An arguably erroneous overlay in FUT Champions is seen by many fans as proof of momentum in FC 24. The community is debating – what could be behind it
Is the proof of the so-called momentum in FC 24 finally found? At least that’s what many players believe, having recently spotted a visual anomaly in FUT Champions. During matches, a small message could appear in the top right corner announcing a change in difficulty. Since FUT Champions is not played against the AI, but against real online opponents, this makes little sense at first. Unless EA SPORTS and FC 24 actually influence the course of the game?
Some community members were quick to say that the developer had finally betrayed itself and one of its biggest secrets. EA SPORTS had always emphasized in the past that momentum, scripting & Co. do not exist in the in-house soccer simulations.
eSportsman Corentin ‘Vitality_RocKy’ Chevrey was unsurprised by the first video of the Champions overlay. “We’ve known for years that the script favors one of the two players during the game and that this advantage sometimes flips from one side to the other during the same game,” wrote the French FC pro from Team Vitality and OSC Lille on X (formerly Twitter).
Same as offline display – purely visual bug?
A number of major content creators such as ‘FUTZone’, ‘Nick28T’ and ‘NepentheZ’ also commented on the issue afterwards. The theories focused on the AI of those players or opponents who are not being controlled manually. “That was always the only thing I believed in. The AI has to be or have a difficulty level. Sometimes it just feels different,” said ‘NepentheZ’. Before that, he made it clear once again that he doesn’t actually believe in scripting.
EA SPORTS has not yet publicly commented on the overlays in FUT Champions. However, the most likely explanation seems to be a simple visual bug. The display is identical to the one that appears in offline modes when the difficulty of the opponent AI is automatically adjusted.
Content creator and analyst ‘NealGuides’ rules out any form of scripting and DDA (Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment) for the online environment. In view of the flood of errors in FC 24 to date and the major title updates, he considers it much more realistic that this is just another faux pas. Incidentally, EA SPORTS even had the DDA technology patented in the USA in March 2018. However, its use has so far only been proven offline
‘FIFAUTeam’ talks about measures for “balancing “
The X-account ‘FIFAUTeam’ claims to have been collecting extensive evidence on “balancing” in soccer simulations for years. This is said to include excerpts from the doctoral theses of developers and code passages. So far, there has simply not been enough time to condense all the research results into an article. However, they want to do this “one day”.
However, ‘FIFAUTeam’ also states that this alleged “balancing” has been implemented for the benefit of the players. Whether this alleged mechanism is actually momentum or scripting is up to each fan to decide – it is a question of definition.
