FIFA 20: Changes in the defending mechanics

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FIFA 20 has issues with its defending mechanics

FIFA 20 players have reported that the game’s AI is broken when it comes to defensive maneuvers.

Players on the official forums have summarized that:

DEFENDING, it’s broke to the point it is embarrassing .

More so, they go into further detail explaining the issue:

[…]team mates will proceed to break shape and leave gaps they just go opposite directions from what your wanting them to do they take up spaces so there not going to be involved in defending[…]

Apparently, the main problems seem to stem from the game’s faulty AI.

The FIFA 20 goalkeepers are apparently facing the worst issues

I would seem that the goalkeeper is also suffering from a faulty AI:

goalkeepers don’t have good games anymore because they don’t make saves anymore lol 4 shots on target 4 goals , shot hit straight at goal keeper parried into net or underneath him etc

Of course, this entire problem is most likely caused by the fact that EA itself announced heavy changes regarding the game’s defending system.

They especially mentioned the way keepers will behave and move, and how computer-controlled defending behaves in general.

For example, the goalkeeper will move far slower that what players were used to in FIFA 20.

This was in order to reflect the realistic movements of an actual keeper.

This also forces players commit to a direction when defending manually.

Back in FIFA 19, it was considered that goalkeepers had “superhuman” reactions.

As such, changes were implemented to ensure that more shots were made in easy situations, and less shots were made in harder ones.

Why FIFA 20 abandoned AI-controlled defending

The reason for this overhaul in the defending system is because computer-controlled was extremely open in certain situations.

For example, chaining multiple step overs in quick succession or doing repeated flick-ups.

These two scenarios were almost impossible to defend against, which resulted in unrealistic and ridiculous plays.

EA stated that:

Now the goal of this update to the AI is to make defending far more engaging for the player, and feel all the more rewarding as well.

As such, the entire issue of a broken defending system in FIFA 20s stems from one of two things:

  • These changes to the defending system in FIFA 20 were poorly implemented
  • The players didn’t know about the new mechanics and treated them as bugs rather than features