You haven't played manager mode to the same extent as me. Cheats are so obvious that the only question left is if you were one of those that negated the existence of cheats in PES.
In Fifa 09 (since Fifa 10 isn't out here yet), I've played 3 full seasons with Liverpool and 4.5 seasons with Chesterfield in MM mode. Both on legendary difficulty, both without simulating any games... full seasons are played. So I think I've played plenty of games to spot any "cheats".
Maybe playing on legendary is the difference, but here are my responses to your experiences:
- CPU can have speed boosts to catch your players. A player with speed and acceleration BELOW 70 can catch my fast striker (above85 speed and acceleration) who happened to be 10 yards away from him.
This does not happen to me with any memorable regularity. Faster players (whether it is for the CPU or me) do not get caught from behind by slower players assuming the faster player is running in a straight line. This is something I enjoy about the game, which is why it is surprising to hear people complain about it.
- The slightest touch will disposses your player and probably send him to the ground. Your players will usually have the "stumbling" animation during which you loose control of them. CPU players can even regain possession while being dispossessed, so they can tackle you while you're tackling them. Great.
The tackling goes both ways. I shield off players all the time with my stronger players, just as the CPU does to me. I constantly knock the CPU players off the ball with jostling just as the CPU does to me. Tackling is extremely even in my opinion.
- Absolute perfect reaction times from the cpu players. I could live with this if my teammates had the same light-speed response times but... nope! Your teammates are simply idiots who have 0 awareness of the situation most of the times. They will mark 4 meters away from the strikers, they won't go for the ball even if it's simply one yard away, etc... Unless you do something, nothing is done. You can check it easily by playing only with the striker and not switching and the cpu will go through all your team everytime effortlessly. Defense other than you running around and charging people is unexistant.
Well, I do switch players defensively when playing MM, so I really can't accurately respond to your defensive AI complaints for that mode specifically... BUT I assume it's the same defensive AI used in the BAP mode and if so I would have to mostly agree with you. My only addition to your complaint is that NEITHER your teammate's AI defense NOR the CPU defense show the proper aggression/urgency on the defensive side of things. So I wouldn't categorize it as a "cheat" since it's equal to both teams (human v CPU).
- Biased refs. That's so irritating and obvious that it doesn't deserve further comment.
We must play completely different styles of play because the biggest gripe I have with the CPU play is how many bad tackles they make. The way I play I pick up a yellow card every other game, whereas the CPU frequently has games picking up 5-6 yellow cards for just making stupid and late tackles which many times end up in multiple CPU players being sent off.
In short, saying the referees are biased is completely laughable to me. Offside is called the same, cards are given out for the same late slide tackles, and fouls are called for the exact same tackles.
So, the cheats are always there to an extent, and depending on the match, they ramp up or down. When the cheats are "down" I can win by 2 or even 3 goals. When cheats are "average" i dominate and have more than 15 shots on goal, but will win by a narrow margin or draw. Generally, CPU has 2 or 3 shots, but suddenly they do the perfect cross from 40 yards and score or they get 4 or 5 consecutive rebounds and dribble past 3 man in the area in less than a second to score. It's rare, but it happens and if you're playing 8 minutes halves like me, it happens every one or two matches. You can't stop it.
Well, we definitely have different experiences playing MM. I've played as a top team for multiple seasons and as a minnow for multiple seasons, all on 10 min halves, and I've never had a complaint about a CPU goal scored against me. When the CPU scores against me, I can always identify the mistake that I made that led to the goal. If the CPU dribbles past me, it typically because I was either faked out, muscled out, or missed a tackle. If the CPU scores off a cross it's because I failed to prevent the cross in the first place. Most of the CPU goals scored against me are for failed clearances, usually resulting from me trying to pass it out of a bad situation instead of clearing the ball.
Seems plenty fair to me.
Then, there's those matches that have "god" mode. The worst of it is that it doesn't involve the "better" teams, but it seems (as it was with PES) that cheating level is directly proportional to your position in the table or the cup round. So, after winning the 3 best teams in my league, suddenly I played the 16th team and lost 1-0 in a game that I was unable to move, pass or shoot. The CPU was everywhere, played perfect everything al lthe time and every time my players were less than 2 yards of the opposition, they were automatically dispossessed / fall down / slowed down.
I have noticed that cup games are far more challenging than seasonal games... but that's the same in real life. Smaller teams knock off big teams all the time in single elimination tourneys in real life, because the smaller teams play up for the game. When this happens in FIFA 09 I consider this a "feature" and not a "cheat". They absolutely play better in cups, but that isn't cheating.
As for your problems with lower table teams in league play, it can be explained by lots of things other than "the CPU is cheating me"... my guess, is that after you play several top teams (top team tactics are typically more attacking leaving you with more opportunities to counter in space) you get caught off guard by playing a lesser team with far more conservative tactics (11 men behind the ball, counter attacking against you, long balls into the box, etc) and you don't adjust properly.
I play MM as if I'm actually managing the team, because that's the most fun way for me to play. That means that I look through my opponent's team before each game and change my tactics accordingly. I have home and away tactics, cup tactics, and multiple styles I adapt to depending on the opponent. I win/lose games differently all the time, that's why FIFA 09 is so enjoyable to me. I played a lot of MM a lot of different ways, and there is no cheating... just some areas with buggy animation or glitches, but this applies equally to the CPU.
It is irritating because it's such an old pattern of cheating, it's just the same as pes 5 and I don't want to play against those stupid cheats 5 years later AGAIN.
Being as it is, yesterday I decided to stop playing MM because there's no sense at all and it's not designed to have fun, but to even things no matter what. And I specifically HATE this.
Some versions of PES certainly had some noticeable "cheating" by the CPU. Mainly, that on harder difficulties the CPU players were simply given a form/speed boost to artificially increase the difficulty. However, never did I think that Konami had programmed any version of PES to "make" the human team lose by artificial means (i.e. force a human goalie to miss a save to let CPU win).
I don't know if there is some giant gulf in skill between myself and the "CPU Cheatz!" group which might explain their difficulties (and my lack thereof) with MM play.
But I find it hard to believe that EA spends any amount of time programming any sort of "scripts" that suddenly make the human player suck at FIFA. To me, that's crazy talk.
), where the cpu would regularly interfere to change the speed and direction of my guys to ensure cpu guy got to the ball first, etc. In the end, I stop trying to fight it. I was also clean through on their keeper and got scythed down from behind. Was a clear red card and penatly, but no.....play on. Wouldn't mind so much if they scripted it so the ref sometimes "got it wrong" on purpose in your favour. Reminiscent of the unpleasant PES.
yeah, I second that you expect them to run their hearts out not run rings round you...
