Has EA Sports broken FIFA 14 by trying to fix it?

October 17th, 2013, 02:08 Posted By: wraggster

In this age of games we play and pump money into all year round, developers have to be more careful than ever about how they handle change. Tweak things too little and fans may grow restless and hitch their wallet to another post. Tweak them too much, however, and those same fans may feel the rug has been pulled out from under them and reconsider their options anyway.This challenge must be particularly acute for the developers of FIFA. Whereas games like Dota 2 and League of Legends can evolve constantly and in measured fashion to keep players interested, EA Sports still ships a new edition of FIFA every September and charges a whole new cover price for it. The existing audience of players is then expected to move onto the new game and keep playing.As FIFA 14 demonstrates, however, that transition can be messy.A man running onto a through ball, yesterday.

As soon as the demo was released in mid-September, fans pointed out that several attacking styles were startlingly effective. Headers from crosses and corners resulted in goals far more often than anyone anticipated, while curled 'finesse' shots were extremely accurate and outwitted goalkeepers from unlikely distances. On top of that, strikers were sprinting onto passes lofted over the last line of defence using the through-ball button with surprising frequency.These attacks should all work now and then under the right conditions. If a striker is well-placed in the penalty area and evades his marker, while a winger with the ball has created enough space to cross it comfortably into his path, he should be able to direct it to an unguarded area of the goal. Similarly, a player with enough space in front of him and a clear line of sight to goal should be able to flight a finesse shot towards the top corner, and a defender or midfielder spotting the run of his team-mate should be able to send a lofted through-ball over the top to meet him. The individual stats of each player - such as the curve shot stat for people using finesse - and timing should play a part, but these attacks are not fundamentally out of place in the game.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ying-to-fix-it

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