FC 27: EA doesn’t want to make the same mistake
EA wanted to improve FC 26. In doing so, it introduced new problems into the game. Two gameplay developers explain how that happened and why there will be fewer patches for FC 27 this time around.
Hundreds of people are crowding through EA’s small Gamescom village. With its barbershop, tattoo parlour and jersey shop, it’s meant to look a bit like The Grounds, a new social hub in EA Sports FC 27. Tucked away a bit amid all the hustle and bustle is an area where us media professionals can talk to the developers.
There, I meet Samuel Rivera, Executive Producer of Gameplay and Kantcho Doskov, one of the most experienced gameplay developers on the series. Two men I can ask questions that have been on my mind for a while: how does EA actually know whether a mechanic is fun or just dominates the meta? How is it that AI defending – which EA deliberately set out to weaken in FC 26 – managed to become so powerful again through subsequent patches? And how does EA plan to prevent the game from heading back in a direction it originally set out to avoid?
Their answer is more honest than I expected.
A case of déjà vu: AI defending
The whole AI defending debacle in particular feels suspiciously familiar to me. Back when FC 26 dropped, I ranted about defenders standing around like the Royal Guard in front of Buckingham Palace, about ridiculous 8-8 matches and about EA’s much-hyped battle against AI defending. Right at the very end, I made a prediction: EA would patch the game, rein in the broken meta and then sell me the same revolution all over again twelve months later.
Well, just call me Lucastradamus from now on…
EA actually did patch FC 26 – and, as expected, far too thoroughly. On release, EA had significantly scaled back AI defending. Unselected defenders would no longer automatically close in on the player with the ball and do the dirty work for me. Instead of just using a midfielder to cut off passing lanes while the AI takes care of the rest, I should once again select my own defenders, get into challenges and tackle at the right moment.
A good idea, just shoddily implemented. EA took a large chunk of the defensive effort out of the AI’s hands, but didn’t make manual defence strong enough to compensate. At the same time, quick attackers were able to dribble past defenders far too easily. Cue goals galore.
Defending? More of an optional feature when EA FC 26 was released. Agile attackers would regularly weave their way through defensive lines – with score lines closer to ice hockey than football.
So, EA made some adjustments – until, at some point, AI took over so much of the work that the old tactic came through again. Closing down areas and passing lanes yourself and leaving one-on-one battles to the AI as much as possible. The result was once again sluggish back-and-forth play in front of the penalty area – exactly what EA had been trying to avoid. And now, a year on, EA is promising that FC 27 will feature – drumroll please – less AI defending and more manual control. Here we go again.
So, the obvious question for Rivera and Doskov: how was it possible for EA to go in complete circles within a single year?
How EA chased its own tail
«This is exactly the kind of feedback we’ve received many times over,» says Kantcho Doskov. AI defending coming to the fore again over the course of FC 26 was never actually the goal. EA reportedly wanted to fix other issues. But since virtually everything in the gameplay is interconnected, these changes would’ve had unintended consequences. One of them: stronger AI defending.
So, among other things, the team worked on tackling. A straightforward repair for a specific problem – with consequences that extended far beyond. After all, a football game like EA Sports FC isn’t made up of isolated settings. EA can’t just look at AI defending: 70, set the value to 50 and call it a day. Dribbling affects tackling, tackling affects the number of goals and positioning affects passing lanes.
And as soon as millions of players start competitively taking this system apart, the meta emerges.
Source: Luca Fontana
Samuel Rivera mentions patches that sometimes included 20 or 30 changes at once. Each one may make sense on its own, but their combined effects are much harder to predict. On top of that, players themselves got stronger and stronger – especially in Ultimate Team. An approach with regular gold cards in September would only work a few months later with special cards above 90, additional PlayStyles and other bonuses.
Under these conditions, the same mechanism can suddenly behave in a completely different way. That’s how FC 26 ended up where it did. But another question remains: if EA knew at a certain point that the AI defending had become too powerful again, why didn’t the team just change it back?
Why EA can’t just roll back an update
That’s exactly what I ask Rivera. He takes several minutes to answer. No, he’s not dodging the question. But the answer is apparently more complicated than my simple little question would suggest.
Let’s say EA drastically weakens AI defending again halfway through the game’s life cycle. In doing so, the team’s changing a system that has since been tailored to dozens of other adjustments. Suddenly, dribbling might be too powerful again, there might be way too many goals scored, or the balance between manual tackles and AI assistance might be off again. «We risk making the game even worse,» says Rivera.
That’s why EA prefers to develop fundamental gameplay changes collaboratively. For FC 27, the team took a holistic look at AI defending, AI attacking, crossing, dribbling and other fundamental systems and fine-tuned them to work together. Making drastic changes to a single part in the middle of its life cycle is significantly riskier. So at some point, EA has to decide: is a problem small enough to warrant a patch? Or is the change so fundamental that it can’t be implemented until the next FC?
No, I’ve never broken a controller due to EA Sports FC. One of them, however, has become so wobbly that it now needs a sleeve to hold it together. Understandable.
Naturally, that’s an uncomfortable answer for a game that comes out every year at full price. But at least it explains a phenomenon that has been driving me crazy about EA Sports FC for years. The game I test in autumn isn’t necessarily the same game I play in the spring.
And that immediately raises the next question: how does EA even know when a mechanic is actually broken?
A meta isn’t always fun
After all, just playing the game doesn’t really tell you much about whether a mechanic is fun. It might well be that everyone uses the same power shot, skill combo or defensive tactic – not because it’s particularly effective, but simply because it’s the most efficient way to win.
Rivera talks about pros, core gamers and casuals; about Discord channels, forums and social media; and about a so-called Design Council made up of community members and content creators, whom EA flies in several times a year. On top of that, there are user research sessions and vast lines of game data. Only after considering all these sources does the team attempt to determine whether a mechanic is actually problematic.
In EA FC 26, Alexia Putellas was at times arguably both the most popular and the most hated card. Agile, technically outstanding and with the right PlayStyles, she was so meta that there was hardly any way to avoid using her in competitive play.
Data, in particular, can serve as an interesting counterbalance to public perception. For example, if the community complains that power shots are way too powerful, EA doesn’t just look at how loud these complaints are. The team investigates how many of them actually end up as goals, from which positions they’re particularly effective and whether certain players or situations skew the statistics. Maybe the mechanics as a whole aren’t all that overwhelming and the real problem lies somewhere much more specific.
Sounds like more of a technical question. In reality, however, this points to one of the most difficult choices in a competitive game: when should the developer step in – and when do players simply have to learn to deal with a powerful strategy?
Let them learn the game
That’s precisely why EA wants to be more cautious with FC 27. Doskov uses a nice word here: surgical.
Not every dominant strategy should be patched out immediately just because the community starts complaining about it after a few days – just like I do. «Our goal this time is to really give gamers the time they need to learn the game,» says Doskov. EA still intends to intervene, especially when there’s a genuine bug or when a game mechanic becomes so dominant that it distorts the experience in a way that runs counter to the original design concept.
After all, competitive games in particular exist in a constant state of tension between developers and players. One side builds a system based on a specific idea of how it should be played. The other couldn’t care less about this, and looks for the most efficient path to victory. Someone discovers a powerful mechanic, a content creator shows it to hundreds of thousands of people and suddenly everyone is doing it – and a few days later, the community is clamouring for a nerf.
The key question at this point: is the mechanic really broken? Or have the players simply not learned how to deal with it yet?
According to Doskov, that’s exactly what the team discussed at length. With FC 27, the goal is to avoid intervening too early again and thereby potentially disrupting the gameplay experience as a whole. People should be given time to find solutions and adapt. Only when it becomes clear that a meta doesn’t, in fact, align with the developers’ intentions will EA take more decisive action.
It’s a promise by which FC 27 must be judged. After all, FC 26 also started out with a clear vision. And we know how that ended.
Fewer PlayStyles, more players
Right at the end, I ask Rivera and Doskov one more question: if they could remove a single feature from EA Sports FC tomorrow, which one would it be?
Doskov doesn’t name any current game mechanics that he’d immediately remove. Instead, he says that EA asks exactly this question over and over again internally. For example, Timed Finishing was removed because the system was no longer working the way it was supposed to. EA also significantly toned down the ability to manually move goalkeepers, since it felt like a cheap way to make up for a mistake in one’s own defence by simply guessing.
Rivera formulates this into a kind of design principle. Mechanics that require little skill yet still provide a significant advantage – or take away control from players – will generally be scaled back or removed.
That brings us to PlayStyles. Something I actually enjoy. The idea behind it is brilliant: Olivier Giroud should feel like Olivier Giroud, Kylian Mbappé like Kylian Mbappé. The problem begins when that little PlayStyle icon becomes more important than the player beneath it. If my favourite player has excellent attributes but the wrong PlayStyle, and another player is significantly more effective thanks to PlayStyle+, that doesn’t encourage individuality. It dictates my lineup.
Not very agile, but with a hammer of a left foot: I loved this Giroud card in FC 24. In FC 26, there’s hardly any room left in the meta for players like him.
Rivera is aware of this criticism. As early as FC 26, EA had already attempted to shift power back from PlayStyles to standard attributes. He also admits it wasn’t enough. So, for FC 27, the team’s taking things a step further, with more than ten PlayStyles and by shifting additional influence back to actual player stats.
After all, PlayStyles are meant to ensure that Giroud still feels like Giroud and Mbappé still feels like Mbappé. However, they shouldn’t dictate whether a player is even suitable for competitive play. In FC 26, a player with an overall rating of 91 could be worse than one with an 84 – simply because one lacked the meta PlayStyle that was currently in vogue and the other had it.
This is exactly the imbalance EA wants to correct: PlayStyles should determine how well a player can do certain things, not whether they’re any good at all.
And next year?
So: it was the sum of many understandable decisions within a system where every tweak can trigger further changes that made FC 26 one of the most controversial instalments in the series. We won’t know whether EA has really learned from this until months after the release of FC 27.
Maybe this time the team will actually let the gameplay settle a bit. Maybe next summer we’ll still be talking about why AI defending has become too strong. And if I end up sitting at Gamescom and having to listen yet again to some explanation that this year, for FC 28, everything will really, really be different, at least I’ll already know how to start my article.
I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
Interesting facts about products, behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturers and deep-dives on interesting people.
Show all
