Re: Fifa 11
Here it is - Part 2! Drink it down.
DRIBBLING
Do certain players dribble one footed?
No. It won't be in this FIFA I'm afraid. Make a big thing of it in my suggestions thread and I'll pass it across. I'm probably going to hold off on sending stuff to EA because I don't think this is the best time to send stuff over. It's too late for something as big as this to be implemented but too soon for EA to give such suggestions their full attention.
Is it easier to beat your man?
Might want to rephrase that..
Yes. When I was in Canada I was quite concerned about being able to judge the game because the responsiveness of players was pretty awful (FIFA 08 levels) and there was a pretty frequent bug with the trapping where players would just watch the ball roll timidly past them. Knowing that the shielding wasn't really in, the dribbling wasn't working and the positioning was too squashed in made judging how easy it was to retain possession very difficult.
It was the last hour or two of the whole week, when I got to play a much newer, tighter build of FIFA 11, that I felt a lot more confident about the game. The dribbling responsiveness went from being somewhere between FIFA 08/09 to being a tiny smidge better than WC2010. I was delighted with this and I'm sure owners of EA's most recent football title will be as well.
I'm a big fan of Serbia and Croatia in the WC game. Croatia are fairly lightweight and not particularly quick, but technically very proficient and with a formation that lends itself to passing triangles. Serbia are a lot more rigid and conventional with two banks of four, a dangerous right winger and a big target man. Both sides have a very wide spread of dribbling ability, meaning I'm encouraged to take people on with Krasic far more than Zigic, while Modric or Krancjar are both wonderful at retaining possession under pressure.
Needless to say, FIFA 11 develops on this. Weaker dribblers are far slower at turning now (see my comments in Part 1 about Accrington Stanley), while the most agile movers like Lennon and Modric are perhaps slightly more nimble than in the World Cup game. It might sound like this isn't enough, but the point is not that the dribbling was insufficiently effective in WC, but that the tackling ability of players was still too good (even though it was taken down a fair bit from FIFA 10). FIFA 11's reaction to this has been the tackling coverage changes and the fact that defenders can't just barge attackers and take the ball away.
I've not even touched on the 'close touch' dribbling given players like Robben, Messi, Arshavin etc. In truth I didn't play as the relevant sides a whole lot. I used lesser sides far more frequently. I did, however, set up a quick test match against the CPU with me as Barca and I just gave the ball to Messi every time, dribbling up and down the flank to try him out. He certainly can rip fullbacks up now if used properly. The close control running means that you can actually sprint at men with the ball rather than having to jog, which is a significant asset for a player to have.
Will it be game breaking? No. I don't think so. You don't just get a free ride through. It's going to have to be a tactical consideration to try and shut him out via double teaming and man marking, as Greece did in reality.
Oh, and there's an attribute-based dribbling move that doesn't use the right stick. La Croqueta, as loved by Iniesta.
Stop calling it Spanish things! It's the Beardsley Shimmy!
It's like one of the more drastic ones he does. Tap sideways and then forwards. It's awesome when you successfully pull it off.
DEFENCE
Have the defensive lines been fixed yet?
I didn't see a single problem. Apparently Adam from WENB did? But I genuinely didn't have any issues here at all. Defending was an absolute joy compared to FIFA 10 or WC. It feels like you're defending as a unit, rather than fighting against your own side. It was a real joy to behold as someone who loves defending and was pissed off at how often a full back would kill my offside line in the past couple of games. Being able to play as a lesser, yet defensively organised side, is finally feasible without people just passing diagonally into the striker and getting a free shot against my will.
I do wonder whether Adam was pressuring with his centre backs which meant the sprinted up from their defensive line while the full bakcs carried on, giving the impression of a FIFA 10 style dodgy back line. It's hard to say without having seen what he's seen. But to be fair Adam did make a point of saying he found defending was far more solid and reliable than in the past.
Is Jockeying more effective?
I've always found jockeying to be effective. The problem IMO is that pressuring was always more effective, while also being far easier!
Again, I'd say that jockeying and structured, organise defending is a lot more attainable than before. Pressuring still needs reining in - I said as much in my feedback form - but I've always been someone who tries to keep a rigid formation and defends quite narrowly to stop people slipping through the middle and this seemed much easier to do becausse everyone who was on my side felt like they were doing their job.
I did have some issues with jockeying that I fed back, as if I was fighting momentum more than I should have been when moving in particular directions. This is something that I flagged as needing to be fixed. On the whole though defending intelligently felt a lot easier.
Player Switching - does the defender stutter?
I didn't notice it as much. Not saying it was gone but it didn't seem as regular as before. The nature of the game's new pacing meant that it was more forgiving of issues like this.
I think I answered this somewhere in the forum already but for some reason the Evo-Web forums seem to be locking up at the moment - is it just me? I may come back and edit this when I don't just get a white screen!
Do you have to intercept passes more manually?
I've looked at my Q&A notes I made on the train ride back. I put 'Yes'. That's helpful for typing it up a month later!!
In WC2010 there was an issue where your player might be forced to receive/intercept a pass at a certain point, even if the intercept point is much further down the line and you will never get the ball compared to moving in the direction you wanted and trapping the ball. This issue is gone - you intercept the ball at the point in the ball's path you point at.
That said, your team mates are much more proactive in shutting out loose passes. FIFA 10 was rife with slow passes trickling past your team mates when they could blatantly just step out of their trance and control the ball. FIFA 11 addresses this too, even tying a stat to it (apparently!).
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ANY DOUBTS/NIGGLES?
- Sideways/backwards passing inaccuracy at the lowest levels could do with stepping up a bit more. As I said in Part 1, the moment the pass tends to be slower and bouncier, but still a bit more directionally on target than I'd like. To be fair, first touch control wasn't in just yet, so that may contribute.
- Pressing is still a bit much, though we did find we were getting pretty good at making our own space towards the end of the day.
-Until the above two are fixed, personality will be slightly hampered.
- Stamina hadn't been fixed yet - but apparently it's going to be.
- Some running animations are a bit odd. I assume it was glitchy as it wasn't all that consistent, but at times a few players almost seemed like they were riding a bike! I flagged this up as something that, if it isn't a bug, will get a bit of a kicking on the forums. I'm pretty sure it was though.
- There's no way you'd expect to be able to tell from such a brief play, but once we have the game in our consoles it'll be interesting to see, if you can feel more subtle differences between similar players - will you be able to tell the difference between Barry and Carrick, for example.
- The only slight, but still present, doubt I have left is whether what we've played will represent the final title. Most of the people who went along last year will tell you that the FIFA 10 that was released was very different from the much slower, more realistic game they played. I'm very confident that the class of 2010 won't be stitched up as well; EA got a lot of stick for doing this, and for releasing an arcadey game after promising a sim. If EA
do end up turning the game into something far more arcadey then it'll be a real shoe in the throat and I won't be interested in wasting any more of my own time with FIFA 12/13 etc. However I really can't see them doing it twice in a row given how horrifically it backfired last year. The reason EA invited us round so early this year (and for a week, not just a weekend) was precisely because they were extremely keen on getting our feedback and advice.
HAPPY THOUGHTS
- The game speed was perfect. Normal is what we've been asking Slow to be for ages.
- Defensive AI is leaps and bounds above 09/10/WC. Rock solid, as long as you are.
- Passing (in)accuracy and pace feels incredible, particularly at Premiership and Championship levels. When even Barcelona have passing inaccuracy, you know it's not a cheap gimmick!
- Crossing and heading feels utterly nailed on. Perfect sense of threat and excitement.
- The bouncing lob will be terrific once you get used to it being an option!
- It genuinely feels much more emotionally involving to play. Everything feels like a struggle, a competitive battle, like you're playing at the edge of your ability. When you score, you feel a lot more like celebrating than the dispassionate 'meh' of FIFA 10. I know this is something that was promised last year, but I did genuinely feel that way.
- You need to weight through balls. I tried a cheap and dirty cutback using assisted through ball and I put too much on it, missing a very easy chance (there weren't any defenders!).
- Generally speaking, it feels like a game pretty devoid of fuck ups. FIFA 10 and WC2010 were so enraging precisely because goals you conceded almost always felt like they weren't your fault. It'd feel like there was an enjoyable experience in there somewhere but it was agonisingly out of reach behind this semi-transparent film of exploitable glitches and gameplay bugs that took matters out of your hands.
- I wrote in my notes, "Assisted isn't a fucking disgrace anymore". You'll be able to play with assisted controls and feel a shred of dignity, like an old man who has regained control of his bowels and has ceremoniously dowsed his incontinence pants in petrol and cast them into the fire. I still don't see it as anything like as good as semi or manual controls in terms of enjoyability, but at least it feels like I can play against it!
OVERALL
Dead chuffed at it's progress in just a year (and including the WC game in that schedule!). It's amazing to see so many of Evo-Web's suggestions manifested in the next edition of FIFA. As I've said before, I'm not just interested in FIFA for the next game, but for the game after that as well. Some of the ideas we come up with, and the general rehabilitation of FIFA after it's arcadey FIFA 09/10 relapse, need to span over more than one release. But I feel that FIFA 11 is much more than just a platform to build on. In it's current form it's a damn good game in it's own right. It looks very similar to FIFA 10/WC graphically, but in terms of gameplay it's so much more than just a tweak. EA haven't rested on their laurels at all.
It answers a lot of our cries for a deeper footballing experience by overhauling physicality to be much more even handed, completely reworking it's attribute system, returning the pace of the game to FIFA 08 levels and
listening to you hardcore football game fans who actually think about gameplay rather than boots or ankle tape. I bloody salute you lot.
When FIFA 11 comes out we'll undoubtedly find issues and niggles, as will be the case for any game where so many different people with different tastes and ideals crave perfection from one title. My personal opinion though - and I'm probably jinxing it now - is that (touch wood) a lot of the things we'll want to improve after a few months of play will be much more about improving the game, rather than fixing it. That's a very positive thing for those of us who want a great game that'll last them all year, and a particularly big plus for those of us who are full to bursting with ideas and suggestions and don't want EA to have to commit so much time to mending broken gameplay.
Roll on July 22nd for the next big release of news!
