Hey EA SPORTS UFC fans,
Thank you for playing the closed beta! As we’ve adapted to new work environments and extraordinary circumstances to develop games from home, a beta has been more critical for us this year than ever before.
One of the biggest challenges we’ve had to face is our ability to stress test servers and QA for bugs and tuning at large scale. The closed beta has enabled us to ensure we launch UFC 4 with the highest degree of stability and polish possible. That wouldn’t be possible without your help.
We’re also reading and listening to your feedback. It’s impossible for us to reply to all of it directly across forums and social platforms, but we hear you and appreciate the passion and constructive feedback for us to make this the best EA SPORTS UFC yet.
A lot of feedback we’ve seen so far is centered on gameplay controls and tuning. One of our goals this year was to address long-standing community feedback to improve the grappling, clinch, submission systems, and takedown controls; implementing more user-control and responsiveness, as well as the ability to combine grappling with seamless strikes as so many UFC fighters do in real-world MMA.
The challenge we faced in doing so was simple: the lack of available button inputs remaining on the controller. With UFC 3, adding RPM Tech to the stand-up game allowed players a great deal of control over their movement and striking, but it came at the cost of complexity in the controls and using more button combinations. The result was that players struggled with the new controls at first, but overwhelmingly became advocates for them as they surpassed the 4-5 hours-of-play milestone and became more comfortable with complexity.
In UFC 4, we solved for the challenge of lack of available button inputs by implementing a tap vs tap-and-hold mechanic to strikes, clinch and grappling. This allows us to increase the depth of control and fluidity, but - not unlike UFC 3 - it comes at the cost of another learning curve to adapt to the new control scheme.
Here’s some good news to look forward to on that topic:
We’ll be ending the closed beta tonight at midnight (12:00 am PST). Thank you again for your continued support and we can’t wait for you to play more UFC 4 on August 14.
Check in on the official UFC 4 website for more info and deep-dive looks on all the gameplay features, new modes, and more. We’ll be rolling out even more details about the changes and features coming to gameplay on July 21.
- The EA SPORTS UFC Team
Thank you for playing the closed beta! As we’ve adapted to new work environments and extraordinary circumstances to develop games from home, a beta has been more critical for us this year than ever before.
One of the biggest challenges we’ve had to face is our ability to stress test servers and QA for bugs and tuning at large scale. The closed beta has enabled us to ensure we launch UFC 4 with the highest degree of stability and polish possible. That wouldn’t be possible without your help.
We’re also reading and listening to your feedback. It’s impossible for us to reply to all of it directly across forums and social platforms, but we hear you and appreciate the passion and constructive feedback for us to make this the best EA SPORTS UFC yet.
A lot of feedback we’ve seen so far is centered on gameplay controls and tuning. One of our goals this year was to address long-standing community feedback to improve the grappling, clinch, submission systems, and takedown controls; implementing more user-control and responsiveness, as well as the ability to combine grappling with seamless strikes as so many UFC fighters do in real-world MMA.
The challenge we faced in doing so was simple: the lack of available button inputs remaining on the controller. With UFC 3, adding RPM Tech to the stand-up game allowed players a great deal of control over their movement and striking, but it came at the cost of complexity in the controls and using more button combinations. The result was that players struggled with the new controls at first, but overwhelmingly became advocates for them as they surpassed the 4-5 hours-of-play milestone and became more comfortable with complexity.
In UFC 4, we solved for the challenge of lack of available button inputs by implementing a tap vs tap-and-hold mechanic to strikes, clinch and grappling. This allows us to increase the depth of control and fluidity, but - not unlike UFC 3 - it comes at the cost of another learning curve to adapt to the new control scheme.
Here’s some good news to look forward to on that topic:
- In just two days, we’ve received an astounding amount of data and feedback to help improve this system and are already hard at work to implement it for launch. We can’t say it enough: thank you! We’ve learned more about the mechanics and tuning from one technical test than we’ve been able to in months of work-from-home testing. This is incredibly valuable and will make the game better in a variety of ways.
- The full game will include much better onboarding tutorials for the new controls and all of the new gameplay features in UFC 4. The closed beta was purely a gameplay technical test and, unfortunately, we weren’t able to include the menu tutorials or the Career Mode onboarding into the beta build. For the final product at launch, getting used to these new controls to take full advantage of the features should be much more seamless and enjoyable.
- For those of you that try the new ground game controls and decide that it’s not for you, the menus provide the option to switch back to UFC 3 legacy controls at any time.
- Last, but not least, the beta is just a small window into the final game. We can’t wait for you to try out the new modes like Blitz Battles, the new Career Mode, the Connected Fighter Profile for customized fighters, and all the other great new features in UFC 4.
We’ll be ending the closed beta tonight at midnight (12:00 am PST). Thank you again for your continued support and we can’t wait for you to play more UFC 4 on August 14.
Check in on the official UFC 4 website for more info and deep-dive looks on all the gameplay features, new modes, and more. We’ll be rolling out even more details about the changes and features coming to gameplay on July 21.
- The EA SPORTS UFC Team
Comment