Make the single player experience playable

beachryan

beachryan

Golden Boot Winner
4 July 2003
Bermuda
Okay, so there always used to be thread for PES/WE that contained lots of bulk stat changes and things to improve the single player experience. The options files used to completely change the game, and turn what had become stale into a fresh, realistic simulation.

Given that EA have created, without a doubt, the best engine with which to model the beautiful game, it disappoints me to no end that they've also not bothered to make a decent single player experience (especially compared to Madden, NHL and so forth). There are too many faults to bring out, but fundamentally:
- CPU players have augmented stats. Particularly reactions.
- The stumbling animation 'crutches' are just ridiculous, Rooney getting barged out of the way, falling over, getting up and running the wrong way after a shoulder collision with Luka Modric? Um. No.
- In real life, running perpendicular to the goal does not make you invincible to being tackled.
- In real life, defending corners isn't as easy as heading it out with the assurance that it can only land near one of your teammates, who is the only one who can control the ball.
- It's very nice having fancy dribbling and skill moves, but who cares when the CPU can just barge through you, even when you have your back to them, and take the ball (and you'll then stumble, fall out of bounds, tangle with the steward and injure yourself)
- In real life 90% of goals are not scored by 1 on 1s. Defending is not so easy as just stuffing the box with 8 players surrounded by auto-tackling forcefields, and teams can pass through such tactics.

Anyway, rant aside, I figure that there's gotta be editing we can do to improve the situation. For now, I'm going to just focus on single player where you play as a single team. Ideas:
1. In the league you play in, go through every team and move their defensive line back.
2. Go through every team, and decrease reactions by 15. Increase your teams reactions by 15.
3. Decrease everyones speed by 10, increase acceleration by 10.
4. Decrease oppositions strength by 15.

I'm not actually sure this'll solve the problem, but will give it a go. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any macro-editing options, so it's going to take freaking ages. And will obviously bollocks up everytime you play online.

But it's the final act of someone desperate for a decent single player football experience, and will still take less time than downloading, patching and burning all those old WE patches to CD (I miss you swap magic!)
 
beachryan said:
Okay, so there always used to be thread for PES/WE that contained lots of bulk stat changes and things to improve the single player experience. The options files used to completely change the game, and turn what had become stale into a fresh, realistic simulation.

Given that EA have created, without a doubt, the best engine with which to model the beautiful game, it disappoints me to no end that they've also not bothered to make a decent single player experience (especially compared to Madden, NHL and so forth). There are too many faults to bring out, but fundamentally:
- CPU players have augmented stats. Particularly reactions.
- The stumbling animation 'crutches' are just ridiculous, Rooney getting barged out of the way, falling over, getting up and running the wrong way after a shoulder collision with Luka Modric? Um. No.
- In real life, running perpendicular to the goal does not make you invincible to being tackled.
- In real life, defending corners isn't as easy as heading it out with the assurance that it can only land near one of your teammates, who is the only one who can control the ball.
- It's very nice having fancy dribbling and skill moves, but who cares when the CPU can just barge through you, even when you have your back to them, and take the ball (and you'll then stumble, fall out of bounds, tangle with the steward and injure yourself)
- In real life 90% of goals are not scored by 1 on 1s. Defending is not so easy as just stuffing the box with 8 players surrounded by auto-tackling forcefields, and teams can pass through such tactics.

Anyway, rant aside, I figure that there's gotta be editing we can do to improve the situation. For now, I'm going to just focus on single player where you play as a single team. Ideas:
1. In the league you play in, go through every team and move their defensive line back.
2. Go through every team, and decrease reactions by 15. Increase your teams reactions by 15.
3. Decrease everyones speed by 10, increase acceleration by 10.
4. Decrease oppositions strength by 15.

I'm not actually sure this'll solve the problem, but will give it a go. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any macro-editing options, so it's going to take freaking ages. And will obviously bollocks up everytime you play online.

But it's the final act of someone desperate for a decent single player football experience, and will still take less time than downloading, patching and burning all those old WE patches to CD (I miss you swap magic!)
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Gotta agree.

I really only bought FIFA10 for online multi-player, but bored with every match predictably being Barca v Man U (or similar) and everyone just launching into all out attack with fingers firmly pressed to sprint throughout, with no defensive play at all, I thought I'd try off-line against cpu.

The game seems so well presented, with so much going for it, but then the match kicks off and the gameplay experience against the cpu is so one-dimensional and repetitive. The main problems are exactly as you describe, the cpu super-human reponses, the cpu wins every tackle it goes into, the cpu makes endless pixel perfect passes, every cpu will suddenly have dazzling skills when the situaton requires it, the referee awards free-kicks to only cpu team, even when no foul.

It just doesn't feel like there's any point learning all the subtlties of the gameplay or going into depth on the tactical options because whether you play against Man U or Dagenham & Redbridge, the feeling is always the same and it always feels like you're playing against the same generic cpu team (which, of course, you are). It's just such a damp squib of cpu cheats.

The stumbling stuff you describe, which was a horrible feature in 09, is really getting unbearable now. As is the invisible forcefield around cpu players. As are the speed cheats where your players have laboured reactions and speed restrictions when the situation requires it.

It's a game choc-a-bloc with so much amazing stuff, but the gameplay experience against the cpu is gash.

Oh well, back to the online attack-fest. At least there are some human errors here.
 
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And thinking about it, has anyone ever seen a cpu player receive a pass that he did not control perfectly first time?
 
It's just so frustrating. You almost get the feeling that Rutter and co were like, alright, we've done loads of changes, and we have to do something to keep the single player game tough as everyone has improved while playing FIFA 09. But we don't have any budget to do that. So let's just set all the CPU stats to 100 whenever they need to be. No one will ever notice that!
 
Yeah. They've also apparently put a lot of effort into radically improving manager mode, but I've not even bothered to read anything about it because the fundamental flaw with manager mode is that, no matter what amazing features and tactical depth it has, you play the actual matches against the cpu, which kills it stone dead.
 
Bit OTT IMO, Yes it isn't as great as it is when playing a real life opponent but its still been improved from last year.

CPU make misplaced passes, They can actually dribble past you and its even possible to do the same against them. I have seen them run the ball out of play. they even defend in numbers and sometimes just hoof it back at you when in desperate situations.

I personally think its ok. Does the AI need a overhaul? Yes for sure. I think they need to scrap it all and re write it which could improve it tenfold. but its definitely playable.
 
great post and I might just do this tonight. Main thing I want to change the this CPU high line and OTT Pressing tactics.
 
Tim7 said:
If you do the editing before starting an MM they will be used in it, yes.
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Thank you. I guess i will be editing the German Bundesliga then. Take away this stupid pressure at first and try to make teams play more different. Maybe it works. It's worth a try, cause at the moment the singleplayer experience is really disappointing.
 
Robbery said:
Thank you. I guess i will be editing the German Bundesliga then. Take away this stupid pressure at first and try to make teams play more different. Maybe it works. It's worth a try, cause at the moment the singleplayer experience is really disappointing.
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Exactly my plan. I guess it'll be a bit hard to know what to set the values to, any advice please post on here! I think I'm going to copy Arsenal's pressure settings, they're totally chill when you're on the ball in FIFA10.
 
Yep i have spent the entire weekend editing custom tactics for many teams and putting teams into what i call quality bands. So your stokes and hulls and so forth have similar stats of deep defence, long ball playing.

Same for other teams and spreading the tactics out to teams of a similar style. but ive also boosted most teams shooting stats up.

The reason i did this was because they were walking the ball into the keeper. When i checked that teams stats the shooting was set to something like 30. With bigger sides it was set to 70 HOWEVER the passing was also set to high. Thats the reason they continually pass it and dont even shoot when theres half a chance on.

And it seems to have worked as the game is more playable. Teams will behave as they should. Bolton now defend deep and knock longer passes. Elmander will have a go if an opportunity presents itself. before Bolton where trying to play like Arsenal and walk the ball into the net or get in a good goalscoring position and either passing or crossing for a header.

Much better game now but i think it needs a pactha so the whole load of teams can be sorted.
 
@ Dryzer - Great, so it does work, that gives me hope.

Was also thinking about it, and it won't be a problem with online - as long as you do all the changes BEFORE you start your MM. Once the MM is in action, updating the squads doesn't affect it. So happy days hopefully!
 
Dryzer said:
Yep i have spent the entire weekend editing custom tactics for many teams and putting teams into what i call quality bands. So your stokes and hulls and so forth have similar stats of deep defence, long ball playing.

Same for other teams and spreading the tactics out to teams of a similar style. but ive also boosted most teams shooting stats up.

The reason i did this was because they were walking the ball into the keeper. When i checked that teams stats the shooting was set to something like 30. With bigger sides it was set to 70 HOWEVER the passing was also set to high. Thats the reason they continually pass it and dont even shoot when theres half a chance on.

And it seems to have worked as the game is more playable. Teams will behave as they should. Bolton now defend deep and knock longer passes. Elmander will have a go if an opportunity presents itself. before Bolton where trying to play like Arsenal and walk the ball into the net or get in a good goalscoring position and either passing or crossing for a header.

Much better game now but i think it needs a pactha so the whole load of teams can be sorted.
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Sounds good.

Is there really no way that data can shared? Is there not some sort of teams file saved on the console which could be loaded onto USB stick and them uploaded to internet for sharing?

Or maybe we need to hassle EA and get them to include this type of thing in their next patch, or at the very least, let them know that they should be setting up the stats differently in the first place (assuming these changes really do work).
 
winston said:
Sounds good.

Is there really no way that data can shared? Is there not some sort of teams file saved on the console which could be loaded onto USB stick and them uploaded to internet for sharing?

Or maybe we need to hassle EA and get them to include this type of thing in their next patch, or at the very least, let them know that they should be setting up the stats differently in the first place (assuming these changes really do work).
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To be honest i cannot understand for the life of me why they need a shooting slider. i mean since when does any team not want to shoot when a chance or half chance presents itself? Its what the games about after all. So setting a team to 30 just seems off.

The only team i know that shot more on site from outside the box with no tweaking are Man U, Rooney especially.
 
beachryan said:
@ Dryzer - Great, so it does work, that gives me hope.

Was also thinking about it, and it won't be a problem with online - as long as you do all the changes BEFORE you start your MM. Once the MM is in action, updating the squads doesn't affect it. So happy days hopefully!
Click to expand...

Yep try it.

Try Serie A or something. Go Milan or Inter and play Atalanta and edit their stats. They play a slow buildup game and deep defence, knock their attacking passing down, crossing mid (so you dont have to deal with them crossing all the time) and boost the shooting to 80+. Save it as custom Atalanta in one of the slots.

Youll see a difference.

Then just assign that to teams of teh same ilk in europe, like Bari, Chievo, Catania etc

Let me know how you get on.
 
@Dryzer

I choose Cologne for a test and edit their Stats just to play around a bit (take down pressure, let them play long balls, slow passing, then try quick short passing etc). It really works and i see a huge difference.

Most important - now they don't attack me in my own half with 5 players anymore and they don't press me to death every time i receive a pass. That alone makes this game immediately better.

Now i will play around with the values just a little bit more. But i will definitely change the values for all 18 Bundesliga clubs soon. I really think it will work. We won't get a perfect singleplayer experience (you can't change the Refs an other things) but we will get a better one than the current one. That's for sure. I'm happy you start this topic mate.
 
robbery are you playing on world class or pro difficulty? And Dryzer thanks for the advice dude!
 
I play on pro too. :)

Robbery remember knock the shooting up to 80+ so that they take pot shots. Atalanta hit a daisy cutter against me from 35+ yards and Julio Cesar did a wicked one handed save i hadnt seen before in the snow.
 
Robbery said:
@Dryzer

I choose Cologne for a test and edit their Stats just to play around a bit (take down pressure, let them play long balls, slow passing, then try quick short passing etc). It really works and i see a huge difference.

Most important - now they don't attack me in my own half with 5 players anymore and they don't press me to death every time i receive a pass. That alone makes this game immediately better.

Now i will play around with the values just a little bit more. But i will definitely change the values for all 18 Bundesliga clubs soon. I really think it will work. We won't get a perfect singleplayer experience (you can't change the Refs an other things) but we will get a better one than the current one. That's for sure. I'm happy you start this topic mate.
Click to expand...

The good thing is they only press you in their half near there goal, exactly the way you do to them. Allows the game to build up slowly.
 
It would be cool if we could get together some sort of definitive stats list for a lot of the teams, the opposition trying to walk the ball into the net is annoying the hell out of me now.
 
This is definitely the way to go and begs the question what the feck were EA doing to not have this done in the game, why have the ability to make teams play differently and it seems better, then not use it... :RANT:

Explain that Mr Nutter, "oh we would have loved to but we didn't have the time on 10, hopefully on 11.. it's a three year thing you know"...


The words 'Lazy bullshitting Bastards' comes to mind...
 
Just to keep this topic alive. This game makes so much more fun now, since i have changed most of the team tactics for the Bundesliga. So everybody should try this. It's easy to do and it's well worth it.
 
Hopefully there will be a patch out at some point that fixes the "all teams have the same tactics" thing that goes on in some countries (e.g. England from the Championship down, not sure about the Bundesliga though). It definitely makes a difference.

I've been playing a 2-player Manager Mode game (only going to do a "practice season" while we're waiting for the patch[es]) and we're having a blast so far. The AI seems to be a bit more intelligent when there's two players on the one team, perhaps because you leave more gaps...

There is a great game buried underneath all the bugs!
 
Can you guys start posting your team sliders... cant you upload them to ea sports and then people can download them.. maybe we could all do a few and try and get all big 4 leagues... file name format,

team_name_evo_web
 
You can only have something like 20 custom tactics anyway so there's not much point, just got to wait for the patch...
 
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