I like the training ideas. Surely qualifies as Career Mode rather than gamplay though, right?
I agree and disagree. First, that's not completely true that you would never think about athletes in statistical terms. It's been an increasing trend over the last decade for managers, clubs, and others in sports, from football to baseball to basketball, to collect and analyze detailed data on player performances. Arsene Wenger, who has an economics background, is one manager well-known for his fascination with compiling and analyzing player and game data. So while real life managers don't consider stats in terms of an OVR based on individual attribute scores on a scale of 100 (at least none that I know of!), I wouldn't want EA to remove the attribute ratings, and the system FIFA uses seems logical and sufficient to me.
But that's all nothing more than post-performance statistics. Recording what situational actions he performed, not what he can physically do. It's not the actual substance of a player's intrinsic abilities. In reality that's indefinable flesh and blood.
The attribute numbers still
have to exist somewhere under the hood, because the numbers in this virtual world
are that flesh and blood, but as a description of a player I find it clunky and horribly derivative.
My main point was that you don't talk about Emile Heskey in terms of rating individual categories numerically. You would say: "he's a target man who can hold the ball up well but lacks goalscoring instincts". You automatically think of what type of player he is and what his main strengths/weaknesses are, so why not do something similar in video games too? We've become stuck with this predictable, abstract list of integers because that's how sports games have done it in the past, and it's easier to just paste the contents of the database onto the screen.
Where I agree with you is that more needs to be done on the other end of things, i.e. FIFA should improve how it describes players in non-numerical terms, from adding more traits/characteristics/tendencies, to a better graphic layout. Their needs to be an easy way to get the gist of a player quickly, but their also needs to be a way to tell whether Walcott is the fastest player in the world or not. So I see no reason to get rid of the stats, rather EA I think should just work on the front-end and further develop P+.
Yes, although I guess if you looked at Walcott's hexagon/octogon thing and saw his Speed was way over to the edge, you'd have an idea. Knowing he's a point more or less than Agbonlahor hardly seems necessary, to me.
Like I said, a fair portion of this is me with a bee in my bonnet about crappy UI. Further developing P+ in terms of distinct playing styles is perhaps the meat of the issue, behavioural stuff that you're not going to get from a system predominantly focussed on attribute numbers. Heskey should play like a target man, should operate with obviously different tendencies/movements to how Walcott would play if you subbed him on in his place. Being stronger, quicker or more skillfull does not define the player so much as the style in which he plays (one reason why work-rate is the best part of P+ so far).
Getting to put some things direct to the Dev team hopefully, it's hard to read through (and time-consuming) paragraph after paragraph of blurb but if you can keep them at a couple of lines each can you guys list your most important features or issues for 12
My top few at this moment in time:
1. Gameplay Sliders, so we can balance our own gameplay (with some Arcade/Sim default presets too).
2. Expand Personality Plus, with distinct playing styles/tendencies ('target man' behaviour, 'playmaker' behaviour etc), with greater depth/variation to the supporting database (not just the top teams), by including descriptive information in the Player Bio and improving the usability thereof, and by generally exaggerating the differences between attribute ratings more clearly.
3. Team AI. Greater impact of team style on the pitch (so that each opposing team behaves differently), and a system whereby the AI coach adapts his tactics to the scenario/opponent tangibly and intelligently (vital that these actions are communicated clearly to the human).
4. Quick Subs/Tactics menu, with which we can make small strategic changes via a slick in-game pop-up menu during natural stoppages in play, without having to pause the game and trawl through several squad management screens just to swap one player with another, or change someone's role etc.
I might do. It's more likely I'll make a few videos of certain points I want to make. I was thinking of doing a tactics 'obstacle course', bringing up a stock 4-5-1, changing it to a 4-3-3, changing a couple of the positions (CMF to a DMF etc), setting marking options, putting my fastest winger on the right... and so on.