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

Just wanted to say something about the best way to describe your ideas. What EA find most helpful is videos - real world examples of your idea, game vids of what is wrong (if you spot a problem while playing, SAVE IT AND POST IT UP!), and explaining what benefit it would have for the game.

It is also really vital that your idea be explainable in football terms. If it doesn't make football sense, it doesn't go in. I had a good long talk with Gary about how they could rethink the free kick system, and the focus throughout was trying to come up with a system that tallies with how kicking a football actually works. You can also see how, with the shooting physics stuff Gary mentioned in one of the interviews, how he referred to the shots according to real life players (the torres low shot) and real world examples (the Lampard FA Cup final).

I sent the following along in a PM the other day. It's pretty long winded, but that's because I wrote it! I'm sure you can get the point across fairly succinctly and with example vids.
 
I don't feel lobbed shots travel with the sense of weight that you get when you watch efforts like Rooney's vs Portsmouth:
YouTube - 2nd goal Rooney against Portsmouth

You can see the ball travels flatter and with more forward velocity than you'd expect from FIFA. The lob is a really graceful, artistic shot - something that requires real technical finesse and guile to pull off successfully. The only way you can really get that feeling that a lob has been perfectly weighted is by making sure it feels weighty, if you see what I mean!

Another example of a flat lob can be seen at the 30 second mark here, and I'm sure there are others in there too:
YouTube - Best Lobbed Goals!!!


The risks of putting such a lob in FIFA without thinking about how to make it sufficiently hard to pull off are obvious. I don't think you should be able to lob the keeper when he is on his line; at least, it should be an extremely rare occurrence. I was thinking of this more for lobbing keepers who are genuinely in a position to be lobbed, rather than in a position that a human player cannot prevent (e.g. on his line). Getting a lob right should require the right conditions, and a very fine margin of error as far as power bar charging is concerned.

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I'd say half the reason lob goals were so effective in FIFA 10 (and why they still are in WC 2010 if the keeper rushes out) was because the ball would go extremely high, meaning you were able to lob the keeper even if he was right up in your striker's face. Skip 30 seconds here for what I mean:

YouTube - fifa 10 cheats

The keeper could be 4 or 5 yards away and you'd still be able to get enough height to beat a still upright keeper, or at least force a save from him that may come down with snow on it and go in. If the keeper was much more than 5 yards away, then there wasn't a hope in hell of him saving the ball. Compounding this issue was the fact that the sort of lob in this video was just a small charge-up of the power bar, so there was little likelihood of getting it wrong.

Part 1 of my solution to fixing the lob shots is something WC2010 began to address. I feel that more work should go into making the first 1/3rd or so of the power bar for a lobbed shot result in a dink the ball over the keeper as in 1:41 and 3:58 in this vid:

YouTube - Wayne Rooney Tribute

This'd mean that you're only likely to beat the keeper with less power if he goes to ground. If he stays standing then he'll probably parry the ball away or catch it. He's more likely to go down if he's right up close, so there's this sense of drama as you try and get the timing of your shot right.

Part 2 is, over greater distances, I feel that making lobs flatter, or at least varying the trajectory in such a way that includes flatter lobs with heavy backspin, would make them more likely to be floated straight into the keeper's arms, or at a height where the keeper can do something about it. It would also mean that, when the keeper is 5 or 6 yards away, it'd be harder to beat an upright keeper with a lob as you wouldn't have the clearance to get the ball that high. Provided you make sure that it's taxing to perfectly weight a lob and that the outcome has a lot of error attached to it, to the point where experts still can't do it on command and consider it something special rather than something to try every single time, I think this area of the game would be significantly improved. It'd give you those Michael Owen dinked finishes (2:28 here) that still carry a fair amount of forward velocity, and those Wayne Rooney lobs for the best players to capitalise on.


Here's an interesting feature from the Guardian website about lobs, chips and dinks. Might be some food for thought in there. The Guardian do some really, really good tactical articles every now and then, and the Six of the Best is always a great source of videos for various topics.
 
Personality+ got me thinking about the way that player attributes are handled elsewhere in the game, so I will ramble. Not the sort of thing that can be supported by video evidence, unfortunately, it's mostly front-end issues.

1. Judging a player's attributes

Problem:
Making meaningful team selections or transfer decisions is hampered by a lack of transparency and clarity. If I don't know what 'Aggression' or 'Tact. Aware' actually does in-game, how can I make meaningful gameplay decisions based on these attributes?

Causes:
No definitions are supplied for any Player Attributes.
Player Traits are completely hidden!

Suggestions:

Help Text
Provide help text, accessible by a button press in the Player Bio, which gives a clear and concise (and gameplay relevent) definition for each attribute.

Unhide Player Traits
Traits (assuming they work) are a great way to provide character to each player. If they exist, let me see them! It opens new strategic decisions for me to make if I actually know they are there... Tony Pulis wouldn't select Rory Delap if he didn't know about his throw-in weapon. They should be listed in the Player Bio as additional attributes.

2. Navigating the Player Bio

Problem:
Perusing a player's attributes, or indeed comparing him with another, is a chore.

Causes:
Far too much scrolling.
No distinction, just a long list of white text.
Alphabetical order is meaningless in this context.

Suggestions:

Categorise attributes
Instead of one long alphabetically-ordered list, perhaps they could be split into categories. Physical, Technical and Mental? Breaking it down into more digestible chunks could make the list easier to navigate and compare. Related attributes could be grouped close together (e.g. acceleration and speed).

Consider re-sizing the bio
Does it really have to use such a small portion of the screen?

Pick out position-relevant and team-high attributes
Certain attributes could be flagged as useful attributes relevant to the player's primary position. If he is a defender, highlight the key defensive attributes in another colour or in an easy at-a-glance list. Additionally, if that player has the highest rating for that attribute in his current squad, it should be marked as such.

Strengths/Weaknesses summary
A quick way to gain an overview of a player's style/character would be a separate shortlist of strengths and weaknesses. This could either be something as simple as a list of his three best/worst attributes, or perhaps a text description that is automatically generated from the numbers. For example, if a player has remarkably high ratings in Stand Tackle, Jumping and Heading, but relatively low ratings in Agility and Ball Control, his summary report might read: "Strong ball-winner. Aerially dominant. Lacks athleticism. Poor touch."

Implement the skills pentagon
...or whatever you want to call it. Another simple at-a-glance comparison tool to judge the relative merits and flaws of a player or players.
 
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romagnoli, can you please show your contact at EA this screenshot for future reference?

diytournamentswos.png
 
The player selection logic does my head in sometimes :DOH:

It seems particularly bad when using Manual Through Ball. Here's an example I just had, which turned a closely-contested 1-1 draw into a 1-2 defeat through no fault of my own.

My LCM has the ball, and my CDM/CB (immitating the Marquez Mexico role) is stepping up into midfield. I want to roll the ball diagonally into his path with Manual Through Ball (red line). It's a soft little touch pass, so I put minimal power on it:

selectone.jpg


As soon as the pass is released, I'm given control not of my CDM, but of my RCM beyond him, who you can see (below) immediately turns 90 degrees to come and collect. The CDM does that crabby sidestep instead, under CPU control:

selecttwo.jpg


The problem becomes worse when my CPU-controlled CDM decides to make a diagonal movement off the ball, straight across the trajectory of the pass. Unwittingly, he intercepts his own team's pass without giving any impression that he's aware of where the ball is. Smart:

selectthree.jpg


He treads on the ball, and by the time I've hurriedly switched control to him, the nearest opponent is straight in to stab the ball away. It falls to their striker on the halfway line, who turns and burns through the gap in my defence to net the winner with this 1-on-1 chance:

selectfour.jpg


This sort of thing (illogical player-switch selection) happens with annoying regularity, usually causing you to lose possession and occasionally even worse, like this time.

The CDM was far better placed to stroll easily onto that soft pass than the RCM, who was further away, had to completely change direction and had to run back to collect it. Perhaps the selection logic is too reliant on angle of pass/player. Distance, momentum and proximity needs to be considered more.

The most common and classic example of this problem is when you have the ball with your central midfielder and you play the ball wide into the space ahead of the fullback, for him to carry it forward. Often your winger, who was moving forwards up the touchline, will then turn 180 and run backwards to collect the ball, rather than allowing your fullback to move easily onto it.

So there's two problems here:
1) Player-switch is not intuitive enough. I realise that the game cannot mind-read, but there are many times when it seems so obviously wrong.
2) Other teammates who are neither the passer nor the receiver are not aware enough of the ball and its trajectory. The teammate in the way could have either not run across its trajectory in the first place, or could have dummied it at the very least.
 
Sweet. Glad to hear they're working on it.

P.S. Can they also send Manager Mode to their QA team this year? :PP
 
Not the biggest issue, but a random thought popped into my had, why don't we yet have quick throw ins? It still has to have a little loading pause and then everyone is back in position. Would be nice to be able to exploit players out of position with a quick throw.
 
I don't see any reason not to put it in if it is implemented the same way as quick freekicks, so that you can only take it if the ball is close to the spot and you got a player there too.
 
I'd like the whole goalkeeper AI and everything when they have the ball at their feet to be rewritten. As a goalkeeper myself I find todays system pretty awful..

First of all, CPU goalkeepers tend to play a perfect first time pass no matter the situation. When you're playing goalkeeper you don't handle the ball as you do when your playing outfield - when you receive the ball you will (depending on the situation of course) put the ball 1-2 metres ahead of you to be able to play a long ball quickly if needed. Only when the opposition is really, really far away you'll keep it at your feet. And then when they kick away the ball..if you don't have any team mate to pass the ball to it's one of the first things you learn to put it in the corners, not over the sideline or in the middle of the field. They should also be able to kick the ball a lot further, especially at first time kicks: I'm a highly mediocre keeper and at goal kicks I just reach the halfway line, but with the ball rolling towards me I'll have no problem putting it far into the opposition half.

It's also quite common that you get in to a situation "will the AI control the keeper and kick away the ball? will I gain control over him?" and then the striker steals the ball and scores. You should have a button that means that I want to control the goalkeeper - if I don't press it, the AI will control the keeper and do what's appropriate for the situation.
 
Dusse said:
I'd like the whole goalkeeper AI and everything when they have the ball at their feet to be rewritten. As a goalkeeper myself I find todays system pretty awful..

First of all, CPU goalkeepers tend to play a perfect first time pass no matter the situation. When you're playing goalkeeper you don't handle the ball as you do when your playing outfield - when you receive the ball you will (depending on the situation of course) put the ball 1-2 metres ahead of you to be able to play a long ball quickly if needed. Only when the opposition is really, really far away you'll keep it at your feet. And then when they kick away the ball..if you don't have any team mate to pass the ball to it's one of the first things you learn to put it in the corners, not over the sideline or in the middle of the field. They should also be able to kick the ball a lot further, especially at first time kicks: I'm a highly mediocre keeper and at goal kicks I just reach the halfway line, but with the ball rolling towards me I'll have no problem putting it far into the opposition half.

It's also quite common that you get in to a situation "will the AI control the keeper and kick away the ball? will I gain control over him?" and then the striker steals the ball and scores. You should have a button that means that I want to control the goalkeeper - if I don't press it, the AI will control the keeper and do what's appropriate for the situation.
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That button could be triangle/Y, in fact. If you're holding triangle when the keeper comes out of his area he'll clear it; if not he'll control it like any other player.

I like that. It's the sort of thing that could hopefully be fixed fairly easily too.
 
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No problem, glad to resolve any confusion :)

Asset Editor and Reference Collector are new additions though, they were added about a year ago IIRC :)
 
I was thinking of signing up for the face and body editor, but when I saw how crappy the "editor" is I changed my mind. No wonder all players without real faces look so shit, you don't have anything to work with.
 
It's not perfect but it's not too bad, guess I'm just used to it :) I keep all the face/hair/facial hair variations in a spreadsheet and build my generic player by looking in that :)
 
A LOT of C+P from the official forums. There's been a lot of posting about VP's today. It's all in theory and is not going to impact FIFA 11, but I'm quite interested in what people here think. I think it's a great concept but doesn't quite hold out for the whole year. 100% VP's are a pain in the arse, and would also completely remove the whole point of putting in player individuality...


HandOfBeadle said:
There's an easy solution to that - level capping for VPs, and letting us have more than one VP. RPG's have had stats capping for years to very good effect, and CoD has Prestige levels for people to reset their weaponset and grow again from scratch. Why not give us the ability to create 3 characters and/or unlocks for reaching the level cap, or make sure that if you edit your VP from the originally specified ST to a LB then you get an overall stats penalty? If I want a proper LB then I should create a defender and level him up.
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dave797 said:
So you'd have 3 save slots enabling you to create 1 defender, 1 midifelder and 1 stiker maybe? You then tailor that broad position how you please to create a target man, a flying left back, a creative midfielder etc. With each position having its own set of acheivements and abilities to unlock stopping the "all rounder" VP we get now.

That I think would encourage people to actually play in defence as well rather than spamming down to nab an illusive striker role.
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HandOfBeadle said:
Possibly. I think it's up to the user - you could go for one striker, one winger, one midfielder. Maybe it doesn't have to be limited to three players - that was just a nominal figure. You could even specify secondary positions for each where your stats take less of a hit when played 'out of position'.

I just think there needs to be more scope for people to legitimately start a profile again, and there needs to be more attachment to a position by stopping your striker from being unrealistically complete. Now that the game is about individuality it'd be a shame to see Clubs consisting of players who are all equally good at everything.
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dave797 said:
Yeah I see where you're coming from. Its just the thought of people creating multiple strikers all of different heights and speeds that pains me :)

I like the secondary position idea as well so being a RB but having your secondary postion as RWB would mean you'd still be pretty effective playing right midfield, just to change things up.

I think having the acheivements tied to the position you choose for your VP would help to make people experiment with different positions. So as a defender you are unable to unlock striker specific acheivements etc

As you say with everyone having an "all rounder" VP it makes the games feel very flat and level because there is no variation in player quality at the top end.
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BigZombieMonkey said:
I think the idea of having 3+ pros is but I think the best way to work it is into 3 categories e.g.

Defensive
Full Pitch
Attacking

and have each position fall into the correct category e.g.

Defensive - LB, RB, RCB, CB, LCB, CDM
Full Pitch - LWB, RWB, LM, RM, RCM, CM, LCM
Attacking - CAM, LAM, RAM, LW, RW, CF, LF, RF, CF, ST, LS, RS

If it was done this way then you could have the defensive players having a set of objectives, the full pitch players having another set of objectives and the attacking players another set yet again.

This would encourage a person to master their position by giving them the correct type of stats for their position. It would also give defenders more sensible objectives like "score 5 headed goals = + 1 heading" whereas a striker could have "score headed 15 goals = + 1 heading". When it comes to tackling you could have defenders have to "make 100 standing tackles = + 1 tackling" where as a striker will have "make 20 standing tackles = +1 tackling".

Also as the guys have mentioned before have a cap on it so that defenders will play like defenders, strikers will play like strikers etc. Having a defender have to score 50 laces shots makes no sense at all, some defenders never score that many in their entire career.

I suppose the quick way to sum it all up is if someone wants to play in every position they can but it shouldn't be a case of max your stats and you'll de a force in all positions, it should be a case of meeting the requirements a player of that position would have to in real life.
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HandOfBeadle said:
Hmm. I think there needs to be more crossover than that! If you pigeon hole too much then you lose some of the identity by grouping into three types rather than one. I also think it might be counterintuitive to have defenders make 5 times more tackles just to level up as much as a striker! I guess a striker might start on a rating of 20 compared to a left back on 60.

Perhaps we should be able to choose what sort of template we start with too. Maybe we should be able to say that, from the off, we want to be a left back with a defensive boost, and more strength. Maybe a winger with better shooting and short passing. Or maybe we want to be a centre midfielder with a headstart on acceleration and finishing. So that, rather than starting from the same centre mid template as everyone else, we can say that we want to start off with raw talent in these two or three areas, and maybe we want to start with this trait.
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dave797 said:
So similar to the character creation of any RPG like Fallout or Oblivion. You have to choose first a "class" so in Fifa's case Defender/Midfielder/Attacker this choice defines some basic attiributes relevant for that role, to give you a natural base to build your VP from.

Then you get to choose 3 maybe 5 "traits" which give you stat boost in other areas which will help you tailor your VP to your playing style. Strength, speed, stamina, short passing, long passing, crossing etc

Oblivions charchter creation is sticking in my head most, I think that basic premise could transfer quite nicely to Fifa enabling you to customize and feel like your VP is your own but with just enough restraint from the game to make people specialised and not all rounders.
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HandOfBeadle said:
Exactly. I think you should be able to specify what sort of individuality you want to start off with, and then 'level up' from that starting point. Dunno how to go about level capping - maybe only allow a certain number of stat increases per area (e.g. defending, physical, attacking etc) with double the number of available increases in whichever area you choose to specialise.
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Jhnssn504 said:
To be able to pick what attributes to upgrade is very unrealistic. To me it should all be based on how you perform on the pitch. Otherwise you will always end up with people maxing out all the attributes that they can max out, even if they are capped, they're still maxed out. A system that lets you add attributes point to wherever you want doesn't reward people with football brains. Some attributes is OK, because you can't judge them from how a person play, but not all.
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dave797 said:
As HoB said this only going to be when you're creating your VP before playing any matches. And as I said you'd only be able to choose 3 or so stats to boost initially. Everything else has to be earned by playing in games.

Its to provide your VP with a natural more realistic platform to build off rather than just being across the board average to begin with.

Its to give you an opportunity to tailor your VP to the role you wish him to play just a little before you start.
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BigZombieMonkey said:
ooo One very risky way of doing it is by making it so you can't see the objectives to improve at all so you'll get some variety. e.g. making 100 standing tackles = +3 tackling for a defender but you wouldn't know this. That way you wouldn't have people standing on the goal line in VP matches trying to get their goal line clearances and it would also make it a lot harder to max out your player. Obviously the better you are at tackling via your natural ability to play the game would see you progress faster etc.

I don't think this would go down too well though as I know the majority of people treat their VP as a task rather than a player who has to improve over time, most will just find a list and actively sek out to do these objectives rather than play the match they are in.
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HandOfBeadle said:
How about if the description given for what you need to do was just more vague? So instead of "score 30 goals in a season", you'd have something like "show yourself to be a world class goalscorer over the course of a season". Or, instead of "Get 2 assists from crosses in 2 games", something like "show the manager you're a dangerous crosser of the ball".

lalalala examples but you get the gist. It should encourage people to actually do some research online and show an interest in the game. It could be a double edged sword if the descriptions are too vague though - "I scored 25 amazing goals against big teams and didn't get the world class scorer accomplishmenlalalaF??? LALALA YOU EA" etc.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Madden already has a similar thing where you choose your type of individual in their Superstar mode. So if you create a Tight End, you choose whether you want to be a Blocking TE or a Pass Catching TE, or somewhere inbetween. Presumably this weights the initial attributes to certain things like Blocking/Strength or Speed/Catching etc.
 
You could well be right. Hopefully that's filtered across to FIFA this year, along with being able to make more than one VP. Doubt it though!
 
Wrote about this in the FIFA 11 thread, but it's probably more suited in here. Can't remember, but I think we've talked about this before but I'll write it anyway, it's short.

Problem:
Confusing shooting bar where it is a mix between height and power. It's hard to try to shoot a low shot, because even if you press very quickly, the player isn't prepared to make a low shot. In real life you know you're going to try to shoot low, so you adjust the body.

Idea for solution:
Replace LT from hard shot to low shot modifier (NA settings). Since the LT is pressure sensitive it could work like the more you press it down, the lower you try to shoot. This way the bar is always power and the height is always LT.

Problem with solution:
If other settings don't use LT for hard shot currently I guess it won't work.
 
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