EA Sports is trying to improve responsiveness in FIFA 20

EA Sports has announced that it is planning to introduce an in-game button overlay for some FIFA 20 players as part of its efforts to improve the game’s responsiveness.

FIFA 20 has received criticism from its community for its unresponsiveness during online matches, with players feeling that there’s a noticeable delay between when they press the button and when their desired action happens on screen. 

In a recent Pitch Notes article published to the EA site, the developer has described its “live study methodology” whereby, following internal testing, it tests potential changes with a small number of real players in order to garner feedback and real-world data.

Live studies

The upcoming in-game button overlay is part of this and is intended to measure the real-world impact of a “small backend change related to button responsiveness”. 

According to EA, in the coming weeks a select number of players will see the overlay (pictured below) added to the top right-hand corner of their game, though it notes that the image depicts an in-progress view which is subject to change. 

EA explains that this button will allow players to see their inputs in real-time as well as “the impact the connection with the data center has on those inputs.” The hope is that this will help EA analyze matches more efficiently as, it says, it “can get clips of players sharing their experience and raw input.” 

EA plans to share its findings from the study at some point in the future, though it points out that “like any real-world study”, it can take time to get “actionable results”. That means we don’t know exactly when we’ll find out what the developer’s next steps are but given the short lifecycle of FIFA titles and the fact that, based on previous release patterns, late 2020 is highly likely to herald the release of FIFA 21 we imagine players are hoping to see improvements sooner rather than later.

EA stresses in the article that this is just one part of its efforts to tackle connectivity and responsiveness issues in the game and that as progress is made it may roll out more changes using these live studies. 

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