Hello EA SPORTS UFC fans!
The newest patch (3.0) for EA SPORTS UFC 4 is here! This is the first content heavy patch and we have some major updates to the game including new fighters, vanity, menu options, and gameplay changes. As always, the full patch notes can be found at the bottom of this article.
Fan favorites Calvin Kattar and Pedro Munhoz make their official entrance to the digital octagon. Kattar, the sixth ranked featherweight, will have a 4 star rating thanks to his elite boxing skills. Munoz, the sixth ranked bantamweight, boasts a 4.5 star rating due to his well rounded skill set. Additionally, we've added existing fighters to new weight classes, most notably Jon Jones to the heavyweight division.
Venue select will now be an option when inviting a friend to an online match. This will allow you to play in the arena of your choosing including the Kumite and the Backyard arenas. The main menu has been changed to include a new category "Learn" that will house the newly updated practice mode, training manual, and tutorials. The practice mode HUD now includes all new information regarding various types of damage readouts. Additionally, the stamina HUD has been improved to be more visible and call out warning for low stamina.
Gameplay has received a ton of changes and fixes to areas that we have seen lots of community feedback. The last patch made some significant changes to the balance of ground and pound and this patch includes more important fixes relating to GnP defense. Stamina has been one of the largest areas of community feedback and we've included some changes that will help to balance the abundance of stamina. Head damage now causes a small stamina drain and power attributes now have a greater effect on the damage and stamina drain for specific moves. Major changes to stamina can have wide reaching impacts to all areas of gameplay so we will be monitoring the changes and will make additional tuning changes if needed. Additionally, we've given sways and slip counters a significant buff that will allow users to punish strike spammers more effectively.
Clinch spam has been another major area of feedback from the community and in the last patch we made a small update to increase the vulnerability of a fighter attempting a clinch entry. While that change has helped, it was not as impactful as we would have liked and we've made some more adjustments to the clinch in this patch. Most notably we've tuned the clinch entry and exit stamina drain. Escaping the clinch will now have a much smaller stamina drain for the defending fighter - which should discourage those fighters who spam clinch for the purpose of draining stamina. We also tuned striking within the clinch including an unintended issue allowing fighters to land multiple strikes on an opponent as they are escaping the clinch. We will continue to monitor community feedback regarding the clinch for additional tuning needs.
Submissions were tuned to allow a greater penalty for moving too fast on offense or defense. Previously on choke submissions, users were able to flick or spin their bar haphazardly without incurring a major penalty in the form of the maximum size of their bar. The new change has increased the maximum size that a bar can grow by moving too fast. Additionally, we've done some tuning to buff the strength levels of certain submissions that were slightly underpowered and we've decreased the strength level of guillotines from the headlock. These changes should allow submissions to become more nuanced and skill based.
Online world championships received some much-needed updates to matchmaking. We have also removed the ability to see your opponent's gamertag and division points before the match starts to prevent users from dodging opponents. Additionally, we have tuned matchmaking to improve the quality of matches. These changes will allow for much more competitive leaderboards as well as fix some issues with point attrition.
We are still working on many other areas of community feedback and we have more changes planned for future patches. Thank you for your continued support and feedback to help improve EA SPORTS UFC 4!