u/SmolGeologist

The game in H2H is based entirely on who can cheese the hardest. Almost everyone you play beyond the lower levels uses the same "meta" defense which consists only of an all out blitz with man press coverage, complimented by either an outside or inside commitment from the dbs depending on how the other play likes the throw. They run one play all game and it more or less shuts down the pass game every time. It's not even remotely realistic and it is infuriating to play against. Offense has a little more diversity, but it still consists of guys running a handful of plays a game over and over because they are broken and unstoppable.

Even worse, people take advantage of outright broken mechanics in the game. For example, I just played a game where I was talked, hit the ground, and then "fumbled". The other guy recovered it, but I wasn't concerned because it would obviously be overturned on review. The problem was that the other guy knew a glitch. He called a timeout immediately after the play was over. As a result, the game would not allow me to challenge the previous play, which was obviously not a fumble. It's broken, it's unfair, and it's unfun.

Real football doesn't have "meta" plays that get spammed 40 times a game. If EA can't make a football game without broken plays, then there should be a limit to how many times you can call a play in one game or half. If man press blitzes shut down any semblance of a pass game, they need to make receivers beat the press more often and let blockers hold up in one on ones better. It isn't hard, but this has been the "meta" for years and no updates have fixed it. This game is, fundamentally, a broken one that you have to brutally exploit if you want to win H2H and that is deeply unsatisfying.

It seems to me that the general consensus among Bethesda fans (or former fans now, due to Bethesda's performance over the past 15 years) is that almost two decades between mainline Elder Scrolls titles, and what likely would have been two decades between mainline Fallout titles, was very sad and disappointing for us. We loved these franchises and we loved the sort of games that Bethesda used to make. Ever since Fallout 4 (and even this game was a step back in many ways) they just stopped making them. Sure you can point to MMOs and Starfield, but for many BGS fans, we didn't become fans because of MMOs, we became fans for the single player games! Starfield was yet another step back for a company that used to make GOTY contenders with every release. Starfield was widely considered to be mediocre at best, it was certainly no Fallout 3, New Vegas, Morrowing, Oblivion, or Skyrim.

Yet, despite the widespread disappointment with the company's direction much of this past two decades, there seems to be a very motivated contingent of BGS defenders. I'm genuinely wondering why that is. What is it about a two decade wait for games that makes you want to leap to BGS's defense? What is it about the declining quality of what they do actually make that makes you think that criticism isn't fair?

Because naval units cannot travel over deep ocean until cartography, the geography of any particular game can easily bottle up my navy and limit the amount of good it can do. Protecting settlers/trade and helping to promote overseas colonization/expansion? Can't really do that until cartography. Waging war against a far away overseas competitor? Can't do that until cartography. Circumnavigation? Cartography. When naval units are restricted to coastal waters only, they can quickly become stuck and unable to reach any new islands/continents or even any rival players