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

To show the profile of a player I would always opt for N rombs (or pentagones or whatever the geometry): one for the physical attributes, one for technical skills (short pass, long pass/cross, dribbling, shooting, finishing), and another one for mental and tactical skills.

Nba 2k11 has something like this and has proven to be very useful to quickly have a glimpse on how a player should play and how it differs from others.
 
Doesn't NBA 2K11 have something a bit more in-depth than just Attack, Defence, Power etc? Or have I misunderstood someone else on another forum who was talking about this?

I'm trying to think of the easiest way to quickly explain how players play, not just their attributes. Not sure what the best way is; should something be overlaid on the pitch to show the sort of areas of the pitch the player will cover, including runs infield and indication of work rate? Or should it just be text based with no visualisation of what the player will do? I worry about that because text depends on the description not being misleading. It also makes it a bit more ambiguous trying to compare players when essentially what you're after is squashing several days of scouting and match analysis into a 5, 10 second window.
 
Fair play to you all for doing something about this, but how they made you waste so much time and effort you lot put in, only for them to disregard pretty much all of what we wanted makes me think you're wasting your time.

But I hope I'm wrong, good luck guys.
 
Jamezinho said:
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?
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Why 'dumb it down' to 20? You could adopt FIFA's 0-100, then you can really fine tune to your heart's content. No? Then how low would you go? 10?

I don't believe that such a high degree of fine-tuning is realistic. Football is not digital, it is not measured, described or thought about in such subtle percentages.
I'm seeking greater contrast, so the available settings are more distinct and therefore recognisable. So the different styles you encounter are clear, not muddy.
Finally I'm seeking something more intuitive and easier for newbies to read and grasp.

romagnoli said:
I'm trying to think of the easiest way to quickly explain how players play, not just their attributes. Not sure what the best way is; should something be overlaid on the pitch to show the sort of areas of the pitch the player will cover, including runs infield and indication of work rate?
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That's what I would like to see too.

Work-rate has a big impact on how that player will behave on the pitch, so that should definitely be included somehow. Suitable positions too, obviously.

Perhaps a shortlist of their highest/lowest rated attributes, their strengths and weaknesses?

I think the Specialities need to be re-thought. At the moment they are based on attribute scores, so if you have like 86+ (or whatever the number is) for Short Pass & Vision (or whatever) you get the 'Playmaker' speciality. This means only the top players have any, which sucks. I think it would be better if they changed these so that they are calculated in relation to the rest of that player's attributes (or in relation to their OVR, whichever works out). So an average/poor player could still be described as a 'Playmaker' if his highest attributes clearly lie in passing and vision etc, rather than requiring him to be one of the world's best. That would give you a quick idea of where his abilities are weighted, which is the kind of info you need.

Ultimately, as I've mentioned before, I would ideally like each player in the database to be assigned a behavioural template, which affects their movement/tendencies on the pitch.

Perhaps Traits could be included here, although 'Long Throw-In' doesn't exactly describe the type of player they are, and again this relies on the detail in the database.
 
Nerf,

sliders are an utter piece of piss for noobs to grasp. There is not an easier system imaginable. Having 5 options is NOT enough. Football is not as basic as that at all. One team/nation/continent's medium-high is another's medium.

This particular topic is a waste of creative juices now. You have what you want already. Just move the points a bit more or a bit less than 1 slot.

Getting this attribute/trait business sorted is something that actually needs fixing - I agree that it should be relative so it shows what the player does for the team he represents, or how he plays within his means, rather than just saying the top players are amazing and leaving the lesser players untouched. Apparently that whole banding thing where Championship players are capped at 80 or so is still there after everything we were told. Fuxake.
 
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romagnoli said:
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.
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FIFA already has something half-decent like this in place with UT (I haven't been on yet to see if it's different so I'm speaking of UT 10). On the player cards and the player info screens they group the attributes into six (I think?) groups, so for example there's one for pace. All they need to do is import that into the full game. However, in UT you must be in team management to see a player's complete stats which would need to be changed. (When UT first came out I got all excited hoping it would be the basis for changes in the full version. Silly me.)

So that's one way to do it and is what they should've done when they used to display a player's top attributes - listing a player's top attributes was a decent attempt at trying to showcase what differentiated a player from the rest but it gave a too incomplete picture to really be useful.

On the visual side, the hexagon is a good start (although might that make what I described above redundant?), and it would be nice like you suggested if we had a visual representation of where they prefer to play on the field, maybe even combine that with work rates, red parts of the field indicate higher work rates, blue lower rates. I guess it would look not that different from the post-match graphs you see that show where a player spent most of his time on the pitch.

So then the only thing left really are player traits/abilities/P+/whatever. The shields imo don't cut it because they're too small and indistinguishable, although maybe I just haven't learnt them yet because I mostly play my CMs with smaller clubs (where P+, surprise-surprise, is largely irrelevant, argh!). To be fair, I honestly can't think of anything better than the shields off the top of my head. Maybe they just need to be graphically tweaked/enhanced.

The biggest problem in the end may be EA's reluctance to use a greater percentage of screen real estate. I'm assuming that's a holdover from the last gen systems and we may be stuck with the issue until EA fully commit to making the game for widescreens, am I wrong?

romagnoli said:
Getting this attribute/trait business sorted is something that actually needs fixing - I agree that it should be relative so it shows what the player does for the team he represents, or how he plays within his means, rather than just saying the top players are amazing and leaving the lesser players untouched. Apparently that whole banding thing where Championship players are capped at 80 or so is still there after everything we were told. Fuxake.
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Banding thing? What's this? I infer the cap is that 80 is the attribute max, is that right?
 
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Max, yes and yes to the last two questions.

I get the impression that the menus are surprisingly expensive, simply because of the way things are structured at EA. So HDTVs have to put up with stuff designed for 4:3 SDTV's, including those clownishly massive gamertag names.

Of course the menus still leave enough of a frame for 4:3 users to get some of that outer trim, so that's less space, and THEN to top it off it chops half the screen off when you are choosing your formation and tactics.

I do think that this year has been such a schooling as far as interfaces go, that EA cannot afford to leave things as they are. So many of the changes we all want EA to make are based around management and tactics in general that it'd be all the more mental if they didn't see the interface as a significant part of that. Fixing the formation and tactics cesspit that has stewed for the past couple of years, and giving people the ability to see how a player plays and where their strengths and weaknesses lie, AND increasing the effects of stats so that looking up such stuff is worthwhile, is the sort of thing I'm all about this year.

And yes I meant that banding bollocks.
 
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romagnoli said:
This particular topic is a waste of creative juices now.
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I was just responding to people who poked me about it :P

Having said that, I have a suggestion of compromise. A bar of 10 blocks, labelled by five categories (so two blocks per category). How does that sound? Basically a 1-10 slider, if you want to think of it that way, but annotated by the five text descriptions rather than numbers.

Moving on... :P

I think for an at-a-glance page on the Bio I would want:
OVR, so I know what standard of player I'm looking at.
Position, at least the primary. Maybe preferred foot too.
Octogon, showing how his abilities are spread. Also used when comparing two players.
Behaviour - Work Rate, showing ATT/DEF work-rate, hopefully visualised.
Behaviour - Style, labelled shields in a similar manner to (and replacing) Specialities, but bigger and derived from attribute weighting rather than score.

Anything else? That sounds like plenty for one page.

I think part of the cause of the problem with the lack of screen space usage is that it is designed from the beginning with two players in mind. Which is understandable to an extent.
 
romagnoli said:
Doesn't NBA 2K11 have something a bit more in-depth than just Attack, Defence, Power etc? Or have I misunderstood someone else on another forum who was talking about this?

I'm trying to think of the easiest way to quickly explain how players play, not just their attributes. Not sure what the best way is; should something be overlaid on the pitch to show the sort of areas of the pitch the player will cover, including runs infield and indication of work rate? Or should it just be text based with no visualisation of what the player will do? I worry about that because text depends on the description not being misleading. It also makes it a bit more ambiguous trying to compare players when essentially what you're after is squashing several days of scouting and match analysis into a 5, 10 second window.
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I'd say a graphic representation of the pitch would help also, along with a shaped 'stat' graphic. Things where you can see at a glance what the player is capable of/tends to do.
Having to scroll down a list gives you no indication at all. And what is the difference between 77 speed and 78, 79 or 80? A graphic, while essentially portraying the same thing, comes off differently in my opinion.
 
:P

Looks like we all agree on the basics, which is a good start.

What about traits? I kind of think they should be on the same page, at least on the same page as the octagon. Something the GCs have talked about is that traits should be made much more of a factor when choosing who to pick/buy. To do that they need to be more visible, on the pitch and in the menus.

How many shields (the attribute defined ones) are we expecting a player to have? Can traits and shields fit in one screen? If the octagon is up by the player head then that frees up a lot of space..
 
I'd sort of like to include Traits, in theory, but then if I actually look at the traits list in Creation Centre:

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 - Player 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.
...I have second thoughts about whether they are important enough to be on the at-at-glance page. It's tragic that there are only two positional traits.

I'm also under the impression that they are not very well distributed throughout the database. You tend to see the same few traits being used (Flair, Long Shot Taker, Long Throw-In, Injury Prone) or, mostly, none at all.

FYI here are the present Specialities:
Acrobat - The acrobat uses his athletic ability to get to balls that other players won't get to. This player does many acrobatic clearances and bicycle kicks.
Aerial Threat - Whether in defense or attack, Aerial Threats dominate in the air. They can jump quite high, head the ball well and are usually very tall.
Clinical Finisher - Clinical finishers have the technique required to be deadly goal scorers from anywhere within 25 yards. They have an eye for the goal and will make you pay for your mistakes.
Complete Forward - This player is multitalented and excels in a number of key attacking areas, making him the complete Forward Package.
Complete Midfielder - This player is multitalented and excels in a number of key areas of Midfield Play, making him the complete Midfield package.
Crosser - This player is excellent at swinging the ball in from the wing. They are accurate, serve the ball with pace, and can bend it around defenders into dangerous areas.
Distance Shooter - This player not only has a powerful shot, they are accurate from distance. If you get the ball in open space, don't be afraid to take a pop at goal.
Dribbler - This player has excellent ball control and is great at getting around defenders. He will also likely have a few tricks up his sleeve and will use them to beat his opponents.
Engine - This player can run for days. He works harder in both attack and defense than most players in the world. He is the engine that keeps the team going.
Free Kick Specialist - Free Kick specialists have spent countless hours on the training ground taking free kicks. some will be able to curl the ball around the wall, some will get it up over the wall and back down.
Playmaker - This player has exceptional ability to distribute to his teammates. On the ground of through the air, he is the guy you want to play through to create chances.
Poacher - (Description missing, sorry)
Speedster - A speedster is a player who can not only get off the mark quickly, but also has a very high top speed.
Strength - Players with the Strength specialty are forces to be reckoned with. They are difficult to push off the ball and use their size and strength to their advantage when defending.
Tackling - Tacklers have mastered the art of dispossession. They react quickly to the situation to read the dribbler and are able to break up more plays than the average defender.
Tactician - This player is fantastic at reading the game defensively. He will excel at reading the trajectory of passes, and will react faster off the mark to intercept passes.
 
I guess the point would also be that there should be more traits to go with making them more of a factor in choosing your players, rather than just making do with what we currently have.
 
Maybe I'm thinking oddly at the moment, but traits should be something IN ADDITION to stats/skills. Otherwise every player with X stat around the same automatically gets the trait and ends up the same. I know that's a lot of database work, but I think it's headed in that direction anyway. Not really sure I'm even wording any of that right.

Maybe traits could show up as shields, or shield-like items? They could look the same, but be different colors or something. For any of that to work I think the traits and shields need to appear bigger so they can be easily recognized, as it is now I have to check a player to see what he has, otherwise I just see X amount of tiny white shields. I want to be able to look at my team sheet and see what players have.

Maybe expanding (vertically) the number/name/pos area of formation/management so that it can display more info right there, without you having to scroll all over. The menus currently don't use much space, so they can scale things up a bit I think.
 
What was discussed at the GC working group was that players could develop traits based on the the way that they played.

For example you can see "potential" traits a player can achieve but if you had a season where you scored lots of headers with a player that person would be more likely to develop "power headers" etc where as a winger would be more inclined (naturally) to develop crossing/dribbling traits etc.

Its a rather top level concept so it needs thrashing out and talking through but I personally like it more over reams of player "stats" because I really find the ambiguity of 73 of 71 rather pointless.

I take a few things for granted like that all my team can pass in standard ways, what I would like to see is a tripling of the traits and use that as a way to gauge what sort of play I can expect to use out on the pitch.

With all that said I think we are all agreed that the way the stats are presented and to a degree what they actually mean/measure up against really needs a drastic and deep overhaul.
 
That's an amazing idea. Especially for young players. Being able to earn traits from previous seasons play. I think the problem with that would be if EA decided it only took x headers to earn the header shield. Where a I feel it should look at all your stats/runs/passes/tackles for patterns. I know thats a lot, but what if you have a winger who ended up tracking back a lot over his first two seasons or so, but didn't score much. Maybe you could lose traits also, If you're numbers decline for a few years. I like this a lpt, my fear is that EA would half ass it though, as they find a way to with anything.
By stats I mean goals, passes made/played, etc
Lot of great ideas in the thread, I'd really hope EA just got a new team, one willing to invest the time and effort into improving the game, on all fronts.

If the game was slowed down, to where you could actually hold the ball with a single player walking forward without being gang banged by the opposition I could see a quick sub menu working. Maybe L3 then the face or shoulder buttons for position, and it could show the available players and theyre top 3 positions, each assigned to a button. Or it just shows all of your subs and theyre top three-four positions mapped to shoulder and face buttons.
 
glen said:
What was discussed at the GC working group was that players could develop traits based on the the way that they played.

For example you can see "potential" traits a player can achieve but if you had a season where you scored lots of headers with a player that person would be more likely to develop "power headers" etc where as a winger would be more inclined (naturally) to develop crossing/dribbling traits etc.

Its a rather top level concept so it needs thrashing out and talking through but I personally like it more over reams of player "stats" because I really find the ambiguity of 73 of 71 rather pointless.

I take a few things for granted like that all my team can pass in standard ways, what I would like to see is a tripling of the traits and use that as a way to gauge what sort of play I can expect to use out on the pitch.

With all that said I think we are all agreed that the way the stats are presented and to a degree what they actually mean/measure up against really needs a drastic and deep overhaul.
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Well that sucks, I was under the impression that was in the game this year. Can't remember who it was but somebody had said that our players would accumulate traits as they developed in CM this year. Bugger.

daikirai said:
If the game was slowed down, to where you could actually hold the ball with a single player walking forward without being gang banged by the opposition I could see a quick sub menu working. Maybe L3 then the face or shoulder buttons for position, and it could show the available players and theyre top 3 positions, each assigned to a button. Or it just shows all of your subs and theyre top three-four positions mapped to shoulder and face buttons.
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Ah, yeah, that'll never happen. Nonetheless, it's been mentioned before that the select button would be perfect for a quick menu type feature. And I'm pretty sure Rutter or someone said quick subs would likely be in next year.
 
Quick Subs should become available whenever you have a set-piece. I really dislike the way that you can't do Quick Tactics or change Mentality when there's a stoppage in play.
 
nerf said:
Quick Subs should become available whenever you have a set-piece. I really dislike the way that you can't do Quick Tactics or change Mentality when there's a stoppage in play.
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Yeah they changed it (with 10 i think?) and it really pisses me off. Those tend to be exact best moments to change something!
 
I know it's been said, but speed and pressure. Having the ability to actually hold the ball in one spot without being rushed would do a lot for realism. If the defense was worked on to were intercepting a ball was possible then being able to hold onto the ball, knock it back/around would actually be useful, and encourage build up instead of charge up. I'd like to be able to take a slower player with above average passing/dribbling and make use of him. Instead of watching him getting beaten like a red-headed step child.
 
The custom setpiece business has done it. It's locked all the otter options out as EA haven't looked to get them to coexist.

Was talking to Jimmy about something he thought he'd spotted with corners in PES. I don't think it's true and I'm not sure if he still does.

Anyway... The idea is that, instead of pressing the direction you want to curl the ball, you press where on the ball you want to connect with the ball, and the amount you look to curl the ball (how close to the outside of the ball you look to hit) is defined by how quickly you roll the stick towards the top, or roll past the top (basically the speed the stick is rotating). The same could be used for corners, and rolling downward would represent a chipping action.

So if you're left footed and want to curl the ball left to right with top and sidespin, you would charge up the shot, press 10 o'clock or so and then roll the stick past 12 o'clock. A fast roll would see you whip your foot round the ball more, adding more top/side spin but making it more likely that you lose some accuracy. A more gentle roll would see you risk less spin, placing the shot more instead.

I think it'd simulate your leg movement as you whip the ball pretty well. It's an odd concept to be pressing the opposite side of the ball but anyone who has played Deadball Specialist on iPhone should know what I mean.

Dunno what people make of it. Might not catch on with the casuals; maybe this would be how you make a manual free kick system? Perhaps you could tap R1 to lock your player's directional aim to avoid accidentally shifting your aim when trying to spin the ball (though that applies to the current system too)?
 
I think the game needs to move away from casual. Or that would be optimal anyway. So soccer (football!) could actually be played and not human bumper cars.
I'd like to see full manual clubs too. Maybe decent games would be played then. And match rating shouldn't automatically be tied to goals. I don't know how it should work. But right now EVERYONE just wants a goal/high rating. Little bit of a rant there.

I wish they'd do a damn playtest here!
 
Auto-tackling and controlling players while defending MUST change for next year - it's almost ruining this game for me. I don't use any buttons anymore aside from jockey and sprint while defending and man is it such a joke - seriously, I laugh out loud sometimes at how ridiculous some of the tackling animations are. They've simply gone way overboard with the physical side of things. It would make such a huge difference if:

1) jockeying is less free and fast; and
2) tackling animations weren't so effective.

You tweak those two things and this game would be so much better balanced.

Also, does anyone know of a free app I can use for putting a series of short FIFA replay clips together into longer compilation vids? I've now stockpiled a decent number of short replay clips that I'd like to post as specific examples of what in my view really needs to be changed.

romagnoli said:
The custom setpiece business has done it. It's locked all the otter options out as EA haven't looked to get them to coexist.

Was talking to Jimmy about something he thought he'd spotted with corners in PES. I don't think it's true and I'm not sure if he still does.

Anyway... The idea is that, instead of pressing the direction you want to curl the ball, you press where on the ball you want to connect with the ball, and the amount you look to curl the ball (how close to the outside of the ball you look to hit) is defined by how quickly you roll the stick towards the top, or roll past the top (basically the speed the stick is rotating). The same could be used for corners, and rolling downward would represent a chipping action.

So if you're left footed and want to curl the ball left to right with top and sidespin, you would charge up the shot, press 10 o'clock or so and then roll the stick past 12 o'clock. A fast roll would see you whip your foot round the ball more, adding more top/side spin but making it more likely that you lose some accuracy. A more gentle roll would see you risk less spin, placing the shot more instead.

I think it'd simulate your leg movement as you whip the ball pretty well. It's an odd concept to be pressing the opposite side of the ball but anyone who has played Deadball Specialist on iPhone should know what I mean.

Dunno what people make of it. Might not catch on with the casuals; maybe this would be how you make a manual free kick system? Perhaps you could tap R1 to lock your player's directional aim to avoid accidentally shifting your aim when trying to spin the ball (though that applies to the current system too)?
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I think it sounds like a cool idea but I guess I wonder what's the point? Would it add any benefit or actually improve the current functionality?

In the end i guess it would be a cool option to have - makes me think of the options in fps games to invert the x and y axises - and I could certainly see myself using it. Two issues spring to mind though:

1) like i said above, what's the point/benefit? I don't think many people consider the current system a problem, and as the saying goes, if it ain't broke...; and
2) if regular shooting mechanics remain the same it could be considered too confusing - if you are still aiming where you want the ball to go and not where boot is meant to hit ball during regular gameplay, is it not a bit nonsensical to change the way things work just for setpieces? Is it not better to be consistent with the mechanics throughout the game?

Sounds like a cool option to have but is it worth bothering with?
 
mfmaxpower said:
Also, does anyone know of a free app I can use for putting a series of short FIFA replay clips together into longer compilation vids? I've now stockpiled a decent number of short replay clips that I'd like to post as specific examples of what in my view really needs to be changed.
Click to expand...
Depends what you want to do. If you just want to string several .flv files into one without needing to edit them, google "flvbind".
 
mfmaxpower said:
I think it sounds like a cool idea but I guess I wonder what's the point? Would it add any benefit or actually improve the current functionality?

In the end i guess it would be a cool option to have - makes me think of the options in fps games to invert the x and y axises - and I could certainly see myself using it. Two issues spring to mind though:

1) like i said above, what's the point/benefit? I don't think many people consider the current system a problem, and as the saying goes, if it ain't broke...; and
2) if regular shooting mechanics remain the same it could be considered too confusing - if you are still aiming where you want the ball to go and not where boot is meant to hit ball during regular gameplay, is it not a bit nonsensical to change the way things work just for setpieces? Is it not better to be consistent with the mechanics throughout the game?

Sounds like a cool option to have but is it worth bothering with?
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You don't aim swerve during gameplay. You aim at a direction to say where you want to shoot. In this sense, the current free kick/corner kick system is not related to the in-game shooting either.

The point of this is that, at the moment, the free kick system IS broke. All you do is, if you're within 30 yards or so, press up-left or up-right and shoot. BLAND. Where's the sense that you're measuring up the shot, deciding exactly how to strike the ball and then trying to execute it? When I was in Canada Gary P and I talked about what the free kick system should be doing instead - he wondered if you should press the left stick a certain amount for a certain amount of spin.
 
Certainly bland, but broke? I don't consider it to be broke; seems to get the job done. Definitely bland though and doesn't do that part of the game justice for sure. If overhauling free kicks would make that big a difference than im all for it. I'm just not convinced it could be done in a way that the improvement is enough to be worth the effort.
 
To me, if all you're doing for free kicks is altering the power bar, then it is broke.

Ideally I'd want a system that also caters for your player leaning back more or less to control initial trajectory; maybe something can be done with using up vs down there.
 
I would certainly like more control over ball trajectory from set-pieces. Sometimes I want to really whip one in at pace with Ashley Young, other times I want to float one high to the back stick for a tall player to win. You can sort of achieve the former, to a degree, but I think there's room for more contrast and control.

I still hate those awkward free-kicks where you are in a central position, about 40 yards from goal. Trying to just dink one up is really clumsy, it is usually over-hit or too flat (or both). It always feels a much better idea to just tap a short one and resume play. Maybe that's true in real life too, but it would be nice to have the option to try and float up a high/soft one.

Now I think about it, something else I would like the option to change is the positioning of my teammates from free-kicks and goal kicks. I'm not talking about the set-piece editor (does anyone use that, btw? I haven't touched it since FIFA10). I would like to have some control over where they stand/group, to 'herd' the unit forward/back/left/right a bit.

Goal kicks are the worst for this. Your players amble painfully slowly into position and tend to stay in your own half. What if I could tell them (as a group) to push higher up the pitch, or shift more to the right, and they jogged into position? Guide them with the right thumbstick or a modifier+left, perhaps? Maybe I want to angle a kick out to the left flank on the halfway line - I could tilt the stick up and left to shift my team as a unit more over to that side. For deep free-kick scenarios you could tilt the stick left or right to gather your players more to the left or right along the edge of the penalty area.
 
The thing with free kicks which I moaned about in Canada is that indirect free kicks lacked any danger as players never seemed to want to attack the dangerous areas.

They did add more sense of players attacking the ball making it more viable to put one in the box instead of just play a short one. It does need more work though as the players still all read the trajectory too much and too quickly.

Direct free kicks need to feel more organic and need more variation in hitting the exact same spot every time. That's what makes them like penalties but from a little further out......
 
nerf said:
I still hate those awkward free-kicks where you are in a central position, about 40 yards from goal. Trying to just dink one up is really clumsy, it is usually over-hit or too flat (or both). It always feels a much better idea to just tap a short one and resume play. Maybe that's true in real life too, but it would be nice to have the option to try and float up a high/soft one.
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Agreed.

glen said:
The thing with free kicks which I moaned about in Canada is that indirect free kicks lacked any danger as players never seemed to want to attack the dangerous areas.

They did add more sense of players attacking the ball making it more viable to put one in the box instead of just play a short one. It does need more work though as the players still all read the trajectory too much and too quickly.

Direct free kicks need to feel more organic and need more variation in hitting the exact same spot every time. That's what makes them like penalties but from a little further out......
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And agreed.

I take greater issue with the way my players set themselves up and react for set pieces than with the actual mechanics of taking the kick. Like nerf said the most annoying to me is that rather than whip in a 40 yarder I usually choose to just tap it off to the nearest teammate and get on with things, all because my players don't charge toward the goal like they would IRL.
 
I agree that the player movement is wrong AS WELL AS the method and control over taking free kicks/corners in the first place. It's not an engaging, sit up in your seat moment. The lack of thought required to take them both through the act of taking then and the disinterested behaviour of others on the pitch, makes them feel pretty lifeless.
 
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