I missed most of the FG debate but while making a comparison of pre-patch and post-patch meters yesterday, I came to the realization that I don't think this patch really did anything to make field goals easier despite making the meter bigger. Here's pre-patch vs. post-patch:
The black part is obviously bigger but from the
testing on KAC I did in this thread which was pre-patch, I found out that kicks reacted the same whether or not the meter was set in the black area or the light blue area meaning there was virtually no penalty in accuracy unless you completely missed the meter. The one area I couldn't really test was in the weather where there might in-fact be a penalty, but in normal conditions (Clear, with or without wind) there was no noticeable penalty. You can see that below.
60-Yard FG's with 60 KAC kicker:
Just looking at the pre-patch vs. post-patch meter, the black part is noticeably bigger while the light blue part is almost the same to the point where it's hard to tell if it is any bigger at all. I'm leaning towards it being a slight bit bigger but not by much and maybe on shorter FG's it is much bigger but that's the only comparison I had. I did immediately notice the larger area on my first KO post-patch so that could very well be the case as well and if it is then FG's should definitely be easier because of this.
I guess my point is that if I could go in pre-patch and make 299 out of 300 FG's from varying distances with a kicker rated so much worse than every kicker in the game, it makes it hard to justify to me that there is such a huge need to make it easier. Obviously online is a completely different beast in itself and likely the driving force in why this decision was made. Is it a huge deal? Of course not, they're field goals. But as an offline player, it sucks knowing I can still make any kick at any time without any worries, especially when that's exactly what they wanted to prevent.