which will most likely occupy a few months of my time again. Since it's such an important part of the game's future, I'm going to try and not sit on it the entire time, but rather roll it out as a work in progress so yall can hammer on it and let me know if I'm heading in the right direction. More info to come in the future...
In the mean time, I've had a blast checking out folks really digging into custom teams and building out their own leagues and players! If you've made something cool and want to show it off, post it in the forums or on Discord!
As always, lots of changes in this update, read on for the full patch notes:
Gameplay
- Improved AI decision making on running plays, especially on interior runs
- Improved edge blocking awareness and responsibility, particularly for TE's
- Significantly decreased the possibility of missed tackles flying through the ball carrier
- Improved visual feedback and response on missed tackles
- Increased AI controlled defender's break speed on pass defense
- Awareness (AWR) rating has significantly more impact a on defender's pass defense ability
- Skill (SKL) rating has an increased impact on defender's ability to overcome blocking
- Pass deflection ability is more evenly distributed between a defender's ratings, defensive play call selection, user skill level settings, and situational factors
- Slightly decreased likelihood of tipped passes being caught
- Increased receiver's willingness to dive horizontally for passes
- Improved blocking on field goals/xp kicks to eliminate automatic kick blocking strategies
- On kickoffs, standing still in the endzone brings up a timed touchback meter
- Remapped kickoff power bar so max power kicks can go out of the endzone
- AI kick returners will now take touchbacks based on their ratings
- AI kick returners no longer solely run in a straight line
Experimental
- Removed collision when receivers are running their routes with the hope to decrease the amount of players getting stuck on each other
Customization
- Added hyphen support to team and player information fields