Re: FIFA 08 (Next Gen Chat)
They said from the start their aim was to make the responses slower than other games (i.e. suPErSpeed). The exact line was "when a crowd watches Gerrard winding up for a long shot there's a second of anticipation, and we wanted to capture that". So even though it's incredibly annoying, and it is stupid, it was done with the best intentions and they won't be changing it as the whole code and the animations were written/captured around it.
Just hope that the new project lead makes it his first priority when they start on EURO 2008.
I know what you mean. Though, they couldn't have intended it like it is now.
The way they said the exact quote, it has nothing to do with the human interaction with the game, but purely game speed. In real life you obviously have no interaction with Gerrard, so the anticipation you feel when he shoots comes purely from the game-speed in general being, obviously, realistic. So anticipation in their quote has nothing to do with the response of controls. Just having proper animations and a realistic speed of animations and ball etc gives you the moment to anticipate a shot and such.
But examples like players ignoring commands for long periods of time cannot be other than bugs, because they couldn't be considered realistic features. If I am running in real life and get the idea of taking a shot immediately (the equivalent of pressing the shot button), I obviously will be able to respond as soon as I have set myself up properly footing-wise etc. Can take a step or two depending on the situation and how far away from the ball I am.
But for the most part FIFA08 is great. As long as they eliminate the situations where commands take longer than necessary to execute.
Beside the mentioned delay in command and execution, there are also some changes needed in the dribbling and such that need improving. Players now just seem to sluggish. More specifically, they are usually way to slow when wanting to for example stop dead and immediately shuffle the ball in a direction or such to get past an opponent. They suffer from the syndrome of seemingly needing to play out the full "stop dead and touch the ball with your foot to trap it"-animation without being able to, in mid-air, moving it in another direction and also mid-air preparing for a direction-change. They are just slower than seemingly necessary to move from one move to another, and lack the ability to always have the ability to prepare and respond to our commands even if they are in the middle of the air, or in the middle fo another animation.
I really wish they would tighten things up more in the next version, preferably with new systems for making quick(er) transitions between moves possible, so that you with the best players can move as fast and instinctively as they can. For example being able to wait out an opponent and then very quickly take a touch on the ball as they lunge for it. Simply put, currently players seem to not want to move their legs at the maximum speed, which causes an opponent to get a touch in before you can touch the ball past his foot, even though you had the ball at your feet and technically had the upper hand. Players, for example standing still with the ball, need to be always ready to start moving the millisecond the command goes through the gamepad, so that we can flick that ball away from an opponent that is reaching for it.
The only really good thing I liked in PES2008, was the new R2 dribbling system. on it's own, it is very nice and looks quite organic, and it's not clunky. Players move in the direction you want and quickly shuffle the ball from foot to foot. Particularly it is possible to quickly press a direction, and then another, and the player will do a quick 2-foot feint or such (not the same as the normal one that you do with the stick while running).
Video example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZO1Y6RB2EE
Trying to do that in FIFA08 leads to a much wider, slow and clunky move where the player doesn't control it as closely in the PES video. ALso notice that the PES video really doesn't feature any sliding feet or such that would make it impossible for FIFA's physics to do it.
Another PES video of R2 dribbling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf2MuqkCStQ
Notice how the feet in this particular example don't need to switch around instantly or slide a long way for the player to quickly make the transition (obviously if I had tryed to mvoe the ball slightly earlier or later the player might have had to slide the feet to do be able to execute it exactly when I wanted, but again, in this particular video there are no real physics violations that make it inherewntly impossible to replicate in the FIFA engine).
So I suppose my wish is FIFA09 with the close control of the PES R2-dribbling. Or something along those basic lines...
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