I don't agree with the argument about Football Manager etc. It's one that's popped up occasionally for years - especially when I was campaigning for FIFA to be more of a sim - and I don't really agree with it in principle. It's a slippery slope argument, as if the choices are we either go for all or nothing. We don't have to go 100% one way or the other - that's where game design comes in, and where the art involved in subconsciously getting players to play a certain way really shines through.
I always think based on what the ideal football game in 50-100 years would be, provided it was 1v1. In that ideal world, you would control players with your mind. There would be no controller. Playing the game would be about thinking the instructions you want your players to try and execute - 'pass into that space so he can run on to it', or 'run tight onto him so he can't turn around or pass to that player', or 'cross it to that particular space at the back post'.
The assist levels might change there in terms of letting the player decide exactly the best way to hit that pass/cross/shot, I suppose. So you could argue you're never fully free of interpretation of what assists should do. But ideally, just as I don't want footballers to be capable of routinely doing something they could never do IRL, I also don't want to move to a situation where the reason you don't try something is because you can't do it. That's a hole that Clubs fills, IMO.
I'll give manual another go tonight, but I've played it before and I've seen videos of others. If real football was like manual football games, then the short passing game would be more like 80's / 90's football. There would be a lot more long passes along the ground or in the air, and there'd be more dribbling because there's more control in that than in regular passing. And the sport would be really slow because that's how people need to set the game in order to have time to line up their pass/shot.
Loved Matt's vid btw, when he pointed out that saying 'play the game in the right way' is getting the order of things messed up. I've made that point about playing manual, and about how technically you could play FIFA or PES as if it was an amazing sim, but it would all come crashing down if you played someone who was just playing as a game and could exploit basic flaws.
I'm not playing a game to act like it's fun and realistic. If I'm having to pretend, then I'm not actually giving it my all, and it isn't genuinely exhilarating because I'm exercising restraint. I'm having to remember random rules I've made for myself. I get you can't get rid of every exploit - but the fewer there are, the more people turn to genuine tactics, like the long ball, or the short passing game, or quick counters, or building from a solid middle. There are several schools of thought, ways of playing the game which work or don't, and which beat and lose to other schools and have to adapt. It all evolves.
As soon as one exploit just works, everybody uses it, and there's only one or two schools of thought out there. And it's not football anymore.
I agree with that Manual passing isn't really absolute manual, L2 + x is though.
