MJSMITH2K: The issues that you mention... At least one of them I know for a fact (well this is from the horse's mouth, I haven't played the final game) will be fixed. Some will be looked at in a patch. Player switching may or may not be one of them but it's weird, I don't have that much of a problem with it (even though I do see it occasionally and I have reported it to EA).
From what you're saying, the major faults are:
Player switching
Long range goals
Free kicks too easy
Easily chipped goalies
Constantly forced to counter
I would also add jostling on headers to that list (forgot to put that in). I had this down to an art in 09, but now it doesn't seem to be as effective when in a heading position as opposing players still manage to execute a header even when off balance or pushed away.
So first off, long range goals and free kicks being too easy. Would you put this down to the goalkeeping weirdness? If you do (and I'm not saying you do), if you read the article by the guy who's played the three-builds-ahead version of the game - which wasn't even the final version - goalkeeping weirdness is supposed to be fixed, including easily chipped goalies. This has been echoed by the horse's mouth I speak of, and this may solve three issues in one.
I would say it is partly due to goalkeepers, so that's excellent news. I do think they have also made it easier to shoot accurately, which is great for offline play, but I can see it becoming an issue online.
(If it doesn't, there have been enough complaints on the EA forum about easy goals / easy free-kicks for them to patch it, and if it doesn't get patched immediately it will get patched if people find you can score from a certain place all the time like you say you can online, because EA have said repeatedly now that they are 100% dedicated to removing exploits this year as that's what pissed people off with FIFA 09.)
So that leaves just two things - player switching, and constant counter-attacking. Constant counter-attacking is actually, to be fair here, something that EA said was fixed from 09 and judging from this demo I don't think that's true. There are a lot of complaints about constant pressure and counter-attacking on the EA forums - someone from the gameplay team even created a thread about it (originally it was about the game speed but then he himself commented that it's the constant pressure that seems to be making it play so fast).
So if that's not worked on I would be very, very surprised, after they've publicly acknowledged it's a fault (and 63% of the people asked in the thread's poll agreed it makes the game too fast, you can't ignore that).
That just leaves player switching. Which is going to drive you into an early grave I think.
I'm not saying it's not an issue; it is.
That's been reported, along with the attacking AI etc. (which is what really annoys me, and what I can see spoiling the game in the long run). So hopefully that will be looked at, but with the AI I get the feeling it's not just a simple fix, and it'll be another year before I'm completely satisfied by it. Which is heartbreaking. But we will see what happens, I will not stop bombarding them until I'm happy that they understand.
Incidentally, I still have PES 5 installed on my PC from many moons ago. Every time someone mentions it I'll go and play it, and I'm left with the same feeling I get from SWOS. "This was a great game years ago but now I find it way too restrictive, robotic, and how anyone can prefer this to next-gen football games is beyond me." I think it has a lot of great touches but it doesn't stand up as a game I can enjoy today, after experiencing the best bits of the current next-gen football games. Just my opinion.
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