I've been wishing for a new contender in the football gaming market for years, so I'm glad we're finally getting one, regardless of its direction, competition is important to stop monopolies from doing whatever they want, like EA do in pretty much all of their sports titles, just look at how stagnant Madden is, for example.
I like the F2P model too, I do dislike the fact that Konami is going with it, but this case is different, that is a beloved franchise with over 25 years of history, this is a brand new title, this model means that anyone can give the game a shot without spending anything, it's crucial for a newcomer in the market to offer something like this, or else most people won't even bother experimenting with it, because once money is involved most of us will play it safe and just stick with what we know instead of experimenting, that's natural.
The little bit we've seen of visual identity and branding already looks much better than eFOOTBALL too, which is somewhat funny due to how embarassing it is for Konami in a way, I don't think this looks amazing, but what Konami's doing is an eyesore, this is decent. One last thing I'd like to give them credit for is the Discord server, and also having a developer message us here in this thread, open communication and transparency is important, so this is nice to see.
Now, I don't want to be harsh, because we've literally seen no gameplay at all so far, but that's actually my first critique, I believe an announcement like this should be made if you already have something to show, anything, just a logo is not enough, you can talk about your direction all you want, there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't offer only words, there needs to be something more substancial, so this is a dissapointing way to start.
When it comes to the direction, that's where I can see that this isn't for me, which is fine really, no product has the obligation to appeal to me, and I'm glad we might be getting a new football title at all to bring some much needed competition into the football gaming landscape, but it's clear to me that I won't be playing this, I might give it a shot due to it being F2P, but will probably uninstall quickly, afterall it's focused on multiplayer and esports above all else, no mention of there even being any offline modes at all, so it's clear to me, especially from the developer tweets, that this is a FIFA Ultimate Team game for FIFA Ultimate Team players who are upset about FIFA at the moment, either due to "AI defending", "lack of a skillgap" or "scripting".
Sadly, I get the feeling that I'll dislike playing this more than FIFA, considering that we've been told that this game wants to "move away from the slow paced simulation kind of game that is FIFA/PES." I can definitely understand FIFA players looking at PES as a simulation, personally I don't think a game which has suffered for having almost no fouls for 8 years can be considered a serious simulation, but I digress, either way I cannot understand how FIFA, especially online FIFA, can be considered a slow paced simulation.
For any developers that might be reading this, I really don't want you to get disencouraged, or have the impression that we automatically hate any game that isn't a 100% pure simulation, because that's not the case at all, by lurking here on Evo-Web not only will you find some wonderful and passionate people, but you'll also find that a lot of us are sometimes playing football games from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's, which obviously have limitations that don't allow them to be all that realistic, with the exception perhaps of PES3 and PES5.
It's not that we want a game to be a 100% simulation of the sport at all, I understand that the moment you have to condense a 90min match into 10min or 15min it's going to be faster, but too fast, faster than FIFA, doesn't sound good, not because it's unrealistic, but because it's stressful and hard to follow, there's no time to breathe when everything is moving quickly at all times, it also makes it harder to appreciate what's going on, every pass, every play, etc... and the moment you have quick passing like Pep's Barcelona all of the time it stops being impressive and special, it loses all magic it once had, the game doesn't have to play in the same pace as real football, but as a football game it needs to recreate the feel of the sport, and sometimes in a real match things stop, things slow down, you can breathe, you can stop sprinting, that's important.
What I'm trying to say is that, as a football game, the pillars of football have to be intact, this includes, for example, the defense mechanic being more than a 1v1 situation, the AI controlled defenders and defensive midfielders need to move and position themselves well to some degree like they do in real life, or else you're misrepresenting those footballing positions entirely, it's not a matter of "AI defending", when attackers make runs no one calls that "AI attacking", we shouldn't have double standards.
Well, this essay is already long enough, I apologize, sometimes it's hard for me to just stop talking once I start for some reason, either way I wish all of the developers good luck and hope that we get more news and content soon, hopefully some gameplay too, so we can have a better idea of what the game is actually going to be like. Godspeed!
Seems we reached the end of the line. The age of extinction. And those offline footy games will become even worse tragedy, than the Michael Bay's Transformers movies!!
