FC 26 Developer EA Sports actually visited the home of content creators to test their internet connection and reveal the real reason for input latency
Blog Andrew Joseph 05 Aug , 2025 0
If you play FC 25 online, you may experience input delays, and a second between pressing a button and executing an on-screen pass or shooting, which is usually the difference between winning and losing.
Like any Twitch FPS or perfect fighting game, EA's football simulation relies on the actions taken by its characters as responsive as possible to make the venue feel fair. Developers know this, so this often evaluated focus was addressed between the final team community before FC 26 was launched.
“We do need to understand the root of the problem,” senior producer Sam Rivera told IGN. “We work with professional players, we gather data from players around the world to try to understand the problem, but we don't want to just listen to feedback. We want to experience input delays. So we also headed to Europe to meet Pro Players in their esports studio. We actually met with content creators in their homes, and we learned a lot.”
Through this research, EA found that these problems are numerous on the player and developer side of the pipeline. On the player side, there are things you can do to minimize the chance of delays occurring. This may seem obvious to some, but connecting to the Internet via an Ethernet cable is more stable than Wi-Fi.
“If you play on Wi-Fi, you may drop jitter and the packaging is lost, which can create a very delayed experience,” Rivera explained. “We know that over 50% of FC players are playing on Wi-Fi, so we recommend (with Ethernet if possible). Then, something like TV settings. If you play outside of game mode on a normal TV, you can get a range between 20 and 100 milliseconds between 20 and 100 milliseconds, because your experience delays your connection, so you delay your connection because you delay your connection. In a high quality or good connection, or when playing offline?”
Yes, input latency is not a strictly Internet-based issue. As players also reported this phenomenon during offline games, this led Rivera and the team to look at the construction of the game itself to see what caused the problem:
“First of all, the animation has limited coverage. Sometimes we ask for operations that are difficult to perform. So if there is a very fast ball that I want to pass back for a long time, it is very difficult, sometimes without animation. So, like in real life, it is difficult to perform, but it is difficult for us to capture these animations.
“The next one is the animation system box,” Rivera said. “Our animation system is perhaps one of the most complex systems in the game, and it has to solve every request, every shot, every pass, what animations to consider, the opponent’s position, how the ball moves, and all of that.
“Sometimes there may be a bug. For example, you might want to shoot a shot right away, but then the system might decide to delay the shot slightly, rather than using a strong foot instead of an earlier than a footstep, but with a weaker foot. So this happens often, but it happens often. But when you play 20 games on the weekend, you go through a few times. You go through a few times. You go through these games.
Then, the improvement in FC 26 is in progress, and from the short time I played it, it does feel obviously smooth and responsive – the new single-frame pass and lens are the real highlights. But will input delay become a completely eliminated issue?
Rivera replied, “Well, it depends.” “There are a lot of factors that cause input delays. Sometimes the internal factors are internal and sometimes external. So, there is no simple solution to try to help with their setup, making sure everyone has the right setup. But at least we think it’s a huge opportunity. There’s a great opportunity there. There’s a good opportunity there. We’ve done a good move in FC 26 to create a more responsive game.
Simon Cardy is a senior editor at IGN who can mostly find feeling desperate in the Open World Olympics, indulging in Korean cinemas, or in Tottenham and the New York Jets. Follow him in Bluesky @cardy.bsky.social.