FIFA 23 has new referee setting that could cause huge amount of red cards

FIFA 23 promises a number of improvements to gameplay and the overall user experience – and one of those changes is in the referee settings.

EA Sports have already announced a raft of updates to the popular football game. Amongst those are the inclusion of women’s club teams in FIFA for the first time.

EA to include women’s club teams for the first time in FIFA 23

In addition, there are also improvements to the HyperMotion technology, the addition of real-life managers to Career Mode and 1vs1 crossplay.

A female player will also adorn the global game cover for the first time. Chelsea’s Sam Kerr appears alongside Kylian Mbappe of Paris Saint-Germain.

FIFA 23 will be released on September 30. Early Access opens three days earlier, on September 27.

Whilst the new features have been welcomed – especially the women’s club teams – FIFA fans are hopeful that other areas of the game, such as Pro Clubs and Career Mode, receive improvements as well.

Another area that players want to see improved is referees. This is in regards to decisions either being too lenient or too strict. In addition, the awarding of red cards is often seen to be inconsistent when taking into account individual tackles.

Fans will be pleased to hear, therefore, that EA are making strides to improve the quality of referees.

FIFA 23 new referee settings revealed

Before heading into a game, FIFA 23 players can select from a five-tier system. It determines how strict a referee is in-game.

These are very lenient, lenient, default, strict or very strict. This applies to offline modes only. Online modes will use the default strictness.

FIFA 23 has 5 REFEREE STRICTNESS SETTINGS!! Huge W for CM from FifaCareers

For players, this should better balance the overall gameplay experience regarding referee decisions in FIFA 23.

Setting the game to ‘very lenient’ will surely encourage players to perform as many sliding tackles as they want, without the same fear of yellow or red cards.

On the flip side of that, setting the dial to ‘very strict’ will no doubt produce the opposite. We could instead see numerous red cards dished out every match for tackles. The dreaded ‘match forfeit’ message might also get an outing once every so often.

On FIFA 22, referees did actually have their own strictness levels coded. Mike Dean, Martin Atkinson and Keith Stroud were all on the strict side.

With these settings in mind, though, the likes of Mehmet Yildiraz and Scott McBeanie will have plenty of work on their hands this year.

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