The game is far too precise on assisted. you can ping pong all day long and certain type of plays and shots are abused each and every year (finesse, low driven, chip through ball etc etc)
Do you really think assisted is the most realistic setting?
assisted settings are part of what determines if the game is realistic or not. that's the point.
you aren't playing a realistic football game if you can ping pong pass with nowhere close the skill or effort that requires in real life
you aren't playing a realistic football game if you can score every other outside-the-box finesse shot
Strongly disagree. Assistance settings is just as fundamental as those other things you mention and it needs to be taken into account as early in the development process.
This is why manual control gameplay isn't as good as it could be, because the game is built around assisted controls, and so things like player reaction to passes, interceptions, defensive aspects being made OP, goalkeeper reactions, etc etc. are all built with the high accuracy of assistance in mind. the entire game is coded to keep up with and counter balance the ridiculous levels of pass and shot assistance.
If the game was developed with only full manual in mind then a lot of other gameplay aspects would inevitably be changed to accomdate that playstyle (just like they are now with assisted controls being the base).
I'm not sure why this is even a debate but the game is too precise because of lack of error, not assistance settings.
Don't change the assistance settings but dramatically increase slider error and you have a less precise game. Play in the lower leagues on Ultimate difficulty and there's far more error and less precision and ping pong play.
Both examples keep the same assistance settings but introduce far more error, undermining the argument that the fault is the assistance settings.
Assistance settings for passing, crossing, and shooting help with target acquisition. That's literally all it does. Choosing which player to pass to should be intuitive and precise, just like in real football, while the error should be contextual, again just like in a real match.
Some assistance settings even need to be improved, like player switching. And just like with passing and the others, player switching settings are not meant to and should not
directly effect realism; if it's affected, it's a byproduct and not the purpose of the settings.
If the relative realism of the game lives or dies by the assistance settings, then the rest of the game is shit. Fix the underlying systems and you shouldn't need to play manual for the realistic error.
But this isn't FIFA 09, or even FIFA from five years ago. They've slowly (too slowly IMO) but surely been addressing the lack of error over the years, which is why every game doesn't end with 95+% pass accuracy like it used to. That's got nothing to do with the assistance settings and everything to do with continually improving the underlying systems so that they are more accurate to the sport and real world physics.