The ball physics are also "scripted" in that deflections just bounce back to the AI opposition a lot of the time or the AI knows where the rebound is going to land before it's even even taken the shot and sends it players that direction - this is simply because the developers didnt know or didnt have the time to code proper ball physics where the ball can move anywhere after a deflection.
You seriously think the ball "deflects" directly to a player's feet (in EAFC for example, it's the only outcome of a deflection) because the developers "don't know" or "didn't have time" to allow the ball to go in a realistic direction?
EA have confirmed in their patch notes on more than one occasion that players complain when they "win the ball" with a tackle and it rolls away, so they patched the game to make the ball "stickier". To "increase the skill gap", or to make it more "fun", as opposed to
making a game that acts like football. (I get angry every time I think about it...)
It's hard to classify what "scripting" is, because when someone has an open goal and misses (when their controller is pointing directly at the goal), they will immediately scream "scripted" without taking into account things like the player's attributes, the player's balance, the ball's spin, even the player's emotional state at that time (which genuinely was present in the code you can see when tweaking e.g. FIFA 16 - my favourite example was an AI cooldown timer for when players would "trust" a player who has recently given the ball away, and refuse to pass to them until then).
Is that "scripting", taking a user's input and doing something else with it? (Which you classify as "user presses left, code goes right" in a previous comment.) I don't think so. But either way, because of this debate, games have become simpler, dumber, duller and more boring as a result - with deflections directly to feet one of the direct outcomes.
Same with headers in EAFC; they can fly 80 yards from the softest little chip to a player's head, which is physically impossible - but even weirder is that they are often directly to a player's feet (and is trapped perfectly when it hits the foot at 100mph), which is so enragingly stupid.
That's not because nobody knows how physics works - the physics were great in FIFA 16. It's because the games are a cash-cow now and the focus isn't "how do we make a great football game", it's "how do we simplify this so that the maximum number of people can play it and give us their money".
"Responsiveness" and "reward" (dopamine/addiction) are the new targets - not creating a game about football that rewards a football brain making football-based risk/reward strategic decisions.
Misplacing a pass is impossible in EAFC by default (unless you count passes direct to an opponent). How is this a good thing for anyone other than kids? Should they not have a separate mode (like FUT), or (preferably) a separate game?