EA Sports released its latest title update to FIFA 19 featuring big changes to shooting mechanics of the game. The patch also reduces the effectiveness of higher powered finesse shots, as well as yellow timed shots. In addition, the maximum size of the Timed Finishing Window for green shots will be reduced, along with some other gameplay tweaks. As of January 22, the patch is currently available on PC with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 too follow shortly.

FIFA 19 January Patch

Gameplay:

Made the following changes:

• Reduced the maximum size of the Timed Finishing window for a green timed shot.
  • The impact of this change will scale with a higher impact on shots where the time between the initial button press to take the shot and the button press to perform Timed Finishing is longer.
    • For example, a first time finesse shot where the ball is coming from a long distance away, or when queuing up a shot after a long knock on during a dribble.
• Reduced the effectiveness of yellow timed shots.
  • These shots are now more likely to be impacted by error resulting in potentially less accuracy, ball speed and ball spin.
• Reduced the effectiveness of higher powered finesse shots, both timed and non-timed shots.
  • These shots are now more likely to be impacted by error resulting in potentially less accuracy, ball speed and ball spin.
• Further reduced the likelihood that a shot which was correctly aimed into the net, and that was targeting a location near to the post, would miss the net in a shooting situation where the attacking player is under no defensive pressure and is not off balance.
  • This change builds further on the change that was made in Title Update 3.
• Reduced the speed of the goalkeeper when being controlled by manual movement.
  • The impact of this change will be higher when using manual movement during open play and lower when using manual movement during corner kicks and indirect free kicks.
• Goalkeepers will now maintain a ready posture when being controlled by manual movement.

Addressed the following issues:

• An issue where a timed finesse shot would always have less error than a non-timed finesse shot, even in situations where the timed finesse shot was red or yellow.
  • The level of error reduction for a timed finesse shot is now in line with the level of error reduction for other timed shots.
• The ball speed of a yellow or red timed finesse shot was found to be too high and has been reduced.
• Rarely the goalkeeper was unable to move using manual movement during a corner kick.
• Rarely, in a situation where the goalkeeper thinks that the ball is going to go out of play but didn’t, such as due to a deflection or an opposing player taking control of the ball, the goalkeeper was not reacting properly.
• If an AI Teammate runs into or jumps into the opposing goalkeeper it was possible for it to result in a goal and no called foul.
  • This should now properly result in a foul being called and the goal not being allowed.
    • An AI Teammate is any player on the pitch that is not being controlled by a human, or is not the CPU AI Controlled Player.

FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT):

Addressed the following issues:

• Sometimes the ‘Take Me There’ link for a Squad Building Challenge (SBC) would not take the player to the SBC screen.
  • If this issue occurred, attempting to change tabs in the FUT hub would also not work correctly.
• When completing an SBC with rewards that contained multiple packs of the same type, the SBC Completion Screen was only displaying the name under one of the packs.
• Attempting to list a player on the Transfer Market from the SBC Squad Screen, who had just been purchased off the Transfer Market, would sometimes result in an error.

Career Mode:

Addressed the following issues:

• In Player Career, finishing in first place in your league at the end of the season was not properly awarding the Win The League accomplishment.
• In Manager and Player Career, players being unable to grow their overall rating and instead showing as -1 overall in multiple screens.
• The Emirates FA Cup Final match being scheduled the day before the final match of the Premier League season.
  • This fix will not impact existing Career Mode save files, only new Career Mode save files.

Online Modes:

Made the following changes:

• The fatigue reduction that is applied to a Pro Clubs player when it was being controlled by someone locked to a position has now also been applied to the players when they are being controlled by someone playing on ‘Any’.

Addressed the following issues:

• In Pro Clubs, the Club Squad screen was not displaying the stats for each member of the club on the panel on the left side of the screen.
• Sometimes a Pro Clubs Virtual Pro’s overall rating was incorrect when displayed in the Pro Clubs hub screens.
  • The overall rating that was being shown in a match, including the end of match flow, was correct.
  • The overall rating that was being used during gameplay was also correct, so this was a visual issue only.
  • For players that were impacted by this issue, you could see the overall rating of your Virtual Pro, when displayed in the Pro Clubs hub, be lower than it was prior to the title update.
    • The overall rating used in gameplay and shown during a match should remain the same.

Visual / Presentation:

Made the following changes:

• Updates to the stadium banners and flags for Fulham.

Addressed the following issues:

• Corrected the ad boards that display in an Online Friendlies match when the home team is from Bundesliga 1 or Bundesliga 2.

For more details, check out EA’s official post here.

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