UFC 4 Patch Notes (5.0)

Hello EA SPORTS UFC fans!

Patch 5.0 is officially live for EA SPORTS UFC 4 so make sure to download the new update! This month there are some exciting updates to gameplay as well as the addition of two new licensed UFC fighters, rising superstar Khamzat Chimaev and Megan Anderson. The update also includes new hairstyles for created fighters, various fighter likeness updates, and some highly requested changes to gameplay! As always the full patch notes can be found at the bottom of this article.

An extremely popular request from the community, Khamzat Chimaev enters the digital octagon as a 4-star overall in the welterweight division. Coming off a convincing win in September, Chimaev boasts a 4.5-star rating for both grappling and health and 4-stars for striking.

Fan favorite Megan Anderson will join the Women’s Bantamweight division in EA SPORTS UFC 4 as a 4-star overall fighter. Anderson who fights in the UFC Women’s Featherweight division will be added to the Women’s Bantamweight division due to a scarcity of fighters in that division. As a well-rounded fighter, Anderson has a 4-star rating for grappling, striking, and health.

Gameplay received multiple enhancements and improvements in this patch with the most notable areas being striking stamina, submissions, practice mode, and movesets.

Changes to striking stamina have been one of the top requests from the community and there are multiple changes in this patch that will help to address those requests. We’ve increased the permanent stamina tax on long combos by increasing the stamina cost of the third strike and the ones beyond. The meta is currently favoring pressure-boxing, with long combos to constantly break the opponent's block. This change should help to mitigate the effectiveness of this strategy by making the long block-breaking combos more tiring to throw and will be most noticeable in long stand-up fights.

Additionally, we’ve made some changes to slips and slip counters that will add additional balance to the stand-up striking game. We’ve re-added the evasion stamina tax for blocking slips, which is now equal to 75% of the tax from regular slips. When a strike is missed it costs additional stamina, and when the strike also happens to be evaded by the opponent it costs even more. Previously, we had removed the evasion tax for blocking slips with the intent to reduce their effectiveness in comparison to naked slips but this ended up favoring offense too much. The net outcome of this change will be that when you use blocking slips to evade, your opponent will lose more stamina than before the patch. We also fixed a bug that was affecting some slip counters causing them to lack the intended stopping power. Now slips that evade a strike are correctly tracked and will allow punches thrown from them to have the proper stopping power. Both of these changes should make counter fighting much more effective and help against the pressure-boxing meta.

Submissions received a change that allows submission strength to have an effect on the size of the submission mini-game wedges. Previously, even submissions with very high strength levels were hard to finish without a big set-up because the submission strength level only affected the progress made when the wedges were overlapping. This did not help in cases where overlapping the wedges was too difficult because of the wedge sizes. Now, submission strength will also affect the wedges sizes, thereby making stronger submissions more dangerous, even if the stamina is close to even. Beware of giving your back!

Practice mode and various areas of AI received some nice quality of life updates. In practice mode, there are now ways to start in most of the available clinch positions, which helps to alleviate issues that players were having getting into some of the more tricky positions that required two controllers. There are also some changes to allow for more grappling starting positions as well as tuning for the training partner in certain situations. We’ve improved many of the AI’s tendencies following the fix of a bug that was affecting things like takedown rates, clinch rates, submission rates, and getups. Following the fix, the AI should now behave much closer to the real style of the intended fighter.

You can find a full list of all the additional updates to gameplay below including the specific fighter moveset updates. Thank you for continuing to support EA SPORTS UFC 4 and we look forward to sharing more exciting updates in the near future!

Patch 5.0 Full Notes

Major Updates:

• Added 2 new fighters Khamzat Chimaev and Megan Anderson.
• Added new items to Create a Fighter which include new hairstyles and clothing items.
• Various fighter likeness updates. Aljamain Sterling, Michael Chiesa, Max Holloway, Tim Elliott, Colby Covington, and Germaine de Randamie all have been updated.
  • Aljamain Sterling - updated hair and beard.
  • Michael Chiesa - updated beard and body.
  • Max Holloway - updated hair and beard.
  • Jan Blachowicz - updated shorts.
  • Tim Elliot - updated hair and beard.
  • Germaine de Randamie - updated body.
  • Colby Covington - updated body.

Gameplay Updates

• Increased permanent stamina tax on long combos. The third strike and the ones beyond will cost slightly more.
• Fixed a bug with slip counters stopping power. 
• Applied evasion tax from blocking slips, at 75% of the tax from regular slips.
• Made it so submission strength has an effect on the size of the wedges.
  • This should result in more dangerous submissions from advanced positions, even when the attacker doesn’t have a sizable stamina advantage.
• Added scrambles to tower takedowns.
  • Tower Takedowns can now be scrambled by the defender, resulting in a roll to immediately get up. This solves a previous issue where some of these takedowns ended up being too hard to defend because they had to be denied early/could not be denied late (scrambled).
• Practice Mode - Sustained sways can now be recorded with strike recording.
• Practice Mode - Stopped training partner in strike recording from denying transitions and submissions.
• Practice Mode - Added more grappling starting positions.
• Practice Mode - Added option to start in the clinch or catch kick states.
• Practice Mode - Add new HUD displaying the number of recordings in strike recording mode.
• Added new custom Fighter AIs and made them available in Custom Fight Now.
• Addressed various animation issues with transitions.
• Added scramble to thai clinch circling trips.
• Fixed inconsistencies with defender’s stamina drain from scrambles.
• Tuned submission offense attribute effectiveness.
• Tuned stamina cost for ground and pound.
• Tuned AI clinch behavior.
• Tuned AI catch kick behavior.
• Fixed rare instances of undue stance switches when exiting the clinch.
• Fixed an issue where single leg takedowns during an uppercut ended in back clinch.
• Fixed an issue with the grapple hud remaining on screen.
• Updated movesets for various fighters.
  • Alexander Volkov
    • Back Uppercut Level 2 to Level 4
    • Back Front Kick Level 3 to Level 4
  • Anderson Silva
    • Added Lead Side Kick Body Level 2
  • Anthony Pettis
    • Lead Roundhouse Level 2 to Level 4
    • Lead Roundhouse Body Level 2 to Level 3
  • Bobby Green
    • Back Front Kick Body Level 2 to Level 3
    • Added Lead Side Kick to Leg Level 3
  • Damian Maia
    • Leg Locks Level 1 to Level 3
  • Rafael Dos Anjos
    • Boxing Combos Level 2 to Level 3
    • Back Hook Level 2 to Level 3
    • Back Hook Body Level 2 to Level 3
    • Lead Overhand Level 2 to Level 3
    • Added Leg Locks Level 3
  • Stefan Struve
    • Added Lead Side Kick Body Level 2
  • Tom Breese
    • Single Leg Level 1 to Level 2
    • Added Lead and Back Elbow Level 2
  • Uriah Hall
    • Lead Leg Kick Level 2 to Level 3
    • Lead Roundhouse Level 2 to Level 3
    • Back Spinning Heel Kick Level 4 to Level 5
    • Lead Hook Level 2 to Level 4
    • Added Lead Overhand Level 2
  • Evan Dunham 
    • Clinch issue fixed. All Moves Updated
  • Edman Shahbazyan
    • Added Back Front Kick Level 2

• Fixed inconsistency with major back lunge, depending on which stick was used to perform it.
• Allowed blocking during minor back lunges.
• Fixed a bad grappling exchange from mount. 
• Improved side slips by applying loss of opponent’s tracking when walking and slipping to the same side, to the outside of strikes (except jabs).
  • Side slips when walking to the same side will now behave similar to major side lunges, in that they will now make the opponent completely lose track of you and force them to pivot before they can strike you again. However, as the motion required to perform a walking side slip is smaller, we’ve made the conditions for the loss of tracking more strict.