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

:D
From your 10% of your defensive line absolutes. If the halfway line is about 55 yards (slider=20), and the deepest you'd ever defend is the edge of your penalty area (slider=1), you've got a gap of about 37 yards. So the difference between '10' and '12' would be 3.7 yards tops, which I rounded down :P

My point was that three-and-a-bit yards never changed anything. After all, imagine if you came up against one CPU opponent with a defensive line set to 10, and your next CPU opponent had a defensive line set to 12... you simply would not notice. What would be the point of such a small difference?

The gameplay value lies with tangible differences. With risk and reward, with punch and counter-punch. To be able to recognise the opponent's system, to adjust your own to any meaningful degree, and to make CPU teams play noticeably different from each other. I don't subscribe to the idea that the finer grain of control offered by 1-to-20 or 1-to-100 sliders is genuinely worthwhile from a pure gameplay perspective. Nor is it grounded in realism imo.

You think you need the power to tweak something to juuust how you like it, but I think it's deceptive. Moving a defensive line three-and-a-bit yards higher never turned any football match around. Nor is it something that a real manager would try to shout from the dugout. You could have changed yours from 10(medium) to 15(quite high) and your gaming experience would have been the same.

Yes, of course I appreciate that it's still 'a slider' whether you have a bar going from 1-to-20 or you have five distinct options essentially representing what would have been 1-5-10-15-20. But the five text options are easier to read and understand, relate to the real world, and the larger distinction between settings make the results more tangible and worthwhile.
 
The point with the sliders is that it isn't some sort of grid going up from te edge of the box to the halfway line. Of course it isn't. Your backline doesn't stay up the pitch if you've set your line to 15 but the attackers have got in behind you. It's about mentality rather than exact physical position on the pitch, and it affects far more than the back line - the midfield and attack in turn position themselves accordingly.

Similarly people may argue that there's no point in having the ability to move players freely about the formations screen rather than locking them to a grid like FM. In practice being able to move a player slightly infield or slightly further back serves as a great substitute for having a much more complex, per-player set of instructions/sliders. Slightly spreading your midfield two, while only a minor change on the formation screen, still has a significant impact on how your players assign themselves zonal marking targets.
 
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Nerf, maybe I missed it but I don't get what you propose as an alternative? Totally get rid of the numbers and sliders and only use text/visual descriptions?

Whatever options are given to us in the game, behind them making things work are these "abstract" numbers - that's my depth of computer programming right there! - so what is wrong with EA giving us those numbers in a slider system IN ADDITION to the visual/text descriptions, which is what they're already doing?

Honestly I don't see a viable alternative. And are you sure you're not reaallly upset that tactics aren't as big a deal in FIFA as we'd like them to be? It's almost like we're missing what's important here.

Whatever system is put in place I REALLY want improved "scout" information given to us BEFORE we set our squads and tactics, otherwise it's all a wasted effort - in FIFA it's so easy to fall into a groove where you never adjust your team. If I don't make adjustments before the game begins, I'm less inclined to do so at all. IRL you see EPL managers all the time scouting out their next opponents - this needs to be simulated somehow in the game, especially in CM. It does me no good to tell me my opponent's starting RB is out with a red card AFTER I've set my team!!
 
KABOOM!

(Okay, so I typed this up last week as a start and meant to go back and look over it, but I'm sick as a dog and can't be bothered right now, so here's what I got. Also, remember this is coming from someone primarily concerned with offline FIFA, CM in particular, and who plays with full manual controls.)

FIFA 12 should have three themes: 1) Put the beauty back into the game; 2) Improve the AI; and 3) Sliders - provide options for as many aspects of the game as possible, from gameplay to CM options.

FIFA: The Beautiful Game or the Brutal Game?
Though it can provide the visual impression of ultra-realism, FIFA’s current emphasis on physicality and interaction between players has gone too far, leading to the widespread complaints of FIFA 11 more resembling rugby at times than football. While the physical interaction appears realistic on an individual instance basis, as a whole the game over-emphasizes and rewards the physical side of the game at the expense of the skilled side of the sport. My opinion is not that there isn't beauty to be found in FIFA 11, because there surely is and it can be truly awesome, but that the skilled and technical side of the sport has become overshadowed by the physical side.

* Defending: it’s evolved to become far, far, far too easy and simple. In fact it’s practically automated and the tackle and teammate pressure buttons are now unnecessary for effective defending. In addition to overly successful tackling animations, player movement when not dribbling is unrealistic and allows for a defender to miss a tackle and recover almost instantaneously. A proper inertia, momentum, foot-planting system/mechanics would go along way toward helping.

Not only is this a problem for having a correct balance between offensive and defensive difficulties, but the ease of tackling in FIFA 11 means the game has a greater focus on turnovers through tackling than is realistic - in real life matches, a far greater ratio of turnovers occur from misplaced passes, interceptions, missed shots/crosses, etc. FIFA 11 however has an issue with Ping Pong Tackling(!), with a series of successful tackles going back in forth, back in forth, all too often.

Defending in FIFA has become so simple and automated, and thus overpowered, that I now try to refrain from using either the tackle buttons or the teammate press unless absolutely necessary! Doing so has a hugely beneficial impact on my matches, not only in the extra challenge posed (which isn’t much because of how efficient the auto tackling is) but also it leads to a more realistic ebb and flow, with games being less a “tackle-fest.”

One negative drawback from only relying on the jockey and sprint buttons for defending, however, is that jockeying in FIFA 11 is unrealistic in its lateral movements - especially when combined with the analog sprint, players are now able to “slide” from side to side, almost “swooping” in on their targets for a tackle. The movement better resembles how a defender moves in basketball, not in football. Not only is this movement unrealistic but it allows for defenders to move in on dribblers at a speed that should be too high for a player to make a tackle without fouling. The jockey system is great in theory but far too overpowered in the game.

* Dribbling mechanics: a big improvement over previous FIFA’s, especially with the addition of analog sprint, but it’s still not at the level it needs to be, especially when compared with the effectiveness of tackling and the defensive side of the game. Dribbling should not be the disadvantage that it is in FIFA 11 - ask any fullback and he’ll tell you that there’s nothing worse than a quick and agile dribbler coming straight at you, which is why in real life, unlike in FIFA, you see defenders backing off from dribblers, only sticking a foot in much less actually charging in for a tackle at the most opportune moments. In real life it is the defender that is at the disadvantage in a one-on-one situation but this is the complete opposite in FIFA!

In truth, the dribbling mechanics in FIFA 11 may be fine and all that’s needed correcting is the defensive side of the game (which includes unrealistic movement and response times), however a few suggestions:
1) more dribbling animations - defenders have an arsenal of auto tackling animations, so give dribblers auto animations to compensate, i.e. have dribbler automatically shield the ball or better hold off defenders;
2) improve shielding - it’s better but neither nimble or strong enough for tight situations or the bigger defenders;
3) skill moves - many of them are next to pointless, at least when playing against CPU defenders; make them better and easier to do; have failure/success more to do with attributes and situation than my ability to twist the sticks around perfectly;
4) increase player speed - the difference between min and max is too small, which not only makes analog sprint less effective than it could be but it devalues quick and agile players; I’m not asking for a return to the sprint fest of 09 but right now the balance isn’t right.


* Passing speed: as a manual player passing speed is far too slow for ground passes, providing a huge advantage to defenders who a) have more time to close me down before I can properly weight a strong pass and/or b) have more time to adjust and close down the recipient of my pass. Also, soft manual lob through balls are too difficult to hit - understand this may be an exploit in h2h non-manual matches, but for manual players it's too difficult to make a "soft" lob pass in tight situations, i.e. in the final third. (Also as a manual player, the through ball and regular ground pass should be less similar than they are now - one should be for short and one should be for long.)

* Shooting speed: also seems too low, especially when not playing with top players. Playing with lower league teams it can feel as if playing with a bunch of 13 year olds. Also, the RB shot (precision shot?) needs a little more oomph - at the moment it can seem like a floaty lob pass or something.

* Scoring in general: playing both PES 2011 and FIFA 11 yesterday I was amazed at how even though FIFA feels like it has a much higher degree of freedom to it, the variety of goals I scored in PES is like nothing I’ve seen in a FIFA game. I’ve seen many complaints about this and don’t know how to explain it considering the possibilities in FIFA do seem infinite, but it still feels like their are few specific ways to score in FIFA, certain angles a keeper can be beat, and every other type of attack has limited effectiveness. Too many of my goals feel the same in FIFA, and there’s not enough of that “wow” factor.

* Chesting: I’m sick of seeing my huge target man chest the ball only for the defender to waltz around him, stroll away with the ball and initiate a counter-attack, all before my target man has finished his chesting animation. That might be an exaggerated description but the problem is real - chesting animations take too long, while players more often than not fail to properly protect the ball like they would in real life.

Improving the AI
Defensive AI is a challenge on nearly any difficulty level, however the CPU offensive AI is poor also on any setting. These can be helped through adjusting Custom Tactics and other means (like not using the tackle or teammate press buttons) but I’ve yet to find an ideal solution. In the end, the game is hugely imbalanced between offensive and defensive play - playing against a CPU opponent is relatively simple and boring when defending, while trying to break down a CPU defense can feel more frustrating and tedious than challenging and fun.

* CPU defense: inhuman-like reflexes and response times - some of this is down to not properly have momentum and inertia, giving a player without the ball the ability to move, accelerate, adjust directions, and recover unrealistically. This impacts the CPU’s ability to intercept passes, recover from being “wrong-footed”, etc. The CPU virtual player appears to make decisions with super human speed (like that of a computer!), which obviously feels like an unfair advantage to play against. Also, the high pressure and aggression tactics are unrealistically efficient. Goalkeepers this year appear to make too high a percentage of fantastic saves.

*CPU offense: what’s to say, simply terrible. First, the CPU exhibits no desire to retain possession in most cases, typically only seeking the forward pass or move, which frequently leads to an easy stop. The vast majority of my games end with me having 60+ percent possession, easy. While human-controlled dribblers have enough trouble with the overpowered defensive side of the game, the CPU rarely avoids a mash of tackle button even with 10-yards of space and time to evade.

Most important of all, I have rarely if ever lost to the CPU feeling I was defeated, as in I’ve never felt broken-down by the CPU. Typically CPU goals occur as a result of its high-pressure tactics and rarely will I see a goal that comes from the CPU regaining possession in its own half. In addition, the CPU is terrible at taking shots, both in its willingness to do so and its accuracy. I have seen the CPU take shots from inside my penalty box only for it to result in a throw-in - that should rarely, if ever happen, and I play on Legendary or WC difficulty. Also, I like that the CPU is more willing to do skill moves now but too frequently the AI will attempt a spin move instead of just shooting when it’s within 5 yards of goal.

I have had some success at getting the CPU to play better through tweaks to Custom Tactics, however this success only underscores the AI weaknesses. My best results have come when slowing down build-up play so it’s max is in the 50s; next I lower passing so it’s in the mid to low range. For chance creation I put passing in the mid to high levels, crossing I haven’t touched really, and most importantly of all, I’ve pumped shooting to 75+. On the defensive side of the tactics I’ve moved both pressure and aggression down into the 20s-30s range, although I might have made aggression to low as the CPU seems okay with me dribbling all the way to their penalty box (like the PES sideline glitch!).

By adjusting tactics this way I’ve had my most enjoyable FIFA experiences against the CPU, with one very big caveat: it only works for me on Legendary difficulty. On anything less than Legendary I still see poor offensive play by the CPU, but on Legendary I’ve actually witnessed - the only time I’ve witnessed this in FIFA 11 - intelligent offensive passing moves and combos, and I’ve seen some impressive goals that were not the result of a single player besting one of my defenders but a “team-effort” goal! How many times can you say you’ve seen a “team-effort” goal in FIFA? Like I said though, dropping down to WC difficulty I haven’t been impressed with the offensive AI.

The problem with playing on Legendary, however, is that while pressure is much better and I enjoy the midfield game more, defenders on Legendary become unrealistic in their reaction times and ability to stop my attacks in the final third. In addition, at Legendary all of the sudden the CPU wins far more of the 50-50 battles, knocking aside my players as if they were flies at times, and task of scoring becomes just that - a task, a chore, more tedious and frustrating than challenging and fun. Again, this goes back to the fundamental imbalance between the offensive and defensive side of the game this year.

Sliders
* Defensive/offensive difficulty settings
* Basically, more options are better than less. If you can think of one, put it in the game.


------------------------------

I ran out of time so just a couple other random notes:

* Individuality: not enough, esp. at lower teams

* Response times: not good enough on offense; too good on defense?

* First touch: A controversial topic. I believe FIFA has improved in this area and I regularly witness poor first touches playing in my lower league CMs. For me the problem is three fold: 1) Although it occurs less than previous years, a perfect magnetic-like first touch still does occur at times, sometimes occuring in situations that are laughable, and at times when a less than perfect control likely would have meant a possession change; 2) at the other end of the spectrum, the poorest first touches aren’t poor enough, allowing for some players, like defenders, to control a ball better than they should be able to, leading to situations in which a defender does not do a one-time clearance when he should; and 3) there is not enough variety between the two extremes.

* Freedom of movement should not mean freedom to defy physics! 360 degree movement has been a major revolution for football and sports games, however they also have brought with it a level of unrealism that must be eliminated now. A major gripe with the community is “skating” - players sliding along the pitch as if on ice skates. Sadly, imo this appears worse in FIFA 11 than previously. There are some instances where a collision occurs and the “losing” player will be knocked away, but rather tumbling to the ground remains on his feet, sliding across the pitch.

The next most important issue regarding movement must be inertia and footplanting, or the lack thereof to a realistic enough degree. Addressing these issues will naturaly lessen the look and feel of 360 degree movement somewhat, but as it is now players can move and change directions that not only is unrealistic but hurts the game overall, one by having the effect of speeding-up gameplay, and the other by allowing defenders to react with superhuman reflexes.

One reason defenders in real life tend to back off dribblers and seek to contain first and foremost is because it can be too costly a mistake to be wrong-footed by a dribbler. In FIFA, however, the near opposite is true, defenders are not penalized enough for aggressive play because they can recover quickly. FIFA has a very good jockey system in place (although it needs to be toned down!), make defenders use it! By adding a greater emphasis on a player’s movement ability, FIFA can also improve the level of individuality in the game.
 
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Edit: Great post above, agree with every word.

mfmaxpower said:
And are you sure you're not reaallly upset that tactics aren't as big a deal in FIFA as we'd like them to be?
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Oh yes, totally. That is the important bit, I'm just mostly on a UI/usability kind of rant, as usual.

Here's a hypothetical exercise. Watch all ten Premier League fixtures this coming weekend, taking note of how each team performs in one particular element (pressure, build-up speed, whatever you choose), then on Monday come back and describe the differences between the teams. Most likely you would not split the teams into more than about five different categories, if that. You certainly wouldn't rank them within a gradient of twenty different styles, nor use any numbers at all in your descriptions. It's a very gamey construct.

I'm just worried about advocating going from one numerical slider system to a slightly better numerical slider system that itself derived from the one we already have. Can't help thinking that surely there's a better way, a way of thinking about and creating tactics in a more natural way.
 
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nerf said:
Oh yes, totally. That is the important bit, I'm just mostly on a UI/usability kind of rant, as usual.

Here's a hypothetical exercise. Watch all ten Premier League fixtures this coming weekend, taking note of how each team performs in one particular element (pressure, build-up speed, whatever you choose), then on Monday come back and describe the differences between the teams. Most likely you would not split the teams into more than about five different categories, if that. You certainly wouldn't rank them within a gradient of twenty different styles, nor use any numbers at all in your descriptions. It's a very gamey construct.

I'm just worried about advocating going from one numerical slider system to a slightly better numerical slider system that itself derived from the one we already have. Can't help thinking that surely there's a better way, a way of thinking about and creating tactics in a more natural way.
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I'm just not so sure that they aren't necessary evils; limitations from FIFA being a video game.

Without having a virtual locker room, with me being able to give directions like "push up a little more" or "let's spread it out wide more" etc, I don't see how we can get around having to use numbers as our reference - after all, numbers are the only means of reference that both us and the game's programming can understand.

And when you think about, using numbers like this isn't necessarily a "gamey construct" - how many times have you been a part of a conversation like this:

"I'm telling you, that girl was bangin HOT!"

"Nah, she was just okay."

"Bullshit. She was at least a 9."

"Please, she was an 8, max."

"You're an idiot."
 
I'm not American, so never :P

But seriously, it's a gamey construct in the sense that we never describe tactical elements in numerical terms. Personally I think Creation Centre's five text settings is at least a small step in a better direction, for reasons already described.
 
So what, is my point (though not as curtly as that sounds!)?

It's a concept aimed at giving us the freedom to sculpt our own tactics while at the same time making it easy and quick for both veterans and newcomers alike to quickly visualise what they're asking their team to do.

It's not exclusively a gamey concept - your TV will have been using sliders to help you gauge volume, contrast, brightness etc for years. It's intuitive and it is proven to work - the visual representation implying how high/low you've set something purely by how much you've filled the bar is at least as sensible and useful to casuals and the hardcore as the hexagon. How many footballers are represented as hexagons?

Spinal Tap turned it up to 11 way before football games got tactical. Everyone got the joke because the premise is something everybody can recognise - even if the punchline (why not just make 10 louder?) ties in with what you were saying about what the maximum/minimum really means.

The only reason why football games use them is because we don't have hours to explain exactly what we want our players to do - we have minutes, seconds even.

If the sliders, in PES at least, were being used as literally as you thought then maybe I'd agree. But they aren't - there's far more to it - and I wouldn't want to see it cut down or replaced with descriptions that leave even more to the imagination.

Seems like an impasse; we'll have to agree to disagree.

On a different note so we don't get bogged down - do you want more/different options to be able to define? Or do you feel everything is covered by what they currently use?
 
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romagnoli said:
It's not exclusively a gamey concept - your TV will have been using sliders to help you gauge volume, contrast, brightness etc for years. It's intuitive and it is proven to work - the visual representation implying how high/low you've set something purely by how much you've filled the bar is at least as sensible and useful to casuals and the hardcore as the hexagon. How many footballers are represented as hexagons?
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Like I said with the racing car analogy, the TV is a machine. Machines have dials and gauges and numerical settings. Tactics deal with guidelines for individual humans in a 3D space, a field (no pun intended) in which numbers are never used! So why use them?

The hexagon is purely a data comparison tool and is unrelated.

romagnoli said:
Spinal Tap turned it up to 11 way before football games got tactical. Everyone got the joke because the premise is something everybody can recognise
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And if you go down to Old Trafford and turn to the bloke sat next to you and say: "I think Ferguson has turned our [whatever] up to 14" he will not recognise anything, he will stare at you blankly. Then smear his prawn sandwich disdainfully down your face. This is exactly my point.

romagnoli said:
If the sliders, in PES at least, were being used as literally as you thought then maybe I'd agree. But they aren't - there's far more to it - and I wouldn't want to see it cut down or replaced with descriptions that leave even more to the imagination.
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If you're tweaking something by 1 or 2, then you're taking it literally. You're taking each notch as meaningful. I was saying that I don't believe such fine tuning is a) necessary b) realistic or c) conducive to getting the best fundamental gameplay experience out of the system.

romagnoli said:
Seems like an impasse; we'll have to agree to disagree.
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Seems so. But I will mention that I posted a similar opinion about FIFA10, before FIFA11 or Creation Centre came along, and then Creation Centre happened to arrive with the same five text settings that I'd proposed. Whether coincidentally or not, someone over there agrees with me. I was disappointed when they hadn't carried that into the game menus themselves, but that would involve their UI coder gibbon actually getting down from his swinging tyre and doing some work.

romagnoli said:
On a different note so we don't get bogged down - do you want more/different options to be able to define? Or do you feel everything is covered by what they currently use?
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I'll have to take another look at the PES options before I answer this, but a couple of things spring to mind.

1) When the AI started swapping positions, I wondered if this should really be a tactical option. Even if it is no more than an "allow swapping, yes/no" thing, at worst. Sorry, a 0-to-1 slider for you number fans :P

2) I'm not keen on "Positioning: Organised/Free-Form" being a team-wide setting. It strikes me that real players are given more freedom and others less freedom on a per-position basis. You'd give Iniesta and Dani Alves freedom but it's vital that Busquets remains disciplined. I'd like it to be taken away from Custom Tactics and placed within Edit Formation.

3) Not a tactical setting, but most of all they need to re-work the whole way that tactics are saved, named, assigned, stored and shared.
 
Maxpower - you mentioned analog sprinting mixed with jockeying. Does analog sprint actually do anything beneficial? I just didn't see it at all.

More specifically, what difference does it make to jockeying exactly? I'm getting stuff jotted down at the mo and might be asked questions so I don't want to just shrug and sit there silently!
 
Just that when you combine RT (sprint) and LT (jockey) on defense, you are able to move laterally at impossible speeds and angles. Basically by combining the sprint and jockey buttons I've perfected what is almost like a "swooping" motion on defense, where my defender can "swoop" down on a dribbler at such a speed and with such a great accuracy the dribbler has little chance. And because I'm using the jockey button, my defender approaches the dribbler not straight on but almost spread-eagle, creating a large "net" that lets me stuff, or trap, the dribbler and steal the ball, all without even needing to use a tackle button.

I'm not sure that it's a byproduct of the analog sprint, whether I'm actually making use of the new analog feature, or just it's the seamless transitions between sprinting and jockeying animations. I'll have to pay closer attention.

Man this stuff can be hard to explain. I have several short replays I saved on my 360 that I've been meaning to upload to support some of my earlier points. I've just never done much with replays so I don't know what I'm doing, but hopefully later I can get them up. There's one clip I'm thinking of in particular that shows my defender "swing" around a dribbler at an impossible angle and speed.
 
Nerf I think the difference is that you are actually giving instructions to a machine and not a person in FIFA. You HAVE to give it numbers to work with, even if you mask it with words. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but how do you mean the game AI should be programmed to understand the type of system you want?
 
Gab_ said:
Nerf I think the difference is that you are actually giving instructions to a machine and not a person in FIFA. You HAVE to give it numbers to work with, even if you mask it with words. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but how do you mean the game AI should be programmed to understand the type of system you want?
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But 'masking it with words' is kind of the point. That's what a User Interface should do, otherwise we'd all have to learn binary to interact with a game. The numbers will always exist at some level, you're right, but I think to benefit the way we think about tactics, create tactics and use tactics within engaging gameplay, I don't believe that an arrangement of abstract numbers is the optimal way to present and interact with this aspect of football. The subject matter itself is simply not handled in that way.

If you boil it all right down, I guess it's basically a similar point to the one I was previously making about player attributes.
 
It's been a while since I played it, but didn't Madden 10+ have an inertia system? I believe it was based off of the players agility/speed/accel, so that they couldn't just zip around (like FIFA).
Why can't they share ideas, or even tech? I'm really tired of the AI jumping towards passes before they've left my foot.
 
nerf said:
But 'masking it with words' is kind of the point. That's what a User Interface should do, otherwise we'd all have to learn binary to interact with a game. The numbers will always exist at some level, you're right, but I think to benefit the way we think about tactics, create tactics and use tactics within engaging gameplay, I don't believe that an arrangement of abstract numbers is the optimal way to present and interact with this aspect of football. The subject matter itself is simply not handled in that way.

If you boil it all right down, I guess it's basically a similar point to the one I was previously making about player attributes.
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Part of it too might be that a 0-100 scale for tactics is overkill. How different does a team play with Buildup Speed set to 40 vs 41?

And if you're going to have three textual options - Slow, Normal, Fast - then why such a huge numerical range within the three?

Maybe that's the problem: having three textual options but 100 numerical options might not make sense.
 
I'd thought you folks would have been too deflated to still be talking about making future Fifas better. You've spent loads of time and energy on Fifa 11 only to see EA take all that effort away with the very first patch. :(
 
ElanJo said:
I'd thought you folks would have been too deflated to still be talking about making future Fifas better. You've spent loads of time and energy on Fifa 11 only to see EA take all that effort away with the very first patch. :(
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Patch details I'm sure will come as soon as it's OK'd by MS and Sony, as for losing heart we have to keep trying to push the game down the serious Sim route and that's always going to be tough given the most popular mode in the game is pick up and play single games by kids who just play the top sides and the top players and want 4-3 and lots of chances, they are the many,Many and we are the few...:P
 
Also the penalty idea is good but highly scripted. In fact the shooting in this game couldn't get anymore scripted!

Look at this bug here.
YouTube - Fifa 11 Arena Glitch Pt 2
He's in essence he's taking a penalty from his own area (taking a penalty from 100 yards) and with the ball then, watch how he hits it. It zooms at light speed towards goal and then is positioned perfectly in the middle of the goal. EA lied to us about the ball physics being separate from the player! it's still baked into the animation!
 
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klashman69 said:
Also the penalty idea is good but highly scripted. In fact the shooting in this game couldn't get anymore scripted!

Look at this bug here.
YouTube - Fifa 11 Arena Glitch Pt 2
He's in essence he's taking a penalty from his own area (taking a penalty from 100 yards) and with the ball then, watch how he hits it. It zooms at light speed towards goal and then is positioned perfectly in the middle of the goal. EA lied to us about the ball physics being separate from the player! it's still baked into the animation!
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Sorry Klash but that's the most meaningless and irrelevant bug I've seen. Duplicate that in a match and I'd be interested. And who the hell even bothers going through all these crazy steps to find random, pointless bugs anyways?

I do agree that there doesn't seem enough variety in the types of shots i score from, and i'm not sure why that is, but honestly, ball physics is about the last thing in FIFA we should be concerned with. Player physics? Yeah not so great. But ball physics? A strength of the game imo.

Anyone else have problems with ball physics?
 
I don't think that's an example of how the game behaves otherwise. It's only the penalty system that's affected like this. EA look like they took a shortcut by basing the pens on the ball always being in the same position, using your left stick aim to direct that circle around the plane of the goalline. There's nothing to say PES doesn't do the same with penalties.

That goalkeeper is bloody funny!
 
mfmaxpower said:
Sorry Klash but that's the most meaningless and irrelevant bug I've seen. Duplicate that in a match and I'd be interested. And who the hell even bothers going through all these crazy steps to find random, pointless bugs anyways?

I do agree that there doesn't seem enough variety in the types of shots i score from, and i'm not sure why that is, but honestly, ball physics is about the last thing in FIFA we should be concerned with. Player physics? Yeah not so great. But ball physics? A strength of the game imo.

Anyone else have problems with ball physics?
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I couldn't care less about the bug! The guy has too much time on his hands as you could see. The bug isn't an issue in anyway. Its the ball physics being so scripted! In penalties it's obvious!

I think the system is good, but needs to be rewritten so the needle determines just how cleanly he hits the ball rather than if he shots on target or not! So if you get it in the red he could scuff a shot but still score!

But with shots again i believe they are scripted too, Just don't think it's a coincidence when you shoot from range and the shot dosen't dip like crazy it goes in!
 
nerf said:
And if you go down to Old Trafford and turn to the bloke sat next to you and say: "I think Ferguson has turned our [whatever] up to 14" he will not recognise anything, he will stare at you blankly. Then smear his prawn sandwich disdainfully down your face. This is exactly my point.
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I don't get your point.

It's a video game, not real life. It needs some system to convey your tactical preferences and a slider from 1-20 is as good as any.
 
Jamezinho said:
nerf said:
And if you go down to Old Trafford and turn to the bloke sat next to you and say: "I think Ferguson has turned our [whatever] up to 14" he will not recognise anything, he will stare at you blankly. Then smear his prawn sandwich disdainfully down your face. This is exactly my point.
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I don't get your point.

It's a video game, not real life. It needs some system to convey your tactical preferences and a slider from 1-20 is as good as any.
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I don't agree that it is as good as any. I think replacing the slider with five simple text settings (Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High; and variations thereof) would be better. Easier to read, easier to understand, more relevant, more realistic, more contrasting... all of which I think I've explained in previous posts.

We don't have to be stuck in this mindset just because it's what has been done before.
 
It is as good as any. 5 point sliders are too coarse and can be easily implemented by chucking two more text descriptions in to each slider in their current form.
 
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nerf said:
I don't agree that it is as good as any. I think replacing the slider with five simple text settings (Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High; and variations thereof) would be better. Easier to read, easier to understand, more relevant, more realistic, more contrasting... all of which I think I've explained in previous posts.

We don't have to be stuck in this mindset just because it's what has been done before.
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There's no fine-tuning with the options you've given. Changing a slider (in PES) up or down by 2 or 3 does have a noticeable affect on your team, why would anyone want to dumb that down?

It's not about being stuck in a mindset, it's about giving credit where it's due to something that works perfectly well.
 
Can we talk about how to represent player attributes in one little window? I was thinking of 6 to 8 sub-OVRs (not using 1-100 - stars perhaps, maybe 1-20) that show how good a player is at certain footballing departments.

For example, possession play (calculated from short passing, ball control, dribbling, strength, teamwork? I forget which game has what) end product (finishing, positioning, heading, jumping, volleys) team discipline, goal creation, etc.

Just trying to look at more football specific things that describe player styles more accurately than the standard hexagon.
 
I think the nonagon is the best quick check system there is, this in combination with stats along with traits and abilities lists would be possible on one screen, if not a display of the major stats for that position with a R1-L1 option to go deeper...
 
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