Thank you to everyone who has been playing EA SPORTS UFC 3 and contributing feedback on the gameplay, fighters, and ratings changes you’d like to see happen in game. We take your feedback seriously and have used that information to make key updates. This is it, the biggest gameplay update so far. The number of new animations and features in Gameplay Update #8 is quite large, so let’s skip the preamble and dive right into it.

Finishing the Fight Against the Cage

A long-standing request from the community has been to add the ability to knock your opponent down with their back to the Octagon cage, going into a seated position where you can finish the fight. Adding such a feature is very animation intensive, but thanks to a recent mocap shoot, we finally have the content to support this feature and add it to the game.

&amp;amp;nbsp;

via GIPHY

As of this Gameplay Update, any time you knock your opponent down with their back close to the cage they will fall into a new Finish the Fight position. This will happen regardless of the severity of the knockdown, including Alert or Active Knockdowns.

&amp;nbsp;

via GIPHY

From this new position the attacker can try to finish the fight, and the defending fighter has to escape in time in order to survive. If they do escape, the fighters end up in over/under against the cage.



The distance to the cage required for this to happen depends on the type of strike that lands to cause the knockdown. For straight trajectory strikes, the distance can be quite a bit further away, but for any other strike the distance requirements are a lot tighter.

Active Knockdowns

Many players expressed frustration at the lack of attack options available when their opponent was getting up from an Active Knockdown. They felt like a spectator unable to do what they wanted, which was to continue to pressure their opponent as they tried to get to their feet.



On the flip side, many players didn’t like the fact that they had no control over whether or not to get up after an Active Knockdown. Grapplers, for example, would much rather stay on their back and allow their head health to regenerate fully before getting back to their feet.



Once again, our recent mocap shoot gave us the opportunity to capture much-needed content to be able to support the changes players were asking for.



Now when you knock your opponent into an Active Knockdown, simply pressing towards your opponent with the left stick while they are trying to get up will give you an opportunity to interact with them in several different ways.

&nbsp;

via GIPHY

If your opponent still has relatively high head health, and your fighter has the single collar whip, you’ll be able to grab them as they get up and put them into the single-under grappling position for the opportunity to land a knee to the head or the body.

&nbsp;

via GIPHY

If your fighter doesn’t have the single-collar whip, or your opponent has suffered previous head damage in the fight, pressing towards them will allow you to push them back down to the ground into the butt-scoot position. From there, you can dive into their guard or walk forward into the feet-on-hips position.

If their back is close to the cage when you go to push them, they’ll be pushed into the new seated-against-the- cage position discussed above. This will give you the opportunity to finish the fight or gain over/under position against the cage.

&nbsp;

via GIPHY

In addition, if your fighter is knocked into an Active Knockdown you can now choose to stay on the ground by holding down on the right stick. Doing so avoids the single-under position altogether and prevents your opponent from pushing you into the cage. Being aware of what threats are present will be important in deciding whether to stay down or get up.

Improvements to Footwork

In an effort to provide players with more defensive options, we’ve put considerable effort into improving the responsiveness of lunging after a strike, striking after lunging, lunging after head movement, and chaining lunges together.



via GIPHY

This improved responsiveness will allow players to get much more creative on defense, setting up counter opportunities that didn’t exist before. In addition, we’ve added the ability to block while lunging. With minor lunges, you can block while lunging in any direction. If you lunge into a strike, however, you will take extra block damage.



via GIPHY

When performing a major lunge, you can only block in the direction you’re lunging, while back lunges do not allow blocking. If you lunge into a strike while blocking and performing a major lunge, you will do considerable block damage and 50% damage bleed through, however you will negate the effects of vulnerability. This could be a good option to get out of trouble, at the expense of long term block damage.



The big drawback to blocking while lunging is that you cannot strike quickly out of the lunge if you blocked at any time during the lunge. This makes blocking while lunging a purely defensive tactic. In addition to these control changes, we’ve added significant changes to how successful lunges impact the fighter whose strike was evaded. Prior to this content update, a successful lunge would evade the strike, but the striker would continue to track the opponent and still be at an angle and range to continue to attack once the strike was complete.



After this Gameplay Update, the striker will no longer track if the defensive fighter lunges to the outside of the opponent’s strike, or if the defensive fighter evades any forward moving strike with a major lunge.

via GIPHY

By removing the tracking on the strike, the defensive fighter will create a significant angle on their opponent as they pass by. This allows the defensive player to create space, regain control of the octagon, or set up some devastating counters.

via GIPHY