Dev Blog - Core Gameplay

Hi everyone! We want to give more details with the community about the upcoming evolutions of core gameplay. Since release, we have done a lot of work to solidify the fundamentals of the game, which mostly meant fixing issues, and we are now in a better place, but we still have a lot of work to do, both from technical and design standpoints. 

Overall, our main objective is to improve the competitive experience through three pillars: fairness, balance, and depth. We will go through each of these pillars separately, but naturally all three are connected, and changes on all these fronts should form a cohesive whole. There is a lot to cover, so let’s dive into it! 

Fairness

In Rematch, ball’s movements should always be justified by physical impacts from players: this is the basic visual language of the game, and even if the game has an “arcade” feel, with over the top animations, having credible ball movements is essential for the feeling of fairness. Currently we still have situations where the ball “magnets” too much (goalkeeper catches, some advanced dribbles), or where bodies collide without physicality (during some volley snaps for instance, or tackles not registering). As you’ll see below, we intend to improve these situations across the board.

Netcode: fairness comes from how gameplay systems behave in real network conditions. Currently, we are undergoing a major refactoring of our netcode architecture, to switch to a “server initiated” logic. To summarize briefly, until now we were in a “client initiated” logic, which meant that at client level, players would see ball interactions correctly, even if they have high ping - however, other players could see the ball “warp” to the correct position. For instance, if a goalkeeper with a high ping dives on a ball, they would see themselves catching the ball correctly, but other players would see the ball going through the GK, before warping back in their hands - which feels unfair. 

These changes will be tested in Beta during the Summer, and be rolled out in late September. They will impact all hitbox related abilities: ball control, tackles, goalkeeper catches… Switching the “volley stack” system to server validation should also help in situations where you feel that you should have “won the prio”, but end up losing the confrontation. Overall, this change in netcode should make things improve reliability and fairness for the vast majority of players, except for players with high latency, who will notice more rollbacks than before, which is normal: over 120ms of ping, no online action game can correctly synchronize players together. These changes, although mostly technical, will impact the feel of the game, and we will communicate in more detail once we start pushing server-initiated features.

Ball Control: in addition to switching to a server-initiated Ball control system, we are also going to change the way animations are triggered: currently we predict that a Ball control will happen based on player movement, which triggers an “anticipation” animation. This allows for believable interactions but also creates issues: since the player can change their movement input, sometimes the player sees their character starting a ball control or ball catch animation, only for that animation to be cancelled. This is especially problematic for Goalkeepers obviously: you see the character starting to move towards the ball, but the catch doesn’t happen (and a goal is scored). This will not happen anymore - ball controls will be snappier and more reliable, and GKs will no longer see their character start reaching out for the ball, only to cancel 

Dribbling: currently dribbling “advanced techs” often rely on exploiting ball magnetism (vexis/vlad), or on bypassing animation transitions (push cut). We certainly want advanced techniques to be present in the game, but this should not break physical credibility, which is why we’ve removed the Vexis magnetism in Patch 10. Push Cut will be removed soon also: although it requires skill, it is clearly an exploit of the camera system, easier to perform on MKB, and since it’s impossible to read, it incentivizes passive defense strategies, which we want to avoid. That being said, even if we remove “techs”, as we move forward we will keep on refining the dribble kit to add options and skill expression (see the “Depth” section below). 

Tackling: sometimes tackles don’t register and go through players; this is rare but it can happen because of the way we predict hits on the server, and it led some players to think that some moves have “iframes” which is not the case. We are making changes to this (see “netcode” section above), so that tackles always register when performed correctly. This is also linked to how we manage hurtboxes: when the ball handler does a dribble or releases the ball, the hurtbox shrinks instantly around the ball (as opposed to being around the player in possession), which can create an unfair perception of “tackles not registering”. Another issue with tackles is tackle assist: while it can help tackles to connect, sometimes the assist drives the player towards a position that was not desired (for instance, if you correctly anticipated that the opponent was about to change direction, you might still be “assisted” towards an obsolete position); this can be very frustrating and makes the tackle feel unfair. Assist has been reduced in Patch 10, and eventually we may be removing it entirely (we couldn’t deactivate it yet at this stage because it needs some additional work that is linked to server initiated tackles). 

Goalkeeper: there are many topics related to GKs (see below); an important one for fairness  is that catch hitboxes should not cover the legs: this is not credible, often feels very unfair for the striker, and it’s overly forgiving for the GK who dived too early. This will be addressed in Patch 12, but there are many other GK changes planned - more info below in the “Balancing” and “Depth” sections.

Input methods: finally, there is a question of fairness between Controller and MKB - we want to give cam lock options for controller players (in order to lock the shot direction during volleys, like MKB players can do) - and inversely, MKB players should be able have control over their aim when shooting, although in a limited way to avoid mismatch between player orientation and shot direction. Also providing more advanced remapping options will benefit both types of players. 

Balance

Balancing is a constant focus for us to make sure the combination of mechanics actually translate to interesting and varied gameplay situations. We want to avoid dominant strategies at all levels of play: these get stale very quickly, and are not super fun to play or to watch. Overall, we want to incentivize more ground play and tiki-taka passing style- but we also want to allow dribbling and long crosses to be relevant. This is easier said than done: a 10cm change on a hitbox can have cascading effects rippling through the whole game, so we need to be careful when we make changes! 

Goalkeeper

It’s important that GKs remain a powerful role: they’re the boss at the end of the level, they carry the weight of the game on their shoulders. In consequence, while it should be challenging to score in front of the keeper, even in a 1v1 situation, currently keepers catch too many balls, too easily, and there is not enough skill expression for them. 

What to expect: starting at Patch 12, keepers will deflect more balls. Legs will not catch any longer, and defense mode won’t be a guaranteed catch: the GK in defense stance will deflect balls that are shot at close range, rather than catching them automatically. Not only will this be more credible, but it will make things more interesting both for attack and defense: instead of the situation resetting, and everybody running back to the other side, deflecting the ball will keep players engaged, whether it’s to try to score, or to clear the ball. We’ve also tweaked the assist of the forward dive in Patch 10 - forward dive was overpowered, and was becoming the default option. 

On another topic, goalkeeper dives outside the box are a bit overpowered and can feel unfair - as the GK, projecting yourself forward out of the box should be riskier. GK slide is not really useful in it’s current state, and we are going to rework it to make it a more relevant option in the Goalkeeper’s kit. Finally, infinite stamina for sweeper is something that we may be removing; the sweeper position is already deactivated in tournaments because high level players benefit too much from the infinite stamina, making it extremely hard for other players to steal the ball from them. Until now we’ve decided to keep this infinite stamina to empower more casual players in the GK role, but we might reconsider this in future updates. 

Defense Stance

The defensive kit needs to evolve and be reinforced as dribbling evolves. Currently passive defense is more rewarding than active defense, and we want to rebalance that. 

What to expect: in patch 10, we’ve reduced the defense stance hitbox, and increased defense dash range. Patch 12, probably reduce cooldown after the second dash, or add a third dash, for better consecutive replacements. We are considering introducing a “Ball Protection” mechanic, which could allow players to “parry” tackles when done correctly - this will probably come later though. 

Tackling

We also want to reward successful tackles, while being less forgiving with missed tackles. Starting Patch 12, players will recover faster from standing tackles which touch the ball, and recover slower from tackles that miss. We are also considering having a short EE cooldown when stunned. Both these changes will also make it more rewarding to tackle in the direction of the wall - currently the stunned player often recovers closer to the ball than his opponent who performed a successful tackle, which doesn’t feel fair. 

Stamina 

Overall, stamina consumption seems decently balanced, but we might keep tweaking values to give a bit more stamina to players, increasing speed and dynamism. The real issue with stamina is that low stamina doesn’t impact abilities enough, and especially dribbling, which shouldn’t be as efficient when low on stamina. We are working on this to refine the impact of low stamina on abilities.

3v3 balancing

Possession stalling / time wasting is a real issue in 3v3 - it’s simply too powerful to use when winning, and some teams abuse it - when you're serious about winning, you use every strategy available! This is particularly an issue in 3v3 because if one player has to press the opposing keeper, it always leaves the GK in a 1v1 situation which is very risky. Rules of 3v3 game mode will evolve in order to ensure that time wasting is not a valid strategy in 3v3. More news on this soon ! 

Depth

A lot of work has been done on the two previous topics, fairness and balance, but we also intend to keep working on existing mechanics, and to introduce new ones, in order for the game to have more mechanical and tactical depth, and therefore allow more skill expression from players. Depth will mostly come from adding granularity to the game’s systems, ie. having more options in inputs, and more organic outcomes. Details below. 

Physicality

While improvements have been made to the volley “priority” system and to player blocking, there are still improvements to be made on the physicality front - for example, currently when teleporting/snapping to your volley position, players don’t collide with others, but go “through” them. Although volley targets behind other players can't be validated, it can happen that a volley target is validated before another player obstructs the “teleport” direction, and in this case we see a player “phasing” through the other. This is a fairness issue, but also one that limits potential depth. We have started working on a “Volley and Hits contact” system which will further rationalize the outcomes of interactions, notably volleys. To give a very rough idea, the resolution of “contested” interactions will now be more complex, with outcomes that didn’t exist previously in the game (think “pinch” mechanics, or players being in “hit” state in which they maintain control of their movement, but can’t use abilities). This is a major rework that is expected to be released for Season 5, although it will be tested in Beta branches earlier than this to make sure this all goes in the right direction. 

Also related to physicality, we intend to improve the “Hindering” mechanic in the game (ie. “Body Blocking”) so that it becomes a more viable option. In a game that is all about positioning and timing, giving defenders more tools to prevent opponents from reaching a certain position should add an interesting tactical layer and make defending far from the ball more engaging. We are also considering a “Shoulder Check” mechanic, separate from tackles, that would apply the “hit” state to opponents, even when they are not in possession of the ball. The design is still work in progress, we’ll have more information on this soon. 

Dribbling

As discussed above, we want to keep refining the dribbling kit to allow for more skill expression from players, while we also remove certain “advanced” techs which feel unfair to most players. We hope to be introduce a Fake Shoot mechanic in Patch 12 (ie. “feint”), and in the future we we will also be looking into new dribbling mechanics, inspired by real football moves like stepover, elastico, or body feints - we’re not confirming anything at this stage, but these moves could be cool additions to the game which would provide interesting options for attackers. Naturally, we must be very careful when we introduce these, because we want to avoid overly promoting the “Egoista” dribbling playstyle which some players already tend to gravitate towards.

Tackles

We want to add some granularity to sliding tackles - one option we’re considering would be to  allow players to control the direction in which the ball is deflected when they tackle: by giving a movement direction just before the tackle hits, players would be able to modify the trajectory of the ball after the tackle. We haven’t prototyped this yet, so it’s just an idea at this stage though! Also, we want to improve the resolution of multiple players tackling the ball at close intervals, adding a layer of mind game to tackling decisions. 

Shooting

We’re considering increasing the “Magnus” effect (ie. curve ball) when shooting from the dribble stance. This will allow players to perform “finesse” shots, and overall give more depth to shooting, since players will need to master the effects of the ball in the different stances. 

We are also looking into “extra power” shots - currently it’s almost impossible to score from outside the box, which is a pity because these are some of the most iconic shots of football. Finally, we might make the shot buildup duration a bit smaller when shooting in possession to reinforce ground play (this is more related to “balancing” than to “depth”)

Volleys

We are looking into ways of giving players tools to have more control over their volleys, especially volley push ball - currently, the distance at which the ball is pushed after a volley push ball depends on whether the player was running or sprinting, but we would like to introduce an additional input to allow players to perform “soft touches” (ie. “perfect control”) when giving in the right timing - which can make all the difference in tight situations near the box. 

Also related to volleys, the vertical direction of volley shots is not always consistent, depending on the height of the volley, which prevents players from aiming exactly where they want. This is something we will fix in the coming months, and will also add more precision and depth to volley shots. 

Goalkeeper

Finally, coming back to goalkeeper again, we want to add granularity to the dives: basically the idea would be to have a long range dive, similar to the current range, but which will mostly deflect balls, and a short range dive that mostly catches the ball. We are currently prototyping this, but we first have to finalize the “server validation” architecture update, so this GK update will probably be for September.