Re: FIFA 08 (Next Gen Chat)
Ok so now I'll try to post the rest of the information and such that I haven't posted before, I'll try to remember everything at once but if I leave something out I'll just add it later
Tricks and the "Gary Neville" factor: I said to the EA guy that whilst a lot of people seem excited about Fifa 08's tricks one of the biggest concerns is that players like Gary Neville will be running around doing flipflaps and Blanco jumps and what not, he told me this wasn't how it will be, and that the ability to do tricks for each player is primarily stat based, with attributes such as agility, ball control and others being what define what tricks a player can do.
There are 3 levels to the tricks, the basic ones such as feints, the middle ones such as step overs and then the highest level of tricks that only the very, very best players can do such as flipflap, Blanco's jump, Christiano Ronaldo's turn etc. etc.
Now this is the bit some people will disagree with but I think is realistic, even Gary Neville can do the most basic tricks, such as feints and such, although because of his stats they will be much slower than if a "good" player was doing them, I think this is correct because anyone, even a 60 year old granny can stand next to a football and do a feint, it's just a shoulder/leg movement, just if a granny (or Gary Neville) does it then it will be slow and pretty much ineffective.
The inverse is also true for the top level of tricks, example Ronaldhino can do Blanco's jump, or Christiano Ronaldo's turn, and again I think that's accurate, if Ronaldinho is skilled enough to be able to do the tricks we know he can do such as the flipflap, he could just as easily learn to do Blanco's jump or any other trick that the best players pull off.
Finally regarding tricks, I asked the EA guy if we will see the AI utilising the tricks, for example if we play as Chelsea v Barcelona will we see Ronaldinho running around doing tricks even if the AI are controlling the team and he confirmed that is the case, which is good news
Quick change FK taker: one of the things that bugged me about 07/UCL next gen is that when you get a freekick/corner there's no quick way to change the freekick taker (in 07 PS2 you hold down R1 then scroll with the D-pad, works great), I asked the EA guy if there would be a way to quickly change kick takers, the strange thing was when he went to do it to show me it was no longer working, so it looks like for some reason it was removed/disabled from the build they were showing in GCA, so I'm hoping that means there's a chance it will be in the release version (it looked like he was trying to press "LB" for it).
Be a Pro 5v5 outside EU/USA: there's been a little confusion about the availability of Be a Pro 5v5 and why it won't be available in certain regions. The EA guy confirmed to me that sadly it won't be available in Asia or any other continent outside the USA/EU (I didn't ask about Canada but I'm pretty much assuming it will be available there)
The reason that for example Australia/Asia won't be able to have be a pro 5v5 is because there aren't sufficient EA Servers in these regions so the latency would be so bad it would make the mode unstable and unenjoyable to play. The good news is that EA want to make the mode available worldwide and are currently investigating what needs to be done and where to make this possible. I asked if he had any idea of a time-scale for Asia or other parts of the world (I asked if perhaps we'd be able to see it before Fifa09) and he answered that they honestly didn't know.
Be a Pro Arena Mode: not a very big thing but something I noticed, when you set up a Be a Pro match, during the loading of the game it appears that the player you chose to control is automatically the one you have available to you in the Arena as the game is loading (I accidentally chose Yoann Folly as the player I was controlling in be a pro and whilst loading it was Folly I had in the arena, hence the video of me doing tricks one handed with him
, it seemed like a good, simple idea as you then can take a little time familiarising yourself with how that player moves and shoots, or if you chose Drogba you can familiarise yourself with how he throws himself to the ground as if shot by the 2nd sniper on the grassy knoll every time he's tackled
Core makeup of current gen/next gen teams: we talked a little about feature content of both current and next gen, how current gen seems to have more of the little touches and features we would like next gen to have (pre-season friendlies, keepers that can be sent off or injured, etc. etc.), I told him that a lot of people were unhappy about the apparent lack of "extra pazazz" in next gen, I also told him that the new updates to the FAQ had been badly received, that it was basically "is this, this this and this in next gen, answer no, no, no, no". He went on to explain to me that with Fifa08 the current gen team constitutes a larger portion of designers (because the graphics and AI have reached a level where they are at the extremes of what the systems can offer), whereas the next gen dev team constitutes a larger portion of programmers (for the AI, movement, tactical awareness, threat mapping and all that) and "graphicians" (all the extra kits, stadiums, balls and what not of 30 leagues needed creating by someone). So that reason is part of the reason that next gen (in comparison to current gen), looks like it's lacking a little love, feature wise, now that everything has been created for 08 it should mean that less stuff needs to be made from scratch in 09 and there is more room in the team for extra love/features/pazazz in 09
Lifespan for current gen I asked him if there would reach a time where they stopped making a current gen version of Fifa, he said that whilst it still indicated there's a market for current gen they'll keep making current gen versions.
Edit Mode: one question I asked him about edit mode was to clear up some confusion I'd been reading, we were told that for the star players with real faces we couldn't edit their face (which of course makes sense), but the question was whether or not we can change their hair/facial hair? Beckham being the perfect example, for two weeks he was bleached blonde so appears that way in all EA's Fifa08 shots and then in his last Galaxy appearance we see he's shaved it all off, so obviously a year with Beckham's white hair would be annoying. Unfortunately the EA guy confirmed that for players with "real" faces we will not be able to change their hair/facial hair, I pointed out to him that PES lets us do that so I think he took it on board
One thing I was very keen to look for was the edit mode, I wanted to see if for example you can change the skin tone of a player easily, just playing as Sheffield Wednesday I saw a couple of players that need some adjusting (Wade Small in game is light black but in real life he's very black black), unfortunately I couldn't find the edit mode, I went into creation centre/edit player but all I could see was the usual edit stuff such as name/DOB/nationality/tape or no tape/shirt tucked or untucked and where you edit his attributes, so either I wasn't looking in the right place or it was disabled in the build I was playing, the EA guy had left at that point so unfortunately I couldn't ask him about it.
I have to admit that there's something he told me that he then asked me to not reveal, but we talked about so much I can't remember for the life of me what it was, so hopefully if it is something I've revealed he won't get into too much trouble
I think that's everything he told me that I hadn't posted so far, if anything else comes to me I'll post it, obviously if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them
