R1/RB FC 26 Simulator: Let the AI Defend for You

[elder reef]

This game is just not fun anymore, and I don’t know how that isn’t obvious.

Gameplay is slow, delayed, and boring. Every match is the exact same thing. People just hold R1/RB, run around with their CM or CDM, and let the AI do all the defending. No risk, no manual defending, just sit back with 7–8 players in the box and let the game play for you. The best part is, the AI bails them out constantly.

Nothing feels fast-paced. Player switching is awful, dribbling feels dead, skills come out late, passes feel delayed, and players with 90+ dribbling can’t turn. Pace barely matters. Attacking feels like trying to break down a brick wall for 90 minutes, while my opponent hits one through ball from midfield and is instantly in on goal.

Tackling doesn’t even feel rewarding anymore. You time it right and the ball just bounces straight back to the attacker, or someone mistimes a tackle completely and still gets rewarded. Early in the year, bad defending actually got punished. Now it doesn’t.

What really kills it is that there’s nothing to play for. Rewards are awful. Rivals is boring. Champs feels pointless. If Icon Swaps didn’t exist, there would be zero reason to load this game up. Every promo feels lazy (other than the one good SBC per promo), underwhelming, and not worth grinding for.

And the crazy part is this: I’ve grinded hundreds upon hundreds of packs through SBCs and objectives for TOTY and got nothing. Then I do a live event and pull 95 TOTY Pina out of an 87x2. She’s one of the best cards in the game and completely broken, and I still don’t even want to play.

That should say everything.

When you can pack an insane card like that and still have no desire to queue a match, the issue isn’t pack weight or rewards. It’s the gameplay. It’s slow, AI-driven, repetitive, and rewards the most passive playstyle possible.

This game was genuinely fun at the beginning of the year. It was faster, more responsive, and rewarded manual play. Now it’s the same cycle as always. Sit back, let the AI defend, hope for bounce backs, and pray the server feels decent that match.

I don’t know how this is supposed to be enjoyable or competitive in its current state.

[primal fulcrum]

The controlled sprint dribbling (R1 dribbling) and left stick dribbling are also being abused. How many players are constantly Dribbling around in circles?!

All mechanics that are being abused must be removed from the game❗

@digital tartan

[spring gate]

Notice how every one of us (who actually care about this game and want it to be better) say the same thing about what's wrong with the game all over again but ea doesn't do anything... If they actually listen to us, FC would have been in the same rank as COD, fortnite, any popular game.

Look at battlefield 6, still going strog and is currently better than COD...