Had a game tonight. One was plenty.
Why haven't they taken out the "AI randomly jumps off the ground and breaks your leg from behind" code yet? Whatever you think about the gameplay, surely we can all agree this is absolutely stupid:
Two red cards for the AI within 15 minutes.
But the worst thing by far? I promise you, it made
no difference to the gameplay. The AI's accuracy and possession stats didn't dip, and my ability to penetrate them was unchanged.
I dare say you could make do with two in defence, midfield and attack (one marked by the 1v1 assigned player, the other free as a bird). I'm deadly serious.
Why's that? Because the opposition players will never block a pass or position themselves to do so (only marking the ball carrier). So, what difference does it make if you've got three unmarked pass targets or one? The answer: there
is no difference.
But I played on. Desperate to find something positive.
Then, a ball that was hit for a player 30 yards away was controlled by my defender from point-blank range:
For this to happen, ball physics just don't matter. It's like the ball is made of metal, and all the boots are magnetic - which is honestly about a three-console-generations leap backwards, in terms of the dumbification of physics.
Not only that, but the defender would need the abilities
of a ninja (and be able to see through time) to stop it dead.
Why have the physics been downgraded so much? Cos if you make an interception, you MUST keep the ball, baby! Or it's unfair! It's nasty! You did a good thing and must be rewarded! These are the rules of eSport! This is the future!
And as if to further prove this, then this happened:
How obvious is it that the game now "has a conclusion and then works backwards", rather than objects interacting with each other in real-time? Again, this just says to me that the code has taken a huge leap backwards in simplicity for the sake of eSports players.
It has been decided that the ball must go somewhere, and that the player must warp around it. If a "goal" has been decided, your player will kick through their own standing leg to ensure they hit it. They pressed shoot, it must be a goal, they must be rewarded. Otherwise, it's injustice.
It's just so hard to swallow, that the game is actively regressing in complexity in every way - AI (see
@papinho81's post above), physics, you name it.
It feels like the eFootball method - simplifying everything so that it can be ported to a hundred devices... and yet it's not being ported. It's being dumbed down for no reason.
