First of all Gary on celebrations:
If you do not press any direction on the pad then the player will automatically run to the corner and play his trademark celebration, his teammates will run after him and interact.
And now on the net editor:
You can choose the tension (loose or tight) and also the shape (what it looks like when viewed from the side – square or triangle).
Its a small feature but one that was not too tricky for us to put in and one that I know some of the guys on here were interested in.
Now, Glen on the replay feature:
At the end of the match there is a screen which allows you to pick highlights throughout the game and save those highlights.
That’s how it was structured in what we saw. I would assume its the exact same for online.
And finally, his info celebrations:
And players will also be able to interact with teammates after scoring a goal. Producers told us the team is aiming to have more than 90 trademark celebrations in this year’s game.
Glen Cooley – FIFA 11 Gamplay Preview Review J
Well now that the furore of FIFA 11 news coming out is starting to die down I thought it right to write up my review of what we played at EAC and also explain how the early community play tests work and just a n overview of our experience.
Most if not all of what I am going to talk about has been discussed by others or me. What I want to do is provide a little more insight and contextualise the feedback from my point of view and how I think the community will play and see the game.
Right enough waffle lets talk about how the events work.
As you know several lucky people get to go to Canada and get very early hands on with the next version of the game. There are two main reasons and a couple of collateral reasons they do this. The first and most important is so that they can listen to what we as a community want and show us how they are achieving what we want. The second reason is to listen to our feedback and discuss what we want and why we want it. These usually for lively debates between the community members and the senior development team and are enjoyable (especially as avid FIFA fans!)
So it starts with a Golden Ticket, well its not gold actually and its more of a boarding pass so not golden ticket like at all.
My first surprise was meeting Chris (HandofBeadle) and Spike (BigZombieMonkey). Both are top blokes it has to be said and throughout the week we had lots of laughs, debates and outright disagreements J
Right, we will skip the 9 hours of boredom on a plane (which as a smoker is a killer). Monday morning we go to the EAC studios. This is not to be understated the facility/campus is huge. I mean massive, i'm not sure but its probably visible from space So watching some of the people who’s first visit to the studio’s reaction was quite nice as its how I felt the first time I saw it.
You approach the studio up a large driveway passing the underground car park and drive up to the main building. The first thing you see is the Arena Pitch. Which always reminds me of that first time being Ronnie in a dark flood lit pitch (and then fluffing my shot wide).
The game play stuff is coming I promise J
After some paperwork stuff and visitor passes being issued we sit down in one of the EA University classroom/meeting rooms and are given a couple of presentations. The first by Dave Rutter which covers top level improvements and key areas they are looking to fix or improve based on the community. The next presentation is from Gary Patterson and Aaron McHardy. Gary and Aaron are the actual guys behind the gameplay for FIFA.
Throughout the presentations we are shown a series of tech videos (well once Dave R had figured out how to hook his laptop to the projector and several people came down from the IT dept to assist )
The tech videos are basically wireframe like clips of certain gameplay functionality. These are to illustrate specific improvement or to test outcomes of situations.
A set of these videos showed how the new player position and ball position/velocity affects shots. The demo showed a player hitting a shot from a ball that was coming across him. This demonstrated the way be ball will swerve with that type of shot and how hard it was to do it accurately consistently. I enjoyed that a lot as it meant that shooting will be less repetitive and feel more rewarding if it goes in.
Another highlight was a video showing multiple players challenging for the ball which is something that is severely lacking in previous FIFA’s.
The presentations also formed an ad hoc Q&A which was nice. Lots of questions about ping pong passing repetitive shooting were asked and answered.
After the presentation, we went on a short facility tour, and although this is nice I think I can speak for us all and say that we were itching to play the game after all the presentations and would have quite happily skipped the tour!
Right gameplay.
We are ushered in to a gameplay/user group testing room. This room has lots of TV’s and Xbox 360’s and a one way mirror at one end (that is used to watch focus groups and monitor reactions but wasn’t used as far as I know while we were there).
The consoles all have the XNA dev kit on them (or at least that’s what I think it is) and were switched on with the main FIFA 11 menu up. Because of the early nature of the build there are very limited options on the menu, settings and exhibition match are the only active ones.
Being eager, I jump straight in to an exhibition match and notice how the room full of 20 people becomes a lot quieter!
One last thing before jumping in to the gameplay. The game is very very early and we are told there are a few niggles, issue and things not working quite right which is normal but it helps to appreciate that in context. We were also asked to save replays of anything that we thought was odd, didn’t work right or had positive/negative feelings about (for example how the defensive AI moves etc.)
Finally game play. Well in all honesty the first couple of games are hard to gauge. Sure you can see and feel the improvements but because of excitement and being so familiar with FIFA 10 you don’t really start to play and use the improvements for a few games. It takes a while but when you start adapting your play is like a eureka moment.
The first improvement for me was the physicality. What this means is the players now shield, back in to and compete for the ball much more organically and less shoulder charging and comedy bouncing. You sense that Heskey will hold the ball up better than say Kuyt could. It makes you experiment and mix your play up. You probe in midfield, and either get impatient and try to use the wide outlets or get the ball in to feet of the striker to move the team in to the final third. This is much more like the football I used to play and the football I watch from the terraces.
The physicality now means that the players have weight, they have substance and it also means you can play the game slower without being steam rollered.
Passing, this is an interesting one. Because I don’t play ping pong it was less noticeable. Every pass I make, is usually after a controlled touch or a few steps which means that the new passing system wasn’t as evident to me. This is a good thing though, because when I played some of the guys from Germany it was clear that the new passing system was taking them out of their pong passing comfort zone. It also showed that both faster and slower players can play the game they want against each other.
There are several factors to the new passing.
- Playing the ball quicker reduces accuracy, not just directionally but in terms of pass speed.
- The more passes strung together the less easy they are to control and pass again first time.
- Because no team is full of Xavi or Fabregas’s (well until Arsenal sell him to Barca at least) trying to ping pong from a good passer to less accomplished passers is very very difficult
- Passes will now swerve, and can be over hit or under hit more frequently.
Overall the new passing system adds to the authenticity but not to the determent of having a balanced fun game and not to the extreme of full manual controls. Which although a hot and contentious topic on the forums it’s not a control system for everybody.
After adjusting my playing style to the new passing you start to see other improvements. Through balls are special now. There is a real satisfaction to getting them right. This is because of the decreased accuracy and need for appropriate power. Through balls now feel like a skill and give a sense of achievement. This sense of achievement though is short lived when you get through on goal………
Having played some attractive midfield play, managed finally to coax out a chance, I try one in the top corner. God damn it the goal keeper (Renia) takes a step and springs to his side and touches it away. It was at that moment I realised how much they were improving the game. I watched the replay back and you could see how the goal keeper now read the shot and sprung just like in real life to tip it wide.
In the presentation we were told how the goal keepers are now more life like (and thankfully they don’t leave their line so readily!) We were shown some videos on the differing styles of goal keepers like tall imposing Petr Cech and smaller more agile Reina. Cech obviously has advantages in being able to reach much further but Renia has the agility of an antelope (ok maybe not that much but you get the idea).
This is all good and adds to the player “personality” but in game it now means more organic and realistic GK choices in terms of saves and so forth. With this new GK AI multiple saves are more pronounced, the palm the ball less (but still too much for me) to strikers and the better goal keepers can adjust there body to make saves. This is most evident when they misread the trajectory and stick a hand out the other way or foot.
Another nice touch is the introduction of GK kicking styles. There is now a sideways (a’la cech) type kick and a normal up and under type goal kick. Very nice additions in my opinion. Again it all adds to the feeling of authenticity.
Would of like to of seen this after a deflection but I didn’t have any deflections so will have to wait and see how it looks and feels on that front I guess.
Personality+ Personally I think the build was too early for us to see the full potential of this. It was present but there is work left to do on it. A nice surprise is that in the build we had we had a lot of the new player faces. I found this out when I was showing Dave Rutter a replay and he zoomed in on Fabregas and said shhh they shouldn’t have been in our build yet!
It was hard in our build to tell the difference in the improvements in physicality, improved passing and more dependence on attributes. Again we will have to wait for later revisions or the demo to see the true potential of this and how it feels and looks in practice.
Some examples of personality+ were evident though. Brazils right back Alvez for example isn’t shy in going forward in real life. In fifa players now have individual styles of play. Alvez for Brazil has a “low” defensive work rate and actively looks to go forwards. He doesn’t neglect his defensive duties but gives that sense of wanting to get in on the play. The contrast is better though watching Rooney work his socks off up front while Berbatov just looks disinterested most of the time. Pretty much like real life to me J
Ooooo another thing was the way your team mates will celebrate with you, jumping on your back which again just adds to the warm fuzzy feeling of scoring a great goal.
Shooting and ball physics feel much better. Hitting low shots now feels better the ball zipping nice and low. Personally I’d like a little more pace on them but its subjective I guess.
Shooting seems to have more variety the ball doesn’t seem to hit the same spot each time and gives that sense of again being less predictable. I scored a few from distance out of a lot of attempts so it seems the shooting is more balanced and life like. The animations for shooting are more life like too with it taking a fraction longer to wind up for a long shot.
Other nice features were the new audio customisation. To demonstrate this we were taken deep in the EA studio to where they record and edit music, sound effects and so forth. We recorded a few chants that were to be put in to the game and watched in one of the “cinemas” at EAC.
After record the chants Jeff the audio producer for EA sports explained the new audio features. Firstly you can play your own track lists. This is something the community has wanted for a long time so is a nice inclusion.
The in game audio now lets you record and imports various audio files for aspects of the game. You can customise the song for when your team come on to the pitch, when you score and load authentic chants that are sung by your teams supporters.
For people in to this it’s really going to add to the realism. Not only will it really feel like your team, it will sound like you’re at the ground!
Video replays. Again another community wish was to be able to save videos to your hard drive and save replays from online games. Well EA have worked hard and you can now do that. At the end of a match all the highlights are listed and you can choose which ones to save. Finally we can have some proof on the forum of “I scored this amazing goal against a Real Madrid abuser with Barnet” J
The last thing before I stop waffling was the creation of a new pass while we were there. Gary had been toying with the idea of a new driven/bouncing lob and asked us what we thought to the idea. Everyone thought it sounded great so he went away, stayed late that night and coded it up. (Thanks Gary we do appreciate the effort)
The following day because the code was in a build that has new secret unannounced features in it Gary and Aaron brought now a full Xbox 360 Dev Kit (in a rather nice matte grey finish). We were under strict instructions to not restart the machine and had one of the dev team with us at all times to make sure we didn’t load another build (the dev kit machines allow you to store multiple builds of the game on it hence the security)
Unfortunately we only got to play a couple of games on that build but it was much better than what we had been playing all week. The new pass was a superb addition. Being able to put a ball at pace at chest height or bounce it in to a player was brilliant. I keep thinking of Heskey backing in to a player and chesting the ball down as the only way to describe this new pass!
Overall the game is looking so promising, I did have another moan to anyone that would listen that the second player press is too powerful and that defending should be a skill much like attacking so hopefully they will come up with some ideas on toning it down. Gary did say they had experimented with second press not tackling but jockeying but said that didn’t look or feel right so we will have to see what they do on that one.
I am probably missing a few things out so will added them in as I remember them.
Anyways hopefully you get a feeling for the new game and a little taste of how this early testing works and how EA are trying to listen to us.
My fingers hurt now.