FIFA 22 - Gameplay Improvements Deep Dive (Part 2)

[ChaseB]

For part one, we focused primarily on the attacking side of the ball. In this second...

Written By: Kevin Groves

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[electrickeeper]

Quote:

If EA wants a better differentiation between players, then the company needs to focus on attributes and traits, perhaps utilizing the full scale of the 1-100 rating. It might hurt some players’ feelings when they see how lowly rated they are, but it’s one way to create a separation of players when it comes to skill levels.

One of my favorite sliders in any game is Madden's minimum speed slider. I wish it made its way into FIFA.

Granted, it would be nice if the differentiation came in the game already and we didn't need to tweak it as consumers, but the option to do so is nice.

[Chrisx]

In the unlikely case that someone from EA is reading.

I didn't buy/play fifa 20/21 and don't really like any Fifa past 17. Simply put, no midfield, no fouls, no AI (can't stand 1v1s), zero interest in what "competitive" has become and the gameplay is simply not good enough for CM.

It looks like they're considering more gameplay options...fine.

Please, for the love of god:

1) Defensive awareness or whichever new stat is supposed to help with defending: Has to be a new slider. Sliders exist. You haven't done ANYTHING new with them since Fifa 13.

2) Better defensive AI promised for competitor mode only. Why? Should be an option for everyone. Better defending for more realistic gameplay, skill moves belong in volta.

It really shouldn't be that hard. If the game can re-introduce some midfield resistance and make me use my brain for passing, like in the past, then we're back on speaking terms.

Otherwise, see you next year I guess

[TripleJay_X]

Quote: Originally Posted by Chrisx

In the unlikely case that someone from EA is reading. I didn't buy/play fifa 20/21 and don't really like any Fifa past 17. Simply put, no midfield, no fouls, no AI (can't stand 1v1s), zero interest in what "competitive" has become and the gameplay is simply not good enough for CM. It looks like they're considering more gameplay options...fine. Please, for the love of god: 1) Defensive awareness or whichever new stat is supposed to help with defending: Has to be a new slider. Sliders exist. You haven't done ANYTHING new with them since Fifa 13. 2) Better defensive AI promised for competitor mode only. Why? Should be an option for everyone. Better defending for more realistic gameplay, skill moves belong in volta. It really shouldn't be that hard. If the game can re-introduce some midfield resistance and make me use my brain for passing, like in the past, then we're back on speaking terms. Otherwise, see you next year I guess

i fully understand you, but it's like asking the evil to do someting "good" and all this without even selling your soul to them....nah, that's not how it works and never worked, but correct me if i'm wrong. EA never cared about full realism aka simulation mode, in none of their sports titles.

The only thing you can hope for, are mods from the pc-community. That's the only reason i even start playing fifa21, which i bought through gamepass which did cost me 1€ for 3 months in a special offer....should be something like 5-10 cents Microsoft transfers to EA Sports from me as share hehe ... omg, i think i'm evil too LOL

[ImmortalMindz]

Great write up as always and I agree on most points. Only thing I disagree about is whether player switching should be such a contributing factor to the skill gap. It's unavoidable to a certain extent but for me, the skill gap should primarily come from aspects of the game directly tied to football, whereas player switching is purely a video game mechanic.

Regardless, I think we can all agree that player switching needs to be much improved and the updates sound promising.

I'm also not so pessimistic about the new 2nd man press options or the clearance options... IF this means those parts of the game work better now. No control over where clearances went was a massive pet peeve for me, meanwhile if the new 2nd man press mechanics mean that overall we have a deeper and more viable way of defending as a team, I'm okay with it. But yeah, if it's not done well then the stamina bar and player attribute influences could really suck.

And totally agree with Chrisx - why on earth do we need these different options for difficulty and AI? Why aren't these just rolled into the difficulty settings? This might be the only new update I'm totally bewildered by. Just don't get it. Like, I'd love to play with the defensive settings of competitor mode but don't want to deal with silly tricks from the CPU all the time, ugh.

[Chrisx]

Quote: Originally Posted by ImmortalMindz

the skill gap should primarily come from aspects of the game directly tied to football, whereas player switching is purely a video game mechanic.

In my opinion it single-handedly makes both defending & attacking worse. The defending part is obvious, constant mindless player switching as the ball is passed around trying to block a million passing lanes per second as no other player will do so on his own.

On the attacking front, your passing game is transformed from having to watch all opponent players and pick your passes carefully, to just avoiding the one player who is allowed to defend/intercept.

This is probably worse for the game than having to constantly player switch. A bad pass should not work, no matter if it's intercepted by a human or an AI player. It was a bad pass to begin with.

So, it's something that makes defending sweaty & monotonous and attacking much more trivial and less enjoyable. If everyone enjoys attacking football as much as they say they are, then shouldn't the skill gap be in attacking and in creating the space and wouldn't that be much more enjoyable? I think it's all a bit backwards... Yay, let's make a football game with a focus on player switching and let's make attacking and scoring goals trivial and joyless! Sounds fun.

[KG]

Quote: Originally Posted by TripleJay_X

i fully understand you, but it's like asking the evil to do someting "good" and all this without even selling your soul to them....nah, that's not how it works and never worked, but correct me if i'm wrong. EA never cared about full realism aka simulation mode, in none of their sports titles. The only thing you can hope for, are mods from the pc-community. That's the only reason i even start playing fifa21, which i bought through gamepass which did cost me 1€ for 3 months in a special offer....should be something like 5-10 cents Microsoft transfers to EA Sports from me as share hehe ... omg, i think i'm evil too LOL

The bad part about what you wrote is that the PC version most likely won't have HyperMotion and some of the other features that are exclusively on Next-Gen. I haven't seen any credible sites report this but this seems to be the trend with PC as they're always a year behind. I really wanted to try out some FIFA PC mods this year but alas I'll have to wait I guess.

Quote: Originally Posted by ImmortalMindz

Great write up as always and I agree on most points. Only thing I disagree about is whether player switching should be such a contributing factor to the skill gap. It's unavoidable to a certain extent but for me, the skill gap should primarily come from aspects of the game directly tied to football, whereas player switching is purely a video game mechanic. Regardless, I think we can all agree that player switching needs to be much improved and the updates sound promising.

Thanks Immortal!

In regards to the skill gap...I think that you're absolutely right that some of it should be tied to football knowledge but there needs to be something that ties back to being better at FIFA or "insert any video game" here. Of course the new switching systems have to absolutely work as intended but also have enough to offer enough risk/reward that makes mastering one of them an advantage over those who don't. I probably should have stated that "switching" shouldn't be the lone or even the largest factor in creating a skill gap. For me, that should be what happens when you take assists out of the equation. Let me see those FIFA YT'ers try to play a forward first time pass blindly when they're facing their own goal and getting closed down. They took baby steps towards this with some of the competitive settings (manual jockeying, semi through-balls, etc...) so that's encouraging but if you want to make ratings matter AND create a skill gap than there's even more they can do.

[TripleJay_X]

Quote: Originally Posted by KG

The bad part about what you wrote is that the PC version most likely won't have HyperMotion and some of the other features that are exclusively on Next-Gen. I haven't seen any credible sites report this but this seems to be the trend with PC as they're always a year behind. I really wanted to try out some FIFA PC mods this year but alas I'll have to wait I guess.

according to EA's sheet-paper, 13 features are missing from the NextGen vs PC. PC players seem pretty upset about this quite huge difference this year, quite understandable. My guess and my bet would be Sony&Microsoft are paying for this '1 year exclusive shi*. No doubt, FIFA is a big$eller and now even for the pricetag of 80€! That's what makes sense from a business side. Epic Games is doing the same shi* on PC.