EA has released the first screenshots of FIFA 10 on the Nintendo Wii. Much Like Grand Slam Tennis, the games has a stylised look but in this game the football players look more realistic than the tennis players in grand Slam Tennis.
Showing posts with label FIFA 10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FIFA 10. Show all posts
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
EA - FIFA 10 Online Producer Blog
EA have uploaded a blog by on the online producer. it talks in great depth about how the online part of the series evolved from FIFA 04, to its current peak with FIFA 09 and the 2 Million-match-per-day bar that they reached back in march.
For FIFA 10, EA are going to not have custom teams available for online games, nor will they encourage players to play against a specific team. they have also made a big effort to stop all exploits and faster punishment and recognition of those who cheat the system.
Online Producer Blog
Christophe Labrune
FIFA 09 was the year of Online for the FIFA series. Usage more than tripled over FIFA 08 and each day since launch has seen more than 1 million matches completed. We even broke the 2 million-match-per-day bar in March.
Let’s step back for a bit, and see where this all came from...
FIFA console and online – the early days
I was brought on to the FIFA 2004 team as the PC and Online producer. Only PC had online play at the time, and the idea was to follow the early online success of console games like Madden. Internally, we wanted to focus on gameplay and Manager Mode, and we didn’t know what to expect of online on a non-PC platform. It was up to me to find that out!
We implemented 1-vs-1 gameplay on PS2 and focused on making the experience stable and fun. While testing and tuning, we started realizing how much potential Online had for FIFA.
[Side Story #1 – At E3, in 2003, we demoed very early PS2 online code on a big screen, during Sony’s conference... The game would 100% crash if you scored, triggered a cut scene, or tackled. The 2 minutes we spent playing online - me in Vancouver, the product manager at the conference - were the most intense in my whole life. I ended up taking a shot, missed it, but not close enough to trigger a cut scene, and we stayed alive!!!]
Once FIFA 2004 shipped, the early going was slow, with online usage mostly concentrating in North America. The year after, FIFA 2005 saw the arrival of Online on Xbox, and more and more people were playing every day. Learning from the first year, we had made the game more stable, had improved match-up and cheat detection, had cleaned up connection issues. Europe started playing more online, a trend that would continue in the next years.
The arrival of Online Team Play
Let’s fast forward to FIFA 08 and the 5-vs-5 update.
Ta-da! A dream had come true... play as a team, online, against another team of human players. The fact that it was delivered through an update was a tell tale sign that times had changed and that Online had become super important. Making an update is hard, indeed, as you work past the final date of the project (i.e. you go from crazy-tired to almost-zombie) and eat away at resources scheduled for the next iteration. However, 5-vs-5 online was considered a major addition and we couldn’t wait another year to get it out.
It was so successful that FIFA 09 took the obvious next step – 10-vs-10. Every outfield player controlled by someone anywhere in the world. Wow.
First though, we had to get to every outfield player controlled by someone anywhere… on the development team floor. The tech was such a jump over what we had done before, that it materialized only very late and very painfully. We spent long hours gathering people around to organize sessions, shouting over the cubicle walls to go into Quick Match at the same time. A chore at first (we were crashing a lot!), it slowly became a great time for all involved, with stability improving. At the end, we were all cheering on goals scored and laughing at badly timed tackles – ‘hey you took me out, we’re on the same team!’
Now that 10-vs-10 started fulfilling its promise, we had to make sure we had a good screen flow to support it. Quick Online Team Play was one avenue, but Clubs was the bigger ticket item. To play as a team, you have to play with friends, or at least with a group of people with a common gaming vision. And Clubs were the way to get these same-minded people together over multiple matches.
Unfortunately, with time running short on FIFA 09 development, we didn’t have the chance to iterate as much as we wanted on our Clubs feature. And, as you have told us multiple times, it showed. Clubs matches were hard to get into, involving sitting patiently for lengthy periods of time in the Room, most times failing to find opponents in a timely manner.
We saw this ourselves when we created a dev team Club, after FIFA 09 shipped. Nothing like playing in the ‘real world’ to get the best feedback. We were frustrated to have come short on this feature… and swore we would do better on FIFA 10. The 10-vs-10 gameplay itself was there, was fun, and people were definitely enjoying it! We just had to polish flows in and out of Team Play. And also not forget the rest of Online, following the comments that you guys in the forums were leaving for us.So we started working on FIFA 10 Online.
[Side Story #2 – So, right, I am the producer… but what kind of an online gamer am I? I started with a terrorist vs counter-terrorist First Person Shooter, while at Infogrames. Yep, playing at work! Got into the Elves vs Orks vs Humans RTS (version 3) a tad later, while a tester at EA. Yep, still playing at work! I finally played a bit of a turned-based French MMO for a while. Guess where I was playing it…
And what kind of a FIFA Online gamer am I? I must admit, I’m not too good at 1-vs-1, my favorite matches being when I can play my home team Metz, against other 2-to-3 star teams. I am a much better 10-vs-10 player, because I tend to play my position, I stay disciplined, and I focus on making the right play.]
So now, let’s go over what you can expect from FIFA 10 Online.
1-vs-1 is still the cornerstone of online play…
As much as we love our 10-vs-10 modes, 1-vs-1 is still, by far, the most played mode in FIFA, offline and online combined. It is actually likely the most played mode in all Sports games, period. As a result, we spend a lot of time keeping it stable, fun and safe.
… And 10-vs-10 is now your playground
We are providing you with the stage. Up to you to find the Club that you like, with the friends of your choice. We vastly improved the usability of the Club screens, making it easy to get into games. We show you more and better player stats, so that you can have that little internal competition going. We tell you who the best Free Agents are, if you are in the business of running a competitive Club. We even tell you who the best players in the world are!
We will also be using the web (Football World) as an extension to the feature, so that you can check out your Club status when not at your console.
We are confident that the improvements we have made will make Clubs an even bigger hit!
Everyone should play within their comfort zone
Some play for fun, some play for team pride (or glory hunting), some play to be the best out there. Some play for all three reasons! The idea is to make sure everyone gets a chance to stay within their comfort zone.
- Our Matchmaking logic has always matched in priority users from the same region, and within the same level ranges. We improved this again (especially in Clubs) and are showing the range searched in the matchmaking screens. In FIFA 10, you will see when your search hasn’t returned results within your range and is expanding to different levels. You will be free to cancel then, and possibly refine your search.
- A common complaint we hear is the lack of visibility in our ranking formulas. We addressed this, so now, at the end of each game, you will see how many ranking points you got, broken down by criteria: team level, rank level and our brand new match performance rating. Even if you lost, having played the game well (good passing % for instance) will get you extra ranking points.
- Something else we added after reading the forums – more end of match options. In 1-vs-1, you can end the match as a draw. You can actually see what your opponent is choosing: agree to the same choice, and off you go again. Disagree, and the session simply ends. We tried this end of match flow in 10-vs-10 but ultimately left it out, as it proved messy. 7 would agree to rematch on one side, 5 on the other… No way everyone would agree. So we left it at improving screen flows, so that finding a new session to play as a team is super easy.
- No more ‘any’ setting that imposes settings on you. This was a bug, and ‘any’ now means what it should have meant in the first place: ‘I don’t care for that setting’.
- While we are on the subject of settings…. You can search for matches by team level, with multiple ranges available. You can also create 5-vs-5 matches again. And we are improving the search logic for control assistance settings. Lots of good stuff!
- Some modes are not for everyone. If you play the FIFA Interactive World Cup, be ready to face the toughest competitors, in more restrictive matchmaking conditions. FIWC is now Quick Ranked only, as the community pointed to us that top players ‘chose’ the matches they were playing. If you are good, you should play anyone and win. We are also leveling all teams, similarly to Clubs – we want it to be based on skill alone. Call that tough love for our best players out there… Qualifying for the next FIWC Final will take 110% dedication!
Online Fair Play needs to be enforced
In the end, great online features do not matter if we cannot enforce Fair Play. FIFA 09 saw an increase in cheating, which, to be honest, caught us somewhat by surprise. We were so happy about our offering, that we forgot for a second how petty people can be sometimes. And how willing they are to defeat a system to gain anything out of it. Aided by some community members, we were able to track down most cheat mechanisms. We fixed some (custom teams in FIWC), addressed others by punishing offenders (repeat wins against same opponents), while some others had to wait until FIFA 10 to be addressed (original teams in Clubs).
This is our pledge for FIFA 10:
- No more custom teams in ranked games. Their presence in FIFA 09 Online was a bug, and we are implementing foolproof checkpoint-based loading and unloading of squads in online matches. This also applies to original teams in Clubs.
- Diminishing returns for playing repeatedly against the same team. The more you play someone within a close period of time, the less ranked points you get. Ultimately, it is not even worth the effort. And to those who tried to hide their tracks by playing other modes in the middle of winning streaks… This won’t work anymore. Nice try though.
- No more game exploits. Halfway goals are gone, goalkeeper 6-sec exploit is gone. CR7 is still there however, so use our brand new Training Mode to learn how to better defend against him…
- Faster identification and punishment of cheaters. Never say never… if someone finds a way to consistently cheat our game, our improving stat tracking will flag inconsistencies in their logs, and we will find and punish them. We are actually setting up a Live Team, whose responsibility will be to track down suspected cheaters.
- As a minor but nice new safeguard, we now disconnect players who idle for too long in 10-vs-10. No more AFK’s getting control of the ball as the last defender!
- What about disconnects? For this one, we cannot do any better detection than the one our current system is providing. Peer-to-peer means that connections can be lost for network reasons, freak outages, anything really. Understanding how you connect to the internet and setting up the connection in consequence is key, but we still cannot guarantee 100% connection results. We will strive though to keep explaining how to properly setup internet, as it is definitely not as easy as plug-and-play! And, oh, downloading risqué videos is a major cause of network disruption, so don’t do it!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
EA Is Looking At Supporting FIFA 10 Throughout The Football Season
I Asked EA if we can expect FIFA 10 to be supported throughout the Football Season after the apparent success of the DLC that FIFA 09 received. they replied that "we will be looking at ways to continue the life of FIFA 10 throughout the football season".
They couldn't talk specifics, but it would appear that we can to see some sort of DLC for FIFA 10 during the season.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
EA - FIFA 10 Developer Blog 1
EA have released the first, of what i assume to be many, Blog post regarding the new FIFA 10. In the Blog, they discuss the changes they are making to the FIFA series over last years game, whilst discussing how they listened to critisism about FIFA 09, what some exploits where and what is being done about it in FIFA 10. the gameplay as a whole is going to be refined, whilst they discuss how the game will innovate in cool ways.
They mention that there are more features yet to be announced in the game, that will be unvieled throughout June, July and August.
Blog Post
Blog - 1
David Rutter, Line Producer
FIFA 10 X360 & PS3
By now you should have heard a fair amount about what’s in store for FIFA 10. I’ll cover them again here shortly – but we’ve a lot more coming soon too. Throughout the end of June I’ll be visiting London, Paris, Munich, Madrid, Milan, Warsaw and Moscow to get our game in front of more journalists and unveil a number of additional new features we have deliberately not mentioned yet. And during 19th to 23rd August we’ll be proudly showing the game at the Gamescom in Cologne with some more new features.
Anyway, back to the here and now.
We’re really proud of FIFA 09. Quality wise the game was up there, but being football and football game fanatics we’re never satisfied. So with FIFA 10 we wanted to address 3 key things.
1-Refine our gameplay
2-Respond to feedback from our Fans
3-Innovate in some really cool ways.
About 70% of our effort went on the first 2 items, whilst the remaining 30% was spent on the very cool new innovations we have already revealed and others that we will be revealing in the coming months.
Taking each in turn
Refining our Game
When we look at FIFA 09 the overall quality of the gameplay is good. We’ve been building our ‘Next Gen’ gameplay for three years, and we have managed to address most of our fundamentals to a really satisfactory level. However there were still some frustrations – and we wanted to address them. Week in and week out when we watch real football games we see things that help us to identify how real football players behave, and express themselves on the pitch. With this in mind we focused on a heap of things this year, namely:
Urgency: We wanted to replicate the degrees of urgency on the pitch. When players aren’t involved in immediate ‘action’ they’re more relaxed. As play gets closer they become more alert and responsive to what’s going on around them. So in FIFA 10 this year you’ll see a lot of different motions being used dependent on the state of the play, and the ‘threat’ of the situation. We’ve also worked on new Face Ball logic, to ensure that players are correctly following the play and better prepared to react to the situation. This work even moves into players getting out of the way of teammates passes and shots, and players throwing themselves at the ball with effort – things like diving headers, sliding shots, falling clearances etc.
Trapping: Trapping is how the player gets into a position to control the ball, and how they control it. This year we wanted to get away from inappropriate ‘earliest’ trapping, where a player might move to a position where they would get the ball to touch them as soon as possible, to an ‘easiest’ trapping system, where players move to a position to get the ball under control as easily as possible. Essentially we gave the players more intelligence and awareness of where the most ‘natural’ trapping position is. The net result – a more responsive ball control mechanic to get the ball on the ground, and under control.
Positioning: This year we wanted to ensure that players had more awareness of where their teammates were. A new system call ‘Position Priority’ makes sure that Defensive Midfielders cover at the back if a Centre back has gone up for a corner – and they won’t leave their post until it’s safe for them to do so. Similarly in attack supporting players make more elaborate runs, analyzing space more effectively to curve, stay onside and create space for passes.
Passing: Yet again there was a lot of ‘threat’ analysis work going on. Passing players now have a greater understanding of the space ahead of teammates to make through balls more effective.
Shooting: We really wanted to improve the way the ball moves this year. So we created a tool that enables us to create a context sensitive shooting mechanic. What this means is we can tune the error on shots based on the situation. Factors during a shot like the ball, foot and movement of both now will have the correct effect on the ball and lead to some really cool looking shots.
Defending: We worked not just on the positioning as mentioned above, but also on the slide and standing tackles, and momentum on both. For slide tackling, good players now slide further, so you’ll have more reach. They also have better targeting – so you’ll generally go for the ball rather than the player. Obviously with more reach, you’ve got to time them better, otherwise you’ll be picking yourself up, as the attacker is bearing down on goal. The standing tackle, which was very powerful in 09, is now less forgiving. Defenders will use more momentum in these tackles, so again, if you miss time – you’ll be committed to the wrong direction.
Keepers: Lots of improvements here. We’ve looked at interception logic – calm and collected in low threat situations, through to punches under pressure. Again, lots of urgency work too. The keepers are now far more aggressive coming off their line, but if caught off their line they can scramble back to scoop the ball out of danger. We also worked on the goalies momentum to ensure his saves are realistic.
There’s a heap more too – and I’m sure in upcoming blogs by Creative Director Gary Paterson and gameplay producer Aaron McHardy they’ll be discussing these, and much more, in lots of detail.
Responding to Feedback:
So as I’m writing this we’re nearing the 300 millionth game of FIFA. What a number. And what a lot of feedback. For me feedback has taken 2 forms.
1 – Frustrations
2 – Requests
and I’ll take each in turn…
Frustrations: I’m on the forums a lot, posting and reading. There are a lot of people who love the game, and there are a lot of people who discover, report or exploit things in our game that they’re unhappy with. So, we really want to make the people who have legitimate gripes happy, and the exploiters play fair. Some of the things we’re changing are:
1.Stopping lofted through balls leading to 1 on 1 with the keeper.
2.Preventing goals being scored from kick off
3.Improving shooting so you don’t hit the woodwork so much
4.Making our movement animations look better
5.Working to make offsides less frequent and the advantage rule more intelligent
6.Starting to remove scripted graphical sequences and adding quick free kicks.
We’ve done a lot more too – but this should give you a sense of how much we are actually listening to the frustrations people are telling us about.
Requests: The second part of responding is requests. This year we’re proud to announce that we’re including a Practice Mode within FIFA 10. Using the Back/Select button from the 1 on 1 arena, you’ll be able to bring up a menu enabling you to choose to play a practice match or set pieces. You can change the number of players on each side, and a little blog exclusive here – it’s multiplayer too. Only locally though – you can’t have your online friends join your practice match. But 5 v 5 outfield players, on a full size pitch is now a reality
Innovations
This year we really wanted to change the way the game played. One of the big things we wanted to do was firstly change the player control mechanic, but also to give people more freedom to express themselves realistically on the ball. We’ve managed to do this in 3 ways this year:
1. 360 Degree Dribbling
2.Skilled Dribbling
3.Freedom in Physical Play.
360 Degree Dribbling:
Believe it or not the players in FIFA 09 could only move in 8 directions. Up/Down, Left/Right and Diagonals. You might not have noticed it, but at times this led to a feeling of frustration in the way players dribbled and turned with the ball. 360 Degree dribbling totally frees you from those 8 directional constraints. It’s the first time ever in a football game. Literally a super fluid way to move with the ball. We’ve introduced a larger area of ‘control’ in front of the players, wider dribble touches and a much more responsive and accurate pad reading system to allow you to go wherever you want. With practice it’s even possible to switch the ball from one foot to the other.
Skilled Dribbling
In addition to the 360 system above we wanted to give skilled dribblers the ability to rapidly move the ball laterally. Imagine you’re down near the corner flag and are being pressed by a defender. By pressing the top left bumper you can take rapid, high fidelity touches of the ball to jink left and right to throw defenders momentum. It’s also useful in other areas of the pitch. I like to think of it as a more accessible skill move.
Freedom in Physical Play:
With the wider dribble touches we added a new collision sharing system. In combination with the increased area of possession you’re looking at ‘overlapping’ areas of control. A true fight for possession when you’re shoulder to shoulder. It’s more varied, and when the players are evenly matched, can lead to some great extended and less predictable physical interactions on the pitch.
It’s not just all about gameplay though.
Manager Mode:
We’re fully aware on the team that Manager mode is HUGELY popular. Outside 1 v CPU and 1v1 play it’s the most played gamemode in the game. Using our ‘responding to feedback’ tag line, we just couldn’t ignore the volume of requests coming in to address a number of areas in this mode. We’ve improved 50 major components to Manager mode in the following areas:
1.Match Realism
2.Transfers
3.Player Development
4.Football Atmosphere
Match Realism:
We’ve totally reworked our simulation engine. Results for Sim’d games are now generated minute by minute and are based on individual team strengths and weaknesses - down to the level of individual players, defensive, midfield and attacking lines, and formation. From the simulations we run here – we’re really happy with the realism of the results we’re generating, and our league tables look pretty believable too
Authentic Transfers:
In 09 we were guilty of using financial clout as the main decider for transfer success. This year there’s more decision points. Whilst money is still very important, career prospects and squad opportunity also play an important role in the success of a player’s decision. You’ll also have much more intelligent AI competing against you.
Player Developments:
We wanted to make sure that players developed believably for FIFA 10 – so we’ve invested heavily in making intelligent player growth curves based on a number of factors. These physical, mental and technical curves effect how well a player will develop, as well as where the developing player is based and how we’ll they’re performing.
Football Atmosphere:
The world of football is constantly changing, at a high and low level, and we wanted to inject some much needed authenticity here. You’ll see AI rotating squads based on match performance, have real-time transfer updates on a week by week basis and summaries of what’s going on in your football world.
The Future:
We’re looking at Manager mode as a multiyear investment for us. It’s going to take us a little while to get to a Manager mode that matches the quality of our on pitch gameplay – but we’re really committed to pulling this off
In Closing:
As I mentioned that’s about all I can talk about at the moment – and I know the guys here will be doing more in-depth blogs concerning their ‘features’ as the weeks and months go by. We’ll also be releasing more info on what’s going on regarding our other ‘unannounced features’ over the coming weeks too.
I’m looking forward to reading the feedback from this ‘blog’ and hope that you’re as excited about hearing this stuff, as we are making it
Cheers
D
They mention that there are more features yet to be announced in the game, that will be unvieled throughout June, July and August.
Blog Post
Blog - 1
David Rutter, Line Producer
FIFA 10 X360 & PS3
By now you should have heard a fair amount about what’s in store for FIFA 10. I’ll cover them again here shortly – but we’ve a lot more coming soon too. Throughout the end of June I’ll be visiting London, Paris, Munich, Madrid, Milan, Warsaw and Moscow to get our game in front of more journalists and unveil a number of additional new features we have deliberately not mentioned yet. And during 19th to 23rd August we’ll be proudly showing the game at the Gamescom in Cologne with some more new features.
Anyway, back to the here and now.
We’re really proud of FIFA 09. Quality wise the game was up there, but being football and football game fanatics we’re never satisfied. So with FIFA 10 we wanted to address 3 key things.
1-Refine our gameplay
2-Respond to feedback from our Fans
3-Innovate in some really cool ways.
About 70% of our effort went on the first 2 items, whilst the remaining 30% was spent on the very cool new innovations we have already revealed and others that we will be revealing in the coming months.
Taking each in turn
Refining our Game
When we look at FIFA 09 the overall quality of the gameplay is good. We’ve been building our ‘Next Gen’ gameplay for three years, and we have managed to address most of our fundamentals to a really satisfactory level. However there were still some frustrations – and we wanted to address them. Week in and week out when we watch real football games we see things that help us to identify how real football players behave, and express themselves on the pitch. With this in mind we focused on a heap of things this year, namely:
Urgency: We wanted to replicate the degrees of urgency on the pitch. When players aren’t involved in immediate ‘action’ they’re more relaxed. As play gets closer they become more alert and responsive to what’s going on around them. So in FIFA 10 this year you’ll see a lot of different motions being used dependent on the state of the play, and the ‘threat’ of the situation. We’ve also worked on new Face Ball logic, to ensure that players are correctly following the play and better prepared to react to the situation. This work even moves into players getting out of the way of teammates passes and shots, and players throwing themselves at the ball with effort – things like diving headers, sliding shots, falling clearances etc.
Trapping: Trapping is how the player gets into a position to control the ball, and how they control it. This year we wanted to get away from inappropriate ‘earliest’ trapping, where a player might move to a position where they would get the ball to touch them as soon as possible, to an ‘easiest’ trapping system, where players move to a position to get the ball under control as easily as possible. Essentially we gave the players more intelligence and awareness of where the most ‘natural’ trapping position is. The net result – a more responsive ball control mechanic to get the ball on the ground, and under control.
Positioning: This year we wanted to ensure that players had more awareness of where their teammates were. A new system call ‘Position Priority’ makes sure that Defensive Midfielders cover at the back if a Centre back has gone up for a corner – and they won’t leave their post until it’s safe for them to do so. Similarly in attack supporting players make more elaborate runs, analyzing space more effectively to curve, stay onside and create space for passes.
Passing: Yet again there was a lot of ‘threat’ analysis work going on. Passing players now have a greater understanding of the space ahead of teammates to make through balls more effective.
Shooting: We really wanted to improve the way the ball moves this year. So we created a tool that enables us to create a context sensitive shooting mechanic. What this means is we can tune the error on shots based on the situation. Factors during a shot like the ball, foot and movement of both now will have the correct effect on the ball and lead to some really cool looking shots.
Defending: We worked not just on the positioning as mentioned above, but also on the slide and standing tackles, and momentum on both. For slide tackling, good players now slide further, so you’ll have more reach. They also have better targeting – so you’ll generally go for the ball rather than the player. Obviously with more reach, you’ve got to time them better, otherwise you’ll be picking yourself up, as the attacker is bearing down on goal. The standing tackle, which was very powerful in 09, is now less forgiving. Defenders will use more momentum in these tackles, so again, if you miss time – you’ll be committed to the wrong direction.
Keepers: Lots of improvements here. We’ve looked at interception logic – calm and collected in low threat situations, through to punches under pressure. Again, lots of urgency work too. The keepers are now far more aggressive coming off their line, but if caught off their line they can scramble back to scoop the ball out of danger. We also worked on the goalies momentum to ensure his saves are realistic.
There’s a heap more too – and I’m sure in upcoming blogs by Creative Director Gary Paterson and gameplay producer Aaron McHardy they’ll be discussing these, and much more, in lots of detail.
Responding to Feedback:
So as I’m writing this we’re nearing the 300 millionth game of FIFA. What a number. And what a lot of feedback. For me feedback has taken 2 forms.
1 – Frustrations
2 – Requests
and I’ll take each in turn…
Frustrations: I’m on the forums a lot, posting and reading. There are a lot of people who love the game, and there are a lot of people who discover, report or exploit things in our game that they’re unhappy with. So, we really want to make the people who have legitimate gripes happy, and the exploiters play fair. Some of the things we’re changing are:
1.Stopping lofted through balls leading to 1 on 1 with the keeper.
2.Preventing goals being scored from kick off
3.Improving shooting so you don’t hit the woodwork so much
4.Making our movement animations look better
5.Working to make offsides less frequent and the advantage rule more intelligent
6.Starting to remove scripted graphical sequences and adding quick free kicks.
We’ve done a lot more too – but this should give you a sense of how much we are actually listening to the frustrations people are telling us about.
Requests: The second part of responding is requests. This year we’re proud to announce that we’re including a Practice Mode within FIFA 10. Using the Back/Select button from the 1 on 1 arena, you’ll be able to bring up a menu enabling you to choose to play a practice match or set pieces. You can change the number of players on each side, and a little blog exclusive here – it’s multiplayer too. Only locally though – you can’t have your online friends join your practice match. But 5 v 5 outfield players, on a full size pitch is now a reality
Innovations
This year we really wanted to change the way the game played. One of the big things we wanted to do was firstly change the player control mechanic, but also to give people more freedom to express themselves realistically on the ball. We’ve managed to do this in 3 ways this year:
1. 360 Degree Dribbling
2.Skilled Dribbling
3.Freedom in Physical Play.
360 Degree Dribbling:
Believe it or not the players in FIFA 09 could only move in 8 directions. Up/Down, Left/Right and Diagonals. You might not have noticed it, but at times this led to a feeling of frustration in the way players dribbled and turned with the ball. 360 Degree dribbling totally frees you from those 8 directional constraints. It’s the first time ever in a football game. Literally a super fluid way to move with the ball. We’ve introduced a larger area of ‘control’ in front of the players, wider dribble touches and a much more responsive and accurate pad reading system to allow you to go wherever you want. With practice it’s even possible to switch the ball from one foot to the other.
Skilled Dribbling
In addition to the 360 system above we wanted to give skilled dribblers the ability to rapidly move the ball laterally. Imagine you’re down near the corner flag and are being pressed by a defender. By pressing the top left bumper you can take rapid, high fidelity touches of the ball to jink left and right to throw defenders momentum. It’s also useful in other areas of the pitch. I like to think of it as a more accessible skill move.
Freedom in Physical Play:
With the wider dribble touches we added a new collision sharing system. In combination with the increased area of possession you’re looking at ‘overlapping’ areas of control. A true fight for possession when you’re shoulder to shoulder. It’s more varied, and when the players are evenly matched, can lead to some great extended and less predictable physical interactions on the pitch.
It’s not just all about gameplay though.
Manager Mode:
We’re fully aware on the team that Manager mode is HUGELY popular. Outside 1 v CPU and 1v1 play it’s the most played gamemode in the game. Using our ‘responding to feedback’ tag line, we just couldn’t ignore the volume of requests coming in to address a number of areas in this mode. We’ve improved 50 major components to Manager mode in the following areas:
1.Match Realism
2.Transfers
3.Player Development
4.Football Atmosphere
Match Realism:
We’ve totally reworked our simulation engine. Results for Sim’d games are now generated minute by minute and are based on individual team strengths and weaknesses - down to the level of individual players, defensive, midfield and attacking lines, and formation. From the simulations we run here – we’re really happy with the realism of the results we’re generating, and our league tables look pretty believable too
Authentic Transfers:
In 09 we were guilty of using financial clout as the main decider for transfer success. This year there’s more decision points. Whilst money is still very important, career prospects and squad opportunity also play an important role in the success of a player’s decision. You’ll also have much more intelligent AI competing against you.
Player Developments:
We wanted to make sure that players developed believably for FIFA 10 – so we’ve invested heavily in making intelligent player growth curves based on a number of factors. These physical, mental and technical curves effect how well a player will develop, as well as where the developing player is based and how we’ll they’re performing.
Football Atmosphere:
The world of football is constantly changing, at a high and low level, and we wanted to inject some much needed authenticity here. You’ll see AI rotating squads based on match performance, have real-time transfer updates on a week by week basis and summaries of what’s going on in your football world.
The Future:
We’re looking at Manager mode as a multiyear investment for us. It’s going to take us a little while to get to a Manager mode that matches the quality of our on pitch gameplay – but we’re really committed to pulling this off
In Closing:
As I mentioned that’s about all I can talk about at the moment – and I know the guys here will be doing more in-depth blogs concerning their ‘features’ as the weeks and months go by. We’ll also be releasing more info on what’s going on regarding our other ‘unannounced features’ over the coming weeks too.
I’m looking forward to reading the feedback from this ‘blog’ and hope that you’re as excited about hearing this stuff, as we are making it
Cheers
D
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