FIFA 21 Discussion (Console Versions)

To be fair to EA, I have not noticed them pushing UT to me in other modes. I tried because I was curious to see what it was like but that wasn't a result of them pushing it to me via career mode which is what I usually play. However, what the leak does confirm again is that UT is their main and possibly sole focus, everything else is just a side show and the very slim hopes that I had off them improving the gameplay mechanics and improving career mode are all but gone.

Unfortunately we are in a minority, the kids all play UT, almost everything on YouTube that is FIFA is related is UT and most of the content creators are focussing on UT, that is where the money is at so that is where EA will focus on.
 
Ameppe said:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-says-fifa-21-is-driving-people-to-loot-boxes

I'm shocked, who would have thought.
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Ha, I came here to post VG247's article on this and say the same thing - "whaaaa?! You're kidding!! They want everyone to give them more money?!"

That being said, it's kind of sad to see it "confirmed" and see how they word it, even when you knew it anyway.

Worse is that they say things like "grind currency" and then, in a statement, say "we don't typically refer to it like that". OH COME ON.

You have been exposed, about something that isn't surprising A-N-Y-O-N-E. Either "no comment" this shit, or own it, but how can you seriously believe you can "damage control" this at this point?

It's like McDonald's coming out and saying "we don't typically refer to our food as 'trash food with no nutritional value'". We both know what it is, and we the consumers still want it (as, unfortunately, seems to be the case with FUT purchases).

Still. The silver lining is that someone in-house clearly feels that "enough is enough". Not that it matters.

I was lucky enough to visit the FIFA team in what feels like a past life, and several of them stated that they were opposed to the focus being placed on FUT and microtransactions as a whole, but that they had very clear directions from the bosses.

Maybe the spin-off FIFA games that are in the pipeline (including a "mobile simulation") are the only hope. But probably not.

FIFA isn't a football game any more, end of story. It's designed as an eSport, a casino, a reflex-tester. Not football.
 
majuh said:
Where though? I've played almost all of the modes, and I haven't seen any FUT ads apart from the main menu tile.
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Seems we mistranslated things!! :P :D

However, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, FIFA's VP of brand David Jackson says the document was a specific campaign that ran during the summer last year, and the "incentivized to convert" line is in reference to convincing players to move from FIFA 20 to FIFA 21.
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Or someone attended lawschool course 1.01:BY:

"Realistically, Ultimate Team is the most engaged mode that we have," Jackson explains. "It is also the mode that is updated most regularly with the latest and greatest content. Engagement is the No.1 success metric that we have as a company. If we want players to play, that is the place where we want them to experience and receive the ability to engage with the latest content. Especially in the summer months. We're a football title, so in-between football seasons, there isn't a huge amount of real world interactivity that we can create. But we can create that engagement in Ultimate Team. And that is the reason why we like players to be playing and engaging during that bridge period between cycles. It's not about monetisation, it's about engagement for players."
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source
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...llowing-latest-fifa-ultimate-team-controversy
 
kamy100 said:
To be fair to EA, I have not noticed them pushing UT to me in other modes. I tried because I was curious to see what it was like but that wasn't a result of them pushing it to me via career mode which is what I usually play. However, what the leak does confirm again is that UT is their main and possibly sole focus, everything else is just a side show and the very slim hopes that I had off them improving the gameplay mechanics and improving career mode are all but gone.

Unfortunately we are in a minority, the kids all play UT, almost everything on YouTube that is FIFA is related is UT and most of the content creators are focussing on UT, that is where the money is at so that is where EA will focus on.
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The bolded statements are at odds with your sentiment. While it's true that they don't inundate us with overtly invasive screens that scream, "PLAY FUT NOW!" every five minutes, they need not to. By intentionally neglecting offline game modes (as well as popular online modes such as Pro Clubs), they are "subtlety" encouraging and redirecting their users towards FUT. Addition by subtraction. It took until last year to see any semblance of change to Career Mode due to severe public backlash and vitriol, but beyond that, they're not exactly pulling up trees to create a stellar offline experience.

All of this feigning ignorance goes in hand in hand with EA's ol' line of reasoning as to why they aren't focusing on anything else but FUT. They claimed the engagement rates weren't spectacular for other modes, therefore they're not worth investing resources into. Color me surprised. If you don't create a compelling product to begin with, you can't expect a very high attachment rate. As many of us on here have begrudgingly reiterated for years, it's a chicken and the egg scenario. If you refuse to invest time and money into other modes, you can't then use a lack of engagement from your user base as a justification for the lack of said investment (or in the worst case scenario, removal).

They have the audacity to claim it's not about monetization when their entire focus on both the casual and "competitive" experience (eSports) revolves around a predatory, annualized game mode that would make even the most sinister, money grubbing psychologist blush. They openly mock us as they attempt to dissimulate their true intentions at every turn with their flowery, PR nonsense. It's comical. I've dabbled with dozens upon dozens of gachapon and F2P games over the years. In a sea of predatory games, FUT is still one of the most egregious I've ever experienced and it's not even F2P! It's a full retail product!

To continue my rant as I haven't posted about FIFA in many moons, why is the largest sports game on the planet the only "premier" sports title not to have a player career mode? FIFA's current iteration is so bare-bones I wouldn't even consider it to be in the same vein as other games. MLB: The Show, Madden, NHL, NBA 2K, PGA Tour 2K21 (right?) all have one! Regardless of their quality, they're all more fleshed out than FIFA's. Oh well, I'll continue to play MLB: The Show 20's Road To The Show. It's infinitely more entertaining than anything EA or Konami has conjured up with FIFA and PES.
 
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Redhat said:
By intentionally neglecting offline game modes (as well as popular online modes such as Pro Clubs), they are "subtlety" encouraging and redirecting their users towards FUT. Addition by subtraction. It took until last year to see any semblance of change to Career Mode due to severe public backlash and vitriol, but beyond that, they're not exactly pulling up trees to create a stellar offline experience.
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FUT hadn't seen many changes in the last years either. Compare FUT 17 to FUT 20 and it's mostly the same thing.

Redhat said:
To continue my rant as I haven't posted about FIFA in many moons, why is the largest sports game on the planet the only "premier" sports title not to have a player career mode? FIFA's current iteration is so bare-bones I wouldn't even consider it to be in the same vein as other games. MLB: The Show, Madden, NHL, NBA 2K, PGA Tour 2K21 (right?) all have one! Regardless of their quality, they're all more fleshed out than FIFA's. Oh well, I'll continue to play MLB: The Show 20's Road To The Show. It's infinitely more entertaining than anything EA or Konami has conjured up with FIFA and PES.
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Well, they tried to go into that direction with The Journey, but then everybody was crying about how they didn't want that because they wanted xyz instead.
 
majuh said:
Well, they tried to go into that direction with The Journey, but then everybody was crying about how they didn't want that because they wanted xyz instead.
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Tried and failed. That's not the consumer's fault. Here's the thing; it was not a true player career mode. Crying? Come on. It's pretty obvious as to why people took issue with it. It can't be stated enough that I and many other people do not give a rat's ass about Alex Hunter. Being forced to play a predetermined player, with a set appearance, name, and nationality is not what the vast majority of people want out of such a mode.

What if I wanted to make a player after my own name and likeness? Not possible. What if I wanted to create a fictional player? Not possible. None of the aforementioned games pigeon hole your experience to such a degree. Sports game career modes are supposed to be wish fulfillment. How on earth is that possible if I'm forced to play Alex's story and not my own? They could have easily parlayed the dialog choices and cutscenes into a regular player career mode, but alas.
 
Redhat said:
The bolded statements are at odds with your sentiment. While it's true that they don't inundate us with overtly invasive screens that scream, "PLAY FUT NOW!" every five minutes, they need not to. By intentionally neglecting offline game modes (as well as popular online modes such as Pro Clubs), they are "subtlety" encouraging and redirecting their users towards FUT. Addition by subtraction. It took until last year to see any semblance of change to Career Mode due to severe public backlash and vitriol, but beyond that, they're not exactly pulling up trees to create a stellar offline experience.

All of this feigning ignorance goes in hand in hand with EA's ol' line of reasoning as to why they aren't focusing on anything else but FUT. They claimed the engagement rates weren't spectacular for other modes, therefore they're not worth investing resources into. Color me surprised. If you don't create a compelling product to begin with, you can't expect a very high attachment rate. As many of us on here have begrudgingly reiterated for years, it's a chicken and the egg scenario. If you refuse to invest time and money into other modes, you can't then use a lack of engagement from your user base as a justification for the lack of said investment (or in the worst case scenario, removal).

They have the audacity to claim it's not about monetization when their entire focus on both the casual and "competitive" experience (eSports) revolves around a predatory, annualized game mode that would make even the most sinister, money grubbing psychologist blush. They openly mock us as they attempt to dissimulate their true intentions at every turn with their flowery, PR nonsense. It's comical. I've dabbled with dozens upon dozens of gachapon and F2P games over the years. In a sea of predatory games, FUT is still one of the most egregious I've ever experienced and it's not even F2P! It's a full retail product!

To continue my rant as I haven't posted about FIFA in many moons, why is the largest sports game on the planet the only "premier" sports title not to have a player career mode? FIFA's current iteration is so bare-bones I wouldn't even consider it to be in the same vein as other games. MLB: The Show, Madden, NHL, NBA 2K, PGA Tour 2K21 (right?) all have one! Regardless of their quality, they're all more fleshed out than FIFA's. Oh well, I'll continue to play MLB: The Show 20's Road To The Show. It's infinitely more entertaining than anything EA or Konami has conjured up with FIFA and PES.
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Great rant!
Me as an single player guy on 2k/NHL and recently MLB really understand the need for a single player experience ,and the biggest sport on the planet doesn't have that,or a manager career with a decent or god forbid a SIM like experience like we have on 2k/MLB is just pathetic,but makes sense now that the cat is out of the bag regarding EAs guidelines.
 
Redhat said:
Being forced to play a predetermined player, with a set appearance, name, and nationality is not what the vast majority of people want out of such a mode.

What if I wanted to make a player after my own name and likeness? Not possible. What if I wanted to create a fictional player? Not possible. None of the aforementioned games pigeon hole your experience to such a degree. Sports game career modes are supposed to be wish fulfillment. How on earth is that possible if I'm forced to play Alex's story and not my own? They could have easily parlayed the dialog choices and cutscenes into a regular player career mode, but alas.
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This just doesn't work. It inevitably ends up like in NBA 2K16 where you can create your own player, but then everybody calls you "Frequency Vibrations" regardless of the name you've chosen and your whole family is black although your player is whiter than Eminem.
 
majuh said:
This just doesn't work. It inevitably ends up like in NBA 2K16 where you can create your own player, but then everybody calls you "Frequency Vibrations" regardless of the name you've chosen and your whole family is black although your player is whiter than Eminem.
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Thats a one off isn't it,plus you can scan your face or create yourself in game,plus use that player on a number of different game modes after you've played the story mode in mycareer.
Drop in park mode,The Rec,Pro Am, keep playing Mycareer and a few others.
Yeah that time on 2k16 you had to have a set family (black) to fit the Spike Lee storyline.
But that's about it.
EA should be ashamed,they own pretty much every licence in the greatest sport of them all and how do they handle it?
Like a joke!
Arcade gameplay,a game mode that they all want us to play by making every other game mode worse each year.
A game mode that made EA over 1,5 billion dollars last year,a game mode that has more likeness to rocket league than football.
Also,if you want to compete in it,there is no way to do so without paying for packs,good luck trying to grind out a good competitive team.
 
rockstrongo said:
Also,if you want to compete in it,there is no way to do so without paying for packs,good luck trying to grind out a good competitive team.
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Why? Everybody says stats don't matter in FIFA, so pick up some gold meta cards and you're good to go.
 
majuh said:
If you had actually played any of the last 3 FIFA games, you would know that there already is a Battle Royale mode in House Rules.
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LOL! I actually played the trial, saw that it was garbage in like half an hour & didn't buy it. Sorry I didn't waste any more time in FUT or house rules and didn't know that it already exists I guess?

But dear god, that was funny, I'm still laughing! Thought I was making a silly comment, suggesting something outlandish & ridiculous, even for Fifa, only to be told that it's already in the game. 🤣

In that case I don't know what to expect. Not a football game that's for sure.
 
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manmachine said:
LOL! I actually played the trial, saw that it was garbage in like half an hour & didn't buy it. Sorry I didn't waste any more time in FUT or house rules and didn't know that it already exists I guess?

But dear god, that was funny, I'm still laughing! Thought I was making a silly comment, suggesting something outlandish & ridiculous, even for Fifa, only to be told that it's already in the game. 🤣

In that case I don't know what to expect. Not a football game that's for sure.
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Can't make this shit up!
 
I expect the same shite as the last few years, FUT-centric full arcade (or "esports") nonsense.

As some of the main "features" of "next-gen" 21 were stuff like hair physics and hilariously bad ball deformation, I expect them to continue in that vein by shoehorning in raytracing somewhere (maybe on the shiny sweaty foreheads), kit physics, net physics, wind blowing the corner flag physics, a few new animations/cutscenes, player facial expressions etc.

Inconsequential cosmetic shit is where I expect the focus to be, not on the AI or gameplay mechanics.

They might spout a few paragraphs of sweet talk about how they've made something more realistic or worked on certain modes, like they did last year with Career mode which convinced some non-FUT players to buy it, when ultimately the changes are nowhere near achieving what that they set out or the rest of the mode is so unbalanced/untested it doesn't really matter. Like their boasting about career mode stuff last year and then player growth being so fucked that teams are full of 90+ rated players in a season or two. If they tested it even slightly they'd have noticed, but they don't. They just pay lip service to this stuff.

People don't learn their lesson though no matter how many years the same shit happens. Most of you will buy it and then it will be the same situation in 12 months. Probably no action having been having been taken about the lootboxes by then either.
 
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Slightly off topic but I've just bought fifa 14 again for one pound off eBay on PS 5 and the game is light years ahead of fifa 21. The.movenent, the ball physics the AI variation ..I don't see them going back to the same single player experience as it's been purposely neglected
 
Even the most optimistic SIM footie gamer in here must have realised that the train has left the station ,probably around FIFA 18?

Or will the usual hype train return for another run come August?

Me for one won't touch it with a another man's ten foot pole.
I'm happy playing 15-16-17
 
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rockstrongo said:
Even the most optimistic SIM footie gamer in here must have realised that the train has left the station ,probably around FIFA 18?

Or will the usual hype train return for another run come August?

Me for one won't touch it with a another man's ten foot pole.
I'm happy playing 15-16-17
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100% agree
 
I’m coming up to my 15th year on Evoweb and I have never felt so disheartened by the current state of Football games……..throughout all that time, every year was full of optimism and excitement for something new or improved, the last 2 years have literally killed it for me. To think 2022 will be some paradigm shift from the utter shit that the current game is, would be to quote “delusional”
 
Dr Force said:
I’m coming up to my 15th year on Evoweb and I have never felt so disheartened by the current state of Football games……..throughout all that time, every year was full of optimism and excitement for something new or improved, the last 2 years have literally killed it for me. To think 2022 will be some paradigm shift from the utter shit that the current game is, would be to quote “delusional”
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Or"next gen (well this gen) will make it different,you'll see"
I've been here since 06,and I agree,remember the very heated but oh so good conversations regarding Pes/FIFA.
It's really nothing to highlight or discuss nowadays.

This game as a "real football game" a game that has free kicks,has a defence/offence that plays like it should,or have a build up CPU game play like we had on FIFA 15-16-17-18 or Pes 17,it's dead and buried.

It's get a driven pass up as fast as possible,no weight shifting or realistic kicking motion when passing,that's what we've ended up with.
Horrible game,just awful.
If you like fast paced FUT ,then you're ok,and that's fine,but scrapping what they've had in the past just to only cater to the FUT/game changers ,it's so bad.
 
Mathgamer said:
What are the expectations for FIFA 22?
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It depends, if it's still Frostbite then my expectations are that this will be just another Frostbite FIFA, almost identical to the last few ones, which while they do have a lot of genuinely great stuff in it, like the turfs, the lighting and the cameras, the whole package never clicked for me, especially the gameplay, even when it does click, it's only for a few matches, then it starts to seem meh again, not as fun as older footy games, and not as realistic either, there are good things about it, but it's not what football games should be in 2021, back in the PS1 and PS2 days my expectations when thinking of what those games would be in the future was much higher.

However, if there's an engine change, then my expectations will be much bigger, because engine changes are usually the only times when we have more drastic differences between the new game and the previous ones, my hopes still won't be high, since the main reasons for modern footy gaming not clicking with me will all still be there, since it's all a matter of direction at the end of the day, but there will be some change, for better of for worse, it's a chance.
 
Interesting interview about the advances of artificial intelligence in FIFA.

I think the biggest challenge is to create players who can act like humans would," Fabio Zinno, senior software engineer at Ea,

You can train an autonomous agent to play Fifa and win every time, but if its movements are unnatural, erratic and unpredictable, you probably failed to create a good game AI." The goal shouldn't be to win at all costs, but to create a compelling, challenging and overall fun experience for our players.

We are very committed to creating smarter tools for content creation, including 3D models and textures, terrain, stadiums, cityscapes, facial and body animations. A lot of effort is going into motion capture of facial and body movements from video, a technology that will not only give us a higher volume of animations, but also much more organic and natural results: as good as the animations captured with the traditional studio motion capture process are, they are done using markers and props that can sometimes hinder natural movement. Being able to capture the movements of athletes "in their natural environment," especially in sports titles, is a very tempting goal. Machine Learning is also enabling more holistic solutions for character performance, and we're working on models that can generate speech from text, along with lip sync and facial animations. The goal is to include body gestures in the future to provide realistic and convincing behaviors.

Performance analysis of real athletes and teams in competitive sports is a hot topic, and not just for sports game developers: sports like soccer, football, and field hockey are increasingly implementing hardware and software solutions to capture player and team performance, extract relevant metrics, data, and foster a more efficient and scientific approach to training and strategy. Such an approach would allow us to create game AI that can more accurately reproduce the behavior of real teams and world-class athletes. This data could be provided by the leagues themselves (NFL, NHL, FIFA), but in the future I expect we will have technology mature enough to work directly with footage from television broadcasts: imagine being able to recreate the Champions League final and offer it as new content for FIFA players the following week!
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https://amp24-ilsole24ore-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp24.ilsole24ore.com/pagina/ADSj1hUB
 
I'd expect more of the same in 22. Any offline-friendly changes will be by accident rather than design. No motivation for them to change while the money keeps rolling in. They released a game that was, objectively, broken last year and it was business as usual. Teflon.
 
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