You're right, again. Ignite wasn't pretty good for sports games.
Frostbite isn't responsible from the current status of EA FC game.
That's because they literally erased and removed tons of algorithms from that engine instead of mastering it, and replaced them as "people want it super-extra reactive" and others precision stuffs, Fifa loudest community didn't saw his real possibilities in Fifa 17, in terms of realism. No, they didn't carried and as long to repeat "it's a game, not reality" EA took the path of what YTubers players wants.
Fifa don't really need a new engine, but coming back to the real Frostbite made for Fifa and rework it. What i can see now is a game is full of non-sense animations and actions and a Defense completely apathic.
Gameplay choice, and completely rebuilding their own engine in something indecent.
Gameplay choice, you said it. Tbh, the thing I see mostly in almost every videogame is the lack of defensive actions without the ball (winning the position, etc.) and the lack of sharp, yet not speedy controls. Controls must be reactive as fuck, which means a lot of animation blending, but also must have some inertia, which should actually be reflected on the animation blending.
This is one of the problems that PES 2014 faced, and why the controls felt super-heavy. Simply because if they wanted to put inertia into an animation, they couldn't blend it into a new one mantaining that inertia of the player. I think this is one of the good things that old FIFA's have and that IMHO, got peaked with FIFA 20/21, that is the balance between inertia and certain movements and reactivity. IMHO, maybe FIFA20/21 had not enough inertia but there was a good idea behind those games and had good animation blending. I feel they were thrown away, though, because of the emphasis on direct football aswell as running with the ball, but out of that, probably those games are the closest we could be to realistic 1 on 1 situations, OR, if we could rework PES 2014 with new animation blending technologies (keep dreaming, it won't happen) or either, a new game comes with that varycenter core phylosophy applied not only to a single animation but blending between animations, thus offering the possibility to still control the player without loosing momentum feeling, so that you can try and do a sharp turn, but depending on your momentum (and other things as agility of your player, etc.), they will be able to do that new animation faster or not, etc., but having that animation starting (or at least blending with the previous one) as soon as you give the command on the pad.
That'd be quite revolutionary nowadays, if you ask me. We don't have this kind of things since PES 2014, and worst thing is that other games from other genres like RDR2, or other euphoria titles, do have good blending put into them. Btw, this is another unpopular opinion, but I do think Euphoria would be A GREAT engine for a football game with the correct coders, producers, etc., due to the focus on animations, movement, and inertia.
Anyways, and summing it up, the whole thing here is that a good football game needs to have 4 things.
Good, decent AI that actually defends and tries to occupy spaces.
A focus on momentum of the actions, caried onto animation, and animation blending, and analogic controls (jogging, sprinting, etc.).
A focus for reactivity on controls without loosing the focus on momentum talked in the previous point (and that's why the need of analogic controls since they would help a lot control momentum much better at the same time of being reactive)
Realistic errors on passes, shooting, dribbling, etc., based on player attributes and previous mentioned points.
And obviously, besides of that, a good player building scheme (in terms of attributes, skills etc.) and a good formation and tactics system.
And here we are now. Technology has gone further and games have been overly simplified, though.
I agree that it would be a great game no doubt, except for the "definite" adjective lol. It's too... Definitive 🤣
Mixing things is a hard task : but bringing back to like some old PES past features and adapt them could be good too.
I think that the most advanced football game "semi-sim" or "action-sim" may be something with a different approach too, new idea instead of old (i'm not for Team ID for example, but the come back of stat teamwork may resolve many problems...
But that stat in particular is a bit too hard to rate a 99 scale.
Also for the others Fifa stats, i would only took "Crosses", but i would prefers the come back of "Consistency" and some rythm stats like speed passes... Even if it's hard to get it playable with the power bar acting already as a passing power. And we will get lost while playing if the bar is going too fast from some player and slower from others we could lost gameplay uniformity. Analogic run with R2 but making it as a an obligation like Efootball (yes) more than a feature.
And on final not all people would like that game except... Us perhaps, but the feeling, controller in hands still the most important thing from a game.
A feeling is something pretty hard to reproduce : they did some miracle with PES PS2 or FIFA PS3 without mentionning X versions.
Nah, mental attributes are probably the most important thing for sure from FIFA. Crosses could be solved with long or aerial passes, but there's vision, composure on the ball, and a lot of things that are really important for a football player, that are separated from technical abilities.
I mean, obviously, your vision gets better when you have technicall consistency and confidence on your pass, yes, but there's more than that, is the part of being able to see certain play, being able to scan your companions position further, and being able to give a weighted pass much faster or almost without having to think it, even if it is more precise or not, but having an intention behind, etc. All that is vision. Vision is what, if playing manual passing, would separate the pass of being completely manual from having the intention to be played to a companion, and compensate the pass power or even direction for that companion.
So a player with high vision would make your through passes be more weighted, and specifically, more weighted towards anyone running into that position, and also, being able to see which companions might try to run into that position.
For me at least, this is how I see it. And you want to have this kind of things put into the game cause it is how they work in real world. Everyone can know where a pass should land, even do it, technically speaking. But having vision means knowing when and how a player will run into space. Also, vision should play a role into player's positioning, and even into team spirit. Players with higher vision would make other players to move into the correct space. When the COM plays with that player, he should select one pass or a different one, depending of his vision and playstyle, etc.
Also, composure is another great one. Being able to withstand pressure and such...
Dunno, I feel like there's a lot of things that FIFA could give to PES and viceversa, both in terms of stats, mechanics, and many other things, but undoubtly, PES needs to be reborn from ashes, and concepts like varycenter, being incorporated into new games, influencing animations and how players behave.
There are so many of them (gameplay, patches, lighting, physics, crowd, everything), that it literally takes months to explore them. I am really enjoying PES 2021 modded right now (the breadth and size of modding is always expanding), as well as several FIFAs. As for efootball, it will always feel completely soulless and empty to me unless there's a drastic change in direction, which seems unlikelier by the day.
