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FIFA 12 Discussion Thread

I know I'm probably going to get an essay like response to my previous post on Fifa assists, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Some of us want different things from our football games. I'm never going to fully subscribe to the all-manual club, no matter what.
 
I personally can't stand how manual is implemented. There isn't an organic feel to the weighting of passes and it kills the individuality.

Plus every manual player I have played on line just pressures and makes "safe" passes which somewhat defeats the purpose of having manual control.
 
Jamezinho said:
I know I'm probably going to get an essay like response to my previous post on Fifa assists, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Some of us want different things from our football games. I'm never going to fully subscribe to the all-manual club, no matter what.
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Couldn't agree more. At first I liked the approach EA was taking with a manual system and at one point I would have asked for that in PES too. But that was back in 2008/2009. Over the years I have seen the glaring issues that face a fully manual system (both offline gameplay and online) and until EA acknowledge these issue wholeheartedly its just going to create a watered down experience in my opinion. It will certainly be interesting to see what they do in the future though. They definitely have the capacity to make a great football title that incorporates the key features of animations, physics of both player and ball, inertia, AI and of course player individuality.
 
Jamezinho said:
I know I'm probably going to get an essay like response to my previous post on Fifa assists, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Some of us want different things from our football games. I'm never going to fully subscribe to the all-manual club, no matter what.
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The last sentence is very closed-minded. Why wouldn't you want to change over if the experience manual could offer was a better version of exactly what you're looking for? What if in x or y years FIFA has adapted to offer all the sliders and options in the world, some bright spark devises the perfect settings, and it turns out that manual in combination with these settings is genuinely the best game you could possibly imagine?

It's fine if you don't like manual as it is currently implemented. Just know that the reasons you've given have next to nothing to do with manual controls.
 
glen said:
I personally can't stand how manual is implemented. There isn't an organic feel to the weighting of passes and it kills the individuality.

Plus every manual player I have played on line just pressures and makes "safe" passes which somewhat defeats the purpose of having manual control.
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I'd rather play against somebody who makes these "safe" passes than a pingpong gimping prick any day of the week.

I can handle playing against people on assisted who actually have a touch on the ball and play with a realistic mindset instead of the laughable unrealistic 100mph one touch shit I had to put up with last night! I beat the tosser but I hated playing against him. I had 68% possession so thankfully he didn't have the ball that much but each time he had it I just thought to myself "what a cock!". Ping ping ping, chip through ball. It clearly wasn't working for him against somebody who knows how to combat it but it still does my head in.
 
nerf said:
I'm struggling to think how EA could empower Manual controls to enable you to play 'better' than with Assisted controls, beyond what is inherently there. How could they change this?
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Manual has some advantages - primarily in that it's a lot more free. You can do what you want with manual. With any assisted set up there are things you simply cannot do. You are always constrained by the artificial intelligence which picks the passes for you, which is often quite hard in itself to predict.

So in that, manual has an advantage, because it gives you more control, and more control is useful. Manual, even now, is not so much less useful than assisted, if it wasn't for a few areas where the assisted passing is really, really dodgy (like 180 degree passes, and the over-the-top throughballs).

But manual could be helped to make it easier still: one of the biggest problems being the charge up time for manual passing. I've suggested a solution to this, where the direct/through pass buttons were differentiated under manual so there was no overlap. For example, the direct pass button would do short passes, and the through pass button would do longer ones. This way a short powerup can give you a lengthy pass, and you have a lot more precision over passes, in particular the short ones which are quite tricky as of now.

Maybe manual can never be made as effective it should be, but it isn't that far off now and there are areas it can improve on (and a few where it needs to be made harder).

Surely the problem with assists is that there's no/insufficent error factor built into the game to begin with. Fix that, then would the control setup even be a problem?
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Depends how the error is applied. I'm adamant that the manual error would need to be less (to compensate for the human error already there) than it would for assisted. Reasonable human error + contextual error = realistic error, should be the standard applied in all situations. Obviously, if human error is bigger than realistic error, then there is nothing you can do about it.

For example then, a difficult pass with Fabregas should maybe go roughly where you point on manual, should have a bit of error on semi, and a bit more on assisted. The same pass with Gary Cahill should have a bit of error on manual, quite a lot on semi, and lots on assisted. Something along those lines.
 
Rodelero said:
... For example, the direct pass button would do short passes, and the through pass button would do longer ones. This way a short powerup can give you a lengthy pass, and you have a lot more precision over passes, in particular the short ones which are quite tricky as of now....
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I haven't played FIFA 11, but in the versions before it pretty much worked like this. Normal pass button resulted in a much harder pass than through balls (given the same power up), so you could always make sure to use through ball button for all short passes and normal pass for longer passes.

I think the gap between assisted and manual can never be removed completely since you will always have the problem with manual being very sensitive and easy to get wrong from the user input. Manual should be, as mentioned earlier, manual AIM and not manual RESULT. To me, all that has to be added is a lot more accuracy error in passing overall (same error for all settings). Assisted is too easy because all players pass (and shoot/cross) too good.

The accuracy also have to be much more dynamic and not the current solution where you have a min and max error on accuracy. What I mean is that it feels like they add for example a max error value of 2 yards to the side on a certain pass. So it's not completely dynamic depending on the context the pass is being taken. If you play around in the arena in FIFA you can do the same perfect shots over and over again and only have the same small error marginals applied. In PES it's like they don't have a maximum set, because it can end up anywhere, which makes it feel much less predictable.
 
Jamezinho said:
The point maybe moot in real-life, but not from a racing game perspective.

As a regular online racer I can testify that driving without assists is quicker. What the assists do in racing games is help prevent mistakes and spin-outs, but a car can stop quicker without ABS, and can get off the line quicker without traction control provided the driver is skilled enough.
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I think something similar should apply between manual and assisted. Assisted should be just that bit slower in response (from button press to beginning/duration of animation), but with a high success rate in completion. Then give manual a quicker response, but having the success rate dependent on your skills.
 
Gab_ said:
I haven't played FIFA 11, but in the versions before it pretty much worked like this. Normal pass button resulted in a much harder pass than through balls (given the same power up), so you could always make sure to use through ball button for all short passes and normal pass for longer passes.
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To an extent this is true, in FIFA 11 it's slightly awkward because generally passes have been a lot slower: it's now very hard to do a lengthy pass on manual, and while througball is still better for the short passes, there is a huge overlap.

At the moment it feels like, throughball does 5-35 meter passes and direct pass does maybe 10-40, when ideally on manual I'd have something like direct doing 0-25 and throughball doing 20-55. Of course, the words throughball and direct pass are meaningless for manual, which is why I'd alter the buttons so the overlap was removed.

I think the gap between assisted and manual can never be removed completely since you will always have the problem with manual being very sensitive and easy to get wrong from the user input. Manual should be, as mentioned earlier, manual AIM and not manual RESULT. To me, all that has to be added is a lot more accuracy error in passing overall (same error for all settings). Assisted is too easy because all players pass (and shoot/cross) too good.
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If you do 'same error' for every setting you're going to continue with the same problem of manual being much, much harder than the others. Manual should have a little less error to make up for the inherent user-analog stick error. It's not like you'd get less error overall, you'd get around the same amount.

The accuracy also have to be much more dynamic and not the current solution where you have a min and max error on accuracy. What I mean is that it feels like they add for example a max error value of 2 yards to the side on a certain pass. So it's not completely dynamic depending on the context the pass is being taken. If you play around in the arena in FIFA you can do the same perfect shots over and over again and only have the same small error marginals applied. In PES it's like they don't have a maximum set, because it can end up anywhere, which makes it feel much less predictable.
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I don't think there is anything that wrong with the way the passing accuracy works other than it being tuned up really badly. There is very, very little directional error, but it is quite unpredictable within that small margin (it's almost unnoticable). Also, the passes are never over-weighted, they are always under-weighted. This is the main 'error' in the game, it just slows your passes down.
 
romagnoli said:
The last sentence is very closed-minded. Why wouldn't you want to change over if the experience manual could offer was a better version of exactly what you're looking for? What if in x or y years FIFA has adapted to offer all the sliders and options in the world, some bright spark devises the perfect settings, and it turns out that manual in combination with these settings is genuinely the best game you could possibly imagine?

It's fine if you don't like manual as it is currently implemented. Just know that the reasons you've given have next to nothing to do with manual controls.
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Thats easy Rom, fully Manual and individuality are mutually exclusive by definition. I'm sure that's what Jamez means. Semi-Manual with relevant statistics surely is the best way to have the freedom we crave alongside what gives us the 'soul' of football ? Isnt it ?. Well at least it is for me.
 
PU6HY said:
I'd rather play against somebody who makes these "safe" passes than a pingpong gimping prick any day of the week.

I can handle playing against people on assisted who actually have a touch on the ball and play with a realistic mindset instead of the laughable unrealistic 100mph one touch shit I had to put up with last night! I beat the tosser but I hated playing against him. I had 68% possession so thankfully he didn't have the ball that much but each time he had it I just thought to myself "what a cock!". Ping ping ping, chip through ball. It clearly wasn't working for him against somebody who knows how to combat it but it still does my head in.
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well said. i hate playing against unrealistic fuckers out there who uses exploits and shit to win matches. doesnt reward people playing in a realistic manner. same as PES. fucking shocking!

AT least in BAP is a tiny bit better in this regard
 
Jimmy G-Force said:
Thats easy Rom, fully Manual and individuality are mutually exclusive by definition. I'm sure that's what Jamez means. Semi-Manual with relevant statistics surely is the best way to have the freedom we crave alongside what gives us the 'soul' of football ? Isnt it ?. Well at least it is for me.
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In a nutshell Jim, exactly my point.

Cheers.
 
Jimmy G-Force said:
Thats easy Rom, fully Manual and individuality are mutually exclusive by definition. I'm sure that's what Jamez means. Semi-Manual with relevant statistics surely is the best way to have the freedom we crave alongside what gives us the 'soul' of football ? Isnt it ?. Well at least it is for me.
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They aren't mutually exclusive. This is the point. People just don't seem to understand that manual controls in FIFA are as representative of manual passing as a whole, as assisted passing in FIFA is representative of assisted passing as a whole. It's the implementation and the environment in which they sit that defines how a control scheme fares, and at the moment that is being confused with what is genuinely possible with the manual idea.

FWIW I do think that semi-assisted is the best route to take, or the least tied to a particular ethos and therefore the most pliable when it comes to finding the perfect balance. Manual as it currently works is good for something like BAP where I am one player and I have to complete all the passes and shots myself.

But for me all the controls have to be semi-assisted (or semi-manual; semi implies 50-50 when that isn't what I mean across the board). I'll be very disappointed if Konami don't come up with a new through ball system, for example.
 
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romagnoli said:
They aren't mutually exclusive. This is the point. People just don't seem to understand that manual controls in FIFA are as representative of manual passing as a whole, as assisted passing in FIFA is representative of assisted passing as a whole. It's the implementation and the environment in which they sit that defines how a control scheme fares, and at the moment that is being confused with what is genuinely possible with the manual idea.

FWIW I do think that semi-assisted is the best route to take, or the least tied to a particular ethos and therefore the most pliable when it comes to finding the perfect balance. Manual as it currently works is good for something like BAP where I am one player and I have to complete all the passes and shots myself.

But for me all the controls have to be semi-assisted (or semi-manual; semi implies 50-50 when that isn't what I mean across the board). I'll be very disappointed if Konami don't come up with a new through-ball system, for example.
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The current manual pass in PES 2011 is actually stat relevant, if it was fully manual surely that would take statistics out of the equation by definition ? I will quite happily concede I was wrong about how Konami could implement this new Semi-Manual system without it having an adverse effect on stat relevance. You advised otherwise, and you were right. I cant buy into the fully Manual argument though in the same respect. Surely it's one or the other ? Or better a still, a happy medium between both.

As for the through-ball, I have no issues against how it currently is. For the first time it's relevant and does exactly as it says on the tin. The argument for it's effectiveness is null and void in my book when a player becomes consistent and astute with off-the-ball defending. A good example of this was highlighted in a few matches I played last night. The chap I played is currently enjoying a great start to the season in Division One in PEEL, he is beating everyone, and beating them well. He is very effective with the through-ball, and I was aware of this from the match reports. The bottom-line was he got zero change out of my defence in both games. I anticipated what he was doing, and stuffed everything. My point is that in all of the previous PES titles, I was never required to learn this art of defending. The through-ball in PES 2011 has opened up a whole new part of PES that never existed previously, and I personally welcome that.
 
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Rodelero said:
If you do 'same error' for every setting you're going to continue with the same problem of manual being much, much harder than the others. Manual should have a little less error to make up for the inherent user-analog stick error. It's not like you'd get less error overall, you'd get around the same amount.
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Sure, but then you are sacrificing individuality for gamer skills and I really don't like that. If people find it too hard to pass, it is IMO better to have one of the passing options as semi-assisted and the other one as manual. This way it's more like PES in a way.

When I played FIFA 10, what I thought was unfair was that assisted players didn't have to power up like us manual players and that all their actions had too little accuracy errors. I never felt that manual was too hard, if anything it was boring because the ball always went where I aimed regardless of player. I think the pressure in FIFA with the absence of momentum/inertia plays in the assisted players advantage since it takes time to power up a pass on manual. So if they fix momentum, pressure and accuracy errors I think it would make a big difference.
 
Jimmy - you're taking fully manual as referring to the outcome, not the input to the footballer's 'mind'. Manual controls does not mean stat-free at all. There's just not enough stat intervention in FIFA at all, so the end result is much the same as removing them in the first place.
 
100% manual is not the future of football games nor is the most realistic representation of the beautiful game.
 
kouroux said:
100% manual is not the future of football games nor is the most realistic representation of the beautiful game.
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And besides, other sports games don't take a full manual approach.

In Madden throwing the ball is about timing and use of modifiers to change the flight of the ball rather than actually directing the ball and manually adding power.

And there's nothing manual about NBA2K11 which is hands-down the best sports game out there. It's all about timing, tactics and reading the play. The most important things in a sports game.
 
Maybe if we write Semi-Manual everyone will understand it better? Which is manual aim as in you tell the football player to try to put 'this' much power and 'this' direction on the pass, and then it is up to the football player's abilities to get it there.

Kind of like in real life, you walk out on the pitch and paint a red mark on the ground and tell Rooney, for example, to try to hit that spot. This means that the "aim" is manual, but then it is completely up to Rooney himself to actually get it there.
 
Jamezinho said:
And besides, other sports games don't take a full manual approach.

In Madden throwing the ball is about timing and use of modifiers to change the flight of the ball rather than actually directing the ball and manually adding power.

And there's nothing manual about NBA2K11 which is hands-down the best sports game out there. It's all about timing, tactics and reading the play. The most important things in a sports game.
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You can't really compare NBA and football. You don't pass into space in basketball, at all. In NBA you can say, very clearly, where the ball should go for any particular pass, the same is not true in football.

This is not about whether manual is better than non-manual, it's not an argument you can have, because there is no objectivity whatsoever about it. Can you build a great football game without manual? Of course. Is there still a place for it? I think so. There is something thoroughly addictive about the freedom that manual grants you.
 
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Rodelero said:
You can't really compare NBA and football. You don't pass into space in basketball, at all. In NBA you can say, very clearly, where the ball should go for any particular pass, the same is not true in football.

This is not about whether manual is better than non-manual, it's not an argument you can have, because there is no objectivity whatsoever about it. Can you build a great football game without manual? Of course. Is there still a place for it? I think so. There is something thoroughly addictive about the freedom that manual grants you.
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You can lead pass and alley oop in basketball, but that's not the point anyway. Manual controls are not just for when you want to play into space - they're for everything, short passes, long passes, shooting.....
 
It's a difficult discussion to have because I don't think that people can get their heads around the idea of how manual could actually be stat-based, or indeed that it already is in a sense. As such it's hard to debate the merits of manual controls as part of a simulation if the people on the other side of the discussion don't really grasp what they're arguing against.
 
All we need is system that requires some user skill. I wouldn't mind getting beaten by more skillful gamer.

It's getting beaten 5-0 by the button mashers that annoys me.

At the moment only manual controls will pass the ball in the direction you are pointing. I think all manual players would welcome a level of ai error when passing based on the player attributes.
 
romagnoli said:
It's a difficult discussion to have because I don't think that people can get their heads around the idea of how manual could actually be stat-based, or indeed that it already is in a sense. As such it's hard to debate the merits of manual controls as part of a simulation if the people on the other side of the discussion don't really grasp what they're arguing against.
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Don't be so self righteous.
 
I'm not. I'm not even really a manual player. I'm just saying it's a very, very difficult discussion to make progress with if we can't get past that first hurdle.
 
Why is it so complicated to understand?

A simple example of manual passing that is stat based;

A longball with the user imput being perfect (angle and power, which is very possible with practice (even if I'm not a manual player)) results in the following passes with the respective players;
Sirhoofalot himself, Carradona = 100% imput (perfect power and pass from user) with Carra's 50% accuracy means the ball will fall within 20m of the "crosshair"*.
Same pass, same imput with Alonso results in 95% accuracy which means the ball will fall within 5m of the "crosshair".

* The crosshair being an imagined one that is the result / location on the pitch whic results from the imput from the gamer, i.e. where he is aiming and powering the pass to.

Stats would therefor mean that if you want to try an elaborate longball with Carra you only have a 50% chance that you can pull it off because....well he's crap at passing. With Alonso it's 95% because he's great. Imput and power is exactly the same from the gamer, but stats manipulate the outcome. Not too complicated surely?

The basis for controls should be;
Assisted; power is automatic, aiming locks on to nearest player from controller angle
Semi; power is semi assisted and aiming locks on when 75% angle accuracy is reached
Manual; power and angle is in full control of gamer.

For all settings stats determines succesrate and accuracy.
 
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