The thing about ping pong passing is that it goes way beyond just accuracy error.
Yes, first-time passes and passes at difficult angles (180 degrees, etc) should be less consistently accurate, this is true. But most of the problem comes from the facility of the mindset that each next pass can go forwards, quickly.
Watch any video of FIFA and notice how almost every pass goes diagonally forwards. Diagonal forward pass, touch, diagonal forward pass, turn, diagonal forward pass, first-time diagonal forward pass, shoot.
This is not how real football is played, 90% of the time.
In FIFA there's almost never a need to pass backwards, or even sideways half the time. There's never the feeling of being forced to turn and play the safe ball back to your centre-back, to start again. The 'protect the ball and hold possession' pass. In FIFA, the 'hold possession' pass is an easy diagonal fowards pass to the next teammate up the pitch, standing happily unmarked.
There's no risk in the forward pass, so why not play it?
Firstly, as we know, there's no risk because contextual/attribute error in past FIFA games is non-existent, so you know the forward pass will unerringly reach its target and be controlled perfectly. This is supposed to change in FIFA 11, we'll see. My presumptive feeling is that it will have nowhere near the necessary impact on high-attributed 5-star teams, which is all anyone uses.
One of the great joys of Manual controls is that it introduces an amount of uncertainty, because the factor of human error compromises your confidence that the forward pass will be an accurate one. So sometimes you elect to play safe and play backwards, knowing that a pass to a wide open & stationary teammate behind you requires less precision than a pass to a teammate with opponents in close vicinity, or weighting it into the path a moving target. This uncertainty is absent with Assisted controls, so your pass selection is not compromised.
Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, there's no risk because the next teammate up the pitch is so often unmarked, so you know he will have time and space to receive it safely. The AI is clearly not very smart when it comes to marking. In real professional football, a player has to use intelligent movement to shake his marker and/or to locate a few yards of space to offer for a pass. Simultaneously, his teammate with the ball often has to delay and wait for said movement to develop, rather than always having an instant un-marked option like you get in FIFA.
Thirdly, this inability to mark players tightly (and we rely on the AI for this, because we only control one guy at a time) is exacerbated by the complete lack of team shape, of team-wide organisation. Look at any video of FIFA gameplay and it is a challenge to figure out what formation either midfield is supposed to be in. They're just a cluster of individuals chasing their tails. Where's the risk in passing through or around a random jumble of individuals? It makes that forward pass easy because of the wide open passing lanes, and makes finding forward space easy because there's no shape covering those zones.
Diagonal forwards pass, diagonal forwards pass, diagonal forwards pass...
The very idea of equating FIFA's flowing ping pong with so-called 'playing like Barcelona' couldn't possibly be more erroneous. Spain & Barca play more backwards and sideways passes than anyone. The fact that they are better technically-equipped than anyone else to manipulate the ball in tight areas still does not result in forward pass after forward pass.
In real life, that pass back to your centre-half is usually the option with a higher chance of success than a forward pass to your striker. That's not about technique or passing accuracy, you can't mystically pass towards your own goal more accurately than you can pass towards the opposition goal. It's because you're not trying to force the ball past/between opponents, to a teammate who is marked and likely to be under pressure when he receives it, in a situation where any inaccuracy results in a loss of possession. Your centre-back, in contrast, has the time and space to gather almost any quality of pass safely, because he is un-marked and not under pressure. Passing should be about the availability of teammates in context of the shape and organisation of the opposing team.
All of this is what FIFA fails to emulate and the same is true for PES, or any other football video game I've ever known. When one dev team recognises this, when they realise that it goes beyond just making four defenders stand in a line, I'm convinced their game will take a leap ahead of their direct competition and anything we've played before.
I'm hoping we get some MM time, I was told it will be there...
is the fact that there are so many people in forums claiming that Fifa is a sim with that unrealistic, unbalanced and unchallenging (crap AI) gameplay. What a fucking joke! Very sad that in brazilian's forums I can't say the truh about Fifa and it's "amazing" animatios that, becaus they are enough to make the game the most realistic game on earth (
). Saying anything negative about fifa means that I'm a pure troll and I'm a blind PES fan in brazilian's forums. WTF ?!!
