FIFA 13

info0 said:
If you took look at the guys who went there to Community Day...

All of them are skillers. Also with Hjerp being an EA through and through doing promo vids and new skill vids, etc. doesn't help them get sim people interested.

Unfortunately, KSI has massive fanbase, who follows and listens to him like religious cult... Is worrying.

He will never talk about player individuality and other nuances. He also DIRECTLY discredited KONAMI work this year saying: "Forget it, don't pay for it, don't play it, FIFA is much better, get it instead."

U serious? (you may wonder how many people didn't even try PES this year due to his words).

Direct marketing. Hell yeah :P.

I like FIFA, but ffs, some balance please. PES does some things better, FIFA does things better in some areas. No need to be dick about it.

I will play both of them this year. Finally.
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The issue is that the sim community is entirely overwhelmed by the fast growth in popularity of FIFA YouTubers. In a huge, horrible sense, the FIFA hardcore has gone from being people like us - people who will spend time on forums discussing, arguing, debating, and giving feedback, and people who are helping build the community through things like the FVPA - to people like them, minor gaming celebrities who generally produce vapid entertainment.

Not only that, but these YouTubers will be making serious amounts of money from what they do. Getting invited to an event like the recent one will be making a serious difference to their livelihoods. That feels slightly uneasy to me.

But probably the biggest problem is that EA's focus is shifting towards this type of gamer, and there isn't a single one amongst them who seems to care about the things we care about in a football game. In fact, I can barely think of a case of any of the YouTubers criticising FIFA at all for anything.

For a gamer like me, and I think this goes for most of us really, nothing good can come from these YouTuber's popularity and growing influence. How much bad will come of it is really hard to know.
 
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well said..

i would love to go to those events and play full manual and see how i got on against them.

Rodelero said:
The issue is that the sim community is entirely overwhelmed by the fast growth in popularity of FIFA YouTubers. In a huge, horrible sense, the FIFA hardcore has gone from being people like us - people who will spend time on forums discussing, arguing, debating, and giving feedback, and people who are helping build the community through things like the FVPA - to people like them, minor gaming celebrities who generally produce vapid entertainment.

Not only that, but these YouTubers will be making serious amounts of money from what they do. Getting invited to an event like the recent one will be making a serious difference to their livelihoods. That feels slightly uneasy to me.

But probably the biggest problem is that EA's focus is shifting towards this type of gamer, and there isn't a single one amongst them who seems to care about the things we care about in a football game. In fact, I can barely think of a case of any of the YouTubers criticising FIFA at all for anything.

For a gamer like me, and I think this goes for most of us really, nothing good can come from these YouTuber's popularity and growing influence. How much bad will come of it is really hard to know.
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Perhaps the most concerning thing then, is that last year quite a few people were invited to such events who did play full manual.
 
EA SPORTS FIFA
The FIFA 13 Demo will be available starting from the 11th of September. Tune in to the LIVE demo event at 2PM ET / 7PM UK on September 11th!
 
Well, if the games played like real football why not? You do watch real football on tv right? Same thing really, just a different "sport".

As far as the latest video. I can't really see any difference between FIFA 12 and 13. The first touch seems to very very low key - just like FIFA 12 (which does have it to a certain extent). I guess it may be hard to judge until you try but even these lower ranked players were able to control the ball just fine most of the time. Demo won't really give us much perspective either - only top teams are represented.
 
Rodelero said:
Perhaps the most concerning thing then, is that last year quite a few people were invited to such events who did play full manual.
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Is this true? Why weren't they invited back again?

I do agree with what you are saying, as unfortunate as it is.

You still have people like Xaor who push the realism over 'skillz' play but he will never have the reach of the Youtube partners and thus EA will not use him for their own outreach.

Just to give you a glimpse of the extent of the popularity of some of these guys, go onto a computer not logged into your Youtube account and these will be the videos, at least in the UK, that Youtube are promoting to a general audience.

That popularity mixed with the cash cow that is FUT, a purely sensationalist arcade mode, which EA are promoting more than anything, makes you fear for the series. At this point you'd look to the competitors and PES to step up, but that's not going to happen. Certainly not this year.

I understand the argument that you can play your own way with sliders and all manual, and while the latter is true, sliders don't work when you want a consistent gaming experience. As I've got older, my enjoyment of FIFA is solely during multiplayer. I can't delve 60 hours into a Career mode against AI that won't ever compare to a real competitor. So I want to be able to find a game online against a random or go over to a friend's house and have the same experience as I do at home.
 
I'll try out the demo tomorrow night but at this stage, I've made a vow not to buy the game because I get that "samey" feel after a few games and offline doesn't give me that much longevity. Online can be good but it can also be a real pain in the butt lol.

Sorry but I don't subscribe to "offline with your mates is the best". It depends on your mates ;) The 2 guys I play with changed their defending back to legacy, play on assisted and have about 40 custom formations. One abuses crosses and the other abuses first time blind passes, cut backs and finesse goals.

We'll see what the demo plays like.
 
STR said:
Is this true? Why weren't they invited back again?

I do agree with what you are saying, as unfortunate as it is.

You still have people like Xaor who push the realism over 'skillz' play but he will never have the reach of the Youtube partners and thus EA will not use him for their own outreach.

Just to give you a glimpse of the extent of the popularity of some of these guys, go onto a computer not logged into your Youtube account and these will be the videos, at least in the UK, that Youtube are promoting to a general audience.

That popularity mixed with the cash cow that is FUT, a purely sensationalist arcade mode, which EA are promoting more than anything, makes you fear for the series. At this point you'd look to the competitors and PES to step up, but that's not going to happen. Certainly not this year.

I understand the argument that you can play your own way with sliders and all manual, and while the latter is true, sliders don't work when you want a consistent gaming experience. As I've got older, my enjoyment of FIFA is solely during multiplayer. I can't delve 60 hours into a Career mode against AI that won't ever compare to a real competitor. So I want to be able to find a game online against a random or go over to a friend's house and have the same experience as I do at home.
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First, for context, I am Xaor. In terms of the events that happened last year (and the year before that and the year before that), that whole programme, the old GameChanger programme, seems to be somewhere between on-life-support and in flux.

With that, there had been a variety of playtest events, mainly in Guildford but some were actually in Canada, which a select few got to go to. They happened from 2009 to 2011. The people who went to them were from a variety of online community sites - here, the Official Forums, Kitana, the FVPA and so on.

This year though, it's all started to shift (quite quickly) towards the new 'GameChanger' programme which is filled with YouTubers, not community members. Those members were picked on the basis on what they'd done - people got picked for writing good feedback, for being site runners or community builders, or for being helpful in the community.

It seems that in exchange for what used to happen with those community members (incl those from these boards), we now get events which involve popular celebrity YouTubers and seem to be more tuned to push FIFA as a brand than actually help it improve in the long term. I don't know how much feedback is taken from such events - I don't know how much influence the old events had - but either way, this can't be good.
 
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I enjoyed the Blackburn vs Birmingham video .
The passing looked like it had more zip as did the shooting .
The first touch control also appears to have gotten rid of the slowdown from previous fifas when a player would initially receive the ball
 
Rodelero said:
First, for context, I am Xaor. In terms of the events that happened last year (and the year before that and the year before that), that whole programme, the old GameChanger programme, seems to be somewhere between on-life-support and in flux.

With that, there had been a variety of playtest events, mainly in Guildford but some were actually in Canada, which a select few got to go to. They happened from 2009 to 2011. The people who went to them were from a variety of online community sites - here, the Official Forums, Kitana, the FVPA and so on.

This year though, it's all started to shift (quite quickly) towards the new 'GameChanger' programme which is filled with YouTubers, not community members. Those members were picked on the basis on what they'd done - people got picked for writing good feedback, for being site runners or community builders, or for being helpful in the community.

It seems that in exchange for what used to happen with those community members (incl those from these boards), we now get events which involve popular celebrity YouTubers and seem to be more tuned to push FIFA as a brand than actually help it improve in the long term. I don't know how much feedback is taken from such events - I don't know how much influence the old events had - but either way, this can't be good.
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I'm not sure I'm too worried about these youtubers getting access to the game, it's easy promotion costs for EA and they can target a large fanbase that follows these youtubers who coincidentally will buy the game on command like most of us will do.

I don't think much criticism is taken on board as much as EA would like to tell us differently, I think the developers on the game see problems or faults very early on in a development cycle and then save said innovation for the following title. They even hint at it from time to time in interviews.

Why put all the improvements in one game when we can drip feed our fans new features year by year I mean it took them 4 years to fix clubs it was at it's best in FIFA 09 which is an embarrassment to them and whatever damage control they look at. 4 years to also make dribbling even comparable to what I've been getting in let's be honest sub standard PES games since 2010-2012

I agree with most of your posts on FSB for the most part but youtubers won't have much influence on the games design path as they've already been catering to the likes of them since the rise of Hjerpseth and Ultimate Team. They know that's the market for casual fans and for 95% of those youtubers - skills/ultimate team is what they literally live for. Win/WIn for ea and the youtubers.


I'll reserve my judgement on the game until Early october by then I'd have invested over 100 hours into the game and I'll feel safe in any praise/criticism of the game is a fair reflection of plenty of time spent in the engine.
 
PR and marketing.

Konami could learn a whole lot from Ea in that department.

getting these youtubers on board is an amazing step for Ea/fifa, they had what, 10 guys out for the event? they paid for travel and board and a few extras.... thats a few thousand grand for EA which is nothing, especially for indirect marketing terms. those 10 guys probably equaling 1million subscribers between them... not just any subscribers either, game subscirbers...

you could pay 100grand for a billboard or 2 and aim it at the general public where maybe say 20% is your intended potential market... here the numbers are far more filtered... youtubers who have built a trusting fanbase

what comes next is these youtubers will keep wanting to be in eas good side, as that means they get early look ins of the game which means they get more subscirbers for their exclusive content.... which means they will make their content in favour of ea for more money, basically...

aka, how game reviewers work.
 
What about those people like me who dont have the time to play the game a lot to use Manual Passing etc? Is it really that much of an issue?

I just want to boot the game up and enjoy some matches in a session like. They days of spending many hours on a game going through the ins and outs of it are gone for me I just dont have the time to do it anymore.
 
SuperSonic said:
What about those people like me who dont have the time to play the game a lot to use Manual Passing etc? Is it really that much of an issue?

I just want to boot the game up and enjoy some matches in a session like. They days of spending many hours on a game going through the ins and outs of it are gone for me I just dont have the time to do it anymore.
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I hardly play on the xbox and I play on manual (I'm not very good though :)) )

Just play a few games on it every now and again and the training thing looks good, you could probably get used to it quite quickly now. It really is worth investing what little time you have to get the best out of the game. That is if you really want to of course.

In a few weeks you could be competent and start enjoying it.
 
SuperSonic said:
What about those people like me who dont have the time to play the game a lot to use Manual Passing etc? Is it really that much of an issue?

I just want to boot the game up and enjoy some matches in a session like. They days of spending many hours on a game going through the ins and outs of it are gone for me I just dont have the time to do it anymore.
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I am in the same boat as you however I am currently in the process (I was several months ago before lots of work) of learning manual again. You just accept that you'll be shitty for a bit. Playing friends who insist themselves to be on semi or assisted who aren't always Barca etc. is fine and still rewarding, but I agree, playing online is out of the question.

The real issue I see is with the flaws of the game engine. Placebo and others do great work with slider settings that enhance the solo effort but, like you intimate, that doesn't really help online play or with friends when you visit them around town/country/world.
 
STR said:
I am in the same boat as you however I am currently in the process (I was several months ago before lots of work) of learning manual again. You just accept that you'll be shitty for a bit. Playing friends who insist themselves to be on semi or assisted who aren't always Barca etc. is fine and still rewarding, but I agree, playing online is out of the question.

The real issue I see is with the flaws of the game engine. Placebo and others do great work with slider settings that enhance the solo effort but, like you intimate, that doesn't really help online play or with friends when you visit them around town/country/world.
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If you play head to head seasons you can find lots of fully manual players and have great games (Well I do anyway). I have some of my best football games on head to head seasons, I would say 90% of the games are fair, fun and play really well and I don't find many knobs, there are always exceptions to this though of course.

It only takes a few minutes to change the sliders, just change them on your friends computers when they go for a wee wee ;))
 
I guess I'm not having much luck. What time do you usually go on (BST)? Are you finding games with non 5 star teams?

Maybe the PS3 attracts less manual players
 
sweetkilla said:
I don't think much criticism is taken on board as much as EA would like to tell us differently, I think the developers on the game see problems or faults very early on in a development cycle and then save said innovation for the following title. They even hint at it from time to time in interviews.
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I think there's an extent to which they listen, but also that they have to have a different perspective to the ones providing feedback.

We just say: we wish X was like this. They have to filter it through what is possible, what they have the time for, what is priority, consider all aspects of the title before deciding their direction.

Not to mention: filtering what is actually good feedback. A gamer might think their individual opinion should be implemented just because they buy and play the game, but they doesn't mean they have a grasp of what is good game design. Those people who actually suggested a 'Be A Referee' mode might claim they're not listened to, but...

There also has to be a an element of planning ahead, a roadmap. So EA might have already decided what they intend to spend about 50% of their FIFA14 dev time on. They might even start R&D on a new feature a year in advance.

sweetkilla said:
Why put all the improvements in one game when we can drip feed our fans new features year by year
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Personally, I feel like it can't be too long before the annual dev cycle is going to become unsustainable. As games become more and more complex, require more and more time to develop, the amount of incremental changes you can cram into one year is getting less and less.

Especially when a game becomes as sprawling as FIFA has. There's Career Mode, Head to Head, Clubs, FUT, Football Club, Creation Centre and more... all sharing the pie.

A one year dev cycle is a only a few months of actual development. The remainder of the time is taken up by QA (testing) and passing submission. It's really not a lot of time at all and I don't think most people appreciate that.
 
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I wrote something about user feedback in th thread about PES13.
Konami have made several big mistakes but the two stand out for me are:
- the lack of customizable elements (sliders like in FIFA are the most obvious example);
- the fact that they are listening too much to the feedback about the gameplay

The second mistake is IMO the biggest. This year they had two demo's and if you read the thread, roughly 50% prefers demo 1 and roughly 50% prefers demo 2. How on earth can a development team do something constructive with those kind of signals? The thought that a programmer should take serious what i'm saying about gameplay makes me shudder...i'm clueless.

IMO EA does this much better, they listen to feedback about game modes, immersion, maybe presentation but i have the impression they don't ask direct feedback about the core gameplay (of course developers should take into account indirect feedback about gameplay, but never ask about the gameplay directly...that is the road to disaster IMO...).
 
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