Re: Fifa 11
I'm doing a write up, but it's a bloody mission! The actual FIFA Dev Team feedback form is potentially even worse.
Anyway, my thoughts so far based on the Q's you all gave me.
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PRO PASSING
Q: How much error is there in attribute based passing? What about Weaker foot error?
A: It's pretty good. I spent a lot of the time using assisted passing to eliminate my own error and isolate any passing inaccuracy as just attribute based, and the error was clearly there. The power bar plays a significant part too, with harder passes being more heavily impacted by error.
Barcelona also have passing error. I think this is a pretty important thing to mention. EA could easily have phoned it in and have left Barca as a FIFA 10 side, but seeing Barca still have to recycle possession is a really big deal IMO. You're encouraged to actually use the ability of the players to wriggle out of tight spaces that loose passes force you into.
Something important to say about ping pong passing. It's not completely gone. However you can't go from one box to another in 5 seconds and 3 passes. The worst thing about ping pong passing compared to, say cutbacks in PES's of old, is that you could defend cutbacks. You could tell that this was the opponent's game plan, and account for that in your own setup, without using a non footballing formation. With ping pong passing, there was nothing you could do. The other guy would have buffered up his button taps before you'd switched to a relevant player. Combined with the dodgy defences there was piss all you could do about him passing to his striker on the penalty spot unchallenged.
With this current passing system, the ball moves a lot slower and less directionally perfectly. The ping pong you get now is generally (but not always) more akin to the pingpong that people would argue exists in real life. It is effective over short distances, but if you try and ping pong from one end of the pitch to another, as was the killer in FIFA 10, then you will more often than not lose the ball. The effective passing distance is a lot shorter now, so the game shifts from being about covering 80 yards in 5 seconds to about half that distance.
Time will tell if this is how it turns out against the cheesers you play online - they will always find new reasons for us to hate them - but the intention with the passing renovations is to try and make sure that the optimal way for gamers to play the game and the optimal way for us to enjoy the game converge, rather than remain two completely alien concepts. For me, the system looks like it will certainly do that. If it doesn't, then at least I won't spend every game against like minded people worrying about whether it is ethical to make a particular pass, or if that is something a cheeser would do.
Q: Is the error for first time passes only?
A: No. It is accentuated for first time passes
Q: Pro Passing for long balls/crosses too?
A: No but these are less accurate to begin with and/or less precisely judged by the players on the ground, and are already impacted by weighting anyway.
Bouncing lob is utterly awesome! You can hit those Scholes/Rooney-esque 60 yard head height scud passes diagonally out wide, but you can also use it to hit what is essentially a much harder ground pass into space. This is an excellent addition to your passing arsenal. It's entirely possible to smack the ball from one fullback to the other more quickly than with standard long passing but at the same time you have to watch you don't hit it out of play.
You'll be able to spread the play very cleverly with this.
Q: Do Accrington differ from Arsenal?
A: Yes. I kind of think the Accrington passing weakness is represented a bit too much in passing speed and bobble rather than directional inaccuracy, and will say as much to EA. The biggest weakness Accrington had by comparison was their ball control. They were terrible at turning with the ball, so trying to outmanouevre Inter Milan was like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with the paintbrush between your arse cheeks.
An interesting point about ball control. I know a lot of you saw that Sol Campbell vid and thought it looked like he was pretty damn good. Maybe for PES 2010, but certainly not for FIFA 11. The difference between Campbell and Messi/Xavi/Modric is huge. Tommy Hud was pretty cumbersome, and if challenged the most I felt I could do is shot fake away from the challenge, use his rump to absorb any pressuring, and lay it off to my defence. Modric however was a cheeky bugger. As I'm sure I've said a few times now, the goal I nearly scored was disgusting.
Another big thing about ball control is that players don't turn in exactly the direction you press unless they're good enough. I remember taking a throw in as Accrington and chucking the ball to a midfielder. I was pressing down (the throw-in was at the far end of the pitch), but he took a fairly big touch sideways and then turned to face downwards with his next touch. I think someone asked about this and I forgot to write it down on my list of Q's, but as soon as I saw this I remembered that it was something you wanted to know.
I also scored with Accrington! I hoofed the ball into the box, there was a 2v1 jump, one of my attackers then stooped to head the ball (completely missing in the process) but I then lumped it in from the other wing and stabbed the ball in. Certainly with Accrington, there was a real sense of rubbishness, and that was quite visible in how scrappy my goal was.
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MANUAL PASSING Q'S
Q: How does swerve work?
A: It doesn't. I'm bringing this up with EA as I can't see why you couldn't press R1+X to hit a sidefooted swerve pass with an amount of curl that is dependent on the player involved.
Q: Is player switching on manual passes better?
A: I only had one manual game, in which I did keep equal with a couple of assisted guys playing on the same side. I've asked T-Mills what he thinks.
Q: Anything else?
A: I really do think you'll be able to get on a par with your typical assisted player if you know what you're doing. The introduction of the power bar is a really big deal, and one that I can't overstress as being a much bigger leveller of the playing field than people who haven't played the game will realise. The weight of a pass is a really important factor, and generally speaking a tap of the pass button for a manual player will move about as fast as it will for an assisted player. I seemed to find in my one game of full manual that in general, once you got past the first quarter of the power bar, the manual passes were actually hit slightly faster than the assisted equivalents. Dunno if this was just me, or if it was because I was used to FIFA 10 where manual passing was nothing like as fast as assisted/semi.
The only thing you need to judge much more precisely than an assisted player is the direction you press. Not only is the power bar passing going to have a big impact on assisted abusers' game plan, but also manual passing seems slightly faster than assisted/semi. I had a couple of issues with the amount of power in the pass being much greater than the power bar implied but this definitely seemed like a bug. I'll be raising it in my feedback form.
I seriously think manual users will be a lot happier once they've had the opportunity to sit down with the game and see how much slower and less ruthlessly accurate the assisted game is.
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CPU/NPC AI
Q: More characterful/more like each team?
A: I didn't really get to play the CPU so I can't say. Dave797 did, as did T Mills.
Q: Is player switching better?
A: It was glitchy and it seemed to use quite different logic. One of the glitches was that you'd press L1 to switch and it wouldn't switch at all!
Other than that, it seemed surprisingly eager to switch players for me despite me only being on one notch from manual (I think). Generally I was ok with who it switched to when it did auto switch! But this area of the game is something that needs a lot more polish. It must be an extremely hard thing to get right, given that neither PES nor FIFA have managed to do so for all this time.
Generally the much slower gameplay makes this aspect of the game more forgiving, so, while I did think the player switching was rough around the edges, I don't remember it costing me a goal.
Q: Does the CPU misdirect passes?
A: Passing inaccuracy is across the board. The CPU plays with the same limitations that we do as far as stats are concerned. Hopefully Dave or Tom will have more to say on this.
Q: Multi challenge for loose balls?
A: The game feels more proactive about this. I hated how in FIFA 10/WC, it felt like, if you weren't controlling a player and a pass went right next to him, there was nothing you could do to intercept the ball, as if only one player on your team was allowed to care about the ball at a time!
FIFA 11 feels a lot more involving by comparison. The NPC players participate a lot more, as indicated when I was trying to test something. I had a 2 player game set up but I put one pad on the floor and played with the other. I noticed that Man Utd were moving very proactively to stop me being able to just waltz through on goal.
Valencia and Fletcher were all up in my face, pretty much jockey pressing by default. I thought that was quite interesting. Is this a new development? Has anyone looked at custom tactics with particular depth? Placebo must have. I imagine they're using the same custom tactics setup as in FIFA 10 since the databases were more or less untouched.
Q: Is Interceptions a trait?
A: Shit, didn't check! Might be reactions dependent.
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BALL PHYSICS
Q: Does the ball seem freer? Such as in assisted/semi?
A: I think so. Maybe the way to describe it is, it feels less like players are automatically in control of the ball, and less like passes follow an invisible wire from one player to the next. Crosses in particular feel like you're humping the ball into the box, rather than putting the ball directly onto someone's head. There's still room for improvement in this regard, but having to chase a loose pass rather than just stand and watch the ball come to you definitely gives this aspect of the game a lift. First touch inaccuracy isn't in yet either, which will only improve this further.
Another point is that shots feel more speculative. You don't get the constant driven shots that you get in WC 2010, but at the same time low shots feel like they carry more menace. It's a fair bit harder to manufacture clear cut chances, which is perhaps why this is the case. R1 finesse shots from long range are fairly ineffective, I found. It might be too ineffective if anything - I'd sooner it was under than overpowered but I'll let EA know.
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KEEPERS
Q: Do keepers feel less scripted/more human?
A: Yup. You don't get true flaps at crosses but i did see a couple of slightly uncertain punches that went to my player 15 yards away. The only shot type that I felt was unlikely to score was the R1 finesse shot from 30 yards, but then again I did shave the far post with one in all manual as Rooney.
to be continued....
Please explain this in more detail if you can.
but can some one please confirm which leagues are included in the new game ?????