Those are two things I worked on, with players having less break tackle, running slower and with most forwards now having good tackle ratings, you don't need to use the aggressive tackle as often anymore, and when you do chances are there'll be a big hit. It was to make the game more defensive for sure. The problem is I need a difficulty level between legend and seasoned, so that players still break a few tackles, but just not as many as on seasoned. Playing multiplayer in seasoned and single in legend works well for me. I'll keep working on making forwards more dominant though, since I think its an important part of the game.
As for catching, yeah, I found the knock on levels very annoying, especially in games where a few knock ons occured in a row and the teams confidence dropped by a heap. All players have 8 for catch now, a level where they'll still drop it every now and then but not too often, and players with worse handling have 7 or 6.
It was strange though, almost every hooker in the game had a preset rating of 10 for catch...why would they need that?