FIFA 12 Discussion Thread

Thanks very much for the slider configurations because I also found the game a bit stale last night (Semi Pro difficulty) with all the default settings set at 50. It seemed that I could just pass the ball to a winger, run around the AI LB and have a shot on goal pretty easily!

Has anyone played with full manual controls for a few games? If so does it feel more realistic and overall worth the extra practice required to enjoy it? I was playing on semi-manual and found I really need to practice my passing again.

Also during rainy exhibition matches the corner screen is blurry, is this intentional or a bug?

Did you guys get an instruction manual this year with the game? I only got the PS instruction guide but no FIFA manual to refresh my memory :CONFUSE:
 
Dicardo83 said:
Thanks very much for the slider configurations because I also found the game a bit stale last night (Semi Pro difficulty) with all the default settings set at 50. It seemed that I could just pass the ball to a winger, run around the AI LB and have a shot on goal pretty easily!

Has anyone played with full manual controls for a few games? If so does it feel more realistic and overall worth the extra practice required to enjoy it? I was playing on semi-manual and found I really need to practice my passing again.

Also during rainy exhibition matches the corner screen is blurry, is this intentional or a bug?

Did you guys get an instruction manual this year with the game? I only got the PS instruction guide but no FIFA manual to refresh my memory :CONFUSE:
Click to expand...

If you want a good chance of winning against AI, switch to manual. Semi-assisted will make it harder for you to play against AI. At least make passing, through balls manual and keep shooting semi. Will make it load more fun without making it much more difficult than semi.

Nevermind, semi-pro is easy no matter what controls you use...My comment only applies to harder difficulties.
 
Last edited:
Wdoleq said:
Which buttons are modifiers for volley and backheel please? Please tell me what they do in defense/attack, becausei have changed the configuration so I dont know what L1 or L2 does for you:SHOCK:
Click to expand...

I think R1 was the flair pass modifier - so whatever button you use for Finesse Shot in attack should be the one.

L1 is the volley modifier I think - so whatever you use for close/pace control when you dribble.
 
Typical EA sports in 2012, just a pathetic excuse for video sports games for EA Sports.

Thank goodness for PES....
 
Yeah, PES is so freaking good that the game basically plays itself. No Humans Required. Just push one button and everything else will happen automatically. AI will let your players take the ball, even if it goes through their whole team. Balls are like homing missiles, magically finding and sticking to your player's foot. Perfect game, of course, if you want a TRAIN simulator, cause that's what this game's all about - RAILS!

How can people be so blind?
 
Last edited:
Dicardo83 said:
Thanks very much for the slider configurations because I also found the game a bit stale last night (Semi Pro difficulty) with all the default settings set at 50. It seemed that I could just pass the ball to a winger, run around the AI LB and have a shot on goal pretty easily!

Has anyone played with full manual controls for a few games? If so does it feel more realistic and overall worth the extra practice required to enjoy it? I was playing on semi-manual and found I really need to practice my passing again.

Also during rainy exhibition matches the corner screen is blurry, is this intentional or a bug?

Did you guys get an instruction manual this year with the game? I only got the PS instruction guide but no FIFA manual to refresh my memory :CONFUSE:
Click to expand...

No instruction manual.

You on Xbox mate? We could play that Adelaide v Perth fixture a week early :P
 
Sorry buddy I'm on a PS3, will be a great game though as Adelaide have recruited really well and built on the team from last season!

How have you found FIFA 12? I've only had a couple of games and still need to work out sliders + difficulty.
 
Dicardo83 said:
Sorry buddy I'm on a PS3, will be a great game though as Adelaide have recruited really well and built on the team from last season!

How have you found FIFA 12? I've only had a couple of games and still need to work out sliders + difficulty.
Click to expand...

Good so far. One game I had online was fun...had it not lagged so much!! Offline aint bad so far. I think keepers are too easy on 50 but I need to play around with sliders a little after I've gotten used to the default.

No point tweaking until I've found where the weak points are in my opinion.

Yeah Adelaide has done well and Perth has half our team now LOL.

Why aren't there names on the back of the A League players? And the fixtures are wrong. On FIFA my first game will be Adelaide v Sydney! :FAIL:
 
Fc_Zenit_Fan said:
Yeah, PES is so freaking good that the game basically plays itself. No Humans Required. Just push one button and everything else will happen automatically. AI will let your players take the ball, even if it goes through their whole team. Balls are like homing missiles, magically finding and sticking to your player's foot. Perfect game, of course, if you want a TRAIN simulator, cause that's what this game's all about - RAILS!

How can people be so blind?
Click to expand...

LOL. It doesn't play itself, silly boy.

When I play FIFA I'm honestly in awe of how bad it is, you say how can people be so blind? I say how can people put up with a game that all the players stand around doing nothing. FIFA12 is a tragedy, it manages to have WORSE AI than ANY FIFA that has gone before. Quite an achievement I would say!

PES=gameplay, FIFA=shinyshiny
 
drekkard said:
I didn't want to buy the game, but yesterday my wife arrived home late with a surprise. And the surprise was a gift: Fifa 12. She was very happy to surprise me, as she had heard I wasn't going to buy it soon.

So, after properly hugging her and thank her for the gift, I started playing. My first impressions were quite good, but the moment I started a CM the game has been going down and down to the point that in only two days I'm growing bored of the gameplay already.

I put a lot of my thoughts about it and will put it in spoiler brackets not to highjack the thread. This is all about single player experience. Multiplayer is a better game, though it has some of the same core problems of offline modes. But I buy the footy games to play mainly single player (it's hard to find the proper people to play full manual online, with a fair experience), so to me single player IS very important.

Tactical Defending
Tactical defending feels like something imposed on an engine that is designed to work just the other way. It would be good if it worked, but you contain a lot better just by moving the left stick and a little of the left trigger.

It would be great if this Tactical Defending had at least something of Tactics in it. I can't order the team to act as a unit, I simply feel I'm doing efforts to close stupid gaps that my stupid teammates go opening for no reason. There's no context to it, so the best moments of real tactical defending end up as a joke. See an example:

I was pressing a RB with 2 men, closing all the gaps, trying to reduce space and at least harrash him. It was hard to get near to him, because all of a sudden in this game there's always a forcefield that prevents you from go for a tackle. But at the end the RB started to track back. He did like 20 meters running backwards and I totally shut down his options. Now the 2 men had managed to be 1 meter away. The RB suddenly does a 180º turn while he perfectly passes the ball to a teamamte 40 meters away. Inch perfect. Just perfect. Now, where's that EA video talking about Vision? They're just pathetic.

Containing
And what's that nonsense about containing? So, if you press X your defender will perfectly mimic the striker, no matter what???? And even so, it's worthless as you can't get near him. What's the bloody use of it? None. Besides, in the attempt of lowering presure, now it's impossible to go for the ball properly, and all the attacks of the CPU invariably end up with my team in my own area even if I do a great pressure as a team. The CPU simply passes around until some pass forward to an alone striker evolves the play.

Accuracy and inertia...
Mainly because CPU accuracy is stupidly high. Yeah, you can change sliders, but why on earth the default is like this? Besides, the moment you get near anyone, the CPU begin to turn as if they had spasms, they are perfect at that, never turning to the wrong side. That's utter bullshit. There's no slider for this ballerina turns.

Your teammates hardly mark, or simply ignore what's happening around them. You try to press with someone, you raise the custom tactics and sliders, yet you feel again and again that you're playing alone and if you want something you have to go selecting players and move them. Not that it's useful, either, as the moment you deselect someone, he will go somewhere else. When my left back is out of position, I bring the LM there. But the moment I deselect the LM, he will simply go away leaving the winger unmarked and my team exposed. Great for EA, after so many years of hard work!

Crosses, crosses...
Let's go on... CPU AI goes to the sideline. You can't get near, and you know that sooner or later, between the shakira-turns of the winger, he will perfectly cross (with a totally assisted cross that has NOTHING to do with stats, context or balance) and you CAN'T avoid it. Even if you're one meter away of the winger.

Of course, most of the crosses go perfectly aimed to a striker that many times is absolutely alone, and even if they're not alone, it doesn't matter because they simply are stronger and jump higher than you when needed, specially in the 45th and 90th minute. Bollocks. Always. No matter who you control.

Stats, individuality
Stats apparently are binary. There are fast players and slow players. Good and bad dribblers. Strong and weak players. And that's it, unfortunately. Plus, all the CPU players can pass like Xavi, turn like Iniesta and cross like Beckham. Great.

Now to team individuality. There isn't. All the teams do the same patterns in attack, going to the wind obsessively or simply receiving alone in dangerous positions. The only difference is that big teams are quicker and stronger. Nothing else.

More AI
Strikers will receive confortably alone and you can't do nothing. Your midfielders can be just watching a dangerous attack and let pass the opposing midfielders. There's hardly a sense of context or movements that make you suddenly excited about a potential play.

Once you attack there's a worrying lack of movement. I talk of intelligent, real football movement, not just running forward until you're off-side. Even if you fiddle with custom tactics and sliders, you hardly see intelligent movements of your teammates. At the end all it's down to the same patterns of the last years depending most of all of the formation you play. Given a formation, players are like statues most of the time, unaware of possible runs or unable to come and help you. You have to continually force things to happen, and your teammates seem ressiliant to it.

The same positional problems of the last years
That said, some of the stupid all-time problems persist (I didn't expect any change). When starting a counter, you can ALWAYS do a long, ground pass to your striker who will be totally unmarked to receive the ball to start the play. Your striker will be generally alone and unmarked 5 or 6 meters of the opponent area when doing static attacks. Given a minimal, almost dumb-skill, you can always pass to him. Defenders never anticipate, never make it hard to cut the lanes. It's exploitable to death. Against the CPU, playing Bilbao in my CM, if I want I can ALWAYS bring the ball to Llorente in the same exact position and the same exact movements. It's all so mechanic.

The resulting experience is hollow, I don't get any excitement of scoring because scoring hardly comes out of a great team movement. It's down to one or two individual efforts and simple finishing. For all the great physics that the game has, something must be really bad when you get bored of it so quickly.

Where are the fouls?
I don't know. I played +20 matches and had only 4 fouls awarded to me. I counted them. That's pathetic and it's a hint of how unbalanced the game has grown to be. It's a series of patches and late-thoughts added over the others and right now it doesn't feels at all like a cohesive experience. There was a time that I wanted to do a foul to stop time and do some subs... I couldn't do a foul. Really, I couldn't get near my opponent, when near him I would even slide tackle to force the foul but the CPU would simply dirbble me, even with a roulette (an ADO player, note that).

Not having fouls at all it's only a clear sign of how the game has been built upon marketing features and not as a complete vision of how would be better to simulate the sport.

The balancing cheats
I know the word Cheat makes some people angry, and I know technically it's not cheating. But the feeling of being cheated continually persists in the game, more than ever. While it's hard to tackle, the CPU can perfectly tackle your players again and again, no matter the stats. They win headers that shouldn't win, they play totally assisted and can perfectly read your movements every nanosecond to avoid the sliding tackle the very moment you press the button and so on. The CPU teams continue to have a boost in the last minutes of all halves, even if they're far worse than your team.

All in all, it's very predictable. "Oh, now they will cross and score to draw at the last minute". And they do it. Yes, very exciting.

It's about time they change the way CPU teams perform, but with the game so oriented to online play (that's where EA has always put the money) I feel like EA is literally laughing on us with this AI. It's simply unacceptable at this age and time to be playing the exact same game we were playing years ago.

Closing appraisal
All that said, the CM finally is what should have been 3 years ago. Presentation is great and the overall polish of the game is AAA. Everything is just excellent, except the gameplay. It's an irony to have this deep CM mode when I'm absolutely fed up of the game. After playing more than 15 matches (Professional, all manual, 10 minutes, slow, different sets of sliders) I can hardly remember moments of magic, moments of joy.

Unavoidable comparison to PES
Then I put PES demo again. The game is technically awful. The animations are a joke and the engine of the game is old and limited. It has some problems Fifa has, specially in the CPU AI and the railing feeling of things. In every department, PES is absolutely worse than FIFA. Absolutely. It's like comparing a Ferrari and a Skoda.

And even if all this is true, I perfectly remember some team moves I did with PES that made me shout and scream tothe TV. Some players that clearly work in different way, the way some forward will use space and drag defenders to create a passing lane. PES is a game that has a lot of crap in it. But it's a game of football. FIFA it's a great game, but has very very little football in it.

I hope people respect my oppinion and try to understand where it comes from and what I'm criticizing here. How can it be that me, being a great footy fan, loving videogames and having played all Fifas from 08 to now... how can I be utterly bored after 2 days of playing it? Something is definitely wrong here.
Click to expand...

You're opinions, after all these years, still mirror mine exactly. I will still buy FIFA 12 today (I deleted the demo the same day I downloaded it, so woeful is playing against the cpu), purely to play against humans. How have you found human v human?

I will, of course, give CM a go, and use the sliders and custom tactics on cpu teams to see if they have any real effect on the overall feeling. The fact there's not sliders for the cpu's tackling ability, reactions and agility, first touch, ball control and dribbling, as well as long passing accuracy and heading, leave me knowing exactly how these elements of the game will be (awful....or should that be "perfect"), but do the custom tactics still not work? Is it possible to set completely different custom tactics for two cpu teams and then have them play differently, or do all cpu teams still play exactly the same way, no matter what tactics are set?
 
Last edited:
I've started my Career at Adelaide United and no way do those players have perfect control or touches. Had 1 game human v human and it was actually quite enjoyable...let's see where it goes from here lol
 
ccshopland said:
LOL. It doesn't play itself, silly boy.

When I play FIFA I'm honestly in awe of how bad it is, you say how can people be so blind? I say how can people put up with a game that all the players stand around doing nothing. FIFA12 is a tragedy, it manages to have WORSE AI than ANY FIFA that has gone before. Quite an achievement I would say!

PES=gameplay, FIFA=shinyshiny
Click to expand...

obviously a troll, its getting boring now that PES players just make excuses for the game. PES is way too automated fact! Losing in a game just hit the shoot button from anywhere within 40 yards and theres a good chance its going on target and probably in with the atrocious keepers. Try passing to a player that the AI doesn't want you to. It actually overrides your decision. Sorry but PES died in 2008 and just hasn't stepped up to next gen. Maybe next year but probably not. even Konami have said that it isnt as good as FIFA. It's own developers!
 
winston said:
You're opinions, after all these years, still mirror mine exactly. I will still buy FIFA 12 today (I deleted the demo the same day I downloaded it, so woeful is playing against the cpu), purely to play against humans. How have you found human v human?

I will, of course, give CM a go, and use the sliders and custom tactics on cpu teams to see if they have any real effect on the overall feeling. The fact there's not sliders for the cpu's tackling ability, reactions and agility, first touch, ball control and dribbling, as well as long passing accuracy and heading, leave me knowing exactly how these elements of the game will be (awful....or should that be "perfect"), but do the custom tactics still not work? Is it possible to set completely different custom tactics for two cpu teams and then have them play differently, or do all cpu teams still play exactly the same way, no matter what tactics are set?
Click to expand...

Don't know about the tactics, but teams do play differently! No one playing Fifa 12 can say that there is no difference between playing Barcelona and playing Swansea. When I played Barca they destroyed me and were 3-0 up after 15 minutes. When I played Swansea I took control of the game and it made them panic. They misplaced passes and hoofed the ball up the pitch. I've also seen lesser sides misplace crosses more than once.

But I guess tactics could make a difference. I started a CM with Malaga, they play 4-2-3-1 and there was no movement from team mates what so ever. I have now started one with QPR who uses the same formation and with them there is always passing options.
 
Ozkar said:
Don't know about the tactics, but teams do play differently! No one playing Fifa 12 can say that there is no difference between playing Barcelona and playing Swansea. When I played Barca they destroyed me and were 3-0 up after 15 minutes. When I played Swansea I took control of the game and it made them panic. They misplaced passes and hoofed the ball up the pitch. I've also seen lesser sides misplace crosses more than once.

But I guess tactics could make a difference. I started a CM with Malaga, they play 4-2-3-1 and there was no movement from team mates what so ever. I have now started one with QPR who uses the same formation and with them there is always passing options.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Whoever says teams play the same on FIFA12 haven't played enough. I did 3 matches last night and they all felt different.

I must say I'm finding it much easier to play on World Class full manual, I've scored 3 goals so far!

Much better than the demo. Played from 1am-2am last night and craving more in work...
 
Finally you can outrun defenders with a fast player! Playing as QPR it's so satisfying to play a manual through ball and let SWP run at it beating slower defenders on the way.
 
guys sorry if this has been asked, but i can never play more than 1 head to head season game, it comes up with a message saying along the lines "online rosters, check back later" sorry thats from memory, i have to log out and back in again to play head to head season, can someone please help? cheers
 
ozfootball said:
guys sorry if this has been asked, but i can never play more than 1 head to head season game, it comes up with a message saying along the lines "online rosters, check back later" sorry thats from memory, i have to log out and back in again to play head to head season, can someone please help? cheers
Click to expand...

Every game I play it downloads the rosters. It takes about 30 seconds some times for me. Just let it do its thing and I'm sure it will work.
 
I can't score a goal to save my life, on the plus side I'm not conceding any either. I find it terribly frustrating so far, really reminds of FIFA 11. Simple passes get intercepted all the time, defenders have amazing reactions and the CPU is able to do stuff you can't, namely barge you off the ball with ease.

Naturally, I'll give it more time and I'll have a go at tweaking the sliders. I badly want to like this but it's not working for me so far.
 
Surprisingly really enjoying it, but could just be the yearly FIFA honeymoon period!

I must admit, it did endear itself too me straight away last night in my first game. Few minutes in, I lumped the ball forward and Neil Harris (Southend) challenged with a defender in the air. Game went on and eventually ref blew... "whats that for?" I thought... camera pans back and Harris is rolling round on the floor holding his head.

Nice little animation of Harris getting up holding his head, cant continue so I sub him out and game restarts with ref dropping the ball to my RW so I boot it out for a goal kick to a ripple of applause :) Such a nice touch.

The whole thing feels much better than FIFA 11 so far. Love the quickness of it all, no long loading screens for subs, most throw ins are taken without a break in the play (player just goes and gets the ball) etc - makes it all much more fluid and enjoyable.

Also had a couple of handball calls against me, which on viewing the replay, the engine got spot on.

I've been worried about this new collision thing, but again, not had any problems and it makes for a far more physical and realistic game. Running alongside SWP and tugging/barging him is quality. He wont go down the little bugger!

Overall, I think its a massive improvement and I'm gagging to turn 30-degrees to my right, fire it up and carry on playing. The 2-headed dilema of working for yourself from home!!
 
Orange Gooner said:
I can't score a goal to save my life, on the plus side I'm not conceding any either. I find it terribly frustrating so far, really reminds of FIFA 11. Simple passes get intercepted all the time, defenders have amazing reactions and the CPU is able to do stuff you can't, namely barge you off the ball with ease.

Naturally, I'll give it more time and I'll have a go at tweaking the sliders. I badly want to like this but it's not working for me so far.
Click to expand...

Can't get my head round how you can think it's like FIFA 11. Even just after 2 games I noticed how different everything was, it's very similar to PES of old where anything can happen (deflections, players bumping into each other, falling over, goal mouth scrambles, handballs, freekicks, injuries).

I got a penalty in my first game for a defender pushing gerrard over going for a diving header!

The random factor is a BIG plus for me.
 
PU6HY said:
Every game I play it downloads the rosters. It takes about 30 seconds some times for me. Just let it do its thing and I'm sure it will work.
Click to expand...

thanks mate, but what happens i cant remember the exact message, says something bout an error with rosters, ive waited for it for over a few minutes and still no luck, i wonder what it could be
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom