Minifootball player making a 6v6 game — looking for feedback from PES players

[Corangar94]

Suggest me

I'm curious what you'd want from a more skill-based 6v6 football game.

I used to play competitive minifootball in Romania, and I'm now building the football game I've wanted to play myself.

It's 6v6 and the idea is that football decisions should matter as much as button execution.

Passing is intended to reward direction, power and body position rather than automatically finding a teammate. Dribbling is more about timing a touch into space than chaining skill-move animations. Tackling commits the defender, so choosing when to step in matters.

Team tactics are also a big focus. I want you to be able to decide how your team builds attacks, creates space, presses and defends — and actually see your teammates trying to execute those instructions.

There will be spectacle, but I'm trying to make it something you earn. For example, a spectacular power strike should require the right player, body position, timing and clean contact rather than simply pressing a special-move button.

I'm currently thinking about control assistance and I'd especially like opinions on shooting.

If passing were fully manual, what would you prefer?

• completely manual shooting
• mostly manual aim with a small amount of goal tolerance
• semi-assisted shooting
• assisted shooting
• I'd need to actually play each system before deciding

Would you prefer to have walls around the field so the ball it's always in play?

Would you like to have faults or would like to punish bad tackles with losing speed and momentum?

I'm also curious about progression. For online competition, would you rather build and develop your own fictional squad under competitive limits, or have player abilities completely normalized for ranked play?

The game will have fictional players and a substantial single-player career. I'm strongly against purchasable competitive advantages/player-pack gambling.

Even though this is the main feedback that I am looking for anything else that would be important to you that would make the game fun to you I'd appreciate to know.

I'm not showing a demo yet because I'd rather show it when it's ready enough to judge properly. Right now I'm interested in how football-game players feel about these ideas and what I'm overlooking.

 

[sleevel]

Love this and I’ll make a few opening statements before I dive in:

- Make the game you want. Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Seriously. If you make a good game, people will play it. It’s not a good game because you made it the way people wanted it to be made, it’s a good game because it’s a good game.
- The average player likely has not played at the competitive level and does not have the same level of vision and intuition as you.

Now, onto the comments: what all soccer video games fail to capture is that body positioning and first touch are so critical. I would love if you could create a game where you can control this. How am I placing my body to setup my next touch and exactly why do I want the ball to land on that touch? Do that well and you’ve escaped pressure. Do it well (or ignore the importance) and you’ve lost the ball or all of your advantage as you’re now under severe pressure from a defender.

I love a great deal of control on passes and shooting. This isn’t simply a full manual, semi or automatic pass/shooting debate. I’m talking beyond full manual, actually controlling loft, spin and speed for each pass and shot. Almost never is a pass hit directly to a recipients feet directly. The passer knows what the recipient wants to do and knows where the pressure is, so they will adjust the shot to land in the safe area where they know the next touch likely will be taken.

I would suggest no walls and no fouls.

I think you’ll find that the reason FIFA and PES oversimplified so many things is because at an individual level, there is so much complexity and subtlety to body positioning and movement that it’s really (really) hard to get right in a video game in terms of controls and camera (you’d effectively need a first person camera). While it would be so awesome, think of how difficult it would be to program: set defender into blade stance (which foot is forward?), track player with ball (tight or loose), which way do I bias player (force ball holder to sideline or do I block passing/shooting lane). That’s just “jockeying” let alone trying to make a poke tackle with front foot, strong tackle with back foot, or desperation stick out a leg to block a dribble/pass/shot.

(I was working on a game for a while - I would be happy to share some thoughts and observations or help you in any way, provided we share a similar vision.)