Fifa 11 "Festival of Fifa" hands-on Impressions

More CM questions for Nick:

Scout & Youth Players
- Is there more to the new scouting feature than the scout making recommendations during the transfer period?
- With the old scout system removed, how do we have access to undiscovered youth players to refresh and maintain our squads as the mode advances in years?
- Are CPU teams still automatically generating fake young players?
- Are fake players still faceless?
--> Are they more realistic?
--> Have they been given names that commentators will say?
--> Do they have traits?
--> How are their player models? More varied?

Player Development
- How has the player growth system changed/improved from last year?
- Has the option returned to manage player growth directly or is growth automatic again like last year?
--> If player growth is automatic, do we have any input/involvement in the process?
- How is the speed of player growth (i.e. how many OVR pts might a player gain per year)?
- Has the player scouting reports and potential growth charts evolved/improved?
--> Are they more detailed?
--> Do we know what specific attributes are changing?
--> Are these reports available when deciding on transfers?
- As players grow, is it possible for them to gain new traits?
- As players grow, is it possible for them to gain skill stars for more tricks?

Editing
- Are there any options for editing players within CM?
--> If not, I assume that all edits must be made prior to starting a CM career for them to take effect?

VP
- Can you confirm that in PM mode we will not have the option to control our entire squad on the pitch if our VP is playing?
 
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Yesterday, as many did, I trundled down to hell on earth (Trocadiro, Picadilly) to play what must be the demo for FIFA 11. I didn't get to sample the joys of CM but the one-off games were enough to fill the 4hours or so I got on the game (about 8-9 goes on the game). Oh and they didn't have any XBOX360 set-ups at all :( So i sucked more than normal haha.

The short of it: It's what we asked for after our innital complaints from FIFA10. Seriously, it's very hard to complain when you can see they've fixed:

The speed (yes, there's no need to worry about that and i'll explain a little further down).

The pitches are now about as good as in the world cup game. we're no longer playing on a pool table.

The rapid passing is now hard to pull off with shite players. And it's tied with contextual passing/shooting with lots of ping-ponging passing done in one move without stopping slowly effecting the quality of each subsequent pass. For instance I tried a first time ball down the line with Abidal and Puyol and failed epically, many 'a time.

The presentation is now up there with PES2011. I have no idea how anyone could think otherwise. Even the camera angles on the stadium intros change from time to time to keep it fresh. Faces are surreal. Stretching on the shirt lettering and badges seems to be gone although i did see one instance when Pique had both arms up and the lettering curved a little strangely, it was no where near as bad as FIFA10. There are loads of nice realistic touches everywhere (a player v player passing stat that pops down randomly was a nice one). No complaints with presentation. Celebrations are SICK btw. Better than PES in everything but camera angle imo (a real achievement) and even that has improved LOADS.

The pressure has been toned all the way down. If you constantly pressure for long periods, by the end of the match your player will be knackered. The distance you can cover by simply holding the pressure button is a lot shorter too which can leave players tired and out of position. A good player can build up play now and pick apart pressure whores. It happened to me infact! *hangs head in shame*

The individuality isn't mentioned much by others. That's because it's so naturally intertwined with the game that it only rears it's head every now and then. P+ is very much there and it's a joy to behold when it makes a difference to a match. More on that in the post below.

There are lots of minor issues that have been addressed for the game. The major issue left for us to get on EA's back for next game is Offensive and Defensive partner AI. To be fair they've touched upon an answer to it (i'll eplain , again, in a sec) but it really needs their full focus as I believe EA are very, very close to producing one of the seminal football games of the generation. FIFA10 Promised that. Fifa11 elaborates upon that. FIFA12 could be nirvana if they focus on the right areas from here on out.
 
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Believe it or not, that was the short of it! This is the long and mildly interesting version of events down in central Lun-dun. I won't go over the questions that have clearly been answered as... they've been... answered, but I will try and answer common concerns about the game.

First off,

PRESSURE:

Guys, pressure is still in the game. You can get hurried to pass the ball about, especially when you're up against a team with strong and fast defensive midfielders. I was being chased around the place by Van der Vaart and Xavi Alonso at one point in a scene that would not be out of place in a hooror flick (chainsaw massacre?). They charged around the place closing down every pass, but then something cool happened. One of them started to slow down as I was just trying to move the ball about the back line. My opponent said "what the f*ck?" (or something to that effect) and I let out a smile. I think the amount of time you can pressure like a mad man with each player is obviously attribute based (as is the recovery time i think) but I'm gld that has been looked at. It led to a much slower game with build-up being rewarded much more. Ofcourse you can still break forward quickly but when those moves break down you have to be very clever about who you are 1-2ing out of position otherwise you can get battered on the counter.

One thing Phil (Mr. EA UK) mentioned to me was that there are a host of options in the demo and Jesus was he right. You can tune the game to your needs this year. There's a new option that you can choose just how much of your Team AI that you'd like to control. From the moment you pass to another player in your team you can have the AI control the immidiate action of that player. Phil said the CPU will do things like get into a shielding position as the ball is rolling to them for balls on the floor and that when the ball is in the air the cpu will jostle for a favourable position too. With the new 360degree fight for posession you actually do feel you can win the ball anywhere and at any point so all manual player control should be a joy. With pressure no longer equal to a homing missle tackle (it's more a containing tool) you aslo feel you can wriggle out of tight situations with the right player.

PRO-PASSING:

A very contentious issue around these parts, I know. I went off to Central London with a furrowed brow ready to rant about the fabled abolition of the "ping-pong" but once I got there, even I, a cultured and passing gamer found myself hamstrung by the new feature.... in a good way. You really have to consider every pass. To the point that you WILL seek players like Iniesta, Xavi and Sergio "Biscuits". Once they have the ball you can feel sure of your passing again. Puyol is a f*cking liability with the ball at his feet so it's better to just get it to "a man that can".

The option in "game options" for turning the little yellow notch on or off is labelled "Passing Assistance". That should give you a clue to the relevance of it. All that notch is telling you is the optimum amount of time the button should be held to get the ball to your desired location. You can't turn Pro Passing off. Balls can be over and under-hit and both have a big effect on your build-up. Under-hit passes are regularily intercepted by canny midfielders or attackers. Overhit passes lead to miscontrols or take longer to get under control based on who is recieving the ball. And even the top players on the pitch will not appreciate a sh*te-laced pass from 2 yards.

A nice upside from all this pro passing is that you can hit the ball into space and have your midfield run onto it much more often. Towards the end of the day I'd try overhitting the ball into space behind the other side's defensive midfielder and Iniesta was just bursting to get onto it. Quality. "Engineered for Freedom"? Maybe... It felt like that anyways.

Anyways, there is a difference between a awful pass and a good pass and it matters more depending on who you are controlling as well as contextually. Playing as a Juve defender I could not do what I was doing with Pique and Abidal for instance. I got my arse handed to me in doing so. I imagine you have to be even more careful at the back with, say a Stoke defense, passing the ball around (long ball anyone? :) ).

Overall I'm certain it will split opinion but in my mind EA have done enough with PP so far. It works. It makes each pass more of a consideration and you can open teams up with clever useage of it. I can understand this not coming out in vids as you have barely any time to find the right pass in a 3minute demo. The pacing of the game simply isn't suited to playing it in a demo so short. Everyone is trying to get a goal in that short amount of time so it's a clusterfuck of misplaced passes and people holding pressure at any chance which moves the defense all over the place.

Defense & Offense:

Let's get this out of the way first. I managed to squeeze in one game against the AI on World Class (very hard to do at a ublic event) and I'll happily conceed that I may have to start LOWER when the game comes out. My God. The AI is basically as canny as a real opponent. It checks it's runs and trys new routes to goal all the time. It even knocks the ball back to the defense to build up play. Very hard to strip the AI off the ball when it has iniesta & Xavi in it's control. It does some eerily realistic shoulder drops and runs with iniesta too. It's crazy. Definitely very impressive in that aspect. The CPU made a sub in the game and FINALLY the stadium panning sequence is gone. The new scene shows the players coming off and tagging on (face are amazing in this game). So awesome.

Your own defensive AI? Better than last year positionally but not too clever overall sadly. Again this depends HEAVILY on the options that you set with the CPU assistance levels. Some people didn't know the options weren't reset after each game so a person could change everything to manual and the next person would hop on and say "wow, passing is shit this year". Stuff like this was happening a lot but I always checked the options no matter how much it pissed off the tweens around me :BOP: The left/right back, hand on heart, doesn't roam unless you select and deselect him in the middle of a move. The best thing is to take control of a defensive mid or defender and hold the line yourself while pressuring with the mid or vice-versa. It works well that way. You'll have to re-learn how to defend with the limitations on pressuring though.

Attacking-wise I found that my team didn't tak up good positions all too often. I'd be on the ball with Xavi and all i saw were my players streaking in straight lines without bothering to get ball-side of their markers. Sometimes they did, but not often enough for me. They support you well depending on their attack stats though. David Villa and Pedro are beasts. Pedro always pulls out wide. As does Messi. Which leads me nicely to:

Personality+

Wow, visually. Just... wow. I have no idea what FSB were playing at showing the least scanned faces in the game but the faces that have been scanned in using the new tech are absolutely stunning. Can't wait o find more in the game. They're definitely the peak in what we'll see this gen for face-tech. No game and I mean NO GAME touches them. Crysis? Maybe. The facial animations are crazy too. The shouting, talking and even surprised and angry looks on their face are just a level beyond. A treat to behold.

The body shapes are much improved too. Not perfect but varying enough for you to instantly recognise who is on the ball from a distance. Drogba is maybe even a little tooo muscular. An absolute colosus. When he's on the ball you feel like Guilliver against lillyput. Throwin the tiny people off you as you maraude your way to goal.... JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE :lol: The best place to view the players was when they emergade from the tunnel at the Santiago Bernabau. My goodness. The faces and the bodys brought about a creeoy sense of "uncanny vally". Casilas emerged from the tunnel first and I was honestly taken aback by the accuracy. Well played in that instance EA.

With regards to on the pitch action the players distinguish themselves more subtly. I can only give you examples of what I saw. I was desperate. The guy had walzed through my midfield and approached Puyol with similar dangerous intent. I aimed for the ball and hit "slide". Now, in FIFA10 95% of the time i'd have missed the tackle and would be scrambling to get back or thinking about bring out the keeper. In FIFA11 Puyol took the player OUT and got the ball and then passed out to the left back. It was a sligtly strange, new animation too. It looked powerful. I wish I could have replayed the tackle but this was a very public playtest and it is quite awkward iunterupting a game to satisfy my own geekdom. :)) Another piece of insane skill I did was beating 3 players (real madrid players) with Iniesta and you can ask a guy called "starfleet" from EA forums. I think it was him I did it to. I hit the shield button to shield away from the first guy and then let go and turned into the next guy and then hit shield again and then lightly tapped the run to esape from him to which led to me bursting past the third guy (and then i fucked-up my pass :FAIL: hahaha) but the animations this produced were SICK. There is clearly a lot more to see of P+ under the hood, and especially with EA able to add more without patching.

Oh and by the way, I saw Lampard score a stunna off the bar in the demo too as well as my own C.Ronaldo freekick from miles out smashing the bar and off the line and flicked away realistically by the defense. Clearance animations are quality as well as long range shooting animations. Definitely been touched up. Sadly Crossing is the same this year apart from the contextual aspect and PP. It's been improved slightly by the AI though. They actually run into position instead os standing there on free kicks and corners. Another aside is that there were no personality+ insire tippy-toe run ups for corners (ala Gourcuff or Lampard). They stand differently for corners and freekicks though. Some slightly bent and some stand up straight.

Anyways, there's way too much for me to mention with P+. Just know that you should expect the odd "holy shit" moment in your game if you actually try to play the game with any semblance of realism (ie. long shots with Lampard or dribbling around with messi etc).

Celebrations:

Yes, it needs it's own section. Wow. I cannot believe how many were popping up!! Drogba scored a lot for people in the demo and almost always was caught by Anelka or Kalou before he cuold get away. One time though he was left to run away and he started runing with him arms out (not like in world cup but with slight realisms to the way he moved and swayed abit... hard to describe) and then slide to his knees just like the real thing and not the lame shite we've seen before. The he got a hug from a player and another player jumped over the top of both of them and they laughed at him falling right over them. It all looked so... realistic and satisfying. The camera angle cut to a decent angle to see it all too. It was all in real time. It'd be nice if they showed a tiny clip of it in slow mo after the goal replay though. I also saw one where the goalscorer ran up to a player and he got on one knee, patted it and the goal scorer put his foot on it and got it polished. This was just in the demo so I assume there are load more. Amazing when you first see a reslistic one.

Other things I noticed:

Analogue Run - The lighter you press the trigger the slower the run and vice versa. Didn't get to test it much. You can turn this on off in options.

Handball - Was on and is well annoying. You get easy penalties from hitting the wall from Freekicks.

Headers - Much improved and close to the World Cup game for satifaction.

Long shots - Again, much improved and more satusfying to score because it's hard to make enough space for a shot and have it on your good foot.

Goalies - Part of P+ but stunning. Cech saved a close ranger. It was Practically point blank range. Yu could feel the power of the shot as he parried it back while kinda flailing. Amazing. That was just one of the new goalie animations I saw for keepers. I saw another amazing one where cech dove a bit early and made a one-handed punch for near enough above his head very late to prevent a certain goal. They aren't super human though. A good striker can slot 1v1's still but you feel you have a better chance with a top keeper in goal now.

1v1's - Wouldn't worry overly. It's a short demo and many were just trying their damndest to score anyhow so the pressure was palpable from kick off until their players were out of energy. A funny thing happened when I was 1 v 1 one time with Messi. I was so tired from pressuring all game that Messi didn't have the legs to outpace the last man who was behind him. So you can see you can get severly punished for abusing the pressure button here.

Long balls - Long balls into space are better now. It's not so scripted anymore. The new long range pass with R1 & Long pass is quality. Diagonal balls into space are no a viable route to goal.

Dribbling - I was dribbling with Pique and he got tackled but maintained control by toe-ing it forward as he stumbled. The animation looked quality and I've seen him do something like this in real life.

Goals - Apart from 1 v 1's they were nicely varied and you felt if you had the ball at a good strikers foot that you'd either force a good save or score a great goal. The ball rips in at pace when you whack it in this game too.
 
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TikTikTikTikTik said:
You're welcome Nick........don't forget to print the list :P
Click to expand...

:WHISTLE:

How much of a twonk would I feel...

mfmaxpower said:
More CM questions for Nick:

Scout & Youth Players
- Is there more to the new scouting feature than the scout making recommendations during the transfer period?
- With the old scout system removed, how do we have access to undiscovered youth players to refresh and maintain our squads as the mode advances in years?
- Are CPU teams still automatically generating fake young players?
- Are fake players still faceless?
--> Are they more realistic?
--> Have they been given names that commentators will say?
--> Do they have traits?
--> How are their player models? More varied?

Player Development
- How has the player growth system changed/improved from last year?
- Has the option returned to manage player growth directly or is growth automatic again like last year?
--> If player growth is automatic, do we have any input/involvement in the process?
- How is the speed of player growth (i.e. how many OVR pts might a player gain per year)?
- Has the player scouting reports and potential growth charts evolved/improved?
--> Are they more detailed?
--> Do we know what specific attributes are changing?
--> Are these reports available when deciding on transfers?
- As players grow, is it possible for them to gain new traits?
- As players grow, is it possible for them to gain skill stars for more tricks?

Editing
- Are there any options for editing players within CM?
--> If not, I assume that all edits must be made prior to starting a CM career for them to take effect?

VP
- Can you confirm that in PM mode we will not have the option to control our entire squad on the pitch if our VP is playing?
Click to expand...


Cheers, I'm taking a tent with me by the looks... :P
 
Overall-

A nice progression for the series. Sure they could always be doing more but it seems they got a lot right this time around. The game has that more-ish feel back. Everyone at the event was happy with the game. Everyone I played loved the pace. It feels so much better to play than to look at. The vids don't really do the game much justice. The ball physics are crazy. The players look realistic for the first time ever in FIFA imo. The animations are great and the gameplay is balanced. There is more to be done with your own team AI but as it stands I can't see what game betters this one (I've played the PESbeta btw and that is great fun too). I know it's been said before but it really is down to you how you develop play up the field. Your player attributes actually dictate how you move the ball which is as close to real footy as you can get really.

The only things i'd like is for EA to tighten up how you recieve of the ball. Top players can get the ball and give the ball much better in tight spaces than what EA allows. It's doable in '11 but stick-bendingly tricky.

I really want more personal time with the game with 6minute halves. The build up requires that amount of time imo. You literally arent sure if your ball will make it to the reciever in the game (unless you are Xavi lol), which is a nice change. I hope we get another English team in the demo though, Real vs Barca is played-out.

I'll add more as I think of it. (i'll also edit the spelling errors out in a sec!)
 
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Let's get this out of the way first. I managed to squeeze in one game against the AI on World Class (very hard to do at a ublic event) and I'll happily conceed that I may have to start LOWER when the game comes out. My God. The AI is basically as canny as a real opponent. It checks it's runs and trys new routes to goal all the time. It even knocks the ball back to the defense to build up play. Very hard to strip the AI off the ball when it has iniesta & Xavi in it's control. It does some eerily realistic shoulder drops and runs with iniesta too. It's crazy. Definitely very impressive in that aspect.
Click to expand...

Agree with Anthony on this I got a single game in and saw some lovely moves from the AI (they were Barca) and you could tell the players right off, they would attack you with turns and drags not just the odd trick, it just wasn't enough time or differing team options to tell if the sides will play different... :II
 
Thanks Gameklip fantastic impressions! I'm really feeling more excited for the game having read this. My one question: How is weak foot accuracy/frequency?
 
stilts1844 said:
Thanks Gameklip fantastic impressions! I'm really feeling more excited for the game having read this. My one question: How is weak foot accuracy/frequency?
Click to expand...

I asked Phil about this but he kinda swerved the question. Looks Messi will be tapping the ball around on his right foot. He did deliver a few crosses on his right foot but none were that accurate in the ones i observed. I personally think it should be more difficult for players to deliver a decent cross or shot in on their wrong foot. It's another thing we need to get on EA's backs about.

BTW a lot of people will hate FIFA11 at first for being so punishing with passing but I think once you stop playing it like FIFA10 it will be rewading. I'm a glass-half-full man though. :SMUG:

Thanks for the compliments guys. I'd been typing for most of my afternoon! I just let it all pour out onto evo-web lol. You can keep asking questions and I'll answer after the Spurs game tonight.

There are already some really great impressions out there. Mostly positive I think.
 
Thanks all the guys for answering the questions :))

I am alot more positive after Gameklips views though :)) very in-depth and has given me a great idea of what to expect.
 
gameklip said:
I personally think it should be more difficult for players to deliver a decent cross or shot in on their wrong foot. It's another thing we need to get on EA's backs about.
Click to expand...

In one of the recent vids you could see that each player has a 5-star system for 'weak foot accuracy'. Messi has 3/5, which isn't half bad.
 
gameklip said:
I asked Phil about this but he kinda swerved the question. Looks Messi will be tapping the ball around on his right foot. He did deliver a few crosses on his right foot but none were that accurate in the ones i observed. I personally think it should be more difficult for players to deliver a decent cross or shot in on their wrong foot. It's another thing we need to get on EA's backs about.
Click to expand...

In addition, not only should it be more difficult to cross/pass/shoot with weak foot, as part of P+ the CPU AI should act accordingly. For example, you should see wingers doing 180s at edge of the box to send in crosses on correct foot.

lothario said:
In one of the recent vids you could see that each player has a 5-star system for 'weak foot accuracy'. Messi has 3/5, which isn't half bad.
Click to expand...

Problem is, in one of the very first gameplay vids we saw Messi sprint down the right side and send in a perfect cross with his right foot that led to a goal. It was one of the first things people started going nuts about when vids were first coming out.
 
lothario said:
In one of the recent vids you could see that each player has a 5-star system for 'weak foot accuracy'. Messi has 3/5, which isn't half bad.
Click to expand...

True. Perhaps for players we think should be worse we will have to go and edit it - with the new editing features are we able to edit things like this this year?

Also Gameklip, are defensive lines further back finally this year?

Do CBs still man the post on corners?

Are free kicks less accurate a la World Cup and depend on player stats?

Do corners for players whose kick will curl 'outward' (ie of you put a left footer for a left corner) is the curl more reasonable so that they're not useless at corners from that side? It used to bother me that it would curl so far that it would be too deep for a header!

Thanks again man!
 
lothario said:
In one of the recent vids you could see that each player has a 5-star system for 'weak foot accuracy'. Messi has 3/5, which isn't half bad.
Click to expand...

Same as in FIFA 10 and look what it meant in that...:P

I do hope they work on this, I saw little sign of it if I'm honest in the demo, though playing 1v1 was a new experience for me so my focus was on the game as a whole when I played rather than detail...
 
Weak foot has always been the weakest (pun intended) part of Fifa, Chris Brunt even has the "his weak foot is complete and utter shite and he can barely stand on it" trait and yet he can still hit perfect first time volleyed crosses with his right foot.
 
Placebo said:
Weak foot has always been the weakest (pun intended) part of Fifa, Chris Brunt even has the "his weak foot is complete and utter shite and he can barely stand on it" trait and yet he can still hit perfect first time volleyed crosses with his right foot.
Click to expand...

It's unbelievable that it's something that's never been corrected so far in the series.I mean it's so obvious that it's wrong
 
For me, what is even more important than weak foot accuracy is weak foot frequency. The former already exists in FIFA10, to a small degree.

I think it would make quite a difference, both in terms of visual authenticity and in the way you play, if players heavily favoured using their preferred foot, rather than just utilising the one that seems more convenient at the time.

I feel I've been frustrated many times when I've been expecting a player to use his stronger foot and he has unnecessarily used his weaker foot, resulting in a slightly different angle of pass to what I was expecting - and that can be important when using Manual controls.
 
I've never really understood why right footed players can use their left foots easily but left footed players can't use their right foots very well even though they usually shoot on their right foot more so than their preferred left foot.

You may aswell not have left footed players in your team right now because of the detriment it is.
 
A review based on the "Emirates Festival of FIFA"

Before I begin with the important stuff I just want to say a couple of things about the day. Firstly, all the impressions written in this thread are by no means definitive - they were accumulated over a few hours of play, watching, listening and thinking. The games were played on the PS3 (not my favoured console/controller which made some things a little more awkward to test than I would have liked when it came to comparisons).

Secondly I'd like to thank EA for the opportunity for so many community members - feedback givers, community leaders, and competition winners to play, and for paying for the food, drinks, and activities (all excellent). Whilst the main activity of the day was to play FIFA, there were also a few things setup to play around with when waiting or recuperating (six hours is a long time to play a game I find - and there were perhaps not quite enough terminals to play on at times), so thanks to EA, and EAUK, and in particular Phil Wride for organising the event - and also thanks to Dave Rutter for making himself available through the magic of the internet to give a quick talk about FIFA and answer some questions. I have to admit that anyone who was following the forum would have known most of the stuff already but it was a nice opportunity and one which I really think we could benefit with having more often - no matter the venue, forums, or events like these, being able to communicate with members of this community is critical to the games continual improvement.

Some of you may have already read my early/briefish impressions that I wrote up on Evo-Web, which as I did say were really just the things at the front of my mind and trying to focus on things I might forget and getting it down quickly. I hope people didn't react overly negatively due to that - though I know they did. Whilst there I tried as best as I could to test as much as possible - all the assistance settings (incl. some new ones which I'll try to elaborate on), and trying as best as I could to break the game in the ways that it was broken in FIFA 10. We didn't have a particularly wide selection of teams which prevented me playing with any teams lower than 4 stars. I played with all the teams - Barca, Real, Lyon, Bayer Levurksen and Juventus - and tried to get as overall a feel for the game as I could from this.

Where the problems of FIFA 10 are now

Game Speed

Gamespeed is reduced considerably. This is clear all over, pass speed is reduced, acceleration reduced a bit, but the main reduction in gamepace is due to Pro Passing, and the considerable reduction in the effectiveness of pressuring. It is the dual change of a game where you need more time, but feel less rushed - and that is probably the most apparent thing of all from when you play the game. Whether it's slow enough will be hard to tell until the game starts being played online. For the sake of it, I played a game on slow and didn't notice a huge amount of difference - but then it's hard to know when playing between two people used to playing realistically. I was playing Barca/Real - and the game really didn't feel too fast on normal. As someone who tends towards lower star teams on FIFA 10 because it's just so fast on the better teams, I had to keep pinching myself to remember that I was playing with two of the best teams in the world.

FIFA is, should be, and has been for a while a game where you as the player can dictate the pace. The question for FIFA 11 is whether the advantages/disadvantages of playing quickly and slowly are better balanced than in FIFA 10, where both defensively and offensively, pacey play was key, even with teams who wouldn't dare play quickly It is difficult in three minute matches to know whether this has been improved - so the question really is whether the elements are right.

In FIFA 10, playing quickly worked because there was near enough no meaningful penalisation for playing fast in terms of stamina - and because it didn't take much to find the passes necessary to get to goal. In terms of stamina, I'm fairly sure what we were playing wasn't the final stamina model - to be honest, I barely noticed the change at all in that build.

Having watched the video which has now been released about the new model, I'm unconvinced. I still think it's far, far too weak in terms of punishing someone for having a player who is quite literally as tired as tired can be. The player should be an utter liability in almost every way - instead he's a mere ~15% slower over half the pitch. In all honesty, I think EA could do with doubling the negative effect - though obviously without playing the game with this new model it is perhaps unfair to judge - I just find it hard to believe that such a minor difference is really going to produce the situations which we should find - like having to substitute a tired player.

The danger is, that, whilst they've done quite a lot to forcibly slow you down, I'm not sure whether there is anything to really punish you from still playing as fast as you can. Whether the defensive AI, Pro Passing, and Pressure changes can actually achieve the realistic pros and cons which come with playing at certain tempos, I am unconvinced . . ..

Passing of the Wiff Waff Variety

Out of the various problems in FIFA 10, ping-pong passing was one of the most controversial, most abused, and most complained of. The antivenom announced by EA was Pro Passing, and I'm just going to briefly explain what it is because a lot of people don't seem to quite understand what pro passing contains. Pro Passing can be looked at as two primary elements, the user-weighting element, and the contextual element. The weighting element means that the power that a user inputs when using assisted/semi passing will be factored into the pass. When you make a pass, a marker will show up on the charge-bar (after you've let go) to show where the optimum pass was. If you are under this point, you should find the ball going slower to the target, or even coming short. At the other end of the spectrum, if you overweight, you might power the pass too far, or make it hard to control for the player on the other end. This element can be turned off, but it will be forced on for online. Just to reiterate - this part only affects assisted/semi, as manual has always been weighted by the user.

The other element is the contextual error. Like the shooting has been for a few games now, each pass you make will be affected by the circumstances. If it's a first time, long pass when the ball is travelling quickly or bouncing, the pass will be less likely to be accurate, as well as likely being slower, or bouncier. The intention is that if you consistently make difficult passes, it will make the next pass harder still. For someone ping-pong passing, the difficult will increase and increase until eventually the pass will be too slow, too bouncy, or too inaccurate forcing controlling touches. In some ways, it might sound like this will be ineffective, and that PPP will remain, but actually I found it fairly solid. Even playing with Barcelona the effect was clear, especially with the lesser players. It is surprising how damaging a slow, underweighted or bouncy pass can be to an attack - often making an interception much more likely.

I actually think Pro Passing does a relatively good job of nerfing PPP, but I do have concerns about its ability to stop other issues. My first issue, is that I find the contextual error is far too often expressed in terms of slow/bouncy passes, which really doesn't seem particularly close to realism to me. It you are trying to make a pass to an unmarked man (for instance, backwards to a defender), the chance is that you can make almost any pass - because even if it is slow, or bouncy, it will still be aimed correctly. There were occasions where I saw/did 140 degree plus passes, and whilst they were effected, they were still usually pretty straight. Personally I'd prefer the deviation to be a lot more varied - a difficult pass should be overweighted, underweighted, bouncy, too far left, too far right, and so forth - first touch 180 degree passes really should be no-nos, and I'd much prefer to see the ball go off at an angle than to just slowly reach its target in these situations.

Generally, the case is that if you are trying to 'ping-pong' to unmarked players, you will have very little issue. The pass might be a bit slow, or a bit bouncy, but because it's almost always dead straight, it's unlikely to stop people from the 180 degree idiocy of old. In terms of actually attacking with ping-pong FIFA 10 style, it's considerably harder.

My other concern, and this is a big one, is that the user element is very, very forgiving. It is sometimes hard to even work out what it is doing. Massively overdoing short passes, completely underdoing short passes, and all the time it seems to mean very little. I have heard that EA may be tweaking this - but I'm worried they won't tweak it far enough. You certainly can feel a difference, but it tends to be a case of - completely underweight it (like, tapping pass for a long pass) seems to result in a slightly underweighted pass. As a manual player it's frustrating to know that, the difficulty of weighting a pass for me, is still so, so, so much harder than it is for an assisted, or even semi-assisted player. I can understand why EA won't want to make it as hard as it is on manual, but I do think it should at least be half way as hard, as opposed to being something you can almost totally neglect at no real cost.

So whilst PPP itself is definitely more difficult, the actual passing inaccuracy on a more general level is still not done right. As long as you take a touch or two before you pass, you will still be able to pass with huge accuracy.

As a note - I also found on quite a few occasions that I was struggling to manage long passes along the ground. Perhaps just that the range of power needs to be tweaked so that a fully held down pass goes further.

Pressure

Other than PPP, I think the main hatred in FIFA 10 was towards pressure, high-pressure tactics, and pressure abusers. Again, I found this to be improved. In terms of the actual effectiveness of tackling whilst holding down the pressure buttons, relative to the effectiveness of holding back and jockeying, it seems to have been rebalanced quite well. I'm still not a fan of having these homing buttons in the game as it is, but I do feel relatively confident that this year even online, pressuring will be a lot less used/abused tactic. It seems a lot easier to turn, and to hold off a player who is pressuring, and you do have a lot more time on the ball. This, for me, when watching the gameplay videos from gamescom (And even some of the ones from gamerbase) was a major concern - as a lot of those videos seem to show a lot of pressuring, and effective pressuring at that. I tend to believe having played the game (and explicitly asking the person playing against me to pressure like hell), that both the players doing the pressure and the player trying to counter the pressure weren't especially good. As long as you concentrate, you really shouldn't be caught out by it anywhere near as often now - as they are so much slower to pressure. You also seem to get more time on the ball when receiving a pass - as well as the new physical stuff (the 360 degree battle engine which I'll get onto later) this means that you can counter a pressuring man much better.

The other change is that generally, a pressuring player seems a lot less likely to make a tackle. They seem to have less reach, and they react slower to your movement too. I didn't play much against the AI, but against a human, I found it much easier with the skilled dribblers like Messi, and Ronaldo, to go past players with simple dribbling. Being able to defend using jockeying and your own movement rahter than relying on the buttons will certainly be more important this year.

Whether using high pressure tactics and stupid formations could rejuvinate this problem I'm not sure, but I feel quite confident about the pressure being solved - more happy than I am with the passing.

Hold the Line

If there is one place I really was disappointed, it was defensive AI. It has improved, players mark closer, and they definitely do try to hold the line more, and better, and usually they do this well - but on occasion I did find them being broken up bizzarely. More rarely than before, but still a feature is the problem where a defender will try to always stay a few yards off his attacker, even if this means falling back from the defensive line (and therefore allowing the OT to be broken easily).

On one particular occasion my line seemed to be pulled out horribly - a left back being 15 yards further back than the next defender easily. The players seem to have a bit of a problem with letting a player go goal side of them - or even to have a striker a yard away. Returning to FIFA 10 after the event, I noticed the differences more clearly. In FIFA 11 they definitely do mark tighter - but the occasional slips can be all the player against you needs. I would recommend that the players are made even more conscious of their line, and to stop this silly system of the player wanting to constantly give space to attackers, which seems to be the main cause of the all the problems. If the player is to fall back - the line needs to follow.

Goalkeepers

One of the most frustrating parts of FIFA 10, and the most exploitable parts of FIFA 10, was the utter fallibility of the goalkeepers. Whether he was watching butterflies as balls flew over his head on a corner, or charging out like a mad man in the 1v1s, and then failing entirely to try to stop the chip, or parrying shots which should never have been parried, he was almost invariably doing something wrong.

It would take a long time to claim that this game has eradicated problems with goalkeepers, and history shows that this is a difficult goal, but from my time I didn't remember any saves/parries/missed saves which I felt were unbelievable. I gave a good go at trying out some of the exploits/flaws above - chipping (incl. the lob chip exploit), backpost crossers/corners etc. and found in each case that the goalies had improved. I still would like to see them being more adventurous on corners - and maybe in terms of coming out to intercept balls across goal, but in terms of dealing with the horrorshow issues of FIFA 10, it seemed a big improvement.
 
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Assisted, Semi & Manual

So on to my favourite topic, the whole assisted/semi/manual debate. As I have already expressed briefly in various places, I don't feel that the order has been repaired. I still found assisted controls to generally be more effective than semi (bar with crossing), and manual controls harder than the assisted version in every case. Semi far too often seems to be described and designed to be a harder form of assisted, and that mentality is where the problem lies. The debate will rage on next year, but I have a strong will to see the back of it for FIFA 12. EA must choose, within the first few months of the year a long term solution. It doesn't matter if it takes 2 games to get it fully there - the main thing is to decide on a viable policy and set on achieving it. It needs to apply to all online game modes - and it needs to be satisfying to the whole ccommunity. I would vehemently (!) recommend that EA discuss this at length with their community to make sure that whatever solution they decide on will work.

In other manual related news, as we knew a bit ago now (thanks to someone who went go Gamescom) there are now quite a few more assistance settings. It will be interesting to see what setup the manual/semi filters apply for these. Player switching has been changed quite a lot, as opposed to the multiple settings we used to have, we now just have three. Manual, assisted, and 'Air Balls'. Manual leaves it to the player, and won't change for you - assisted changes for you - and air balls will change for you only when the ball has been put in the air - which is very useful for situations where you have large groups of players in one place, like corners.

Another new one is the movement assistance. This was roughly described by David Rutter as a buffer to continue a players run when you switch to them. So, if you are running in one direction, then switch to a player who was running in the opposite direction, the player will continue to run in that direction for a brief period of time. High, presumably has the largest buffer, low, just a small one, and manual removes it altogether. Turning this off allows you to instantly resume control of your player.

Finally, we have the 'Analog Sprint' - new mechanic which allows you to move at speeds between jogging, and sprinting. The more you press the trigger, the faster you go. This can be turned off, or on. I tried this quite a lot, and disappointingly (partially because I dislike the PS3's triggers) didn't find it to be especially useful. I'm fully subscribed to the idea of annalog speed, so I'm not sure whether it's not being used to it, or the implementation, but I didn't see it being especially useful. I partially believe that it may need to be entirely analog speed - rather than just analog sprinting. One of the main reasons I didn't fall in love with it was that, once sprinting, even if it was just a tiny bit faster than jogging, it seemed to start ruining your stamina just as fast as it would if you went full out (not sure on this but it was what I felt), and secondly, the maximum turning angle seemed to decrease to 22.5 degrees even if you were just going faster than a jog. For me, this is the main thing which needs to change. When I'm only half sprinting, I expect to be able to turn more than full sprinting, and for my stamina to reduce less... but maybe it's a case of needing to play with it for longer to get used to it.

As a note, in regards to manual passing, I found that #1, the tapped pass flying off like a rocket bug was fixed (though I didn't play for that long I'm fairly sure I would have experienced it if it was still there), which should save a lot of manual controllers a lot of anger. Disappointingly, I did find that short passes with the direct pass button (X on PS3, A on 360) were still very difficult to do. They seem to have a sort of lowest-distance which is just too far. I have mentioned this to Gary Paterson (and I'd like to hear other manual players' views on this one), so maybe this will see some improvement for release.

Et Cetera

Be a Goalkeeper

One feature of the build we had was a minigame played in the loading screen. Instead of one player in the arena, you now get to have one attacker, and the goalie. This gave me my first try being a goalie in any football game. I have to say that it was actually a lot better than I expected. What really sums it up is -something-completely-different- and I can actually see it being an enjoyable mode online, even if you're going to be doing a lot of waiting, and watching. The controls are simple, and intuitive, whilst not overly simplified. Like with normal play, there are assistance settings here too. I hope, that unlike the assists for normal play, using manual will actually give you some advantage to make up for the increased difficulty. Whether it does remains to be seen - but it will be interesting to see whether EA have gone in here with a balanced system, or, like with every FIFA on the current gen consoles, given the player on assisted huge advantages over semi/manual users. I'll definitely be giving this a go in FIFA 11 - and for those who've written this off before it came to fruition, you shut your mouth until you've tried it ;)

AWOL

One feature which was touted to be in the game after the Vancouver/Guildford playtests was the fact that the game now allowed multiple people to jump for the same ball. I have to admit that, if I did see this, it was on one occasion, and I'm not even sure if it was this feature. For me, this is rather disappointing. Corners/crosses are still almost always 1v1 affairs - which makes them look stale, and they also have the tendency to feel over before they've even started. As opposed to those fantastic moments when you just don't know who will get their head onto the ball, it turns into a standoff between the two men the game have selected. For me, I'd prefer to see lots of players going for it - even if they miss by a fair way. A player doesn't look at the ball in the air and think - no, wait, I'll miss that by an inch, and the player behind me will get it instead - football is a lot less calculated than that. Everyone with a chance of getting the ball should be jumping for it - and this just isn't the case for FIFA 11 from what I played, in fact, it would be difficult to argue there had been any progress with this at all.

On the bright side, headers do seem less erratic and more controllable now. Generally easy headers were going on target, as opposed on on FIFA where my player seemed to love to hit everything over the bar regardless of his position or what I pressed or how much pressure was on him. This at least may make heading more of an art and less of a lottery.

The new Lob

Fortunately, the driven lob is not absent without leave. Using R1 as modfier for a lob, you can now hit hard, quick balls below head height across long distances. This feels great on use, and even though I didn't get to try it out much (as to be honest I forgot its inclusion for the first few games) I did manage to utilise space on the flanks a lot better thanks to this.

A case for the defence

I've obviously put quite a lot about defending in the Pressure/Defensive AI segments in the first sector - but I'd like to just elaborate on what I feel is quite disappointing in general. Becuase pressure now is a lot less effective of a tactic, it does mean that the balance of sorts in FIFA 10 between defence/attack seems a bit rickety. An already small repetoire of choices dwindle further. The offside trap activation through the d-pad is as clunky, risky, and poorly implemented as before - simply not worth using. Non-controlled players still don't jockey themselves - so only your player will be making himself big when close to opponents - and it's still difficult to pressure in the way that pressure is applied in real life - not a homing-tackle like FIFA 10, but a slowly moving in, waiting for the error. As hopefully pressure has been neutered, this makes it difficult to effectively/realistically use any other man than the one you control, which is a pity.

Interceptions are still far fewer than I'd like - and I still found many balls just dribbling over my players toes whilst they walked on. There were a couple of occasions where I saw the first ever effective interception animations in next gen FIFAs - a player lunging out to get in the way of a pass and actually controlling it - but there were still the occasions of my player triggering a stupid animation and allowing it to bounce off him. Blocking however was a different story - players throwing themselves in the way of the ball all over the place to stop goals - perhaps with a little too much effectiveness but it's difficult to say in a short playtime.

First Touch & Chesting

One of the things which really annoyed me with FIFA 10 was the consistently awful chesting. It would always be slow, and it would always push the ball away from your player, and always in one direction - ultimately making any ball in the air a good way of losing the ball - as it was so easy to predict where the ball would land once it was chested.

This has improved a lot - you no longer feel so constrained by the animations and there are a lot more in there too.


What's more, is that first touches feel more realistic to the situation. Good balls are easy to take under control - poor balls much harder - and player to player you see these differences highlighted. I found that defenders were a lot better at taking a ball down and clearing, which is nice, much less of them stupidly allowing the opponent to take the ball whilst they bumble around chesting, setting themselves up and taking a teabreak in the middle of it.

On the other hand I did see a number of controlling touches which were just bizarre moments. You see a larger variety, but it still feels a bit soft in certain cases. There is a video floating around of Cech taking down a ball like the best target men in the world. It's a general case of being better, and more varied, but there are still occasional moments which just show a bizarre lack of footballing realism.

Personality+

More or less, I've managed to write all of the above without mentioning one of, if not FIFA 11's main additions. Unfortunately for me, Arsenal not being available in the build I played, I couldn't make the comparison to real life per player that I'd have liked to make - but having played with some of the most recognisable players in the world in Barca, Chelsea, and Real Madrid, I got a good feel for it.

I think the word which best summises what Personality+ achieves is empowerment. When dribbling with the ball as Messi, or Ronaldo, you feel empowered to take on your man - and yes, I did find it much easier to dribble past a man without skills. With Xavi, I felt empowered to pass. With Essien, I felt empowered to tackle.

There are definitely questionmarks in my mind whether it could go further, whether it could infect more areas of the game - but in the areas it does, which is a lot more than FIFA 10's, it seems very solid. Finally in FIFA, you will find that players like Ronaldo, Messi, Villa, Terry, are not just good versions of any old player in their position but individuals with their own styles.

Visually too players are a lot more distinctive. Running with Ronaldo may not be perfectly recreated, but it's a huge change from a game where every player moved in the same manner more or less. The new array of player models are apparent. How much these intricacies will play down to lower level teams remains to be seen. Visually, I'm sure we won't find much personality in lesser players - but in terms of gameplay I hope we'll find a lot more variety than previously.

I'm not really ready to give a strong verdict on P+ until I play with the team I support - but I felt it was certainly a strong opener for a series which is notoriously low on personality. I still feel that perhaps there isn't quite enough differentiation in certain areas. Whilst there are now clear differences between good dribbler, and bad dribbler, there perhaps isn't quite the level of detail to differentiate between different types of good dribbler, as an example.

Generally, I'd say the step has been that, in FIFA 10, there were a small, small number of stats which went together to make a player. In FIFA 11, there are a lot more, but, there are still stats/differentiations which seem to be missing, or too weak.

To Conclude

If I had to sum up my experiences and my extrapolations, I guess I'd sum up FIFA 11 by saying - lots of steps in lots of right directions - but maybe not big enough steps in a lot of them to really improve the game. This is the case with the passing - which whilst the worst of ping-pong is gone, we still see 180 degree passes, and extremely easy assisted passing, and I am fairly sure it's a similar case with a lot of the other elements of the game - stamina, defensive AI, and so forth.

If I had to say what an optimistic view of the full game will be, at least for online players, is an experience free of many of the frustrations of FIFA 10 - but in some areas the route which EA have taken to fix the problems are a little questionable. Initially I was both happy (in that it was nowhere near as bad as most videos would imply), and underwhelmed (in that it still wasn't what I'd hoped for in quite a lot of areas) - but having left a lot of time to collect my thoughts, and to play FIFA 10 to compare, I know that I can't wait to play FIFA 11 again because of how much more I think it has to show me - and the fact that it may allow me to get out of FIFA 10 what I would have if FIFA 10 wasn't so broken, in so many ways.
 
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My main gripe with the Keepers in 10, apart from the obvious chip bug, was the superhuman stuff, it always seemed the better the shot the better the save and at times the keeper will be moving in the right direction to save before you even strike the ball...
 
Nick Cave said:
My main gripe with the Keepers in 10, apart from the obvious chip bug, was the superhuman stuff, it always seemed the better the shot the better the save and at times the keeper will be moving in the right direction to save before you even strike the ball...
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I disagree with the superhuman complaints. I've never thought goalies were too good in my many many hours of FIFA 10. I also think goalies should move before attackers shoot, or at least the better ones should. Anticipation and positioning before a shot are what separates the better goalies in real life.

I don't want them "cheating" though, that is, having the CPU "force" saves either by extending CPU goalie save area or "curving" user shots to the CPU goalies. I don't think they would do this though, as that would be obvious and stupid.
 
First off, great job. You're the man.

Rodelero said:
So on to my favourite topic, the whole assisted/semi/manual debate. As I have already expressed briefly in various places, I don't feel that the order has been repaired. I still found assisted controls to generally be more effective than semi (bar with crossing), and manual controls harder than the assisted version in every case. Semi far too often seems to be described and designed to be a harder form of assisted, and that mentality is where the problem lies. The debate will rage on next year, but I have a strong will to see the back of it for FIFA 12. EA must choose, within the first few months of the year a long term solution. It doesn't matter if it takes 2 games to get it fully there - the main thing is to decide on a viable policy and set on achieving it. It needs to apply to all online game modes - and it needs to be satisfying to the whole ccommunity. I would vehemently (!) recommend that EA discuss this at length with their community to make sure that whatever solution they decide on will work.
Click to expand...

But you kinda lost me here. Are you saying the problem lies with thinking control settings should be about difficulty, whereas where I would say it should be about being able to do what you want to do (freedom of play) vs. help from the computer? If that's what you meant, I'm on board, otherwise I'm still confused. You may want to edit this paragraph on the official forums - out of an excellent post it is the only confusing paragraph but it might be the most important!

Finally, we have the 'Analog Sprint' - new mechanic which allows you to move at speeds between jogging, and sprinting. The more you press the trigger, the faster you go. This can be turned off, or on. I tried this quite a lot, and disappointingly (partially because I dislike the PS3's triggers) didn't find it to be especially useful.
Click to expand...

I wonder: maybe analog sprint is meant to be useful for when you don't have the ball, and not when you're dribbling? I could see how this could help with jockeying, when you're trying to contain a dribbler, and so maybe it's not really meant as a dribbling feature? Just throwing that idea out there.

Disappointingly, I did find that short passes with the direct pass button (X on PS3, A on 360) were still very difficult to do. They seem to have a sort of lowest-distance which is just too far. I have mentioned this to Gary Paterson (and I'd like to hear other manual players' views on this one), so maybe this will see some improvement for release.
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We've discussed this before but I'll mention, my problem with direct pass is it's too hard for short passing *plus* it takes too long to power-up to be useful for long ground passes, so right now it's only effective for medium passing unless you have a lot of time on the ball. Although, I'm wondering if the new direct lob pass is meant as a replacement/alternative for a long ground pass, in which case the primary inadequacy would be short passing. Like we discussed, right now I think most of us get by through a mixture of using the through pass and direct pass, and the most obvious solution would be to just greater differentiate what these two type of passes do - one for short, one for medium/long. The only question I have is whether player AI reacts differently to each type of pass, in which case the issue becomes more complicated.

(Also, regarding the first time pass bug you mentioned, someone on the official forums said he still noticed this a couple times, though it wasn't quite as bad as before.)

One feature which was touted to be in the game after the Vancouver/Guildford playtests was the fact that the game now allowed multiple people to jump for the same ball. I have to admit that, if I did see this, it was on one occasion, and I'm not even sure if it was this feature. For me, this is rather disappointing.
Click to expand...

Question: is this (missing) feature meant to only impact balls in the air, or all loose balls? Because I thought originally it was going to be that finally loose balls in general would be targeted by multiple players, but I could be wrong.

Non-controlled players still don't jockey themselves - so only your player will be making himself big when close to opponents - and it's still difficult to pressure in the way that pressure is applied in real life - not a homing-tackle like FIFA 10, but a slowly moving in, waiting for the error. As hopefully pressure has been neutered, this makes it difficult to effectively/realistically use any other man than the one you control, which is a pity.
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I'd like to make a suggestion: EA should rename the pressure button the "contain" button, and redesign the defensive AI accordingly. Like you said, the problem with the pressure button is that it only acted as a homing missile, although this was already improved in the WC game.

The problem is, it still misses the point: one of the primary tenets of defending is contain the dribbler and let your teammates get back into position so they can help you out. EA, for some reason, thought the previous sentence should read "sick 'em boy" and that is simply a moronic way to defend. So I suggest the button be turned into a contain button, which does seem like the direction they're heading in, although you make it sound like the result is something stuck between pressure and contain.

Great summary, really appreciate the efforts. A big question for me, though, will be how different it will play from the WC game, because some issues have already been addressed, though maybe not fixed, like chesting and the pressure button. It makes me wonder: if you don't think it's a big enough change from FIFA 10, how will I see it after the WC game?
 
mfmaxpower said:
First off, great job. You're the man.



But you kinda lost me here. Are you saying the problem lies with thinking control settings should be about difficulty, whereas where I would say it should be about being able to do what you want to do (freedom of play) vs. help from the computer? If that's what you meant, I'm on board, otherwise I'm still confused. You may want to edit this paragraph on the official forums - out of an excellent post it is the only confusing paragraph but it might be the most important!
Click to expand...

Maybe I didn't write that correctly - I'll take a look at it. My point is that, if you look at assisted passing and manual passing, assisted is a lot of help from the CPU, and manual no help. With semi, it seems to be designed to be a less forgiving form of assisted, if that makes sense.

It doesn't give you a huge amount more freedom, or control, almost by design. If you look at manual, whilst it has a plenitude of disadvantages, it is advantageous in the sense that you can do whatever you want totally aside from the CPU. Semi passing still seems to me to be a less forgiving form of assisted.

I guess, the way I feel it works, is that on assisted, you can aim terribly, and it will guide that pass in, whereas on semi, you have to aim relatively well, and if you do, it will guide that pass in, almost identically to how it does on assisted.

What's nice with manual is freedom - but in all honesty, the only freedom semi passing seems to grant to me is the freedom to fail.

I wonder: maybe analog sprint is meant to be useful for when you don't have the ball, and not when you're dribbling? I could see how this could help with jockeying, when you're trying to contain a dribbler, and so maybe it's not really meant as a dribbling feature? Just throwing that idea out there.
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Interesting - didn't try using analog sprint whilst jockeying - not sure if that would even work. But yeh, maybe there is something more useful to this feature - but from what I did play I didn't find it anywhere near as freeing as I thought I would.

We've discussed this before but I'll mention, my problem with direct pass is it's too hard for short passing *plus* it takes too long to power-up to be useful for long ground passes, so right now it's only effective for medium passing unless you have a lot of time on the ball. Although, I'm wondering if the new direct lob pass is meant as a replacement/alternative for a long ground pass, in which case the primary inadequacy would be short passing. Like we discussed, right now I think most of us get by through a mixture of using the through pass and direct pass, and the most obvious solution would be to just greater differentiate what these two type of passes do - one for short, one for medium/long. The only question I have is whether player AI reacts differently to each type of pass, in which case the issue becomes more complicated.
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I think it would be a bit of a pity if the driven lob was meant as the substitute for a long pass. It's hard to explain - but it just constantly feels as if the passes can't quite get as far as they ought to be able to. Most players should be able to play a grounded (ish) pass from one side of the pitch to the other. The driven lob is a -lot- higher than that, so it would kinda leave a bit of a gap. Certianly it might be able to act as substitute - but I don't think it should be able to.

As for the passing buttons being more differentiated - we certainly agree on this. No hope this year - but next year it's another thing to push for. As for the AI's reaction - I'm not sure. When Gary responded he didn't say anything about that - but I have occasionally felt that the AI did respond slightly different to the throughball button and the direct pass button. I don't think there is any necessitation for this - they shouldn't react differently to the same weight/direction of pass - but I do sometimes find that players let soft passes past them to the next player along when I use through pass in a way they definitely wouldn't normally.

(Also, regarding the first time pass bug you mentioned, someone on the official forums said he still noticed this a couple times, though it wasn't quite as bad as before.)
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That's a pity. Ugh.

Question: is this (missing) feature meant to only impact balls in the air, or all loose balls? Because I thought originally it was going to be that finally loose balls in general would be targeted by multiple players, but I could be wrong.
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Well, it's certainly written in the description to be only balls in the air - so I'd guess that is the case -but I couldn't say for certain. To be honest, I didn't see much of loose balls being targeted by multiple players either way, disappointingly.

I'd like to make a suggestion: EA should rename the pressure button the "contain" button, and redesign the defensive AI accordingly. Like you said, the problem with the pressure button is that it only acted as a homing missile, although this was already improved in the WC game. The problem is, it still misses the point: one of the primary tenets of defending is contain the dribbler and let your teammates get back into position so they can help you out. EA, for some reason, thought the previous sentence should read "sick 'em boy" and that is simply a moronic way to defend. So I suggest the button be turned into a contain button, which does seem like the direction they're heading in, although you make it sound like the result is something stuck between pressure and contain.
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Well, the first thing is whether pressure actually is 'fixed' as it were. Considering how limited the buttons are, if it is fixed, it will be used much less - and then we will find we have these two buttons spare.

I like the contain idea. I do think it's hard to get right though for EA, as really containment is a lot more dynamic thing than just pressuring. Pressuring in FIFA 10, and FIFA 11 is an on, off thing. It's not really contextual - it just charges straight towards the player. Changing it to be a button which caused a (or multiple?) players to cover, jockey, get close, slow down, and move inwards, holds a lot of potential issues. I don't envy it. What I do think is that realistically, a big, big defensive change is in order, and hopefully the hole left by pressure's rightful nerfing will precipitate it.

Great summary, really appreciate the efforts. A big question for me, though, will be how different it will play from the WC game, because some issues have already been addressed, though maybe not fixed, like chesting and the pressure button. It makes me wonder: if you don't think it's a big enough change from FIFA 10, how will I see it after the WC game?
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Well, I haven't played WC much, I don't own it, and most of my playtime on it is on the demo, given that I'm not the best person to answer really. I think you'll find the gamespeed, personality+ and pro passing give you a fair bit of 'new'. I'd say that you can play 11v11 on FIFA 11, which you can't on WC, but you might bite my head off :)

It's always going to be difficult for EA to make a big jump from a game which released half way through their year dev cycle, which I realise isn't very comforting, it's just the unfortunate reality of the situation. But in all honesty I generally found WC (from my brief, brief time with it) to be a game which kinda got rid of the worst of FIFA 10. FIFA 11 does do more, it not only goes further to fix the worst of FIFA 10 but it actually starts really cutting down on the primary unrealistic factors.

Enough? I couldn't say - someone who has played WC a lot will be able to perhaps.
 
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Nice report Rod, I ditched mine halfway through as we had a glut and most had covered the main points I wanted to convey anyway..

On the Analogue sprint I think this will be almost negated by the exaggerated 0-Max sprint in the game I guess we'll have to wait and see, I think it was hard to tell a lot of things from the short playtime and the fact we had such good players, yes it meant it made nice viewing but it also masks a lot of the mechanics of the game for me...

I think they will tweak the passing especially the gap between good and bad as it has been mentioned in many reviews, I just wish as most have commented there were more errors in general, again this may have been masked by the great teams but as we found when getting the short time with the older copy Accrington looked little different to Man United in this department...
 
Played it yesterday for 4 hours straight and Rods big post describes it almost exactly as i see it.

Only things i saw differently was the stamina,i thought it was ok. I saw players chasing noticeably slowing down while running after my back four.

If i could have EA work on anything between now and release in terms of gameplay it would be above all defensive AI.... then directional error on Pro passing, making free kicks harder and adding back in the two players going for a header.

If they managed that we'd have a winner on our hands.
 
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