UFC 6 Gameplay Update: What's Next

We're five months post-launch with UFC 6, and we would like to provide an update on what the EA SPORTS UFC team is focusing on delivering for gameplay over the next few months.

To start, we've been reading your feedback and want to thank you for helping us make UFC 6 the best MMA game it can be. The input we’ve received so far has been invaluable in guiding our focus toward the right gameplay improvements. Please keep the discussions and suggestions coming so we can continue to elevate your gameplay experience.

On that note, we're happy to share a new way for you to get involved and share your feedback directly with us! The UFC 6 Feedback Portal is now live, giving you a dedicated place to submit issues and feedback straight to our team. The feedback you share will directly assist us as we prioritize areas for improvement. To submit feedback please go to: https://go.ea.com/ufc_feedbackportal, select the corresponding feature and sub-feature, and send your feedback. For anything gameplay-related, a video is always helpful in understanding the feedback better.

As we look to roll out updates over the next few months, our priority is delivering thoroughly tested and validated improvements. Today, we’re sharing an early preview of what the gameplay portion of our upcoming roadmap contains. Looking ahead, the full roadmap will make it easy to see 1) if an issue is being tracked, and 2) when it is targeted to be fixed.

The two main categories of the gameplay experience we're targeting are:

1. Gameplay Balance & Exploits

• Focusing on issues directly tied to meta balance and mechanical exploits. Our goal is to ensure there are no unintended tactics that give players an unfair advantage, while keeping the core combat loop fair, competitive, and balanced across fighting styles.

2. Gameplay Readability & Responsiveness

• Readability is about clearly seeing the action, and responsiveness is about trusting that your controller inputs play out in-game. These focus on unresponsive inputs, animation clarity, camera framing, and visual effects (VFX). Our goal is to ensure exchanges feel consistent, predictable, and fair.

Below, we’ll talk about the issues we have tracked so far

Gameplay Balance & Exploits: Issues associated with gameplay balance and exploits.

Hit Detection

• Ghost Hits
  • Solving ghost hit issues - instances where strikes are treated as landed, even though visually they missed - has been among our top priorities throughout patches to date. Unfortunately, they can have different causes, which makes them challenging to eradicate. Our next fix is tied to a specific kick animation. We will continue to monitor reports and dedicate time to polish our hit detection, as it is one of the most important foundations of fighting games.
• Lack of Hit Animations
  • Some attacks can animate as if they missed the opponent, even when they hit. These still deal damage and cause hit reactions, but slip across the opponent and look like they’re phasing through. We are investigating the underlying cause of this visual bug.

Fairness of the Damage System

• Knockdowns
  • A few patches ago, we increased how much damage accumulates against a fighter's resistance to health events for the head and legs. While that reduced the number of knockdowns, we are still receiving feedback that there are too many. Therefore, we plan to tune this further so that fewer stuns and knockdowns are needed to result in a knockout—increasing the number of fight-ending KOs as opposed to continued knockdowns.
  • We agree that such excessive survivability is an issue, especially because it can give a fighter a chance at a comeback, even though they should have already lost. This is an issue with the fairness of the damage system.
• Inconsistent diving punches
  • We are also aware of and working on a bug that causes a delay in diving punches and can lead to knockdown victims getting up before the aggressor can dive. These unfortunate moments can easily swing the result of a fight and are a high priority for us.
• Critical Stuns - ‘The death rock’
  • There are multiple levels of head stuns. The most severe one is quite rare, as a hit must be hard enough to cross a very high damage threshold, but not enough to deplete the health and cause a knockdown. Although this most severe stun should reasonably have gameplay consequences, the current consequences are excessive.
  • These Critical Stuns last much longer than regular ones. They also prevent lunges. We plan to shorten their duration to a point where they still last longer than standard stuns, but not by so much. We will also lift the prohibition of lunging while suffering from them. These changes should make Critical Stuns feel less overwhelming and fairer.

Head Movement

• Sway Punch Speed
  • Punches from sways are slightly faster than intended. Their speed will be adjusted. We will, however, keep in mind they must remain fast enough to feel responsive and be used effectively as counters against flurries.
• Sway Punch Range
  • Fighters can significantly warp toward the opponent to land their punches from sways, which, as stated above, are also a bit too fast. These factors combine into granting these strikes way too much chasing potential, especially to overwhelm hurt opponents trying to retreat.
• Unintended Parries and Lunges
  • Using blocking sways can sometimes result in a Parry, even though there was no input for it. A similar bug can result in a minor lunge instead. We have been working on these bugs for some time and it continues to remain a high priority fix for us.
• Warping from Evasion
  • In rare cases, fighters can warp away from each other when strikes are evaded by head movement, either from regular sways or from the built-in evasions that some strikes have. This issue is currently being investigated.

Submissions

• Excessive Stamina Drain
  • Denying a faked Rear-Naked Choke (RNC) finish in a specific scenario results in excessive stamina drain for the defender. This can make this submission more powerful than intended and is one of our highest priority grappling issues.

Gameplay Readability: Issues tied to themes of lack of or unresponsive input, or readability of character animations

Input Responsiveness

• Hanging Transitions
  • Certain ground transitions take longer than normal to conclude. Our investigations have led to an understanding of this issue. It is tied to how the animations are loaded. However, the fix is complex and will require extensive testing. Although the issue can also affect offline play, it is aggravated further by online latency. We will keep you updated on our progress.
• Unresponsive Clinch Grappling
  • We have a few instances of fighters being unable to act quickly after some clinch entries, transitions or denials. This typically looks like fighters are walking longer than necessary before players can take further action. Aside from the responsiveness issue itself, this can subtly affect balance by allowing fighters to stall for longer or gain more octagon control than they should. As such, this cluster of tuning issues are also a high priority for us.

Camera Behavior

• Grappling Camera Bugs
  • In previous patches we have fixed several camera bugs. The most notable remaining issues are the excessive zoom and camera spin after single legs and the postured up mount armbar entry.

Impact Visual Effects (VFX)

• Grappling Actions
  • Impact VFX can appear when fighters connect with grappling actions, like clinch entries and takedowns. This is not the intended behavior.
• Camera Dependency
  • The Impact VFX can occur behind the fighter, in relation to the camera. This can undermine its purpose of providing the players with feedback regarding whether strikes have landed, as VFX in front of the fighters will appear clearly, whereas ones behind the fighters might be obscured. We are investigating possible solutions to this inconsistency in feedback.

We hope this gives you insight into gameplay improvements we’re focusing on in the coming months. If you have thoughts or feedback on what we’ve discussed above, please go to the UFC 6 Feedback Portal to share them with us.

Finally, looking ahead to next month, we'll be sharing a roadmap that outlines what’s coming to UFC 6. The roadmap will cover the gameplay pillars outlined above as well as planned updates across other areas of the game, including Fighters. Until then, we'll share all specific tuning details and patch notes with each patch release blog. Thank you for playing and continuing to share your feedback!

— The UFC 6 Team