A Vision for the control schemes
Introduction
I will be placing summaries throughout this post for those who don't want to read it all. There will be mini summaries at the end of each subsection. Look out for the blue text! I do apologise for the length of the thread, but I don't want to miss anything in this.
Please vote and or post to make your opinions known!
This post will outline my final push before FIFA 11 releases - to see if a final spurring on might have an effect. From what we have heard so far we can see that the feedback, thoughts, and arguments of the manual users have had some effect. We have heard a lot about Pro Passing, a system which should prevent the worst abuse of assisted settings - ping pong passing. In doing so it should not only solve one of FIFA 10's biggest problems, but it should be a first step, and a rather large one at that, at solving one of FIFA 10's other big problems - the imbalance of the control settings. However, from all that I have heard, read and all that I have managed to eek out of those lucky enough to go to the events in Vancouver and Guildford, I am fairly sure, almost certain, that we will not see a total solution - and that for all of the improvements in this area we will see a situation which, whilst being an improvement, will still not be the ideal.
So in this post I want to answer the questions and the arguments and to come up with a vision to express exactly how this large, multi-faceted issue can be totally solved. I want to create an unambiguous and uncontroversial vision which people can get behind - no matter what control system they use. To come up with a system which is both realistic, but has a range of accessibility. I've plunged myself right into the center of this debate and have seen the questions/fears/arguments of each side - so I feel I can come up with solutions which should, within reason, deal with the major complaint and problem whilst not fulfilling the fears. Not only that but I have taken what EA have said in various posts so that these solutions won't be too outlandish and things that they might actually be willing to do.
What is the problem, and how should it be?
The current situation:
The first question which has to be answered, is what is ideal? It is only once this can be defined that setting about actually achieving it can be done. I believe that the ideal situation is to have balance. A situation where, whilst being realistic, the systems give a variety of tradeoffs between the various correlated factors.
That is to say that you can grade the systems on a number of different levels:
1. Accessibility How easy is the system to pick up and play
2. Freedom The degree to which you can attempt to do what you want
3. Effectiveness for weak players
4. Effectiveness for average players
5. Effectiveness for good players
6. Effectiveness for great players
Accessibility:
1 Two Buttons | 2 Assisted | 3 Semi | 4 Manual
Freedom:
1 Manual | 2 Semi | 3 Assisted | 4 Two Buttons
Effectiveness for weak players:
1 Two Buttons | 2 Assisted | 3 Semi | 4 Manual
Effectiveness for average players:
1 Assisted | 2 Semi | 3 Manual/Two Buttons
Effectiveness for good players:
1 Assisted | 2 Semi | 3 Manual | 4 Two Buttons
Effectiveness for great players:
1 Assisted | 2 Semi | 3 Manual | 4 Two Buttons
Looking up at that, I have no problems at all for the first four categories, but the final two are where we have an issue. This comes down to the core of the problem - and it all starts off with what I believe the whole point of a system like this MUST be - which is to give a variety of systems which work on a fairly simple axis - accessibility against freedom - but there is a natural consequence of this being true if there isn't something very wrong - and that's that as freedom increases the effectiveness that can be extracted by better players increases proportionally. Which means that the best players -ought- to be the best with the system which grants the most freedom.
The Ideal:
So, if we adjust the final two categories to be as they should be according to that deduction:
Effectiveness for good players:
1 Semi | 2 Manual/Assisted | 3 Two Buttons
Effectiveness for great players:
1 Manual | 2 Semi | 3 Assisted | 4 Two Buttons
Having done this, we can distill it further - because actually there SHOULD be only one thing you need to look at with any of the systems which tells you everything about the setting, and that is the freedom. The higher the freedom, the lower the accessibility. The higher the freedom, the lower the effectiveness for weaker players - and the higher the freedom the higher the effectiveness for stronger players. That is how it ought to be.
One question which does have to be answered at this point is given these parameters, how large, as a percentage of the online playing population are each of the demographics (weak, average, ... etc)? Well, that's a fairly subjective choice and to an extent it's a fairly irrelevant one - but I'd suggest that, as a ratio (of weak to average to good to great), it should be around 2.gif "N Aggressive (16)")
5:3. This is important so we can set a realistic target of how difficult (or how accessible) each system should be. These numbers can be set at any value, but I think two things should be held to. Firstly, no system should have such a small number that it might as well not exist, and secondly the majority of the players should not need to go further than assisted settings.
The Player Stats Question:
One fear that I have heard again, and again, and again (and also a fallacy I hear again, and again, and again) is that when you use manual the ball goes exactly where you point. That on manual, the stats don't make any difference, and that therefore manual is unrealistic. This is false. Manual has never neglected stats any more than the rest of the game. One example people often use is John Terry can make a pass that Fabregas can make - but the reply to this is that the same is true on assisted.
The problem with passing specifically should be at least helped with Personality+, but just to convince everyone, here is a quote from someone in the know, HandofBeadle, who went to the Vancouver playtest (and the Guildford one).
This has always be the case, and, as HandofBeadle testifies will continue to be the case in FIFA 11, as it should. It is a core fundamental to all of these systems that none of them override player stats or contextual error. Is there a problem with player stats being neglected to a large extent in FIFA? Yes. I hope this will be solved this year - but it is NOT a problem inherent to any control system (whereas many of assisted's issues, like pingpong passing, is inherent to assisted) - I'm pleased that this particular point has now been let to rest - as I seemed almost completely incapable of convincing anyone of this!.
Summary 1:
1. All systems can and should be as realistic as eachother, yet varying on accessibility and freedom.
2. As freedom increases, better players should become proportionally more effective.
3. Therefore, if the system is balanced, manual should be the most effective for the best players, whilst assisted should be the most effective for the majority of players
4. Attributes are independent of the control scheme
Why not a segregatory/arbitrary solution?
One much talked about and much supported set of possible solutions are those which will do one of two things - either to split the community, or to use incentives to reward/make-up-for users playing on harder control settings. I call these segregatory systems, and arbitrary solutions respectively:
Segregatory solutions?
The truth is that we already have a segregatory solution with the manual filter. The filter allows manual players to only play manual players - thus cutting themselves off from the assisted community to a large extent. One idea which many support (including myself with a critical caveat) is a manual leaderboard. A manual leaderboard would, at least in the head2head, allow a total separation between manual players (and semi players presumably) to the assisted community.
There are some quite clear positives to these type of systems but there are also some crippling negatives:
Pros
1. Completely averts having to solve a large and multi-faceted problem, as no balancing is required
2. Is supported by many manual users
3. Is a much easier thing to achieve than solving the problem properly
Cons
1. Does not affect other multiplayer modes - like the FIWC, and Clubs
2. Does not improve the realism of assisted
3. Splits the community
Arbitrary solutions?
Like segregatory solutions, we also already have arbitrary solutions in this game - though not for this issue. The one I'm thinking of in particular is the star-rating system which affects the amount of points you win/lose when playing online. This systems flaws are similar to those you would find if an arbitrary solution was applied for the control systems (like rewarding extra points for winning with a harder control system than your opponent).
The problems with the star-rating system are two - one is that the stars are quite wide. The difference between a bottom end 5 star and a top end one is quite large - and the difference between a top end 4.5 and a bottom end one is larger still. Playing with Arsenal against Barcelona is not a particularly fair matchup but the rating system still fails to address this.
The other problem is that it's very difficult to understand the relative difference. How much more likely are you to win with Barcelona than Aston Villa, for instance? Whilst you could probably find the answer to that question - actually assigning those values is impossible without a huge amount of research. The star rating system doesn't make nearly enough of a difference which is a fairly good piece of evidence for this point.
A system to reward you based on how hard your control settings would be would have many of the same issues. How much harder IS manual passing than semi passing? Is that the same factor that applies to the difference between manual shooting and semi shooting? These questions are unanswerable without an immense amount of data which I wouldn't be sure EA parse. Short of creating an evolving system (one which tweaks itself to improve the algorithm), it's pretty difficult to get right, especially without the immense amount of data on control systems and results.
Pros
1. Probably the easiest 'solution'
2. Would give some reward for manual users which could make up for the disdavantages
Cons
1. Is as explained above simply arbitrary and therefore prone to being untuned - likely to make the reward too little or too much
2. Again fails to actually improve the control settings
For all of both of these systems faults, they are BOTH better than nothing. It would be preferable to have one of these solutions or both than no solution at all. However, if the solution is solved properly these solutions should be ENTIRELY unnecessary
Summary 2:
1. Systems which split the community with filters and leaderboards avert the true issue and won't improve realism for all
2. Systems which reward using a certain system with points are highly fallible to being tuned incorrectly, and also won't improve realism for all
3. Systems like a manual leaderboard will not improve the situation for semi/manual players in the FIWC, and Clubs at all
4. Still, these solutions are better than nothing - though unnecessary if a proper solution is implemented
Solving the problem properly
So then...
Given the above two sectors, describing first what the problem is and what the ideal is, and second why other solutions are not as good, it is time to get on to how I would aim to solve this. This will be relatively vague, as this thread is aimed primarily at getting us to say what we want, not so much how we want it to be achieved, but, I will make some suggestions about how this can be achieved.
Obviously it's not the easiest thing in the world given that to an extent they are already definitely applying things which will be a portion of what makes up this solution - the Pro Passing in particular. But also, they may be implenting stuff we don't know about like a manual leaderboard.
The Trio of Problems
1. Assisted is more effective than semi for essentially everyone
2. Assisted is more effective than manual for everyone
3. Semi is more effective than manual for everyone
Can manual be made easier?
edit: trying to get this passage right and express my point clearly enough
The problem is not necessarily with the system which is more effective than the other though - and I think it is definitely time for the manual community to accept that manual IS too hard. It may be slight - but it is too hard.
The passing percentages that even the best manual passers I've played up against fall short of realistic for the team they tend to play as (though, the passing percentage changes very little from team to team in manual thanks to the lack of stats which really affect how passing works). They tend to be at least 5% off a typical passing accuracy for that team - which is perhaps understandable given the extreme tempo of FIFA in comparison to real life.
Managing to tweak manual into a situation where it can be more effective than the other settings for the very best players is not easy - particularly because many possibilities go against the grain of what manual is, and what manual means. Manual means, technically, that where you aim is where the pass, shot, cross will be aimed (obviously taking into account error, and play stats). Many ways of making manual easier and more realistic would arguably change this - making it not really manual. The question is, can manual -ever- be effective enough whilst it's still manual?
There are perhaps ways of making it easier which would not stop it being manual. One idea (from HandofBeadle below for instance) would be to give an indication, on screen, of where you were aiming. This would make it much easier to know where you were aiming - whilst still being manual.
Other ideas would involve giving slight assistance, potentially just for the better players. Maybe a player like Fabregas could curve balls around players to make safer passes. Alternatively, some of the settings could be just mixed with an element of how semi works. I have no exact answer to how this ought to be done - bu tI think it should be done. Part of what I want to do with this thread is find out how manual users in particular would feel about making their settings slightly easier - and if anyone has any good ideas for how to do this.
But what I do feel is that if you are to go along with the idea that the ideal is what I outlined in sector 1, then I don't feel that this can necessarily be achieved without making manual slightly easier. Not much, not to stop it from being what we love - or to remove the freedom it gives... but enough to allow manual to take its rightful place. The truth is I'm not sure. It's difficult to know whether changes to the rest of FIFA, like pressure, like defensive AI, like gamepacing, like fatigue will make manual right on its own. I'm just sensing that it might be worth accepting in the back of our minds that it could be necessary to take this step to get the balance which this game sorely needs.
and what about assisted?
The main changes however I firmly believe will have to be editing assisted to be more realistic. Pro Passing and Personality+ will go a long way to achieving this but I'd be surprised if it was far enough. I may be very suprised, but I feel we are on the right track at least. Without actually playing the game myself it is very hard to predict exactly what needs to be done next. If assisted has gone almost far enough, we should see that FIWC players will be using semi settings, rather than assisted settings. If not, we still have some way to go - and that measuring stick is a useful tool.
To an extent, one of the parts of this solution is going to be knowing when they've gone far enough with the various measures to tweak the positions of the three main settings (note that I feel that two button controller settings are ideally placed to do what they are meant to do - and actually are, ironically, the beacon to show EA and us what a balance looks like. Incredibly easy, but so constrained that it's never going to trump someone playing on something harder. The ultimately telling factor for whether this problem is solved is the number of people who use the systems, and what skill systems the high, and very high ranked are using. Any measures necessary to achieve this whilst keeping with the core fundamental that each has to be realistic can and should be implemented.
There is a large range of players on this forum who all have a different perspective on this debate. I hope that in this thread I have presented a solution, aims, and goals which would please everyone (though I'm sure there will be dissent) from whatever football-gaming background they come from and whatever setting they use right now. I do apologise to anyone who has read it through fully for its length but this post is the post I have put this most effort and thought into since I joined this forum in 2005 - and this topic is so large, and so controversial that I wanted to cover every base I could whilst trying to think of as many people as I can. Finally, before the summarisation:
I have a dream...
Imagine a player, called Matt, who goes online on FIFA 11 for the first time. He used assisted for FIFA 10 because it was the best - he was a high ranked player. He plays a few matches and all is going well but they start getting beaten by players using harder settigns. He notices that the freedom that those settings give them is allowing them to beat him. So he tries it - and it's not easy at first but he grows into it - and eventually he'll learn to love it more than he ever loved assisted because it allows him to be the best he can be - utilising all the freedom real football presents.
Later on, he notices people on full manual beating him again - and he gives it a try. As one of FIFA's elite players he is capable of getting the effectiveness out of manual. He lived happily ever after.
It's about serving all types of members of the community. It's about serving our man above, Matt, who is in the top echelon and will find a whole new realm of FIFA - and the freedom to do what he wants.
It's about serving Chloe, Matt's girlfriend, who has never played a FIFA game before but wants to play with him and have fun, and with the two button control system finds a football game which she can get in to.
It's about serving Mike, who works a 40 hour job and has a couple of kids, and doesn't get long to play, but can have a fun, enjoyable game on assisted without having to stress too much about the controls, and yet being able to play a good, realistic game of football online, or against mates.
And it's about serving you, whatever your wants are, to give you a control system which suits you, whilst not making the game frustrating for anyone else.
Summary 3:
1. There are three problems. That assisted is better than semi, that assisted is better than manual, and, that semi is better than manual.
2. Making assisted considerably harder by increasing realism, though Pro Passing/Personality+ at least a large step on the path
3. Making manual easier can, and should be part of the solution, though how is a question to be answered still.
4. Simple and quick changes like semi including Manual Lobbed Passes can be a quick and easy step in the right direction
5. A solution can be found which suits everyone, from casual gamers to non gamers to the hardcore.
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