The newest patch is out for EA Sports UFC, and it once again addresses a lot of gameplay issues and requests while adding new fighters. For all the flak EA takes these days, I certainly do have to give them credit for being so open to feedback when it comes to their UFC product, and their responsiveness to acting on said feedback is equally commendable. For those keeping score, this is the fifth patch that EA has released for the game, and there have been 11 fighters added via free DLC. Let’s hope this continues, as the company is certainly building some good will with this brand, thanks to a proactive and generous approach.

The newest fighters this time out are Hector Lombard at welterweight and Michael Chiesa and Diego Sanchez at lightweight. Lombard sports a 92 overall rating, and this is supported by a 93 for striking, 94 in grappling and 87 in submissions. The judoka has some pretty good perks, too, including “Heavy Handed” to land some crazy strikes and then “Crushing Presence,” “Infinite Core” and “Force of Nature” to maintain and drain stamina once things hit the ground. Chiesa’s 90 overall comes from an 87 in striking, 92 in grappling and 95 in submissions. He has the “Swing for the Fences” perk, causing health events on opponents, as well as “Workhorse” and “Force of Nature,” bolstering his ground transitions and stamina. Sanchez’s ratings seem appropriate for this stage of his career, with an 89 overall based on 88’s for all three categories. His perks are “Weathering Storms,” which helps him survive health events, and “Workhorse” and “Sinister Gates,” allowing him to transition like a beast on the ground.

In terms of gameplay tuning, EA did quite a bit. Let’s take a look….

Ground Stamina Regen and Get-up Spam

To prevent users from spamming get-up attempts from the bottom, EA has limited the amount of stamina regeneration the bottom fighter will get when they attempt this. Before it was kind of a pain, as the fighter in mount, for instance, wasn’t gaining stamina when they were denying a user on the bottom from getting up. EA added this stamina delay for “apex” positions, such as mount, backmount, crucifix and rubber guard. The idea is to keep an offensive player transitioning into a dominant position, and once he/she is there, they can have an advantage when denying escape attempts. I’ve liked what I’ve seen of this in practice so far, and it further improves the ground game. Transition denials remain untouched for stamina penalty, which is good, as some ground fighters would be almost unstoppable if they put that there too.
 

Takedown Spam

Takedown and clinch denials will now penalize the attacking player who was denied, freezing their stamina regeneration while allowing the blocker to recover stamina. This will hopefully minimize some of the constant takedown attempts that some users try once they get you backing up, and it gives someone an out who successfully denies a takedown, as they can now regain some stamina while the other person freezes for a second.

Leg Kick Tuning

There has supposedly been some tuning to leg kick strike combos, as the window for them has been altered to allow for more interruption and less spam. I’d say my experience has still been that leg kicks are a bit too effective, but I think the devs are heading in the right direction. I’ll admit that I still use leg kicks as a good setup for further striking, but lots of users have grown wily to this sort of initial salvo. If anything, they still serve as a meaningful range finder, but the speed and successiveness of them has been lessened.

Anti–Strike Spam Measures

EA seemed really high on its new combo system, and I agree that it has added some much-needed fluidity and speed to the striking. The issue with this system, and some other areas of the gameplay, is that spam is still a possibility. Users have been enjoying success with repeated hooks once they have you in a slightly vulnerable spot, and this new update looks to curtail that.

The first thing EA did was implement a strike-specific combo limit. For hooks, the limit is four. Once you exceed this, a stamina and slowness penalty will be applied to subsequent strikes of the same type. The idea is to prevent users from just spamming the same strike type over and over. Even better, this allowed EA to address some of the goofier strikes that have been an issue, including jumping and spinning strikes. Those now have a combo limit of one. This means that multiple spinning kicks and jumping attacks in a row are much less effective than before, and they are open to larger counter shots.

There is also a global combo limit on any type of strike combination, and this limit is ten strikes. This means that users will have to be aware of how many strikes they’ve thrown and plan accordingly. This works for both offense and defense, as the defensive fighter might be waiting on either a strike limit or global limit in order to fire back. The ability to “live tune” these amounts means EA can probably play with these numbers going forward.

Stopping Power

Other than the stamina penalty on the previously mentioned combo limits creating bigger countering opportunities, EA didn’t implement any revamped stopping power in this update. They felt the change was too big for the current gameplay incarnation. I certainly am open to see how this combo system impacts the countering, but I’m also looking for some basic counters to have more of a devastating impact than they currently do. It’s a work in progress, I guess.

Other Changes

As far as other changes, EA removed a glitch where a user would get stuck in a guillotine defense when they had not inputted that command. Also, there was a clinch break/transition denial that users could do by spamming the stick both ways, and that’s now been removed. Finally, Gegard Mousasi can now be selected for fights at middleweight.

It’s really cool to see EA implement such deep and meaningful changes to the gameplay systems, and the ability to live tune some of these thresholds and under-the-hood ratings is also helpful. It means they can respond quicker to feedback, even though they’ve already done a pretty good job at doing so. The added fighters continue to be a welcome sight as well, so hopefully that continues. With this game likely to head into EA Access during the next few months, it’s good that the dev team continues to put in the effort on this franchise, even though it has limited online numbers.