[gcooley]

Hi Karl

Yes its a concerning thing. As of last week thur/friday I have struggled to beat even level 1 noobs (although some are definately new account people).

To put it in to perspective last week wednesday I had 1976 rank points.......by last night I had 1182.

Now I managed to win about 4 games since friday and have been battered just under 800 points in 2 days......2 days!

Now I am a reasonable player and definately not an exploiter I play manual matches with friends and use a healthy spilt of teams and always usually the same or less rated than my opposition.

What I did try last night after losing 80 points in 3 games and winning one game and get 15 back......yeay!.

Was to understand what was going on.

This is what I found (i cant explain the right stick or sprint thing at the moment)

The teams I were playing were ALL using 100% aggression and 100% pressure with very deep defense and packed midfields with either 3 up front or wide and attack minded wingers.

Now the formations arent usually a problem to play around you just have to use cuter passing or slow the tempo up. What I couldnt deal with was because the pressure and aggression were so high is that your players seem to be scared of the ball. The loose the ability to trap the ball or when they pass its eratic. This I believe is because your team feels "spooked" I tried to play deep, wide, slow, fast, high and nothing seemed to work.

I also know and use the hold off and turn but now its useless because the get so close its impossible.

I have a couple of theories on all of this.

Firstly I think that when people are using this system they are letting the AI do all of the work. You can tell when you are tackled and they win the ball the delay in when they take over the player. This is most prominent in the middle of the field where the ball will pinball around.

In using the AI to do all of the work and having the other 8 AI players closing and marking/pressuring the outlets for passes makes the game extremely difficult. Because of there aggression levels this is why they are jostling so hard and getting so close. This is reminiscient of how UTD play and win balls if that makes sense?

Secondly because of the formation they are using you have no option but to clear the ball anywhere near your box. I have tried to play it out and I dont get more than 2/3 passes before I am caught, jostled and then out sprinted. I have tried everything and yeah I will score a goal or 2 but will be litterally hammered the other end.

You have no passing options out and because of the pressure going back towards the keeper or defense is a bad idea. Conceeded about 5 that way alone by defenders not trapping the ball or clearing enough or not even able to "jostle/hold there own".

As a side note and to do with my controller/player control in offline and the areana and club games control is 100% fine tiny bit delayed in clubs but liveable. In 1v1 ranked my control is pretty much only good for 4 way direction and if i try to sprint it takes ages for it to register and if I use the right stick for anything (trick, knock on or first touch) it does nothing or it will just long touch the ball 30 feet when a defender is too close to you anyways.

I think this is to do with the crab walk fix. I rarely experienced it and always thought it was to do with the way you controlled your player when approaching the ball. What I think they have done is coded around some of the controller inputs in certain situations so when I expect something to happen its being deferred or ignored. The players who had lots of crab walking are not experiencing the same latency as I am. But this is just speculation on my part.

I would be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on this.

If the standard of online play has just got better in a week then so be it but if not some clues or discussion would very much help.

Glen