I like your post but I'm not sure I agree with this part. I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily, I just have my doubts, especially about the idea that a more realistic football sim would be less appealing to FIFA fans.
Sure, the EA forums are atrocious - posts trend toward the juvenile, meaningless, and at worst malicious. But until EA release a more "realistic" game and see its sales figures drop, I'm hesitant to jump to the conclusion you have. Some of EA's other games, like Madden, Tiger Woods, and MLB, do very well for themselves, yet they are not frenzied action-fests but instead require moments of pause and thought.
If the game is fun, they will play it. I don't have the sales figures in front of me but didn't PES 5 and 6 sell well, when they were at the heyday of realistic football sims? Now combine that with next gen graphics and 360 dribbling etc, and you're telling me the kids won't like it?
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm completely talking out of my butt here, but until it actually happens I'm going to resist the argument that a more realistic FIFA would turn away a significant portion of its fanbase.
You aren't wrong at all. I think a lot of people thanks to 09 and 10 have really lost all hope which is sad. I hope 11 will reignite it, because otherwise it's going to be even worse in 12 months time.
The main thing about the forums, shite though they are (and for anyone who wants a laugh about this listen to the recent FSB podcast - which is full of stuff about the forums), is that we have to get on there and be persuasive. We've suceeded to an extent already but we can do more with better organisation and better strategy.
I know that a lot of us can't stand being on that forum, and I have times on there when I want to crack spines, but, it is the place EA listen to primarily and I really don't think that's going to change in a great hurry. We should try to change that forum from the inside AND complain about it from the outside, not just the latter!
Yes, it's a bit of a shitstorm, and yes at every moment at least half, to three quarters of teh threads on the front page are worthless - and yes, the largest thread on the FIFA 11 NG Impressions forum is a 'Rate the player!' thread, in which people decide to use their lacking football knowledge to rate a player on the basis of their somewhat irrelevant OVR rating.
But having said that, the second biggest thread there is an enormous thread discussing manual and the control system in general (shameless plug) - and those discussions are highly, highly productive. What we need to be able to do is spark discussion like this more often on a wider range of subjects and keep those topics alive - particularly through the all important October, November, December, January period. It will help once hte 'Feedback & Suggestions' forum is put up for FIFA 11, because then we won't have to compete for threadspace with "UEFAs Player of the Year shortlist is a joke"*.
All too often good threads are lost, and whilst they may have good discussion in them they can be buried to page 5 or 6 before you know it - and unless EA saw that thread, and you'll have no idea if they did, that's pretty much it.
It would be great if we could persuade EA to design the forum/moderate the forums in a way which provides more constructive discussion - and frankly the best way of doing that would be to get rid of the piles of useless BS on it at the moment.
*what the fucking hell does that have to do with FIFA?!
Murkurial said:
Maybe guilt a few people into picking Simulation for fear of looking like a newbie and maybe they decide that they like it and wanna learn to play it. If not, stay on Arcade.
Definitely something which would help; and further still - the FIWC competition should be simulation based. Whether it's really necessary, I'm not sure. If EA get to a point where they feel they can't really make the moves necessary to make it a sim whilst still keeping the casuals happy, then this is the route.
