Why FIFA is bad and why EA doesn't care

[nieudanybalet]

Okay, this will be a rant. Not meant to offend anyone, but I feel things need to be said.

Dear FIFA community,

We complain about this game every year, but I really think the line of what is permissable in an online video game has been crossed. Things have just gone too far.

Before going into the actual game mechanics, let's perhaps start with the long standing elephant in the room. The delay. Do you thing any of the game developers actually tried playing their own game during daytime? I mean, folks, it is just something you cannot unsee. You will have your full bars of connectivity, ping at 20 ms, but when the game starts, oh boy! The sliding, the lost input, the lack of repsonsiveness, the pitch seemingly being made of sticky mud. Toty players turning like bronze goalkeepers. Just wow. The worst part here, you may have this, while the guy you are playing is moving just fine. It's called one sided delay, we all know it's there and the netcode served to people is the reason for this! But wait, did you know the actual delay is pertinent also in the fut game menus? Yes, that is right, FIFA has  lag in its menus! What other online game can hail such an achievement! 

If by some miracle, playing at 2AM you actually get playable gameplay (I guess the only online title where such a term exists - playable gameplay), you just have to face the wall of the gameplay mechanics dished out by the people behing the game. The passing... oh the passing. What a beautiful disaster it is, not to be able to actually manually defend simple passes, where the AI simply adjusts the runs of the receivers, so that clearly poorly timed and aimed plays get rewarded. Trying to make a pass that actually makes sense and seems straightforward? Nope, that will not be made possible. Everything is backwards! Pass not going where you are clearly aiming? That's the natural thing in FIFA. The dribbling, where the fundamental method which should be left stick movement is made impossible, so people have to spam these overpowered moves that have no use in real life football!

Then there is the whole plethora of bugs, glitches, inexplicable occurences that are imposed on ous poor FIFA gamers! I mean the bugs that have not been fixed for years! The one where the pass is deflectd and the original receiver is locked on and there is no way to change your player, even though the guy locked on is like 30 meters away from the ball? You all know that, right? The attribution of possesion after players collide? You can see clearly who touched the ball last and the ball goes to the other team! I mean, you can actually pause the game in squad battles and clearly see this! The absurd no-touch penalties? The aburd inability to get the ball after you tackle properly five times in a row? The attackling players just ghosting through your defenders? The situations where your manually controlled players just go out of their way to let the ball run between their legs, when you defend a pass properly? The AI blocks? The absurd following more absurd. When will it be enough?

I mean, the bug in the squad menu, where you try to change positions of players within a formation and you cannot properly switch between players, so you have to go back and try again? This has been there for years and nodoby got around to fix that!

The matchmaking in fut champs? How many time have yout tried to get that E3 in your last game, at 22-7 and it turns out later, after having messaged you opponent that he was already 25-2?

The big things, the small things, everything! FIFA year by year seems like a half cooked beta of a product sold for the full price, using its consumers as beta testers!

People ask: will this ever change? Will the game producers actually step up and start fixing the game that we fell in love in years ago, but growing to hate as years go by?

Answers? I have none.  

[Izzy_FUT_Dubs]

@nieudanybalet To be fair, FIFA was fun when we thought of it as fun but these problems were always there, to begin with. Instead of playing seriously, just play for fun. FIFA is not a realistic game, and we all know that based on what goes on. So, why continue to treat it as so?

The problem is that we all want it to be realistic. We want it to work when everybody is on -- during peak hours. We want IF/Promo/Icons to feel like upgrades to every card but then scream P2W. We want Defenders to not be AI-controlled but then say defending is too hard and needs to be made easier. You get the point.

My advice is: don't take FIFA so seriously and play for fun. Or, take a break and chill. FIFA has many problems and I honestly don't see it working out anytime soon because EA can't please pros and casuals at the same time. That's the problem. There's no way you can make a game easy to play with but hard enough for people to not score 20 goals or have defenders save 20 goals. There has to be a bit of a compromise -- and people don't want that.

Hope you got something out of this. And, hope it has helped you in some way. I've taken many breaks from FIFA because I needed time to realize FIFA will never be what we want it to be, rather what we accept it to be.

Cheers!

[Izzy_FUT_Dubs]

@nieudanybalet I didn't say, "oh well, it is what it is, so why do you complain." I said if we can't come to a consensus as a community we will never resolve FIFA's issues. We can't please casuals and pro's alike because there is a complete difference in playstyle and skill.

Developers playing their own game does nothing for higher skilled players because they're developers and not pros. That's why they do betas and constant updates. Because they try to fix gameplay for both casuals and pros. But like I said, they change something to make it better for one side but it tilts the scale too much for the other side and now that side is complaining. We can never find a middle-ground because it simply doesn't exist.

[Chris5626]

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@Izzy_FUT_Dubs wrote:
@nieudanybaletI didn't say, "oh well, it is what it is, so why do you complain." I said if we can't come to a consensus as a community we will never resolve FIFA's issues. We can't please casuals and pro's alike because there is a complete difference in playstyle and skill.

Developers playing their own game does nothing for higher skilled players because they're developers and not pros. That's why they do betas and constant updates. Because they try to fix gameplay for both casuals and pros. But like I said, they change something to make it better for one side but it tilts the scale too much for the other side and now that side is complaining. We can never find a middle-ground because it simply doesn't exist.

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I agree with you to an extent, that potentially any gameplay changes EA make have the risk of being disliked by some players however that doesn't explain the lack of effort EA has put in to some game modes.

Take player career for example, the mode has had no improvements from FIFA 20 to FIFA 21 however thanks to bugs that have been present since launch the mode is essentially unplayable, players are played way out of position and important stats like assists and goals don't get tracked. Those issues aren't to do with EA making a change that some people didn't like, it's down to EA not showing enough care in what they do and now almost half way through the game's lifecycle major issues like these still aren't even being investigated with all of the dev's team focus being on FUT.

This board is full of examples of broken elements of the game, yes there will be some player preferences mixed in but most aren't that.

EA makes more money from FIFA than it ever has before by several orders of magnitude yet seemingly spend less time on quality assurance, bug fixing and customer service. None of those things are to do with the paying customers.

[Izzy_FUT_Dubs]

@Chris5626 I agree, the quality for career mode and other non-FUT game modes is terrible. There's literally no escape from FUT. XD

[whosgotthefiyah]

@nieudanybalet

Great post 100% agree.

[Chris5626]

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@Izzy_FUT_Dubs wrote:
@Chris5626I agree, the quality for career mode and other non-FUT game modes is terrible. There's literally no escape from FUT. XD

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So now the question is for those of us who want to play a football game rather than an imaginary sticker collecting game what do we do?

[whosgotthefiyah]

@Chris5626

What will happen is nothing. Then a couple of months before fifa 22 is released the usual suspects will be all over social media banging on about what great improvements they have made and all these shiny new features across all modes.

The game will be released it will be a reskin of fifa 21 the shiny new features wont be there and we will be in the same situation yet again the people that matter will then disappear and if we are lucky we might get a couple of pitch notes telling us "we hear you we are working on it blah blah blah" whilst actually not providing any information we don't already know.

There will be however be a regular supply of overpriced packs giving you 0.00000000001% chance of that great new player in FUT.

[nieudanybalet]

@Izzy_FUT_Dubs 

Okay,

Let's assume for the sake of this argument that it is difficult to get the balancing right to the broad range of players, from casual gamers to pros. Hence, the gameplay mechanics as they are. 

What about all the glitches/bugs/inexplicable occurences during the game? These are not design choices, right? This is what I mean, when I say, that it seems that people making the game are not even actually playing it. If they were, these bugs are so visible, that they would have been fixed a long time ago, right? Yet, they remain. There are so many of them? Wouldn't you agree that this particular fifa has many more then the ones before?

Another thing, the connectivity/netcode issues. Are these design choices as well? If you have a 98/100 rated connection (according to the official EA tool) and yet the game is impossibly sluggish, even with full bars and 19 ms ping, then how can you not get frustrated? It is so easy to distinguish between playable and laggy gameplay, even though the connection indicators remain the same. How should we treat that as passable, when all other online titles have no such issues, when you ISP is rock solid?

These are not design choices.

[whosgotthefiyah]

@nieudanybalet

Reading your OP there are actually some bugs, the one where you cannot switch player after the deflection in particular that were fixed in previous fifas (19 or 20 not sure) that means they actually fixed it then reverted it back and forgot to fix it again.



With the connection thing what gets me is the absolute refusal from them to talk about it or investigate it. The fact they have implemented all these new monitors and tools etc shows they know somethings not right.

I have brilliant scores on the connection various tools. Played plenty of games this weekend on 6ms ping yet still my players were moving like bronzes taking extra touches sliding all over the place having no acceleration not locking onto the ball etc etc

The other guys point about balancing there is there is plenty of scope to keep everyone happy in my opinion with different modes and settings. I think what everyone wants is a balanced fair game that runs smoothly . The pros want a skill gap which is fair enough and the casuals want a game they can enjoy there absolutely no reason we cant have both.