Firstly - I accept (and agree with) your point re: the "casual" audience, which is why it's a blessing that we have the "competitive" vs "authentic" gameplay switch now. It's been needed for a long time.
Broadly speaking, there are two audiences playing this game. It has only ever been aimed at the "casual" audience, and very little risk has been taken in order to ensure the game keeps selling to that audience. It wouldn't make business sense to scare those customers away by changing the game.
(I would argue that 99% of players aren't "competitive" gamers and would actually be blown away by something more realistic, but also, I've worked for big businesses and I understand that if you have a money-making formula, you never change it, because capitalism.)
However, with regards to the point I've quoted specifically - especially now "authentic mode" exists:
This argument falls flat for me when you think about the fact that PES5/6 were anything but boring, but still had higher levels of pass error that made playing one team different from the next. Those games didn't even have manual passing for God's sake, let alone 360-degree input, but passes were subjected to error based on player positioning, pressure, and (most importantly) their attributes. Right now that's non-existent in FC.
Personally I don't like full-manual controls, by the way - 1) because it turns a pass-and-move team into a Sunday League team with some very unrealistic errors from professional footballers, and 2) because it renders a player's attributes null-and-void when every player should feel like themselves ... which, again, PES5/6 captured.
Of course a game has to simplify something in order for a 90 minute match to compress into 15 minutes, that's obvious - nobody is ignoring that. But it can still be more realistic, and not boring, nor need to be fully manual.
I hate to drone on about PES5/6 because I'm sick of playing them, and I am desperate to be given a game I can move on to... But, I played an "International Challenge" earlier (PES6's "road to World Cup" mode) and I drew 0-0 with Sweden, beat Hungary 4-0, and lost very narrowly to Spain 2-1. Every game was different, and the pass accuracy was different, because attributes really mattered. With FC it's the same results game in, game out, because even though FC has
many systems (attributes, "playstyles", FCIQ, the difficulty level, assistance levels), realistically the gameplay has little variation - particularly the AI. Now
that's boring.
EDIT:
I've been a part of the football gaming community for a really long time now mate, and in some ways I feel a bit chewed-up-and-spat-out by it. I've been a part of several betas, made countless videos of issues, pointed to
@Anth James /
@Matt10 /
@Topaz etc. and their very clear descriptions of why the game isn't fun for a lot of us... and it was a significant amount of time wasted, because we aren't their core audience.
Having said that. Last year's "simulation mode" was the first ever "we see you" from EA, as far as I'm concerned - and this year's "authentic mode" gives us the only chance we have of things getting better.
But can it ever have the AI and physics of e.g. FIFA 16, and the attribute importance of e.g. PES5/6, when the animations have been mangled by Hypermotion and the physics, AI and gameplay further diminished by the demands of the "competitive" crowd? Which, by the way, 99% of FC players aren't?
I'm not sure (literally - I don't know) if there is a willingness to go that far, or whether "authentic mode" will always be a tweaked version of a (frankly) terrible game (or at least, a provably terrible representation of football). So I'm not sure if there would be a point.
