FIFA 21 Just Nerfed the Game’s Biggest OP Tactic

A new FIFA 21 update on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 will nerf an OP and overused tactic. Ahead of its imminent release on PC, EA has revealed the patch notes for Title Update 5, which in turn reveals that EA has nerfed the Team Press D-Pad Tactic, which has been abused by many players in online and competitive matches since the game released last month.

For now, it remains to be seen how effective this nerf will be, but once live, it will decrease the amount of time the Team Press D-Pad Tactic can be active for before cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

The update will also fix the issue where players were receiving straight red cards when committing a foul after the ref played advantage on a foul just committed. Of course, these two tweaks aren’t the only thing the update does. Below, you can check out all of the gameplay changes being made:

Gameplay

– Made the following changes –

• Increased the distance that a ball can travel after making contact with the foot or leg of the defender during a blocking animation.
• Decreased the amount of time the Team Press D-Pad Tactic can be active for, before requiring cooldown, from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Increased the impact of the Overload Ball Side D-Pad Tactic on in-game Stamina.
• Increased the impact of the Constant Pressure, Pressure On Heavy Touch, and Pressure On Possession Loss Tactics on in-game Stamina.

– Addressed the following issues –

• When requesting a shot, players would sometimes take longer than intended to shoot.
• Addressed some cases of user controlled players performing an automatic lunge animation while the Pass Block Assistance setting was set to Off.
• The Bridge Skill Move could not be performed when playing with specific button remappings.
• Addressed various visual only issues during some post-match relegation and promotion playoff scenes.
• When a foul occurs which would result in a yellow card, but it is not granted due to the referee calling for an advantage, the offender could commit another yellow card offence and be shown a straight red card by the referee.
• In rare situations, a collision between the goalkeeper and the opponent’s player could have resulted in the goalkeeper being knocked into the goal with the ball, resulting in an own goal. These instances will now be treated as fouls.
• In rare instances, a goalkeeper would perform a diving save animation earlier than intended, followed by another diving save. The initial save animation did not impact the following save animation.
• In some situations, a requested goalkeeper throw could result in an own goal if the pass was aimed at a receiver too close to the goal.
• The Player Rating would sometimes take too long to update after a player scored a goal.
• Following a pass by the goalkeeper in the Advanced Practice scenario, the user could lose control of the player.
• In some House Rules match types against the CPU AI, the in-game difficulty level did not match the selected setting.
• When performing a celebration that involves picking up the ball out of a goal and running back to the center of the pitch, the celebrating player could go through the goal frame and net.
• Sometimes, Skill Moves were not being performed if they were immediately requested after the ball carrier finished turning.
• In rare instances, a player could pause a match immediately after another player’s set piece.
  Removed an unintended Skill Game from appearing during pre-match loading.
• Addressed a rare stability issue that could potentially occur during gameplay.

Above is just the gameplay changes the update is making. For the full patch notes on what it does to Career Mode, Ultimate Team, and more, click here.

At the moment of publishing, precise release timing for the update has not been announced. For now, it’s only been announced for PC, but a similar version on PS4 and Xbox One should arrive not long after. As for how big the file size of the update is, EA doesn’t say.

FIFA 21 is available via the PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch, and soon it will be available via the PS5 and Xbox Series as well.