Fifa 11 Xbox 360/PS3

After messing with the CPU custom tactics before I started one of my current CMs, I've finally seen some better play from the CPU on the offensive side of the ball, especially with it retaining more possession. I set-up 4 different custom tactics that were slightly different and assigned them randomly throughout my league. Here's the basics:

Build Up Play:
-Passing: 10-60
-Speed: 10-60
Free/Org

Chance Creation
-Passing: 50-90
-Crossing: 40-60
-Shooting: 70+
Free/Org

Defense
-Pressure: 5-30
-Aggression: 20-30
Normal-Wide

HOWEVER, the result of this is a mixed-bag. First of all, I was still not impressed with the CPU offensive play UNTIL I played on Legendary, then I saw some of the best CPU offense I'd seen - a good mixture of passing, skills, shooting, etc. For the first time I felt beaten by the CPU rather than simply outdone in a one-on-one situation that resulted from high-pressure forcing a turnover.

BUT, while Legendary brings out the best in the AI's offensive game, it brings out the worst in its defense! Playing against the CPU on Legendary can be a real bitch, no matter the pressure settings, because those bastards become total bad-asses near their penalty area, and you see all kinds of bullshit stuff, like your tall and powerful striker getting shoved off the ball, or more like thrown off the ball! Or all of the sudden not being able to get a head on the ball or win a 50-50. Or watching a Bundesliga 2 keeper make a super-human save.

(Also, when playing with manual passing controls I find the jump from WC to Legendary to be huge when it comes to retaining possession and creating nice scoring opportunities near the CPUs goal area - the CPU becomes just so good that any inaccuracies or delays in passing can be a killer. Could be I'm just not good enough at manual to play at that high a level.)

Maybe most interesting of all, I've found that if you drop pressure and aggression down it uncovers some nasty truths about the programming, with the most important being that you start to notice how the CPU cannot score on you unless it gets the ball in midfield or near your own goal as the result of high pressure and aggression.

I will admit that I probably put aggression too low, because I found the CPU defenders backing off too much (in fact it can be just like the PES dribbling bug!), but the bigger problem is that with low pressure/aggression settings, unless I played on Legendary I found that the CPU simply couldn't create any chances. It makes you wonder: when playing against the CPU, how often do you get scored on from a play that began in the CPU's side of the field, that involved more than a few passes and even some pass backwards? Not many probably, because in my experience it seems like the CPU gets FAR more than its fair share of "cheap" goals.

Anyways I'm still tweaking the settings, and I'm curious to what others are doing to better enjoy playing against the CPU, but it's a shame how much effort I need to put into this to make it enjoyable rather than tedious, challenging rather than frustrating.

(Oh, and probably the best part of playing on Legendary with these tactics: I've played three games in a row now that possession for both teams was in the 50s!)
 
nerf said:
Online gamers spoiling online game mode shocker. That's how people want to play, it seems, and I think we're stuck with it. Sure, EA could change a few things, balance stamina better, put tighter controls on physique creation... but can you really imagine any scenario where people wouldn't still try to do the same things you described? I can't.

It's a group of anonymous people, 90%+ of whom are solely interested in the glory of skill dribbling, scoring a goal and only being on the winning side. I don't know how the game could change that mindset.

That's the worst thing about online gaming. People :P
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Totally true and that's why I'm primarily an offline gamer, but the best online games are those that limit the opportunities for the few to ruin the fun of the many. FIFA, not by design surely, fails at this.

When it comes to clubs, you're right, I don't know what they could do. The answer I guess is to only play in clubs that you belong to (which I guess is a way EA have tried to limit the problem, by getting people to belong to clubs, so there's accountability.)

But when it comes to h2h matches there's a lot that EA can do. First is to simply fix the glitches and loopholes. Every game is going to have them but FIFA's can be real gamebreakers because it's 1v1, so if one person's experience is ruined, that a 50% fail rate. And while every game is going to have bugs and glitches, EA has been shockingly terrible at fixing them promptly. I can't think of a greater online disaster than UT 10.

In addition, regardless of what anyone says there's plenty of stuff EA can do with their gameplay to address the major complaints, especially when it comes to pressure. Simply put, defending is far too powerful at the moment, and their is not penalty for playing max pressure/aggression. People are always going to find cheap ways to win - that's simply human nature, sadly - so the task for EA is to make sure cheap tactics and bullshit formations are not effective strategies. Sure you should be allowed to play 7 at the back if you want, but you should be severely penalized on the offensive side of the ball when you do so, and vice-versas.
 
Manual Users I would suggest you read and try the following.
. If you want to drastically improve your one touch passing, lay offs for a runner, lay offs for shots, extremely deft touches in and around the box, intricate inch perfect passing with the perfect weight in any given situation, and if you want to make passing more comfortable at the back and along the wings, all while improving AI teammate responses to slightly wayward passes (you won't believe me till you try it) you need to make one simple change in your controller. In real life these are often the simplest passes, but in the game they seem to require the most concentration - which in turn hinders your creativity. This can all change (for manual users only) if you switch the x and triangle functions on your controller. Using the weight and nature of the through pass as a normal pass will do all that I mentioned above (assuming your decent player already). I could go on and on as to the reasons why but you only need to try it in practice mode (11vs11) and see for yourself the drastic difference it makes.

Some negatives
If you decide to play this way you will have to work really hard to reprogram your mind for one-two's and shot feints which will be frustrating at first. The lobbed through pass I have found easy to adjust to and I have actually improved quite a bit at it using L1 and x instead of triangle.

Tip
It takes a lot more to power a pass with this method, which gives you an opportunity to concentrate on the pin point accuracy of your pass while you hold the x button without worrying about over hitting your pass. That extra half a second you have to judge the direction of your pass is the difference between your pass zipping inches passed the outstretched defender and the pass being intercepted. Conversely, you don't have to concentrate so much on tapping x ever so slightly when you want to play those intricate passes or those quick perfectly weighted lay offs before a teammate runs on to it or unleashes a viscous shot.
 
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Yea I know nerf. I guess I just wished ridiculous pressure was punished more, a lot more. And maybe ratings weren't so forgiving. I don't sprint the whole match and try to play a lot of passes, back and forward.
I hav been playing mostly offline. But occasionally I stray online to hopefully have fun, but more often than not, it's not fun.
I haven't tried PES but I'm considering giving it a try soon. I think I last tried 2010 or 10 whatever it was, or 2009. I don't know. Frustrated!
Having fun in my CM although there are annoyances. But I should be having more fun. Ahhhhhhh I wish EA would listen to the damn feedback.

.......Next year?
 
ibra77 said:
Manual Users I would suggest you read and try the following.
. If you want to drastically improve your one touch passing, lay offs for a runner, lay offs for shots, extremely deft touches in and around the box, intricate inch perfect passing with the perfect weight in any given situation, and if you want to make passing more comfortable at the back and along the wings, all while improving AI teammate responses to slightly wayward passes (you won't believe me till you try it) you need to make one simple change in your controller. In real life these are often the simplest passes, but in the game they seem to require the most concentration - which in turn hinders your creativity. This can all change (for manual users only) if you switch the x and triangle functions on your controller. Using the weight and nature of the through pass as a normal pass will do all that I mentioned above (assuming your decent player already). I could go on and on as to the reasons why but you only need to try it in practice mode (11vs11) and see for yourself the drastic difference it makes.

Some negatives
If you decide to play this way you will have to work really hard to reprogram your mind for one-two's and shot feints which will be frustrating at first. The lobbed through pass I have found easy to adjust to and I have actually improved quite a bit at it using L1 and x instead of triangle.

Tip
It takes a lot more to power a pass with this method, which gives you an opportunity to concentrate on the pin point accuracy of your pass while you hold the x button without worrying about over hitting your pass. That extra half a second you have to judge the direction of your pass is the difference between your pass zipping inches passed the outstretched defender and the pass being intercepted. Conversely, you don't have to concentrate so much on tapping x ever so slightly when you want to play those intricate passes or those quick perfectly weighted lay offs before a teammate runs on to it or unleashes a viscous shot.
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Well me personally and a some others i know like Shorty Alien have been using Triangle for standard short pass since way back in 09!
 
klashman69 said:
Well me personally and a some others i know like Shorty Alien have been using Triangle for standard short pass since way back in 09!
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Without a doubt. It's the only way to do it.

Biggest problem for me is doing short 1-2 passes on manual. If a player is within 5 yards it's basically not worth trying but I still fucking do it, argh!
 
EA servers down for anyone else right now? If not then great! I finally managed to block the right IPs/ports in my firewall so that my 360 cannot connect to the EA servers so I'm not forced to have all the prem results spoiled.
 
Anyone know a fix to the corrupted formation bug?

In case you haven't had the delight of coming across this particular bug, it's when one of your custom formations becomes corrupted, and whenever you try to change formations and scroll through your formations it stops and freezes on the corrupted formation, forcing you to restart your machine.

For some odd reason EA in their infinite wisdom this year have made it so you can't have a CF and a ST in a custom formation, even though some of the default formations for teams are a 4-4-1-1 with both a CF and ST. This means, strangely, a 4-2-3-1 formation is with a CAM instead of a CF, a change made since FIFA 10 and the WC game. No idea why.

Trying to make a more realistic 4-2-3-1 formation, I was forced into making the CAM an LF, but I guess that's the source of the problem. Ever since I made this change that formation has become corrupted, and like I said, if I try to scroll over beyond it on my formations list, the game freezes.

How do I delete my custom formations?
 
EA_FLT said:
ANOTHER UPDATE Oct 15
- Most Career Mode changes we're looking at will NOT require you to restart your career. Some, like the improved draw system, will actually work right away!
- And I insist - we are working on offline issues at least as much as we are working on online ones, and we have lots of fixes ready to integrate.
Click to expand...

Good news...
 
If this game had sliders, I'd go with something like:

Pressure Fatigue: 100
Air Balls Defence: 100
Air Balls Offence: 0
Physical Contact: 0

And then MAYBE I could actually enjoy the game...
 
@Placebo, or anyone else who is a data editor/reviewer/whatever.

How do I report errors in the database? Is there some system in place? There are a couple of errors still in the Aston Villa data that were in last year.

Ciaran Clark should be left footed, not right footed.
Barry Bannan's height should be 5'7", not 5'11".

I wondered if there was a way to report this, otherwise it'll just be the same in FIFA12. They don't appear to have bothered with a 'FIFA11 Database' forum this time.
 
nerf said:
That sounds nasty. I don't suppose you can save over the slot?

I think formations/CT are stored in your profile. It's not the squad file, I know that.
Click to expand...

No I can't - when I'm scrolling down the list of formations it stops on the corrupted formation and won't go further, I can't do anything, then it freezes a few seconds later.

If I delete my profile, that deletes my VP too doesn't it? He's critical to my squad at the moment so that's a no go.

@Placebo: Great news on the update. Where are you seeing these at?
 
Does anybody have any tips for me regarding heading and chesting?

For heading, I can't for the life of me figure it out, no matter where on the pitch. I guess it's an issue with time but I'm terrible. Or maybe I need to pay better attention to my player's positioning before jumping? When do you guys hit the header button, how early? And do you hold down the button or just tap it? Any tips/strategies would really be appreciated.

About chesting, are we not able to directional chest passes? I'm sick of sending a lob pass to a target man, him holding off the defender and chest the ball, only for that defender to waltz right around and steal the ball before it hits the ground. Something makes me think it's an issue with the chesting animation - it takes too long - but maybe I'm doing something wrong? Help, thoughts?
 
In my experience, as far as heading goes it's more about positioning than timing. You need to get physical with the defender and you need to judge where you need to be relative to the x that marks the landing spot. Think of it as an aerial battle and take it personal, it takes a lot of effort to win a header in real life and so it is in the game. Nothing more enjoyable than two players going at it all game.

On a side note, the more I pay attention to the details the more I realize it's my own inability that lets me down. I'm a central midfeilder and I know a little about how to play that role so I'm quite effective in the game with my cm's but I have a lot to learn about other positions. Each position is an art on it's own and if your going to be any good at controlling 11 players then your going to have to learn the subtlties of each position. Even goalie distribution is an art and it will effect your results, where to kick it and when, do you hold it for your players to get in position or launch a counter attack etc etc. The goalies decisions lead to goals for and against you quite often.
 
Nice post ibra77. Couldn't agree more. Especially me being a CM too, I know what you mean.

Max, aerial battles are a real joy! And yeah it can be quite challenging too but so rewarding when you get hang of it. I have this tall powerful target man who is actually not that tall, 6''1 but has VERY good jumping. 87 I think.

It's more about getting in front of the defender using the jostle button (L2 for me on ps3) so I beat the defender to the ball by being first to it and then timing as well but I've never HELD the button, always just tap it.

Just scored a REALLY nice header the other day with my Right winger putting a David Beckham like early cross to edge of box where my aerial threat ST wrestled ahead of his opposing marker and met the ball with a ferocious powerful header to bottom right corner to put the game out of reach and put us ahead 2-0 with only minutes to go.

I personally have some trouble still DEFENDING crosses. Not so much attacking them and scoring from them. Maybe it's because I have auto-switching set on 'aerial balls' where CPU does that for you rather than full manual which I'm used to from FIFA10, and so I find it sometimes switches a little too early/late for my liking and when defending corners, crosses, etc. I get the timing wrong which has already cost me.... that's an area I need to improve on. Defending crosses.
 
Yeah I find player switching to cause many of my problems with headers. Next time I play I think I'll switch to all manual for switching. Still, it seems a little bugged - the CPU seems to switch players when it shouldn't; sometimes when on Air balls only it switches when it shouldn't. I thought they were suppose to have emphasized fixing player switching but it was better in the WC game.

How about chesting? Is there directional chesting in this game? Anyway to prevent that scenario I mentioned, where a defender walks around your guy to steal the ball while he's chesting the ball?
 
I think I tried 'full manual' and no 'Air Balls' switching and then it was too hard and would switch to wrong person so that was even worse for me but I barely tried it, perhaps later I'll give that option a proper try.

In regards to chesting, well I don't have that problem so I'm not best guy to answer but I'm pretty sure you can't 'chest-pass' like players often do in real life at least not intentionally. And yah the animation can be a little slow at times. I think I know what you mean. So sometimes someone may steal ball off you as you try to chest it, that kinda happens in real life too though, takes time to chest a ball and bring it down. It's best when no one's lurking around and you wanna bring the ball under control.
 
mfmaxpower said:
Does anybody have any tips for me regarding heading and chesting?

For heading, I can't for the life of me figure it out, no matter where on the pitch. I guess it's an issue with time but I'm terrible. Or maybe I need to pay better attention to my player's positioning before jumping? When do you guys hit the header button, how early? And do you hold down the button or just tap it? Any tips/strategies would really be appreciated.

About chesting, are we not able to directional chest passes? I'm sick of sending a lob pass to a target man, him holding off the defender and chest the ball, only for that defender to waltz right around and steal the ball before it hits the ground. Something makes me think it's an issue with the chesting animation - it takes too long - but maybe I'm doing something wrong? Help, thoughts?
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I'm not sure if you played the World Cup game, but they implemented directional chest control and it worked like a charm. Everyone seemed to love being able to turn whilst chesting the ball. So EA removed it :CONFUSE:

I envy you for trying CM on legendary, I tried it in a friendly match and spent the whole game getting fouled with no help from the ref. One guy even hacked me down from behind when I went through on goal, worst professional foul you'll ever see, and the ref gave a free kick against me!

I can't find any middle ground in this game. The AI seems too poor (only ever scoring headers but missing easy shots, skill moves instead of shooting when having only the keeper to beat) but ramp it up a notch and you play against 11 bionic wrestlers.
 
LTFC said:
One guy even hacked me down from behind when I went through on goal, worst professional foul you'll ever see, and the ref gave a free kick against me!
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Do you have handballs turned on? I think there's a bug here, whereby if you are knocked over and fall on the ball it can give a handball against you rather than the initial foul. Not 100% certain, but it has seemed that way a couple of times.
 
No, I used to have them on full (penalties included) but found that you'd have about two penalties per game, so I reduced it to just outfield handballs, and found that almost every time I had a cross blocked out on the wings, the ref would award me a free kick for handball. Which grew kind of annoying too!

I think that free kick incident was just one of those rare bizarre things that happen, but my experience of legendary AI is that it feels as if you are playing a team of Terminator T-1000's rather than just plain old improved attacking AI. Also, along with the headed goals problem, I'm sure the ref is programmed to 'lend a helping hand' shall we say. Any bodily contact from me and it's a foul, yet the AI can seeminly all but beat you up and still get away with it. Which is a shame, because there's plenty to like about the game.
 
mfmaxpower said:
After messing with the CPU custom tactics before I started one of my current CMs, I've finally seen some better play from the CPU on the offensive side of the ball, especially with it retaining more possession. I set-up 4 different custom tactics that were slightly different and assigned them randomly throughout my league. Here's the basics:

Build Up Play:
-Passing: 10-60
-Speed: 10-60
Free/Org

Chance Creation
-Passing: 50-90
-Crossing: 40-60
-Shooting: 70+
Free/Org

Defense
-Pressure: 5-30
-Aggression: 20-30
Normal-Wide

HOWEVER, the result of this is a mixed-bag. First of all, I was still not impressed with the CPU offensive play UNTIL I played on Legendary, then I saw some of the best CPU offense I'd seen - a good mixture of passing, skills, shooting, etc. For the first time I felt beaten by the CPU rather than simply outdone in a one-on-one situation that resulted from high-pressure forcing a turnover.

BUT, while Legendary brings out the best in the AI's offensive game, it brings out the worst in its defense! Playing against the CPU on Legendary can be a real bitch, no matter the pressure settings, because those bastards become total bad-asses near their penalty area, and you see all kinds of bullshit stuff, like your tall and powerful striker getting shoved off the ball, or more like thrown off the ball! Or all of the sudden not being able to get a head on the ball or win a 50-50. Or watching a Bundesliga 2 keeper make a super-human save.

(Also, when playing with manual passing controls I find the jump from WC to Legendary to be huge when it comes to retaining possession and creating nice scoring opportunities near the CPUs goal area - the CPU becomes just so good that any inaccuracies or delays in passing can be a killer. Could be I'm just not good enough at manual to play at that high a level.)

Maybe most interesting of all, I've found that if you drop pressure and aggression down it uncovers some nasty truths about the programming, with the most important being that you start to notice how the CPU cannot score on you unless it gets the ball in midfield or near your own goal as the result of high pressure and aggression.

I will admit that I probably put aggression too low, because I found the CPU defenders backing off too much (in fact it can be just like the PES dribbling bug!), but the bigger problem is that with low pressure/aggression settings, unless I played on Legendary I found that the CPU simply couldn't create any chances. It makes you wonder: when playing against the CPU, how often do you get scored on from a play that began in the CPU's side of the field, that involved more than a few passes and even some pass backwards? Not many probably, because in my experience it seems like the CPU gets FAR more than its fair share of "cheap" goals.

Anyways I'm still tweaking the settings, and I'm curious to what others are doing to better enjoy playing against the CPU, but it's a shame how much effort I need to put into this to make it enjoyable rather than tedious, challenging rather than frustrating.

(Oh, and probably the best part of playing on Legendary with these tactics: I've played three games in a row now that possession for both teams was in the 50s!)
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Wow, this looks like nice. Reduced pressure & aggression make the game feel more real) But have I to start new career to accept the new tactics?
 
If you chose the option for 2nd player as AI when starting your CM you may be able to select the custom tactic for each team before each match then just go back to the controller select menu and deselect the 2nd controller?
 
Placebo said:
If you chose the option for 2nd player as AI when starting your CM you may be able to select the custom tactic for each team before each match then just go back to the controller select menu and deselect the 2nd controller?
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Ok,I'm a bit confused now.
If I change the CT for each team in my CM league and save them to a slot do I also have to change the CT for the computor controlled team before each match.
In other words.How do I know that the computor is using the altered tactics in game.Am I supposed to be changing the quick tactics by setting the new CT as default?
Think I might be missing something here.
 
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