My take on (state of the) Gameplay and FUT in FC26 overall - whats yours ?
There have been reports that EA has been continuously shadow-patching FC26 as it quietly prepares the ground for FC27. Whether that's the exact cause or not, one thing feels obvious to anyone who's put real hours into the game this cycle: it's getting worse, not better, the closer we get to the next release.
Right now, the game doesn't seem to know what kind of football it wants to simulate. Bounce-backs are absurd, defending is functionally optional, and outscoring an opponent 15+ goals in a single game has been a recurring theme all year rather than a rare anomaly. Goalkeepers swing between two states with nothing in between: either they're unbeatable walls, or they concede everything that comes their way. There's no middle ground, no consistency, no sense that skill or positioning is meaningfully shaping the outcome.
That extremity bleeds into the overall experience. The game is as dumbed-down and beginner-friendly as it's ever been — probably the most forgiving version of the franchise to date. And it's not just a feeling; it shows up directly in results. As a moderately good player, I regularly win games I have no business winning, and just as regularly lose ones I should have controlled easily. Over a large enough sample, that randomness stops looking like variance and starts looking like design. It feels less like playing a football simulation and more like being at the mercy of whatever mood the game engine happens to be in that day.
A friend and I have spent an unreasonable amount of time testing player roles, line heights, and tactical instructions against each other in FUT. The conclusion we kept arriving at, game after game, is that most of this depth is cosmetic. In several matches, we genuinely couldn't tell who was set to a deep line and who was set to an extreme high line just by watching the gameplay — the on-pitch behavior barely diverged. That's a real problem for a game that markets tactical customization as a core pillar of its identity.
It's also worth noting that content creators have every incentive not to point this out. Their business model runs on "new meta tactics" videos — if the underlying settings don't actually change much, that's not a story they're eager to tell.
Even more frustrating: none of this seems to correlate with actual connection quality. My friend and I play each other on hardwired gigabit connections with low pings, and we still get input lag that has no business existing under those conditions. If the netcode were the bottleneck, better infrastructure should fix it. It doesn't. That points to something happening server-side or in how the game is throttling/simulating input rather than a straightforward networking issue.
The inconsistency doesn't stop at input lag — the entire feel of the game shifts depending on where you're playing. Rivals, Champs, and Live Events all seem to run on subtly different physics or pacing, even with identical tactics and identical settings. Some days the game plays like players are wading through mud, animations lagging half a second behind inputs. Other days it's basically FIFA Street at 1.5x speed, end-to-end chaos with no midfield battle whatsoever. You can't build muscle memory or trust your reads when the fundamental speed of the game is a moving target from session to session.
Visually and mechanically, the game still feels like it's stuck a decade in the past. Basic shooting mechanics — and especially free kicks and penalties — either look nothing like real football or are recycled wholesale from previous entries. You get 500 different flashy skill moves at your disposal, but realistic shooting technique, run-ups, and body mechanics are locked behind a small handful of players who have their own bespoke animation sets. Everyone else is stuck with generic animations that have been preserved, seemingly untouched, for close to ten years — and at times they look like they were mo-capped by actors rather than actual professional footballers.
Some of the technical gaps border on absurd for a modern sports title: you still can't hit a curved penalty with the inside of the foot using real power. That's a basic, well-known technique in real football, and it's simply not modeled.
The AI hasn't meaningfully evolved either — it still behaves like it's from the arcade era. Off-ball players run mindlessly to pre-assigned positions with zero situational awareness. A clear example: an attacking player assigned to rest-defense duty during a corner will sprint back to their designated defensive spot immediately, completely ignoring that a transition attack is unfolding in front of them. AI-controlled outfield players — and remember, in any 1v1 match you're always playing with nine of them — show almost no real reaction to the ball or to opponents entering their vicinity. In 2026, the AI still doesn't understand space. It doesn't track threats, doesn't adjust to context, and doesn't make decisions that look like thought rather than scripted pathing.
What separates genuinely great competitive games from mediocre ones is usually that there are multiple viable ways to win. FC26 fails that test almost completely. In practice, you're forced to choose: either you commit to the current "meta" playstyles and formations to unlock the best animations and responsiveness, or you accept being mechanically punished for playing differently. There's no real reward for tactical individuality anymore.
I still remember when matches against different opponents genuinely felt different — when facing someone running an unconventional formation actually changed how a game played out. That variety is largely gone now, replaced by a shrinking set of "correct" ways to play that everyone eventually converges toward.
To me, this game (until major change to its very core) is a dead horse thats been beaten, taxidermied and gets beaten and taxidermied again year after year.