Are you sure it was tweaks? Have you tried playing the prelude again? In the prelude, you are way better than your opponents...
In the actual game, everyone has invisible force fields (or magnets) around them... we bounce off each other or get pulled certain directions based on attributes.
I would really love to experience a game without these just to see how it feels. Maybe it's worse? Maybe there's a good reason for these forcefields? But they definitely do make you feel like you have less control of your movement.