In my opinion the ball physics is one of the most important aspects of the gameplay. Honestly EA did an excellent job creating a very flexible system for controlling the ball physics and a very bad job in its tuning. The original setting are honestly “ridicolous” and the realism in many situations is very poor. Just try this: in the practice field execute a long kick with the keeper and when the ball is landing press both buttons 7 and 8 so that any player will touch the ball and observe the ball. Well… for a while the ball seems to fly as it would never land, then each bounce is too high and too short with a totally unrealistic physics. But fortunately we can fix it. I did some experiments with the following parameters and I found some values that work much better for me. Copy and paste them in the main section of the user.ini file and try yourself.

// Increase the gravity a little bit so the ball doesn’t fly in the air, original value –0.24

BALL_SQUARE_GRAVITY  = -0.27 

// Increase the length of each bounce, original value 0.87

BALL_SQUARE_BOUNCE_FRICTION_MULTIPLIER = 0.45

// Reduce the height of each bounce, original value 0.67

BALL_SQUARE_L_BOUNCE_DAMPING = 0.55

Another thing that I don’t like of the original settings is that the ball stops too quickly when it rolls on the ground. This can be easily changed with the following parameter

// Let the ball roll longer on the ground before to stop, original value 0.08

BALL_SQUARE_ROLLING_FRICTION = 0.06

When the field is wet the ball physics should be different. Each bounce will be shorter, the ball will slide as it touches the ground but then it will roll less. The parameters to change are the following, I left the original values

// Increase this value to reduce the length of each bounce, perfect ground = 0.45

BALL_SQUARE_RAIN_BOUNCE_FRICTION_MULTIPLIER = 0.87

// Decrease this value to reduce the height of each bounce, perfect ground = 0.55

BALL_SQUARE_RAIN_L_BOUNCE_DAMPING = 0.3

// Decrease this value to increase the slide effect when the ball touches the ground, perfect ground = 0.24

BALL_SQUARE_RAIN_SKIDING_FRICTION = 0.15

// Increase this value to reduce how much the ball rolls, perfect ground = 0.06

BALL_SQUARE_RAIN_ROLLING_FRICTION = 0.12

The behaviour can be very different according to how much the ground is wet, it is up to you to change them and find your preferred tuning.. or maybe you can change them just to simulate an heavy rain or a light rain condition.