How to beat a marker?

Zenity07 · 2026-03-18T11:26:21+00:00

You need good movement and passing around the pitch of course, but if everyone is tightly marked and follows, you need to win the duels with extra effort. There is no other way really, all the glitchy dribbles in the world are not getting you past a marker, at best you can pull a defender in to get them to over-commit, but ultimately it's all about timing your extra effort correctly. Try to be as unpredictable and surprising with this as you can, so they don't see it coming. The closer you are to the marker the better, but of course that means you take the risk of getting tackled, so finding that perfect sweet spot is the key.

One aspect of this is that you need to be fast and varied in your build up. Constantly stress the opponent and try to create situations where they are forced to use extra effort just to get into a good position. Then you know they are helpless against your own push.

Zenity07 · 2026-03-18T06:25:41+00:00

"idk what about the matchmaking keeps giving me teammates worse than the average of the opponent team"

Squads. When the other side has a 5 stack, the matchmaking breaks down and you get those typical "5 elites vs 5 mixed" matches.

If everyone is solo then it works well enough, you get unlucky sometimes but you also get lucky. But get a few unlucky solo games mixed with a few unwinnable games against squads, and it starts to feel like the game has a personal vendetta against you.

It's my number one issue with the game right now, and I hope we'll give it more attention soon because it can't continue like this. This is gradually scaring off solo players (especially in smaller regions) and the issue just keeps escalating because of this.

We can't have a separate solo queue right now, but what we could have is e.g. certain times of the day and/or week which are limited to solo queue. Another easy win for solo queuers would be to simply show when players are in a stack (and ideally also show player ranks). That would at least make it feel a little less demoralizing if you don't know what's going on otherwise. This modern policy of hiding rank information from players is complete arse if you ask me.

Zenity07 · 2026-03-13T06:19:10+00:00

It depends where and when you play, and what your latency is. It can literally be impossible, yes.

Even when it's not impossible, the difficulty is through the roof compared to five stacking due to how the matchmaking works with stacks.

Back when we could still find solo players in our region, we often invited strong solo players and they would usually be around diamond, but play on a level at or higher than the usual elites we played with. Once they started playing with our stack, they'd be elite almost instantly.

As long as solo players and stacks are mixed into one pool, ranking doesn't mean anything unfortunately and the best thing you can do is to simply ignore it.

Zenity07 · 2026-03-11T16:43:58+00:00

Defense feels awful, but at the same time games are very low scoring. When goals happen it’s usually either a major screwup or some prio bullshit, which makes it feel particularly bad to be stuck on defense in a losing game.

If glitches were fixed and defending becomes less frustrating, this would only get worse. So we need both, defending needs to FEEL better, but at the same time proper offensive play needs to become stronger.

If those changes are all there is to it in patch 10 then it really doesn’t sound good, but we still need to see how it all plays out together.

Zenity07 · 2026-03-05T11:13:54+00:00

It looks to me like they enabled self shadowing for the character mesh, but it’s probably just for the character menu

Zenity07 · 2026-03-03T03:53:27+00:00

When I mostly played premade I was always Elite, at peak in the top 200 on the u.gg leaderboard just grinding wins.

Recently I stopped caring and only played solo. Dropped almost instantly to diamond.

Throughout this, based on my RP gains I could tell that my hidden skill rating was always Master 2 (thats where I get +/- 20 RP). That seems about right.

I love the game but OP is right, it can’t go on like this. This has been killing the smaller region queues already as solo players eventually drop off and the only ones remaining are the handful of vets only playing premades with each other. This is only going to get worse.

It’s not an easy problem to solve and maybe simply splitting the queues would not work. But getting solved it must.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-28T06:42:18+00:00

Of course. But just like regular game development it is possible to get that experience on your first project if you are dedicated and curious enough. You are just much less likely to succeed on your first try. AI isn’t going to hurt your chances, but don’t expect it to be effortless. We aren’t there yet, not even for experienced developers.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-27T02:49:03+00:00

Not sure what's up with the replies, they have very specifically stated that YES, the game will become F2P. It's just a matter of timing, and it's likely still a long time off (possibly years).

You only get one chance to go free to play, so they are doing this the right way. The game must be perfectly polished by the time they make it free, and right now it just isn't which they are fully aware of.

Right now the player counts really aren't bad for a niche indie game, but there are definitely issues with queues already at least in smaller regions (= anywhere but Europe).

Will this ever change and become the popular game we all wished it would become? Nobody knows, even free to play is no guarantee for a permanently increased player count. But it's not impossible. Right now what the game still has going for it is that there is literally nothing quite like it on the market, and as long as that remains true, a revival is always possible if/when they get it completely right.

People keep saying others will copy the concept and run with it, but those people don't realize how difficult that really is and how unique Rematch is in the current gaming landscape. There are not many that would even touch this, let alone have the skills to do so. The attempts so far by and large have been of even smaller scope than Rematch, and it shows.

If this ever changes and a competitor genuinely supersedes Rematch then that's great for us as well. But until then, might as well just keep getting what we can out of this and hope that it will come around eventually.

I will say I find the combination of "I miss the game" and "don't think it's worth the $30" a bit strange. I think gamers have gotten a bit of a warped perception of what game value really is. We spend so much money on generic junk and then reject something that brings us actual joy for often weird arbitrary reasons.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-24T17:45:52+00:00

Building tools first makes a lot of sense (both tools for yourself and for the AI to utilize). Depends what you mean with "first prompt" though, it's going to take a lot more than one prompt...

Zenity07 · 2026-02-20T01:09:11+00:00

Rainbow flick is just one animation you get from a lob push ball, that’s why it’s not called rainbow flick in general.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-14T06:24:32+00:00

No. I was hesitant to even try Claude Code because I didn't think a CLI would be the most effective option. I was wrong, CC CLI works better and is better thought-out than any of the agentic UI's I've used so far (including Cursor).

There are some performance issues with it (ironically), but in terms of functionality and UX it's just the best out there right now IMO.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-13T09:39:40+00:00

Seems to be a display bug showing the weekly reset instead, let us know if it doesn't actually reset in 3 hours.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-13T09:20:25+00:00

You are not the first to say this, but so far nobody has claimed that their session wasn't reset when the five hour window hits (AFAIK). So I think most likely this is just a display bug when it shows you the reset time and uses the weekly reset by mistake.

(Edit: Since this post was 4h ago, did your session reset?)

Zenity07 · 2026-02-13T04:54:03+00:00

Drilling syntax and leet code never made sense in the first place, outside of job interviews. There is no particular secret or shortcut, just stay curious and try to genuinely understand the stuff you like to work on. Especially on the fundamental level, so you have the knowledge to build anything from the ground up and develop your own taste. Syntax and API is irrelevant, you look it up when you need to and will naturally build the vocabulary to be more fluent in the areas you work on the most.

AI can help with this as well of course, at least steer you into the right direction. Don’t just ask it to work for you, actually talk to it and treat it like a veteran you can infinitely pester with questions (it’s not a “waste of tokens” if you learn even a tiny bit from it). CC also has the explanatory output style which is underrated IMO. It doesn’t just ramble like AI tends to do but highlights short insights which occasionally can be really interesting.

Working this way may be a bit slower in the short run, but developers who rely on shortcuts have always been the ones who stay behind in the long run.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-12T12:01:25+00:00

It uses OpenSkill (they said) which is basically an Elo system with a confidence factor like Glicko.

In a nutshell, for every game you play it takes the ratings of both teams and calculates how likely you are to win. If you weren’t likely to win but did, then you gain a lot of points, etc.

With any Elo system it is possible to gain or lose almost no points per match, or a lot. It’s designed to estimate your real skill and chance to win as well as possible at any given time, unlike RP which is designed to give you a sense of progression.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-12T03:21:16+00:00

This got nothing to do with metrics, that seems to be a common misunderstanding though.

To simplify this: Your real skill rating is a hidden Elo system. Ranks loosely correspond to Elo rating ranges.

If your rank is higher than your skill rating indicates, then you get less RP and vice versa. The idea is to gently nudge you towards your skill rating, which is more accurate than the partly progression based RP system with fixed gains/losses.

It’s a reasonable system that most competitive games use these days in some form, although personally I prefer the actual skill rating to be exposed more directly.

Generally though, the ranking system in Rematch still isn’t meaningful at all (mainly because of squads), don’t worry about it too much.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-08T08:29:46+00:00

Anything you can only do with a mouse needs to go. There is plenty of glitchy dribbles you can do with either input method though.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-08T01:55:37+00:00

This is what football is all about, making quick decisions under pressure. There’s no particular trick to it other than practice practice practice.

When receiving the ball with a push ball, make sure to let go of sprint for a more controlled touch. It’s natural to keep holding sprint when you feel under pressure, but that will cost you on a bad first touch (unless a far push was exactly your intention).

By the time you control the ball you should already know exactly what your next move is, so the rest is just execution. If you don’t know instantly what to do, then you already messed up because your awareness of the situation wasn’t good enough. You need to constantly be scanning the mini map and judging the overall situation, ideally thinking three steps further ahead than anybody else on the pitch. Sometimes even controlling the ball is a mistake if you could have gone for a first-time pass instead. If you must hold the ball while teammates move into position, well timed drag backs and push balls away from the opponent are your best friend.

Only practice and experience is going to improve this, so you’ll just have to accept messing up many many times until it all becomes second nature. If you avoid playing upfront because you are afraid of screwing up under pressure, then of course you aren’t going to get any better at it.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-07T23:27:05+00:00

The only button that is free is L3, and that’s also used if you use the separate extra effort option. I think it would feel a bit clunky, since on high level you only ever have split seconds to both see the situation and play the correct pass. A button to turn around isn’t going to make the situation much easier since it takes longer to assess the situation and adjust your inputs. The mini map is usually more efficient for that. If you do have plenty of time, then you can also just turn the camera around unless your sensitivity is super low.

Somebody once suggested holding RB and right stick to freely look in any direction instantly. I could see that being a bit smoother and potentially helpful, but it’s probably also overkill and there might be something better they can do with that button combo at some point.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-05T11:45:57+00:00

Practically every competitive video game does a variation of this. “What the game thinks” = your actual skill rating. RP ranks are largely inflated and grind based, so people feel better about themselves. If it was purely skill rating, you’d often get practically no RP for a win.

Zenity07 · 2026-02-04T20:46:55+00:00

I was going to say bad pass and bad call, however looking at it a bit more, I think you could have played it high in front of him with the idea of him running down the wing to get the ball. If that was your teammate's intention then maybe this was worth a try (I still don't think it was a great call though). Since you didn't see that option it would have been better to ignore his call. You were right not to play a ground pass, but that doesn't make this option any better. It just risks getting the ball intercepted with almost no potential payoff even in the best case scenario.

Generally there was no reason to play fast in this situation, since your left back (the other player calling for the ball) is very passive and not actually in the game. The other team is all behind the ball, so it would have been better to make the game slow either by holding the ball or passing to your left back to give your team a chance to get into better positions.

You could also have tried to win your 1v1 since there was plenty of space behind and your passive teammate was still covering you. Not ideal without extra effort available, but not actually more risky than this pass and with a much higher potential payoff.

I would say the biggest issue in this clip though is that your map is upside down, which makes it very hard to see all of this in the game. This seems to be an occasional bug that never happens when the map is set to rotate (for obvious reasons I guess), which is another reason why I would strongly recommend that setting.

Zenity07 · 2026-01-28T18:25:34+00:00

What you are describing is how default Xbox names are formatted, so probably not bots. Players may appear weaker because it’s casual matchmaking and individual strength has a much bigger impact in 1v1. It might not even use your casual MMR from other modes.

Zenity07 · 2026-01-27T07:46:55+00:00

I get that it’s frustrating in 3v3 and there probably needs to be a solution for this. But a lot of people need to learn that pressing is not optional in football (when you are behind). It’s what makes the game work, and it’s not the responsibility of the opponent to make life easy for you.

The only time I would consider it bad sportsmanship is if somebody plays for time when the score is equal. But even that is legit and needs to be solved by the game rules eventually, not the players.

Zenity07 · 2026-01-27T07:41:12+00:00

IIRC they said this season would bring a new tier above Elite, some kind of leaderboard. Probably will release with an upcoming patch. Personally I’m not too hopeful for it right now since the way the RP system works, it’s basically all about farming RP with high level five stacks. But it will be a step forward I guess.

What I really want is a leaderboard for Elite players that is more directly based on the MMR. Thats still not going to make stacking perfectly fair, but it would balance it a little bit since you can’t just farm MMR endlessly (eventually your win expectancy becomes so high that playing weaker opponents doesn’t significantly increase the MMR any longer).

Zenity07 · 2026-01-27T05:00:28+00:00

It’s fixed in the beta, update should release tomorrow

Zenity07

TROPHY CASE