Final Beta Test | Recap and Learnings

Over 1.8 million players joined the pitch during these four intense days, and we wanted to thank you all for trying out the game, sending feedback, bug reports, comments - this is hugely helpful for us. Not everything went well though, and we want to point out right away two things that we should have done better for this Beta.

First of all, we should have sent patch notes prior to the Beta 2 - these past few weeks have been really intense, and we didn’t take the time to prepare patch notes, which was a mistake: we intend to be very transparent regarding the game’s evolution once we’re live, and this is very important so players can understand precisely what has changed, and what are the intentions behind these changes. To clarify this for everyone, at the end of this post we’ve listed the main changes to core gameplay that were done between Beta 1 and Beta 2 - better late than never! Once the game launches, we will be patching/updating it very regularly, and we are committed to sharing precise information regarding changes.  

Second, new issues appeared in this Beta which were not present in Beta 1. These past few weeks, the team has been super busy preparing for console certifications, adding anticheat, and fixing a lot of bugs - and sometimes by fixing bugs you create new ones unfortunately! The main issues that were reported to us were the following: 

• Server crashes: this was fixed live, we fine tuned the density of games per server during the Beta, and by the end of the Beta there were much less crashes where the whole team was booted out of the game. 

• Client crashes: we have identified a couple of causes, one of which was linked to our implementation of anticheat. These issues will be fixed for launch, so the game should be much more stable then. 

• Desynchronization / network issues: obviously, players need decent internet connections to play the game in good conditions, but in some cases, even players with low latency were seeing these problems. This is a critical point of focus for us, our servers are running at 60fps to ensure best quality possible, and we are constantly working on netcode improvements - we have already implemented several server optimizations which should improve network issues. We are also working on another fix to improve desyncs - the worst case being when you’re goalkeeper, make a perfect catch, only to have a goal scored on you because of a conflict with the server. This fix is making good progress, and should be solved for launch. We will be monitoring this extremely closely and aim to keep improving netcode throughout live development. 

• Matchmaking durations: some extremely long matchmaking durations were happening, especially for players with high MMR. We also fixed this live, and by the end of the Beta, the matchmaking durations were much better, with less than 60 seconds of matchmaking on average, even for high ranking players. 
  

From a gameplay perspective, a couple of major issues stood out in the feedback;

• Rainbow flick reactivity: we have made some changes to volley prioritization, to avoid having players juggling the ball of their head by chaining volley lob push balls, which felt like a cheap tactic, and created a balancing issue. The consequence of these changes was that rainbow flicks felt less reactive. We have found different ways to balance the rainblow flick ability, while maintaining a good game feel. 

• M&KB tap aiming: some bugs were present in the Beta build, which prevented players from aiming precisely at 360° using the mouse, and with no deadzone, making tap aiming overly sensitive, and honestly quite painful to use. We have fixed these bugs, and introduced a better sensitivity, so mouse aiming will be vastly improved in the next iteration. At this stage, it was too late to reintroduce WASD aiming, or to allow players to choose in the options, but this will be available in an upcoming patch, since some players may still prefer this input method. 

• Lack of input remapping: unfortunately, we were not able to have remapping available for the Beta. Our priority is M&KB remapping, and this will be available at launch on PC. Gamepad button remapping will be delivered in a patch shortly after launch. More advanced remapping options will also be made available in future patches!

• Other issues include: stuttering at kickoff, goal replay bugs, spectator mode bugs. We are investigating all of these, and if they’re not fixed for launch, they will be soon after! 
  

Finally, we feel it’s important to say that Rematch will not be “finished” when it launches - and like all works of art, maybe it will never be! That being said, we are strongly committed to improving the game constantly after the game launches, and we are preparing for a dense timeline of patches and updates. This will cover many things:

• balancing and tweaking mechanics

• changes to existing features

• new features (both in core gameplay and in meta systems)

• quality of life improvements

• bug fixing

• netcode improvements

• etc 

We will be sharing more information on the plans for the first season in another blog post before the game launches, to share our plans with everyone - although of course, these plans may evolve as we get feedback and suggestions from the community ! Please keep in mind that we are a small team compared to some of the giants making multiplayer games, but we promise our players that we will put in all our efforts to ensure a high frequency of updates, so that the game keeps getting better and better with time. You’ll find patch notes for the Beta 2 version below - thanks again for joining the Beta, and for your support. We hope to see you soon on the pitch! 

Patch Notes : 

Since the last Beta, about 1500 changelists have been submitted to the game engine - big and small, features and bugs, a lot of work has been done, most of it behind the scenes. We can’t list them all here, but we’ve listed below the main changes which have impacted core gameplay, along with some comments and next steps. Please let us know if you have any questions on these! 

Goalkeeper & Dive

New and shorter invulnerability duration for Goalkeepers after receiving passes from teammates (as opposed to intercepting balls from enemies): "Long invulnerability" is 7 seconds, "Short invulnerability" is 2.65 seconds.

Visual Feedback for Invulnerable Goalkeepers: Nets and goalposts now provide clear feedback when a goalkeeper has caught a ball and is invulnerable. 

• Outfield Dive Rework

  • Hitboxes reworked to hit more targets

  • Dive has different dynamics and range depending on whether the player is running/sprinting

  • Dive range slightly buffed in defense mode

The outfield dive is a core feature for defenders and we are going to be working to improve it over the next updates. These changes have made the ability more usable and flexible than in Beta 1, but we still have more impactful changes planned in the future

Defense and Tackle 

• Sliding Tackle Dynamics

  • Sliding tackle movement speed is 5% slower at the beginning of the tackle, and also 5% slower at the end of the animation. 

  • A player getting up from a sliding tackle while sprinting will now gradually accelerate to full sprint speed (V3).

    
    

  Hindering (Body Block)

  • Fix of a bug that deactivated the hindering effect during ability execution 

  • Fix for hindering effect on the goalkeeper in Defense Mode (opponents could go through them)
    

The Hindering effect applies when two players are in contact with each other, and creates the physical contact between them. We have more improvements planned on this feature in the near future.

Gameplay Balance & Interactions

• Push Ball and Volley Push ball 

  • Standardized push ball south dynamic with controlled version: same duration, smoother exit speed (slightly less reactive)

  • Volley lob push ball prioritizes targets further ahead (from 0.3 to 0.4 seconds) to prevent spam while keeping chainable actions: this change will be reverted in launch version

  • Volley aerial push ball corrected: player lands properly behind impact point before redirecting 

  • Stamina cost for push ball increased from 0.35 to 0.375, fix to stamina regeneration to reintroduce a cooldown when stamina was entirely consumed. 

  • Fix for ignoring ball status in Extra Effort Push Ball (less chaotic deflects, better network handling) 

    
    

  Volleys

  • Minimum volley duration increased from 0.3 to 0.33 to allow for better control on tap and shoot power

  • Volley taps at high height are now 10% stronger

    
    

  Shoot Mechanics Update

  • Shot power is no longer influenced by player/ball speed if shot power is very low.

  • Short Tap (A+X or Cross + Square) dynamic tweaked: same distance before the ball stops, but reaches that point faster (the ball slows down more at the end)

    
    

  Standardized Stamina Costs

  • Stamina cost for dash and dribble standardized to 0.75 (previously: dash 1, dribble 0.25). Max stamina value is 10. 

  • Bug fix for stamina depletion and regen cooldown triggers in “out of stamina” state 

 Input & Control Updates

• Mouse & Keyboard Mapping Reworked

  • Default mapping changed because some actions weren’t bound 

  • Modifier input moved from middle mouse after listening to player feedback and to improve overall keyboard input mapping 

• Mapping Presets

  • Two new mapping presets for mice with thumb buttons.

  • Previous default mapping removed, with goal to enable full rebinds in the future 

• New Tap Aiming System

  • Previous system allowed 8 directions via WASD; this was changed to mouse aiming, to offer more granularity for passes - however as mentioned above, this system was bugged and overly sensitive, this will be fixed for launch. 

• Gameplay Options & Communication System

  • More gameplay options added, some options fixed

  • Anti-spam system for in-game communication: after 5 quick communications, blocked for 15 secondsCooldown between two communications reduced from 2 seconds to 0.8 seconds