It's my day off so I have some free time today. On a hunch I decided to edit some player stats in a feeble attempt to accomplish on the PC what chimps has been doing all along on the PS3. Firstly, I think the reason Konami has stuck with this engine is because it's so damn complicated. I can't begin to imagine the number crunching going on in the background.
It appears that when dribble acc along with explosive power are lowered, the game compensates by allowing players to pass more often. Combined with Klash's tactics (slightly tweaked) the CPU plays a much better game of football and doesn't rely on dribbling to get past the back line. As an example Messi's dribbling acc was reduced to 85 while his explosive power was reduced to 83. Instead of dribbling 95% of the time to get past players, he now dribbles about 50- 60% of the time and is often quite successful. Of course I've had to re-balance the rest of barca to fit, but the results are very positive.
I played the edited Barca side against Konami's stock Real Madrid side and Barca won 4-1 (2 were free kicks by Cesc). Regardless of the scoreline, Barcelona played great football; passing triangles, 1-2's, switching sides with beautiful long balls.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start rebalancing the entire La Liga and the Premiere League.
Gave this a go on the ps3, didn't make much difference on Superstar, but slightly more on Professional, mostly making the cpu a little easier to tackle, giving my players a feel of weight, (rather than being run through all the time) just going through barca's team and looking at the stats is amazing, i know there are good but some of the ratings are
madness.
Anyway in my last few games i have started to notice something else, its almost like there is two games in one, one when i have the ball and another when the computer does.I spend time constructing passing moves, probing the lanes dummy runs etc, the cpu however always seems to look for the most direct route to goal regardless of the situation, i've taken just pumping the ball long to their keeper and watching them build up attacks, the most passes i've seen them play in their own half was 3, then its through to midfield through to striker every time. This leads joins on with the other thing i've noticed regarding formation, they seem able to do this cause no matter what formation I play, when an attack breaks down the cpu can counter attack, my back line retreats, with maybe a cm going into it while 1 maybe 2 of my midfielders have to try cover 3 or 4 players on rushing, however when i win the ball back the cpu always has cover, and more importantly, their get back into, and stay in formation so much better.
I dunno if this is a stat thing that can be fixed, but if there is a way to (1) raise my playeys positional and tactical sense, and (2) lower the computers 'get the ball forward asap tactics' i feel this would make the cpu play a more possession based and realistic game, at the moment all they have to do is exploit the gaps and shoot, camp, wait to break down an attack and repeat.
No one got the sarcasm huh...
