Let's FIFA 11/12/13: Making the perfect football game.

Completely agree. Tendencies could just be Traits, though. I think that could be implemented by adding a lot more positional Traits, ones that affect player movement.

"Cuts Inside", "Drifts Wide", "Runs Through Centre", "Roams Free", "Attacks Far Post", "Goalmouth poacher"... etc

Existing traits list, according to Creation Centre, in spoiler:
Traits

Skills
Early Crosser - Performs early crosses often.
Speed Dribbler - Player is known to knock the ball ahead of his opponent and use his speed to beat them.
Finesse Shot - Players is efficient with shots utilizing the inside/outside of the foot.
Flair - Player is known to try flamboyant moves (trap, pass, etc...) during a game.
Long Shot Taker - Player is known for shooting often from long distance.
Long Throw In - Player is known for throwing the ball farther than the average player.
Long Passer - Player performs long passes a lot.
Outside Foot - Player is known to shoot with the outside of the foot often.
Power Header - Player is known to hit the ball powerfully when heading at goal.
Swerve - Player is really accurate with swerve passing.
Takes Powerful Driven Free Kicks - Player relies on power rather than placement when taking direct free-kicks.
Giant Throw-in - Player is known for throwing the ball even farther.

Mental
Argues With Officials - Player is known to argue with referees.
Leadership - Player is known to inspire the other players on the team (for GK, how well he commands his own area).
Selfish - Player is known for holding onto the ball even when team-mates are in a better position.

Physical
Avoids Using Weaker Foot - Player is known to always use his favoured foot.
Diver - Player is known for diving to earn a free kick or penalty.
Dives Into Tackles - Player is known for consistently going to ground while attempting a tackle.
Injury Prone - Player is known to be often injured.
Injury-Free - Player is known to be rarely injured.

Positional
Play Maker - Player is focal point for attacks, team mates pass ball to him more often and make more runs when he has the ball.
Tries To Beat Defensive Line - Player times his run to stay onside when a ball is played through to him.
 
nerf said:
Rating players.

You know what I don't like? Attribute numbers. Boring, white-fonted integers. 75 this, 62 that. An 86, ooh, exciting.

I don't think I'll go down to Villa Park on Saturday, turn to the guy in the seat next to mine, and have this conversation:
"You know what, Stephen Warnock is playing like his stand tackle is 93 today."
"Yep, but James Collins' tactical awareness is a bit 68 for my liking."
"You hear about that player we're supposed to be signing? Apparently his aggression is very 87."

These numbers are irrelevant and dull. Why must we automatically have lists and lists of these things? That's not football.

Yes, players are better at certain things than others, there has to be some way of rating and comparing. Surely it doesn't have to be so boring, so abstract... so gamey. Let's think outside this number box for once.

What I do like are the Specialities, the Traits. These little descriptions that tell me what this player can do, how this player behaves. They tell me what this player is... (when they've bothered to assign them, but that's another story).

Interesting and involving gameplay is about making meaningful strategic decisions.

Whether it's which platform to jump onto, which car setup to choose, which primary weapon to equip, which spell to cast, which upgrade to build... which player to select... it's all the same. And to make meaningful decisions, we need relevant, meaningful information on which to base our choices.

So... scenario. Let's say I want to pick my centre-back pairing for my next match. I look at my options. Richard Dunne, Carlos Cuellar, James Collins, Curtis Davies.

Overall? 80, 79, 78, 77. How neat. Basically all the same.
Marking? 79, 80, 79, 77. The same.
Tactical Awareness? 78, 77, 79, 75. The same.
Strength? 90, 88, 86, 83. Near enough the same.
Jumping? 85, 85, 88, 82. Same.
Stand Tackle? 83, 81, 80, 80. Same.

Excuse me while I get wrapped up in this decision. I can have this centre-back and this nearly identical centre-back, or this very similar centre-back, or that other one who's the same as the rest.

You get the picture. They're all about the same height, about the same speed. They are all just 'centre backs' of no particular style or definition. Isn't this pointless? So who cares if Dunne gets injured? I'll just put Curtis Davies in, it'll be no different. If I'm playing against Kevin Davies or Michael Owen next, it doesn't really matter.

Boring :YAWN:

Forget numbers. I don't want to see a player with a number unless it's on his shirt, his age, his height or his weight. Maybe, MAYBE retain an overall rating. Please lock the rest away in the depths of code where they belong.

Does James Collins have a tendency to hurl himself to block shots bravely? Maybe that's important to me, I'll pick him.
Does Carlos Cuellar read the game particularly well? I value that, so I'll pick him.
Does Richard Dunne bring leadership and organisation to the back line? I'll miss that if I drop him, so I'll keep him in the team.

These are the things I want to know. What does that player do unusually well? What are his notable strengths, what are his glaring weaknesses? What type of centre-back is he? A brave stopper? A tactical man-marker? What behavioural tendencies does he have? What distinguishes him from his peers?

Traits and Specialities are one miniscule step in the right direction, but we're still a train journey away from where we could be.

The new Virtual Pro position thing is interesting, in theory. A player of a certain style. A creative playmaker, a box-to-box dynamo. A target man, a poacher. Why couldn't all existing players be arranged under some similar scheme?

What if a player's bio was more along the lines of:




Paints a more interesting picture, I think? It tells me what style of centre-back they are, and which of their abilities are most notably good/bad... much more in line with how you might really describe and think about a footballer. I can absorb that and know what sort of player I have on my hands, and then make a decision on who I'm going to pick, based on the style I prefer and who my opponent is.

On some level, way, way down, there will be numbers. These numbers should be generated as a fraction of the Overall, then be subsequently weighted based on Position and Style, then subsequently re-balanced according to Strength/Weaknesses, with particular weighting awarded to the Speciality. Blissfully, we should never need to see these digits.

(Of course, each style/speciality/strength/weakeness/trait will require a nice text description, like the current Specialities have.)

So... I can glance at the Overall, and know roughly what standard of player I'm dealing with.
Then I can look at the position Style, and know what type of [insert position] I'm dealing with.
Then I can look at what he does particularly well/bad, and weigh that against what I think I need.

The rest is all superfluous. It doesn't matter if Cuellar's dribbling is four points better/worse than Collins'. Neither of them are dribblers, full stop. I know that because they are both centre-backs of a similar OVR who don't have Dribbling as one of their strengths. That means they both have average dribbling for a 79/78-level CB. That's all I need, and it's all I'll be able to detect when in-game.

As a side bonus, this sort of system would surely make the data reviewers jobs easier. Instead of having to balance abstract numbers without a hard grasp on what those numbers really translate to, they can set a rough overall and then pick a description along with a handful of strengths/weaknesses. Could result in better, more varied data, I think.
Click to expand...

Hmmm.. I had a very similar line of thought nerf, I just came at it from a different angle, mine was a way of getting rid of the list after list of numbers to scroll through as EA seem to think Menu hopping is part of the game.
I know they have a similar Octagon or Nonagon indicator in the creation centre to how PES display the overall and a mix of this and the more descriptive way of displaying a players assets and traits would be great, along with a short blurb from your scout it would be far more rewarding and involving than just being given a number fest... :P

I can see me and Chris will be plugging the same things at Guildford...
 
Nick Cave said:
I know they have a similar Octagon or Nonagon indicator in the creation centre to how PES display the overall and a mix of this and the more descriptive way of displaying a players assets and traits would be great, along with a short blurb from your scout it would be far more rewarding and involving than just being given a number fest... :P
Click to expand...
Ah of course! I forgot the octagon thingy. Throw that in the mix too, perfect.
 
The thing for me is choice.

EA will never go down the route just for hardcore (manual players etc). Nobody can blame them for that.

But a must for offline are Sliders and a comprehensive set of them. Covering all angles. So we can optimise the game to our own preferences. Along with that, there needs to be an option to share sliders and formations easily in the community.

There also needs to be an option to change stats of teams in groups with one click of a button (instead of going through every team). So for instance, you can change defensive stats by -10 for teams in a certain league, star rating etc etc.

I know they are thinking of doing sliders, but they need to do it well. My fear is that they will put sliders in and it will be half hearted and not implemented properly.

Customisation must be the key to keep people happy.

Individuality needs to be stepped up considerably.

Replays need to be saved to the hardrive normally. Not in the replay theatre. Then after that, they can have the option to save to easportsworld etc. This has to be a must....it's insulting and limiting with the current system in place. I like the easportsworld, but you need to upload ALOT more goals, but we need to have the option and not be restricted.

Also replays/highlights. You have the highlights section to go through after the game. But they need to play them automatically after the game in a highlights real. At the moment the highlights just after the game are rubbish, but they have all of the highlights in the highlight part in the menu after the game?! surely it is simple to just make them show straight after the game?! They need to do this next year. They also need to not save penalty shoot outs in the highlights section, overwriting all your other real goals :ROLL:

They did really well with the seperate menu highlights. The way you can save them after etc. They just need to go to that next step.

These are just my early thoughts.
 
Last edited:
The key thing for FIFA 12 is to leap the barrier that FIFA 11 went head first into - that is, they need to deal with the entire issue of people wanting to play different games.

This needs to be solved online, and off - and it needs to be solved across every base - this is a pertinent time to solve the assisted-semi-manual issue too - it's absolutely ridiculous that this issue remains still. EA can shoulder the most of the blame but I can't help feel certain ordained community members being far too OK with far too little, essentially on behalf of the community, could do better.

The problem with this is that online it becomes doubly important and doubly difficult. It's a problem EA seem to have absolutely no idea how to solve - and even if they did I'm not sure they'd take the steps necessary. EA need to get to grips with it - because it kills the competition within the online space - and it's destroying the realism game wide. Sliders is fine for offline - but online a solution needs to be found where both the hardcore/football purists are satisfied, and the casual crowd are too.

To actually succeed with that, there DEFINITELY needs to be more segregation online, across all modes - a hardcore mode and a normal mode is the most obvious solution. A preset selection of sliders which fits the most realistic the game can offer for the 'Hardcore' mode, and a preset selection of sliders which offers what EA think will please the rest the best.

Having more than two variants may split the community too far - and as fragmented as the community is right now it would be very risky to go for any more than two selections right now.

One of the problems online has had for years now is that although they do provide filters - the way the filters are designed more or less means that the only filter which works, purely on a basis of how inefficient it is as a way of finding like minded people.

Reworking the way that the searching works would be a really large improvement - as opposed to having to search for a specific set, it would be nice to search for a range of possibilities - for instance a range of match lengths, or a range of team star ratings.
 
Online is good imo. Having the manual table etc is great. The only thing they need to do to make the games better, is to reduce the pressure that people can use in game.

Online is dependent on how people want to play. No matter how good they make it, if somebody want's to exploit they will. There is not much you can do but limit it...but you will never eradicate it.

The amount of manual players are growing, in peak hours I haven't failed to find a manual ranked game on this years fifa. It is great usually the way manual players play is fair. So you get less pressure etc and it makes it great fun to play.

Online it is hard to change for the good imo as it depends on the people that use it.

As I said the only thing I can think of is to reduce the pressure buttons...or get rid of them ;)). Then I will be a happy fellow. But the more options they give us online the better....that should be the key for next year. Giving us all the options, so we can make the game how we want to play it and give us the infrastructure to play it seamlessly

Offline is where all the major work needs to be done imo. When they get that, then it will be great....if they ever do.
 
Last edited:
Great ideas nerf, though it's probably a lost cause to hope stats will be replaced anytime soon, and rather our emphasis should be on, like you guys are saying, making the traits, tendencies, etc of P+ more prominent. You would think the introduction of P+ indicates EA are already heading this way. I think we're really talking about two separate issues here: 1) how players are presented/described to us through menus; and 2) more P+ on the pitch (more personality for each player and also personality for more players.).

On the topic of how players are presented to us, aside from making traits, tendencies, an octagon (yes please!), etc. more an emphasis, when is FIFA finally going to revamp some of its submenus? In particular, it's about time they jump into the HD-era and start utilizing more of the screen dammit! Right now player info is in 5 different screens in the team management menu while an insane amount of space is left wasted on the screen, it's mind-bogglingly poorly designed.

In addition to more easily displaying each player's info, I want it to be far easier to compare players. Let me choose a couple players and look at their traits, stats, everything, in a little fake spreadsheet graphic or something. At least in the WC game when you compared two players it used to a long scrollable page, but now you've got to tab through five different pages. It's clunky and inefficient.

drekkard said:
Fifa should watch at the Nba 2k series and borrow a lot of things. Player tendencies, for example, would be a great way to add personality to players. For instance, Messi should have the tendency to cut to the center or swap positions quite regularly, while Villa should have the tendency to go to the centre and try to receive through passes. Implementing long sets of tendencies like that would mean that the game is ready to perform them in a regular basis, then say goodbye to the flat experience we have now, where all strikers do the same things, I can't see a difference between Villa and a league 2 player, there's only speed and dribbling, but they do the same moves over and over. And are bad moves, most of the time...
Click to expand...

Here's the problem with comparing FIFA to other sports games: FIFA must have something like 20x more players to deal with than the Madden, NHL, or the NBA games. As someone who primarily plays CM, all those "less-important" players are important to me, so the big question for me is how to bring greater individuality to FIFA in a way that its felt at all levels of the game. I'm not expecting some obscure player or a CPU regen to have the same level of individuality as Messi, but now that players in the top leagues don't all act the same way, more individuality needs to be brought to the lesser known players. It doesn't even need to be accurate - I don't know how the hell a ST in the npower league 2 plays!

Again, the best answer is option files.
 
If FIFA had only the main 50 teams in the world but had them at the level of detail NBA 2k has, and individuality worked greatly as in 2k... then I would prefer this over what we have now. But that's another discussion... I too like the "lesser" teams, but if that means to handicap the whole game, then...
 
drekkard said:
If FIFA had only the main 50 teams in the world but had them at the level of detail NBA 2k has, and individuality worked greatly as in 2k... then I would prefer this over what we have now. But that's another discussion... I too like the "lesser" teams, but if that means to handicap the whole game, then...
Click to expand...

Obviously we want different things, and you're far more likely to see the top 50 teams treated like 2k has done than I am to see individuality extend throughout the game at a decent level... which is why we need option files. I know the "L" word will be argued to be an issue, but at least with lesser known players, licensing shouldn't be such an issue - hell, they'd be getting far better treatment this way! Honestly, with the state of PES v FIFA at the moment, if EA doesn't show some serious love to the offline side of its game I feel like they're going to start losing customers like me.
 
drekkard said:
If FIFA had only the main 50 teams in the world but had them at the level of detail NBA 2k has, and individuality worked greatly as in 2k... then I would prefer this over what we have now. But that's another discussion... I too like the "lesser" teams, but if that means to handicap the whole game, then...
Click to expand...

That's easy to say when your teams are Barcelona, Arsenal and Ajax...
 
Sod spending my time trying to help EA improve the game.

In February, I got a PM off Gary Paterson on here (VancouverDon), enquiring about my views, and asking me for my suggestions.

I spent quite a while typing up a load of suggestions which I felt would make the game more balanced, realistic and enjoyable, it filled the max PM length twice...

Guess what? No reply whatsoever, and hardly any of it was actually improved/implemented, so it was just a big waste of my time and effort. I also remember posting a video of a glitch/exploit I discovered in FIFA 10, not even that long after release, and posted a thread in the feedback section of the official forums, in which I explained the glitch and gave video proof of it... No response from EA, bug was not fixed...

Good luck trying to get through to them, but I seriously doubt EA's attempts at PR are anything more than an attempt at improving their reputation.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I got pretty much the same thing from Marcel, indicators that through the process of 11 he would seek my input and suggestions about CM, then I heard nothing, a couple of times I PM'd him and basically got "can't talk about anything now, news to come later" then the next couple of times I PM'd him (for example to express my concern about a lack of injuries) I was completely ignored and didn't even get the courtesy of a short reply in acknowledgement.
 
1) Pressure needs lowering on higher difficulty levels(Sliders Please)
2) Standing Tackles need to be timed, No auto tackles
3) User controlled players stats should stay the same no matter what difficulty level (No CPU dumbing down to gain an advantage) Fatigue should only affect this.
4) CPU needs to have more mistakes like missing passes headers in defence as the positioning always seems to be perfect on higher difficulty levels.
5) Slight delay of user controlled players in dangerous areas (see number 3)
6) Teamate AI needs upping to make more runs based on stas of course
7) Animation on shots looks weird sometimes as there is hardly any backlift
8) Passing power bar needs to be slightly slower at powering up.
9) Short passing needs improving, still feels clunky on really short passes, could be linked to point number 9.
10) Player switching needs improving as it's still rubbish.
11) Tricks can be read by the CPU all to often, needs random mistakes when reading what you're trying to do, based on a stat obviously.
 
Placebo said:
That's easy to say when your teams are Barcelona, Arsenal and Ajax...
Click to expand...

So you prefer to have 1000 teams in a mediocre game than 50 in a much better one?

I too love to play small clubs, in fact I think I've never played a big club online in the last 2 Fifas. But if this means spreading the efforts too much, then I'm not in. It's just like modes. There too many modes and the productions has to spread more every year to cover all fronts. This has resulted in the improvements being a thin layer of ice upon the last year thin layer.

We are not seeing real progression in the game. Individuality is almost unnoticed for the major part, specially in the small teams. 360 movement had very bad secondary effects in movement, loosing foot planting, inertia... Defense has been dumbed down to numb levels and playing the CPU is way worse than in Fifa 08!

So, having reached this point, and not to enter a debate about big or small clubs, I would prefer a lot more to have a much better and realistic game with 50 fantasy teams (or empty slots) and be able to share option files.

I think that the lack of focus on gameplay development and depth is somehow due to all the modes and content they have to develop and pay for. But that's my view from a production and management stance.
 
drekkard said:
So you prefer to have 1000 teams in a mediocre game than 50 in a much better one?

I too love to play small clubs, in fact I think I've never played a big club online in the last 2 Fifas. But if this means spreading the efforts too much, then I'm not in. It's just like modes. There too many modes and the productions has to spread more every year to cover all fronts. This has resulted in the improvements being a thin layer of ice upon the last year thin layer.

We are not seeing real progression in the game. Individuality is almost unnoticed for the major part, specially in the small teams. 360 movement had very bad secondary effects in movement, loosing foot planting, inertia... Defense has been dumbed down to numb levels and playing the CPU is way worse than in Fifa 08!

So, having reached this point, and not to enter a debate about big or small clubs, I would prefer a lot more to have a much better and realistic game with 50 fantasy teams (or empty slots) and be able to share option files.

I think that the lack of focus on gameplay development and depth is somehow due to all the modes and content they have to develop and pay for. But that's my view from a production and management stance.
Click to expand...


I too don't think it's down to the number of teams in the game more the number of modes and titles EA are pushing, they are spreading themselves too thin.
The problem is EA make money from some of those other modes where as they don't from the CM, they could offer DLC at a small fee and given the mode is still the most played in the title I'm sure stuff like 3rd strips or new grounds would make them ample profits. But this gets ignored in favour of things like UT..
It's as if EA are trying to force a shift from the era of by a football game and play offline, even though the stats keep smacking them in the face... :ROLL:
 
southernbelle said:
how do you reckon that is? i hope so, i have just been under the assumption that the online game was the driver of revenues recently.
Click to expand...

FIFA 10's MM was and look at the issues with that! There is no results yet for 11 but the Career Mode side of the EA site is the most popular on there after the general chat forum and that is just getting spammed with the same complaint threads over and over.:P

The whole game has been marred in my opinion by trying to cater to whiny online kids, its unfortunately these kids that bombard EA to have speed removed from the game as they can't catch a fast winger when he's run past their slow defender or Ronaldo's tan is the wrong shade...:ROLL:;))
 
Nick Cave said:
FIFA 10's MM was and look at the issues with that! There is no results yet for 11 but the Career Mode side of the EA site is the most popular on there after the general chat forum and that is just getting spammed with the same complaint threads over and over.:P

The whole game has been marred in my opinion by trying to cater to whiny online kids, its unfortunately these kids that bombard EA to have speed removed from the game as they can't catch a fast winger when he's run past their slow defender or Ronaldo's tan is the wrong shade...:ROLL:;))
Click to expand...

to be clear, i am 100% on your side. i love CM, wanted it to be great, see its flaws and still play it.

i just do not think that popularity of one of EAs forums dictates that its the most played. its my personal fear that offline just does not drive revenue and therefore gets no treatment.

my hope is that one day Career Mode goes online... look at the success of Madden and NCAA Football (ea titles). their online "career" modes are the center of the franchise(s). but still, feels like there has been no real development for 3 years in career mode, so constantly playing catch up...

anyway, my fears and gripes, talking aloud, not trying to be overly negative.
 
southernbelle said:
to be clear, i am 100% on your side. i love CM, wanted it to be great, see its flaws and still play it.

i just do not think that popularity of one of EAs forums dictates that its the most played. its my personal fear that offline just does not drive revenue and therefore gets no treatment.

my hope is that one day Career Mode goes online... look at the success of Madden and NCAA Football (ea titles). their online "career" modes are the center of the franchise(s). but still, feels like there has been no real development for 3 years in career mode, so constantly playing catch up...

anyway, my fears and gripes, talking aloud, not trying to be overly negative.
Click to expand...

To me that's my biggest fear... :P
 
I wonder how can there be individuality and manual at the same time?
Manual stands against everything in the football world. Its a gamer's dream. But NOT a football fan's.
In a realistic football game Bornsmith must pass BADLY no matter how good the GAMER holding the pad is. Xavi MUST pass presicely because THATS how he is.
Both FIFA and PES suffer from different diseases. FIFA has a HUGE problem in reflecting the stats on teh pitch while PES has an DESPICABLE stats database from default (online this is a CANCER)....
 
Niero said:
I wonder how can there be individuality and manual at the same time?
Manual stands against everything in the football world. Its a gamer's dream. But NOT a football fan's.
In a realistic football game Bornsmith must pass BADLY no matter how good the GAMER holding the pad is. Xavi MUST pass presicely because THATS how he is.
Click to expand...
I believe it's possible. It needs a well-balanced 'inconsistency' factor, whereby Bornsmith's passes often go slightly off-target, and slightly under/overhit, and bobble, etc. Xavi's passes would be precise to your input and smooth almost every time.

FIFA needs more of a presence of stat-based inconsistency and unpredictability throughout, whether it's short passes, crosses, first touch, manual, assisted...
 
Last edited:
Placebo said:
I prefer to play as the team I support, they won't be in a top 50 club only game any time soon.
Click to expand...

I know it, and I love some teams that wouldn't make it into an hipotetic list of 50 teams. But if you could customize them and there were "open" slots, you could have them anyway, just as we had the teams we wanted back in the good old days of pes5.

My point is they are doing too many things and seems that at the end the gameplay tweaks are just one more catchy line in the case and it's not even a priority on their list of "to do".

I fear we won't see a real evolution of this game until they rewrite most of it for an eventual next-next gen console.
 
Just won 2 ranked games against your stereotypical pressure whoring, 5* loving noobs, using far inferior teams and me on on semi/manual controls.
Ny red bulls 1- 0 inter
Stoke 1- 0 Real Madrid

TAKE THAT U WHORES!!

(just realised I posted this in wrong thread, sorry)
 
Last edited:
The thing about limiting player attribute details to just a list of strengths and weaknesses is that

(a) If the level of detail behind the scenes is the same, and EA actually implemented anything like PES levels of individuality, then you lose the understanding of just how much of a strength something is for someone - a great dribbled as opposed to a world class one. How do you tell a young player like a 16 year old Walcott is the fastest player in the world?
(b) The alternative, slightly more likely route, is that because the level of detail isn't publicised, then there's no reason to go into that much detail getting the on-pitch representation of players to be as subtly detailed and sophisticated as PES. As Drek said, it would be covering up the flaw in a way that makes it harder to definitively prove something is wrong, and therefore harder to tell EA if they've got it right or not. Is the player wrongly represented by the database or the game?

I fully agree there should be a summary page of sorts that explains a player's strengths and weaknesses and I have argued in the past for cutting the stats down to being out of 20 not 100; but I do like to be able to see whether a player is a steady allrounder with minor strengths and weaknesses or a specialist with bigger pros and cons.

I also think a lot of this would indeed be sorted by the hexagon and some coloured in stats that mean you can get a feel for a player straight away using your peripheral vision. The new stats layout is supposed to help but it doesn't at all because the numbers and text are all the same white colour.
 
You make a good point with your Walcott example. He might have Speed listed as his primary strength, but just how much speed compared to his peers?

Personally speaking, my favourite (but not perfect) method of attribute display to date was when I downloaded the 'Steklo 09' skin for Football Manager 2009 and ticked the "Show Graphical Attributes In Profile" preference. Instead of numbers, I got these coloured bars.



At a glance you can see what this 33 year old midfielder excells at (orange), what he can't do so well (purpley-blue), and figure out what kind of role he's suited to. Age has slowed him down but he's an intelligent and motivated leader, able to win the ball through tackles and interceptions and distribute in smart, simple ways.

That's already an improvement over the numerical display. Now imagine the above bars distilled to a description of those relevant strengths and weaknesses.



And of course FM has the hexagon too. Here he is compared woth his younger protegé, who he mentored earlier in his career. What he loses in athleticism he makes up for by being more defensively reliable.

The precision of 74/100 or 83/100 is, to me, unnecessary and unrealistic. Sure, you could colour the numbers too, but it really doesn't matter if I can't specifically tell that his Pace is 10 compared to his Acceleration of 9. If they're that close it doesn't make a difference, all I need to know is that he's a bit slow and I should use him in a way that minimises this weakness.

That's the football element to this, whereby I feel that representing player abilities which such impossible precision, and then using those as the basis for decisions, has no relevance at all to how football works. After all, they only exist in the first place purely for the underlying engine to be able to represent player differences in-game, no more than that. You would never think about a professional sportsman in those terms, why do we still have to do that in video games?

NBA 2K11 has taken a small step away from it, in that they group abilities into categories and grade those. So instead of looking at numbers/100 for several abilities that impact on a player's ability to defend on the perimeter, they instead give an e.g. 'B+' grade to an overall perimeter defense proficiency. But really that's just shortening the list, and you can still view the numbers if you wish to go to that part of the menu. I'd like to think we could break away from it more significantly.

But... in the interest of compromise, maybe it's not completely necessary to make those basic numbers invisible to everybody. Perhaps if a comprehensive summary page was implemented, which described the style of the player and his strengths and weaknesses, complete with hexagon too, then I could simply choose not to scroll to the pages of numbers, just like I chose to tick the 'show graphical attributes' option, and we'd all get the benefit of that 'at-a-glance' feature anyway.
 
...and that's all while getting slightly sidetracked by the UI aspect.

The other important part is, like drekkard mentioned, if each player actually had a 'style' that described what type of (eg) central midfielder he is ('playmaker', 'box-to-box', 'ball-winner', whatever), then that could not only weight certain attributes but also be coded to affect how he behaves on the pitch. The moment-by-moment decisions he takes, the movements he prefers, his tendencies. More than one AI template.
 
nerf said:
That's the football element to this, whereby I feel that representing player abilities which such impossible precision, and then using those as the basis for decisions, has no relevance at all to how football works. After all, they only exist in the first place purely for the underlying engine to be able to represent player differences in-game, no more than that. You would never think about a professional sportsman in those terms, why do we still have to do that in video games?

NBA 2K11 has taken a small step away from it, in that they group abilities into categories and grade those. So instead of looking at numbers/100 for several abilities that impact on a player's ability to defend on the perimeter, they instead give an e.g. 'B+' grade to an overall perimeter defense proficiency. But really that's just shortening the list, and you can still view the numbers if you wish to go to that part of the menu. I'd like to think we could break away from it more significantly.

But... in the interest of compromise, maybe it's not completely necessary to make those basic numbers invisible to everybody. Perhaps if a comprehensive summary page was implemented, which described the style of the player and his strengths and weaknesses, complete with hexagon too, then I could simply choose not to scroll to the pages of numbers, just like I chose to tick the 'show graphical attributes' option, and we'd all get the benefit of that 'at-a-glance' feature anyway.
Click to expand...

I agree and disagree. First, that's not completely true that you would never think about athletes in statistical terms. It's been an increasing trend over the last decade for managers, clubs, and others in sports, from football to baseball to basketball, to collect and analyze detailed data on player performances. Arsene Wenger, who has an economics background, is one manager well-known for his fascination with compiling and analyzing player and game data. So while real life managers don't consider stats in terms of an OVR based on individual attribute scores on a scale of 100 (at least none that I know of!), I wouldn't want EA to remove the attribute ratings, and the system FIFA uses seems logical and sufficient to me.

Where I agree with you is that more needs to be done on the other end of things, i.e. FIFA should improve how it describes players in non-numerical terms, from adding more traits/characteristics/tendencies, to a better graphic layout. Their needs to be an easy way to get the gist of a player quickly, but their also needs to be a way to tell whether Walcott is the fastest player in the world or not. So I see no reason to get rid of the stats, rather EA I think should just work on the front-end and further develop P+.
 
Just posted this in the EA forums so I think it's suited here, training/growth is obviously an area which is now horrifically lacking and under-implemented (even more than it was already lacking in previous Fifa's).

Personally I don't want to see manual growth return, it's completely unrealistic especially being able to change physical stats of players, want Beckham to have the pace of Cronaldo? No problem, just save up enough XP...

What the system should be in my mind is automated but you can guide it by adjusting the training regimen at certain points throughout the season, there will be 5 training routines, General, Mental, Physical, Skills, Special:

General- All players automatically put in this routine and it focuses on all stats with the possibility of steady small improvements on all stats depending on age and development curve.

Mental- Players will focus on their mental abilities and will improve a little more significantly in this area depending on age and development curve, older players will gain more from this regimen as they have experience/maturity.

Physical- Players will focus on their physical abilities and will improve a little more significantly in this area depending on age and development curve, younger players or those coming back from long term injuries will benefit more from this regimen, for older players it can be used as a way to temporary halt the natural decline of physical stats.

Skills- Players will focus on skill based abilities, defending for defenders, passing/creating for midfielders, finishing for fowards and a little in between for all (example wingbacks need to defend and also have some attacking/creating ability).

Special- This regimen is a special training routine which gives players a very small chance to gain a trait/speciailty based on their current stats, so for example if a player has good long shot there's a small chance putting him in special training will gain him the "shoots from long range" trait, or if he is a strong player a chance of gaining the "strength" speciality, the chance should be quite small say 5% so most of the time it's wasted training, but maybe worth a risk for young developing players.

Once set in a training regimen it lasts for 3 months and you have 2 options to change regimen per year, so for 6 months all players are in General but for the other 6 months there's the chance at 2x3 month slots of specialised training. Simplest way is probably a week before a player's training is due to end you get an Email from the coach asking you which regimen you wish to change them to, if you ignore the email then they simply return/stay on General, you should also be able to change it yourself through the coaching menu and thus avoid receiving the emails if you so wish.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom