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FIFA 12 Discussion Thread

kevano22 said:
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).
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+1 nothing like FIFA 11
 
After two games it's a huge step up in terms of AI both on your team and the CPU. I've tweaked my sliders before I even started the game and it feels good.

I think the game is definitely easier (I play World Class on FULL Manual), but that might be because I can finally play the kind of football I want. Patient build up and then when you need to play quick and dynamic, you can.

I'll get this goal uploaded later tonight with the team move. I did about 20-30 passes (btw replays are ace - you can see so far back to see the WHOLE move).

Then I did a a quick ball over top then into the rushing right back, I overhit the ball so it ALMOST went for a goal kick but he managed to hook the cross in and my CM was there to stoop in.

Also the first goal from open play I conceeded was Kyriakgos for Wolfsburg. He scored a great header, but was so low at the back compared to the quick attacking threat of Sevilla :), he couldn't cope all game.

Player individuality is much more apparent this year.

This was all from 2-3 games. I can't wait to get cracking.
 
LTFC said:
So thanks drekkard, I think I'll reconsider now and maybe get the game if I get bored with PES (which I absolutely love btw), and when the game is cheaper. I got swayed by some more relaxed gameplay in the demo once I got used to it, and the gorgeous graphics and presentation. But if, like you say, the gameplay goes 'turbo' in favour of the AI in that really artificial way again, then yeah, you've just saved me £40. :)
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Well, human vs human it's a very different beast. Played with the right people on slow and a combination of semi and manual can give you great and exciting games. It has its shares of problems, but it's overall a much much better game than in single player. In multiplayer, if you can find the right set of sliders it can be very enjoyable. The only problem for me, by now, must be the lack of intelligent movement of your teammates.

Maybe I've grown quickly fond of many of the moves that your teammates do in PES and the way that it plays so differently all the time (it's the main factor that still drives me to play the Pes Demo), but in Fifa I find them too static.

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.
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There are 3 factors that make the CPU AI play differently, but honestly the first two are the only ones that make differences between teams.
- Players attributes
- Formation
- Custom Tactics

The first two have a real impact on how the CPU plays the game. But not on the kind of passes they do, or the type of plays they develop. It impacts on how much time they can resist you barging, how easy they are to tackle or how quick they move. It seems to be more physical differences between athletes. But they play the exact type of football against me.

For example, if you play Barcelona against Swansea, Swansea should try long balls, put 10 men inside the area and practically give away possession all the time. In practice, they try to play exactly like Villarreal or Valencia, their players do the same turns and passes, only they misplace one now and then and are easier to dispossess. But they look for the wing, etc exactly like other teams. At least that's what I found. They are worse deploying the plays, but the plays are the exact same plays!

Altering custom tactics could add slight differences, though I think it's a joke if I have to go and manually change every bloody team tactics by myself. I guess if you fiddle with custom tactics and sliders before EVERY game, you can have a sense of much better and much worse teams, but at the bottom pit, there's the way the CPU plays football, the algorithms to find an open man, the routines that make them go to the wing and cross, or the fact they all can turn around themselves. This to me is just too blatant, cheap programming to avoid coding complex AI.

No matter what, if I play Messi as a CF, for example, I can find him with the same kind of passes against any team. Positionally, I see not much difference in the way the CPU deals with this. And every CPU team can compact the team in front of the area to defend almost perfectly, while my team won't compact at all and in the midfield there's always gaps all around, no matter the formation and the custom tactics. If you play a top team against Swansea, my forward should look for spaces and Swansea may do a lot of positional mistakes, leaving gaps on deffense, even with 9 men defending. That doesnt' happen, it's your speed what makes you beat a deffender, and the way the game is leaned towards counterattacks that makes you break them on the counter. But while doing static attacks, you will hardly find an open man exploiting a deffense mistake.

And players abilities are way above all this. If you play Barcelona against Milan, for instance, you CAN'T play possession against them, because you can't pressure them. Seedorf or Gattuso will skin your midfielders the moment you get near him, becasue they are "good".

So I feel the game doesn't reward properly real life football thinking. You hardly win or loose a game because of your tactical approach, it's all on your gaming skills and some passing patterns depending on both formations.

And things like the way how CPU transforms a clearance into a 40 yards perfect pass it's been there since Fifa 09. It happens with any team now and then. Look the examples I talked about in my previous post playing against ADO.

Mind that I come from a long history of being bored by AI and positioning issues.
 
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drekkard said:
For example, if you play Barcelona against Swansea, Swansea should try long balls, put 10 men inside the area and practically give away possession all the time.
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Why should they? They're a crazy good passing team and stick to their style no matter what, did you not see Arsenal v Swansea?

Your example is flawed, a more accurate team would be say Wolves, and if you read my CM report when I was Man City v Wolves it was exactly as you said it should be.
 
One thing I don't like is the commentary lags behind sometimes. Someone hit a shot against the post and then it got tapped in. The celebration had started and Martin Tyler's audio loop about the missed shot was just finishing. Saw it in the demo - sad to see it's still there on the final product.
 
Drekkard, i agree with Placebo on this: Swansea are a team that always try to play good passing football, they are renowned for that...

Yesterday evening i had my first long session of FIFA12 and until now i've only played single matches. Must say i've enoyed it. Defending is hard for me. To be honest, i agree with drekkard concerning defending, i think it's very hard to get near the attackers with defenders, but i'm a lousy player...that could be me and not the game although i noticed a difference when you tweak te sliders. I don't agree with Drekkard (who i apreciate enormously) on the sliders: i think they are a good addition...i also use them in the NBA2K game which is IMO the best sports title around.

It seems to me this game is quite deep and i'm still discovering it.

The thing that annoys me most is a detail: the fact that the game uses inches and pounds. Is there any way to change this? If not, that's a shame (but of course not that important).

I would like to end a game without conceding goals. Yesterday i was loosing matches and having draws when suddenly my 8 year old son asked me to play a couple of matches. His first match was "his" Barcelona against Real Madrid, he won 5-1...Later on when he was in bed i started to win matches...but my son made me eat some humble pie...not the first and certainly not the last. I'm getting old.
 
I'm too intrigued by the sliders (and by what gerd says above) not to give this a try. Hopefully they'll make the game slower without becoming too easy. If I don't like it I'm not gonna moan, I brought it on myself having not overly liked the demo.....

There are some decent deals for the game going around today, but the worst has to be Gamestation's. Seriously taking the piss. They've marked the game up to £44, but 'offer' the game for £38 if you trade in TWO games. Two. They're effectively buying two games for £3 each and selling you FIFA for just £2 less than everyone else. What a joke!
 
This is the best FIFA since FIFA09 in my view. I never got along with FIFA10 or 11. I think the double-sprint-pressure thing finally wore me down. I could never take them very seriously.

Tactical Defending is superb in FIFA12. Having to show restraint and make good decisions whilst defending – imagine that! No wonder the kids hate it.
 
Keith Houchen said:
This is the best FIFA since FIFA09 in my view. I never got along with FIFA10 or 11. I think the double-sprint-pressure thing finally wore me down. I could never take them very seriously.

Tactical Defending is superb in FIFA12. Having to show restraint and make good decisions whilst defending – imagine that! No wonder the kids hate it.
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Haven't played it enough but it does remind me of FIFA 09 in a good way. Even the lighting is much improved, finally!

I've actually gone back to default buttons now for defending as I find it more natural. When you first try tactical defending your fingers and brain are trying to coordinate but now it's easier. I like moving the selected player with the left stick while just using RB to close down the ball carrier. If it gets passed around you switch players and start again.

I laugh at all the guys I know hating the fact they can't just hold down press and 2nd press all the time. They admitted that's all they were doing LOL
 
Placebo said:
Why should they? They're a crazy good passing team and stick to their style no matter what, did you not see Arsenal v Swansea?

Your example is flawed, a more accurate team would be say Wolves, and if you read my CM report when I was Man City v Wolves it was exactly as you said it should be.
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Oh, I'm sorry about that, I didn't specifically test Swansea and I reckon I haven't seen them play. I'm an ignorant of small teams of many of the european leagues. :EMB:

I've played mostly La Liga matches, so replace the example with Barcelona against Osasuna, for example, or Levante.

gerd said:
I don't agree with Drekkard (who i apreciate enormously) on the sliders: i think they are a good addition...i also use them in the NBA2K game which is IMO the best sports title around.
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I didn't express myself correctly then. Sliders have a clear impact on the gameplay and were A MUST for the game. Surely if there weren't sliders I wouldn't even make any more efforts. Tinkering with them I can add zip to the ball, for example (the default passing speed must be ajoke), and the game gets better...

But it doesn't change a bit the way the CPU plays!

I think that the game rewards gaming skills rather than footballing skills. If I play thinking about football, I get bored quickly and don't find plays to do. If I forget what real footballers would do in that specific play and simply try to play the game as its meant I can play and score, I can do it, but I'm not seeing team moves, only static positions. Well, full backs run deep, taht's true and it's an improvement. But watching Pedro, Villa and Messi act like statues kills me. Of course I can pass to Messi and knock the ball and break the defenders, but practically all my matches in the spanish Liga have been copy-pasted. There are differences in the sense that Sevilla has stronger players and Villarreal quicker ones, but they play exactly the same and the CPU algorithms are too blatant.

They can all perfectly read your movements, rarely wrong foot them, they all can turn, and passing doesn't differ much between them, specially long passing.

I've played with Bilbao and Barcelona, mainly, and my issues with the game are mostly related to positioning and CPU AI design. Maybe I'm wrong and I simply suck as a player or I'm just a grumpy old gamer. Maybe it's that I've played too much footy games and I do programming a lot in my life and I can "see" the algorithms there, just the same way I studied cinema and I can't watch a film without noticing the editing, pace and direction.
 
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Very early impressions after a couple of exhibitions - very positive. Seems much improved from the demo and improved all round from 11. And that's without altering the sliders yet.

As a couple of people have mentioned, I find it notable that you can now pressure an opponent into a mistake just by getting close to him and causing him to panic, particularly if you can hunt him down near his own penalty area and force him into a wild clearance.

Seeing a lot of heavier touches than before. I hacked a ball up the pitch and Ridgewell went to collect it. His first-touch as it dropped was wayward and almost presented it to my striker - he had to lunge to stab it away before I could intercept. I feel like last year he would have just killed it first time no problem.

Instant Replays are very long now (45 seconds I think?), but you can only edit/save/upload 5 second chunks, is that right? That's very short, it was double that last year! Will probably have to save them in two parts and stitch together... argh.

Commentary is good. I played a Villa v Birmingham exhibition and Alan Smith confessed at K.O. to his Villa allegiance ;) . Unfortunately my lack of practice at defending ultimately let him down! I did dive straight into Legendary though.

Might go and have a fiddle with the sliders this afternoon, see what they do.
 
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Just got this through the letter box so did a quick test.

Played Liverpool vs Southampton, professional, tweaked Sotons custom tactics and played. Lost 2-1 in the last minute but its miles better than the demo. The a.i felt threatening but never ridiculous. In fact the a.i was quite smart at times. Gonna do more testing, not looked at sliders.

Slow is really slow on default compared to the demo. Maybe that has to do with the sliders being involved. its only one game but im very positive.
 
Drekkard, i've only experimented with "sliders", not with the CPU's sliders...so i can't say anything sensible about that. I did notice a difference with "my" sliders.

I think it's a good thing to have these sliders. I'm far from an hardcore gamer but thanks to those sliders i can enjoy NBA2K wich is basicly a very difficult game...Thanks to the sliders i find a personal balance between simulation and arcade gameplay (most players will find it too arcade, but i don't care...i never play online).

I also play lots of FIFA and PES with my kids. My daughter is not a gamer, but she loves football. Thanks to the sliders she can play with my son or with me who are gaming a lot more (you can do something similar, but less refined in PES). I think it's good that the difference between arcade and simulation is fading away. I know on forums like these it's not politically correct to tell that one is a casual gamer but i couldn't care less. All those superstars who claim that games are too easy should play their games with the television off if they really want a challenge ...i'll stop before i get carried away too much. Sorry.
 
uuughghh promised myself I wouldn't buy fifa b/c of my impressions on the early release... but sat here with nothing to play and ASDA is only a 10minute walk from my house... I actually miss career mode, only played like 2 games and wasn't that pleased but after playing manual online with a mate I really enjoyed that... besides the shooting.

I might be about to crack :SHOCK:
 
gerd said:
Drekkard, i've only experimented with "sliders", not with the CPU's sliders...so i can't say anything sensible about that. I did notice a difference with "my" sliders.

I think it's a good thing to have these sliders. I'm far from an hardcore gamer but thanks to those sliders i can enjoy NBA2K wich is basicly a very difficult game...Thanks to the sliders i find a personal balance between simulation and arcade gameplay (most players will find it too arcade, but i don't care...i never play online).

I also play lots of FIFA and PES with my kids. My daughter is not a gamer, but she loves football. Thanks to the sliders she can play with my son or with me who are gaming a lot more (you can do something similar, but less refined in PES). I think it's good that the difference between arcade and simulation is fading away. I know on forums like these it's not politically correct to tell that one is a casual gamer but i couldn't care less. All those superstars who claim that games are too easy should play their games with the television off if they really want a challenge ...i'll stop before i get carried away too much. Sorry.
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I agree i think its an option long overdue in football games.
 
How are you guys at defending? I just can't defend. Are you using the contain button?
Seriously thinking of going back to legacy defending. I'm conceding at least 3 goals per game in my CM.
 
Dryzer said:
Just got this through the letter box so did a quick test.

Played Liverpool vs Southampton, professional, tweaked Sotons custom tactics and played. Lost 2-1 in the last minute but its miles better than the demo. The a.i felt threatening but never ridiculous. In fact the a.i was quite smart at times. Gonna do more testing, not looked at sliders.

Slow is really slow on default compared to the demo. Maybe that has to do with the sliders being involved. its only one game but im very positive.
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Sounds promising :)

Got my copy this lunchtime, I'm off to a gig tonight so I can't try it until late! Aargh!
 
Ozkar said:
How are you guys at defending? I just can't defend. Are you using the contain button?
Seriously thinking of going back to legacy defending. I'm conceding at least 3 goals per game in my CM.
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I pretty much never use contain, I use super cancel (LT+RT) to put my player into position to either close down the space or close down the ball carrier whichever seems most appropriate at the time.

Watch the ball not the man ;) I noticed I was doing that earlier and it's much better for gauging when to make the tackle, often I don't even press the tackle button I just walk down the ball basically and then when I'm right on top of it tap the standing tackle button.
 
Anyone else who uses gameface have the portraite be green/blue squares? I had to re-download it as that did not transfer from the early release, but it was fine on that.

Edit: Just re-downloaded it, its fine now.
 
I take back what I said about clubs. It is starting to click.

This game is amazing, steep learning curve for defending but online matches are great with no problem finding manual games.
 
Placebo said:
I pretty much never use contain, I use super cancel (LT+RT) to put my player into position to either close down the space or close down the ball carrier whichever seems most appropriate at the time.

Watch the ball not the man ;) I noticed I was doing that earlier and it's much better for gauging when to make the tackle, often I don't even press the tackle button I just walk down the ball basically and then when I'm right on top of it tap the standing tackle button.
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Hmm never tried Super cancel. Will give it a go. It's really frustrating because everything else about the game and especially CM i great this year. It's just my poor defending leading to scrappy goals that's ruining the experience atm.
 
Ozkar said:
How are you guys at defending? I just can't defend. Are you using the contain button?
Seriously thinking of going back to legacy defending. I'm conceding at least 3 goals per game in my CM.
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I think defending is easier on this game. Mainly because I defended the same way on FIFA 11 to an extent.

Not played online yet but from my early impressions I've nailed defending already :)

I only use jockey and stab tackle. Don't over jockey or you'll get done on the turn.
 
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