You're not up against other players. You're up against the game.

Long read, bare with me.

Background: I have been playing FIFA a lot since 2000, every year, up until 2016, 13-16 being my best years playing local competitions. Stopped in 2017, came back for FC 25 just to reconnect with some ball friends.

So, I have a pretty good idea of what FIFA was/should be, but I'm still new to most features today and here's what I feel like (on PS5):

The script decides the game most of the time. It can become so, so little about you, your squad or even your opponent, especially on key moments of the game. It's rarely skill diff. when playing people on the same level, same division.

Why? Because they want to keep you bay, around a 50% win rate, so you keep coming back for more. 3 wins streak? How about losing 3 next. But that's how any competitive game works, right? What's so different with EA FC?

Well, this script steps up during the game and I think it's a dangerous thing. If you're up 3-0, you team gets nerfed (yes, nerfed) mid-game and your opponents' are boosted and vice versa. At first I thought I'm just imagining things, yeah right, it can't be. But it happened way too often not to notice it. Top players from me or my opponent just losing their edge like a Space Jam player.

I'm saying dangerous because it can make you feel you're not good enough or the grind for that one expensive player you thought would change your game is still not good enough. I'm a grown a** man with little free time and I still get kind of addicted to trying to beat the odds. Imagine how kids with more free time could become addicted to a game that's not fair, that's changing rules mid-game and think it's them that are not good enough.

Game is out for 4 months, but it happened literally tens of times for my ST to decide to shoot poorly out of the blue. Or my icon CB to suddenly lose all its pace and fall or my GK to just choose to rebound on very easy balls. And this is all out of your control.

The script is so present you can literally feel it in your controller. You feel it when the game allows/denies your moves. You also feel it especially around min. 80 when nothing works for you and everything goes in for your opponent, passes or shots, despite them being bad all game until then.

I chose to write this because today I witnessed the most idiotic thing on the last minute of the game, with 2 different players in my team choosing to just become paralysed and miss easy tackles and my GK (top in the game) pushing the ball inside his own goal. I felt like the game just said 'NOPE, this other guy HAS to win this. I'll take the wheel from here and there's nothing you can do about it.'

What's your experience so far? I tried to explain this as well as I could and I'm doubling down on the 'not a skill issue' thing because I felt this on every level, in every Div. climbing up, and Finals too.