FIFA 12 by Adam Neaves

Hi,
I used to be an active member on these boards for a long time was very involved here when FIFA 09, 10 and 11 was brought out. Having gone to the sidelines and playing FIFA 11 alot since it came out in October.
My realisation is that the AI or even the gameplay as a whole, needs to be scrapped and done from scratch again.
Now this isn't a dig at Gary Paterson or David Rutter, 2 guys who i have huge respect and gratitude to but this is just my OPINION and can be discounted by all if needed, but after all, this is a forum and we are hear to express our concerns and opinions.
My opinion is that if you watch a game of Football on the television (premiership etc) then you play a game on FIFA 11 against the CPU at the highest difficulty (where the AI is at its best) then you will see two different games.
Isn't the whole idea of the FIFA Franchise to make the gap between the virtual and real world of a football match very slim indeed.
It has been a while (FIFA 08 to be exact) where i have thoroughly enjoyed a FIFA game so much.
One example where I feel the AI is at a difference to the real world is that:
- Wing play (defensive) .. In real life for example, if you say, have a fast wide man running at a defender at speed, you will often see the LB/RB backing off the speed merchant and then going in for the tackle. In FIFA 11 we have none of this and it makes wide men seem almost not really relevant. This brings me onto my next point:
- Pace of game and players .. For me, this is the biggest and most important thing in a Football game period. The pace cannot be too fast or too slow and you will always see people complain (FIFA 09 - FIFA 11 there has been many complaints about pace, although FIFA 11 had it going in the right direction). The other thing is the pace of the players. Players like Nani, Ronaldo etc who are known for their speed, should not be getting caught by defenders when they jog past them. FIFA 10 was bad for this and FIFA 11 was an improvement, but for me, it wasn't an improvement that was justified.
The AI is said to be the most important part of any game, let alone a football game. While the AI of a football game still seems to be repetitive which concludes in people mastering the hardest difficulty after 5/10 games.. it makes Career Mode (however good it is) a failure. I say this because if the difficulty is easy, then when players are teams such as Tranmere Rovers and face Manchester United, it makes it easier to beat them. To make the game that much better and to keep people coming back to it after months and months of gameplay, you want even the best of players to be facing Manchester United and after saying "woah that was one hell of a challenge!" or getting thrashed by the utter quality of the team they faced
This would make Career Mode much much better IMHO.. It would really present the challenge of going from a League 2 to Premiership Glory, European... that much better..
This is where i think AI Sliders should be implemented.. it has worked very well for other games and should be something EA are looking at.
We all know that BAP was integrated into Career Mode this year, but on a whole it is still that much disappointing than it was when it was introduced 2/3 years ago. The concept on a whole is a great idea, but EA have ATM failed to deliver on BAP's Potential (Yes, i still think it has).
The AI of your team-mates is dreadful and you are left very frustrated in your team mates which will eventually end up in you ending it all together.. For EA to make BAP a success, they should not only improve the Team AI.. but IMO (Don't slate me for this anti-PES people) but take a look at Become A Legend on PES 2011. That mode has so much depth in and EA could do much more wrong than to look at that mode and take ideas of it
The last thing that i want to talk about is FIFA Clubs. In FIFA 09/10, it was a hugely impressive mode where players can join clubs and compete to become the best Club in the world. This presented a great challenge and playing other clubs online was a great feeling and scoring the winning goal against a club was brilliant..
However, again this is my opinion, while they made improvements into the mode in FIFA 11 (Cups etc) It again wasn't justified.
I was (id say) a very successful CDM in FIFA 09 and FIFA 10 and i loved being just in front of the back line and stopping the attacking play of the other side. I was really looking forward to building that success in FIFA 11 but once i had a couple of games, i lost the love of Clubs :)
This has to be vastly improved and this is my visionary for the future
FIFA Clubs/Online Manager Mode Combined..
Each club is made by a manager and that manager is allocated a Transfer Budget. The transfer budget is used to buy real players (online players) and the manager will bid to another club (owned by a real player) for one of their players..
For example..
Glen Cooley Bids £5 million pound for Midfield Meistro Adam Neaves..
It would then be up to my club manager to accept/decline the bid.. This would result in stories being generated in the virtual newspapers and maybe even when the player logged into FIFA 11, a message would pop up asking for an interview off the virtual newspaper. The player would then answer a number of questions and could even put a comment on.. This could end up with stories coming up in the Club Home page such as
Adam Neaves demands to leave <Club Name>
I really think things like that would make Clubs/Manager mode be absolutely awesome and it is something i would love to see being developed by the devs.
Each player would start off with a £100,000 starting valuation and would go up//down considering on a lot of factors such as: -
-Age
-Injury Prone
-Rating of a series of games (e.g. if a player gets a 7>10 rating for a length of time it will go up)
-Club Captain
Other factors would also come into factor here, but im sure EA could think of them.
Each Club would start off with a budget of £5 million pound and in each season have a couple of days/1 week to sign free players who are unattached..
I hope you enjoyed my article on how i think FIFA 12 can be the best Football game we have ever saw.
There are obviously many other things, but for now.. these are the things i wanted to share with you guys.
Enjoy
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|||I like that idea of club transfers. Maybe you could get players to say sign like a month or 2 week contracts to the club. Or even 3month etc. It would certainly stop the club jumpers. They would be tied to that club they have signed for, for a few weeks.
Maybe pay the VP wages, then the VP(player) can buy out his contract with that club, so the club doesnt loose out on funds. Then both parties would be happy.
I could see loads of ways to vastly improve clubs. But its wether EA will do it. To me it seems there main direction is UT. Its a money spinner. U only have to play that mode to see how well the gameplay works, compared to the normal H2H. Its so smooth.