The new Fifa 20 patch fixes loads of bugs and improves the game

Yesterday EA released a pretty thorough patch for Fifa 20. It addresses a lot of the game’s bugs and makes a couple of noteworthy improvements. 

One caveat, however, is that the patch is initially only being released for PC. EA say it will hit PS4 and Xbox One “at a later date”.

So what’s changed? According to EA’s patch notes, quite a few bugs had to be ironed out. Incorrect offside calls have been a recurring players and they’ve been cut, alongside delays between pressing a button and seeing your player actually execute an action. These are changes we’re happy to see made as they could both lead to particularly frustrating moments of gameplay.

Related: FIFA 20 vs PES 2020

Lots of ball control errors have been sorted out too, which is similarly good news. Players were sometimes running over the ball, rather than shooting, and having to double back to execute their shot. That particular error had occurred in previous titles too and has now been sorted out. So have issues with controlling the ball before, during and after skill moves. Hopefully now it will be easier to pull off those Ronaldinho-esque combinations of skill moves without a massive ball-losing anti-climax spoiling the fun.

Players had also complained about a whole lot of goalkeeping errors. EA are claiming that they’re all sorted now. For example, players had complained of un-warranted attempts at diving saves. That’s been sorted so your keeper will, hopefully, act a bit less like a Lemming in post-patch Fifa 20.

Related: FIFA 20 Career Mode is a mess and EA Sports knows it

Sometimes, pre-patch, the users player would enter an objection animation after being tackled. That prevented the player from re-joining the action straight away and has been removed. Again, that was a frustrating one, but arguably that frustration often happens in actual football too…?

Here are a few other bugs that the latest patch ironed out:

• Previously, when playing a 4-3-2-1 formation, an attacking player would be incorrectly positioned near the corner flag at kick off. That’s been sorted.
• Players can no longer jump higher than their skill rating suggests they should.
• Various gameplay changes have been made to Ultimate Team, ironing out issues with team selections, difficulty settings, visuals, save technique and more. Full details of Ultimate Team changes are available via this link.
• One of the key Ultimate Team changes will see players more directly impacted by their fitness ratings.
• AI career mode managers have been prevented from fielding weakened lineups in inappropriate situations.
• Managers will no longer be fired when they have good records.
• Recently signed youth players will no longer be quite so demanding in asking for first team play-time.

Beyond bug fixing, EA have made a couple of other improvements. Most notable, commentary specific to female managers has been added and Legendary mode has been made more difficult. The former of these two changes seems very much like it was an oversight in the original release. The latter sees the AI more efficiently defend against your attacks and make better decisions when passing the ball.

Here are a couple of other additions EA saw fit to make:

• Skill moves have changed. The body feint skill has been fine-tuned and some moves have been upgraded, meaning only players with a higher skill move star rating can perform them, (examples include the Advanced Rainbow).
• An own goal scored in King of the Hill mode, when the goal is worth 0 points, will now result in a corner kick for your opponent, rather than a goal kick for the team that scored the goal.
• In career mode, goal difference has been added to the standings screen.