FIFA 11 - The Little Things (The thinking mans FIFA)
A number of the UK's FIFA Community got together at EA's Guildford offices to play the FIFA 11 build demoed at E3 this week. We will be bringing you are update very soon, but in the meantime some of the lads have already posted their views. Check out Tom Mills (T-Mills-85's) wise words here...
I have to say first, after a day in EA's UK offices in Guildford, Phil (Mr UK FIFA) Wride took a number of us out for the evening to watch the England game and then drown our sorrows afterwards. Tom (Mr Manual) Mills spent the night with us, plus Dave (Dancing Dave797) Bryant, Kelley (FVPA) Lewis and Chris (I never manage to get on or off the train at the right place) Lloyd and what a cracking night we had.
Just to clarify the "little bold man" Tom refers to Dave797 dancing with was not me, although we did share steps on the dance floor during the night.
Tom gives a very interesting insight to his first play of FIFA 11, especially from his perspective as a "manual" player.
For those that didn't know i went to guildford yesterday and ate some free sandwiches.
Either side of the sandwiches, we were playing fifa11. We being me,dave797 (i am only posting this so early because he beat me to it last year, and he should be driving home now, if he even made it back to the hotel, dude can Dance!) HoB (honestly, when you told me who you were, i was stunned, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you in person and to find out the origins of your username) Dave Witts from sweetpatch(total gentleman, even once the beer started flowing) and some others whos names i cant remember because of beer.
Normal stuff really, went in, got a coffee, watched some videos, got on with playing. Dave and i were probably a little more sociable than last year but we still just grabbed a screen and tucked ourselves away.
I will do my best to answer any questions below, but only in relation to gameplay. If you ask about kits or leagues or player ratings i will probably laugh and then ignore the post. Sounds harsh but we had some rather awesome conversations last night and one of them was relating to the wealth of good feedback and ideas that get buried under threads like this gem. Can they finally get Clint Dempsey's model right?
Some of this will need to be updated once i get our notes back from dave, but i'll do my best with what my brain has held onto.
The first things that struck me was how often we were pausing the game and saying "did you see that?". There were so many little touches that smacked you in the face, purely because they havent been seen before. Beautifully simple things that bunched together make the game a world apart from the one we currently play.
Whoever put the mo-cap together this year needs a lalalalaing medal. The new tackling and defensive animations are top notch. They add so so much to the "feel" of the game. Playing as Terry later in the day, Dave brought Messi (i think) inside and looked to cut in. I just used Terry to go through him, taking the ball and the player. It looked wonderful. It felt just as good.
The new animations were a big talking point for us. They look awesome and there is a lot of variety. Some players went in high, some went lightly for the ball, some clattered through players and if they got the ball it was more luck than judgement.
Standing tackles improved a lot too. You could feel the difference between players and it was easy to tell what their reach with standing tackles was going to be. The system as Gary describes in his video works, and again it's a small peice of the puzzle but it's just as important as any other.
AI improvements were hard to spot. Defensively things are much much better. There is still a slight player switch lag as a few people mentioned. I can remember one specific move which saw me bring clichy up to the half way line, tracking a player. Dave turned him and dinked a ball towards the corner where clichy "should" have been, i was expecting carnage, a pacey player with a lalalala load of space to play with, but it was ok, because Nasri had seen Clichy pulled out of his position and had slotted himself in at left back to cover. It sounds like a small touch, but overall it makes a huge difference to how you can play the game, you can explore with defenders without having to worry about leaving big gaps. Another example would be with Dave playing as Barca. Puyol followed one of my players wide, ending up around where alves would play. Alves drops inside and covers Puyol. They stayed that way until Dave had won the ball back and moved forward. Once you see it for the first time, i promise you, you will smile.
I hope it's only the beginning of something i have moaned about before, player awareness. If they are now able to be aware of other players properly, and change their behaviour based on that, then i think a real step has been taken.
I can't honestly comment on ProPassing too much. I only played one game using assisted controls. With manual controls, it's much less obvious, its more like the margin for error has been toned so that you need to be spot on with the stick. It's less forgiving whn you are wide of the mark, thats probably the best way to put it. I was able to pick up and play in the same way i did in fifa10, there wasnt a learning curve for me.
At Phils reccomendation we played a couple of games with one of us playing the AI and the other watching. I was pretty impressed. The AI now does skill moves. Far too often. It works and it looks great, but it's over the top and needs toning down.
I honestly can't contain my excitement, because we were playing an unpolished build. We were given a list when we went in of known issues to ignore, i wont be discussing them, but i wanted to point out that we weren't playing final code or anything close to it, there is still time and room for more improvement.
The thread title will become clearer soon, but the important thing to remember is that this game is not a million miles away from Fifa10. What we are being given this year are touches, nuances, that build upon the existing game and take the realism and excitement to another level. It might sound like a rough deal but it's not.
Fifa10 was a brilliant foundation to build upon. The gameplay, bar some obvious issues, was excellent. So is Fifa11, but with so many small tweaks and nips and tucks that it does feel like a different game.
I'm rambling and i need another coffee, so i'll post this as is. Feel free to ask any questions. Ill do my best to answer them. There are many many things i havent covered yet.
To everyone i met yesterday. Thank you. I had a great time, met some top blokes and got drunk. Dave797, see you next year. hopefully. We need to get our heads together and arrange a night out again with all of us. If only so i can see you dancing with a little bald guy again. You're lucky my phone had no battery otherwise this post would contain extremely dodgy photos. It was probably the funniest thing i have ever seen.
Phil. Thanks for putting the day together and entertaining us. It was really appreciated and a pleasure to meet you. Well done for staying off the beer. i have no idea how you put up with us.
Cheers.
FIFA 11 - Dave797's Guildford Playtest
Following hot on the tail of T-Mills-85's wise words, we bring you Dave Bryant's (Dave797) thoughts here, after the UK Communities opportunity to play the E3 FIFA 11 build at Guildford on Friday...
After Dave's dancing performance with a "little bold man" (no it wasn't me), we bring you his review which he breaks down in to the following sub sections:
Pro Passing
Ping-Pong
Weight
Personality +
Animations
Game Speed
A New Pass
Some Negatives
**Disclaimer**
Whilst we weren't put under an official NDA as such there were things we saw that I cannot discuss. Any questions you have please keep them game play related, I can't talk about licensing, kits, stats and whether Titus Bramble wears a wrist band........
First of all a big thanks to Phil, our esteemed UK community manger it was a great day (and night) and I along with others really appreciated the ability to give feedback and see the game this early. I'll overlook the fact that your Cranberry juice cost more than 2 pints for the time being.
So on to the good stuff.....
Pro Passing
I hate tag line features which get slapped on the back of the box because largely they never live up to the promises their catchy name advertises. This however does. The error applied to passing not only covers direction but also power and bobble. On a number of occasions I said out loud “no you can't play that ball any more” in frustration as I was crossing the Fifa10/11 divide. Its harder, more varied and it makes the game play so much more realistic and organic. The inevitable loose passes mean you get more interceptions and random situations happening rather than the very structured and rigid Fifa10.
You also need to power up passes regardless of your controller settings. So assisted will do its usual job of helping with direction but you still need to judge the power yourself. Just tapping X will result in very short under hit passes. I managed to get a pretty good feel for it on Semi-assisted by the end of the day finding I could weight passes in to space and in front of players nicely.
But more than anything Pro Passing changes the way you play Fifa. You need to consider so much more before making the pass; the player you're using, am I under pressure, distance, pace its all now on us rather than assisted simply perfecting our actions. Couple that with the contextual error and you have something much more realistic and challenging.
Pro Passing is designed to tackle ping-pong and improve the passing mechanics but it knocks on and effects so much more.
Ping-Pong
Has Pro Passing killed ping-pong? Not entirely but its restricted it about as much as EA can without making things unplayable. You can still link multiple first time passes with good players but you can only do it over fairly short distances, not the 30 yard 180 degree ones we're used to in Fifa10 . So if you do find yourself up against Barcelona then yes because the players are so good its possible but hitting a first time pass 20 yards on the deck to feet now carries so much more error that its fraught with danger. You'll give the ball away and find yourself on the back foot more often than not which is exactly how it should be.
Weight
Interesting one this. It wasn't advertised or mentioned by EA really but the players and physics now feel like they have much more weight to them than before. Rather than player movement feeling very floaty and light to control players now move with purpose and with weight. Its difficult to describe because its all about feel not something tangible you can see on screen but I liked it and I hope it stays in.
Personality +
Not quite as influential as Pro Passing but still a big improvement to the game and the individuality of the players. Great passers like Fabregas and Xavi really stand out now and combined with the added error in Pro Passing you'll really need you're talented play makers to get on the ball as much as possible. The player attributes now seem to really effect player performance where as before a lot of players seemed the same regardless of whether their stats were better or worse.
Animations
EA have been hitting the mo-cap hard. There are so many new subtle animations dotted throughout the game. I really can't stress enough the great work EA have done in this area. On numerous occasions myself and Tom stopped games to watch back the simplest of things purely because the animations looked so realistic. There are multiple slide tackles, multiple standing tackles, new chest trap animations, shooting, passing, heading its been looked at. Although largely subtle they all add up to make the experience so much more varied and alive.
Game Speed
Very interesting this. I'm a huge fan of the slow setting on Fifa games I always use it where possible because I think normal in general is too frenetic and fast. But in 6 hours playing in Guildford I didn't change the speed setting from normal once because there was simply no need. The game speed for me was spot on, much slower than Fifa 10 allowing you to build up play and create time and space for picking passes. It looks like they have it spot on right now so I really hope they don't change it but any slow lovers still obviously have that further notch down but I didn't need it.
A New Pass
I was loving this, so much so that I probably annoyed Tom with it so that he now hates it . If you hold finesse (R1) and cross/lob pass (square) it initiates a low really driven cross field ball. Like your typical Steven Gerrard pass. In a word its amazing.
Some Negatives
To keep a bit of balance to the post I'll detail a few minor negatives. We had a sheet given to us before hand detailing errors that EA knew were in the game and hadn't been addressed yet which I did obviously see but wont mention as its down to the early state of the code. One thing we were finding with shooting was that players were using the outside of the foot shot far too regularly or going with their wrong foot. The latter is probably due to the state of the code but the outside of the foot shot was annoying me a bit because of its regularity. I was trying to drill the ball across the keeper and instead they were curling it towards the top corner. Which is fine because the animation is great and the adjustment is natural but it was a little too often for what should be a specialised shot.
Myself and Tom also had a minor gripe with throw-ins because they were locking on to players before the ball was thrown. Then to get them to swivel and change direction would take ages. Again perhaps due to the code but it was noted down.
There was also still some minor player switching lag where they'd stop for a split second as soon as you switch to them. Its an age old Fifa problem that's still there.
The good news is that we all have pretty substantial feedback documents to complete (yes they made us work) and get back to EA by Monday. So hopefully some of the bits mentioned above EA can look at based on the feedback from the day. Again I will stress it was very early code.
******************************
Right im done for now, there are a million other things I'd love to say and the game really is looking fantastic but this OP would go on for ever so its over to you. If you have any questions fire away and i will do my best to keep up, please keep it gameplay related.
One thing we were finding with shooting was that players were using the outside of the foot shot far too regularly or going with their wrong foot. The latter is probably due to the state of the code but the outside of the foot shot was annoying me a bit because of its regularity.
我们发现外脚背射门太多了,还有用脚和现实左右不符,后者或许是早期版本的缘故,但是外脚背多得我实在有点烦.作者: likeff8 时间: 2010-6-20 14:16:03
Game Speed
这一点非常有趣。我是一个慢速设置的死忠，只要有更慢的设置我肯定选更慢的，因为我觉得默认的速度都是近乎激进的狂躁。吉尔福德的六小时游戏时间我却没有这么做，因为没必要（废话，兜圈子），意思就是普通设定就已经很慢很慢了。游戏速度很正对我而言，比10慢很多了，这样就可以让你游刃有余的稳步推进，适时创造时机和寻找漏洞并预留出接球空间。这样就很好了，希望他们继续保持住这种态势，但是有些比我还要极端的龟速者显然还要要求再慢一个档次，但我就敬谢不敏了。
A New Pass
我很喜欢这一条。我老是用它去恼Tom所以他现在很讨厌这个（典型的闷坏型），如果你按着技巧射门键（R1）和长传键，就会发动贴地球，就像斯蒂芬杰拉德的典型传球，总而言之，言而总之，就是太神奇了。
Some Negatives
为了使这篇文章不至于被喷至枪文，我还是要说几点小的缺点。我们手头上有一份单据，上面列举了一些艺电已知但未处理的细节问题，我也亲眼看到了但是我却不想说，因为是早期版本的缘故。一是我们发现用外脚背射门次数超常规了，或者是球员们都该换脑子了，都不用利足踢球了。后者更多是因为版本问题，但是外脚背射门次数多实在的恼人。我练习吊门，结果球总是曲线救国，还总是打边角。也还好了，因为动画设计太棒了，修正也很完美，但还是有点过了，那也应该是一种专属射门才对。
我和Tom对于边界球也有点小诟病，因为抛球之前球员就被锁定了。那样的话让他们虚晃或者是变向就要花上好几年时间了。再次，也许是因为版本问题，但是却被记录下来了（如果是版本问题，现在版本更新了，就应该不存在了，记录下的是没有被解决的问题）。
还有一些球员切换的反应差，你切换到他的时候他得先愣一会儿，明清时候的事儿了，结果问题现在还在。
好消息是，我们都有可观数量和质量的反馈文件在手（当然这是功课），周一哥还会再回EA来，所以，可以预见，届时其中一些提到的问题、观点会闯入EA的视线（幸亏他们不用做翻译功课）。最后，我还是要唠叨，这是狠狠狠早的版本。
暂且就这些了吧。还有百万件事情我想说（快别说了，要人命了）还有就是游戏真的棒极了，但是这个OP（I don't know it stand for what）将永不停歇，再有，就是，完了。如果你们还有什么热烈的问题，我会尽力跟进的（我不会了）。但是要保证跟游戏相关。
谢谢
