FIFA 08 Feedback Survey

[Lessi]

Hey guys I guess you don't know me cos I'm new around here. But..as much as I love FIFA and it has been so good for me I'm sorry I have to say this..This game has caused me so much damn stress....it's amazing...its like the AI has to win every damn match..recently I created a team in the brazillian league. In semi-pro mode I won every match with ease..too easy..but then when I turned it up to pro difficulty it was hell! I mean ok i want a bit more of a challenge..but not to the extent that every lalalala player of theirs dribbles your whole team, shields like 5 players at once, never loses the ball, gets every pass on target! Also, it's like your team don't know how to control the ball anymore it just keeps going..and they tackle..you keep going and then its just a case of: "OMG..THE BALL! IT'S GONE!!! :O WHO TOOK IT?! COME BACK YOU!"
Also now I just played another game and turned the difficulty down to semipro again...did ok...but then the last match I came 1-1! The most frustrating match ever man! they had a penalty late in the game I literally had to scrape off and come 1-1..and then I should have had a penalty and the AI..cos when I was 1 v 1 he slide tackled obstructed me, got none of the ball but I DIDN'T fall..the AI ref didnt blow...even though with the way semipro should go I should have been winning by miles...and yes..if you're wondering. I'm with a better team. As cool as this game is..there are these really frustrating points which change the whole attitude of a person towards the game...the difficulty is UNREALISTIC...TOO UNREALSTIC! Thanks for listening.

[ed31]

the difficulty is pretty normal once u reach Legendary than
i feel all hell breaks loose but still a good game

[NVRPLYFIFAAGAIN]

EA and Fifa have outdone themselves again with this gem.

The easiest way I see to break down the ridiculous amount of things wrong with this game is to make an extremely long list.

The gameplay in Fifa 08 is an old system of code made to look real pretty. I' not fooled. There are a few key mistakes that this franchise has been making game after game that definetly should have been fixed by now if this company listens to the feedback it gets. But obviously not since the problems still exist.

1. What EA thought would be a good system to allow a player to think ahead really just turns into a headache of wayward unintentional passes and shots over the opponents goal when an unexpected steal happens. I could see how being able to tell a player to pass before the ball gets to him is a very good idea for this game but it has too many flaws that need to be worked out before EA loses any more faithful fifa supporters. One suggestion would be to only allow passes and shots when the ball reaches the player. This would cut down on the times that you steal a ball just to give it right back or fire it down field unintentionally.

2. Teammates never run to. If you've ever actually played soccer you know that you need to run to the ball when it is passed to you. In fifa 08 players on your team make no attempt to even acknowledge that you are passing let alone make an effort to run towards it. About 40% of passes upfield could be won if my team would just run two feet toward the ball as a real player would do in REAL SOCCER!

3. LEAVE IT! Why is there still no option to step over the ball and allow it to go to a player further up the pitch? It makes no god damn sense. This is one of the best plays on the real pitch. Many times in my own experience I would step over a ball on my teammates order to LEAVE IT! and he would receive the ball in wide open field ready to cross into eager heads for a goal. How hard could it be to have one buttonon the controller step over the ball on a long pass that could go possibly to multiple players.

4. The ball is temporarily glued to the CPU's foot. If this is EA's attempt at making the game challenging you crashed and burned on this one. All this does is lead to major frustration and hatred for a game that should be fun and as realistic as possible. This game is neither due to this. The only way you can win the ball from the computer is a well timed slide tackle, which is very hard to do without picking up alot of fouls free kicks and cards, or you can try to time a standing tackle from the front which works when timed exactly right. This timing is extremely hard to get right when both player are in motion and the ball is stuck to the foot of the offensive player.

5. No ability to change game sliders. Everyone knows to make a good sports game players need to be able to control game sliders. This could allow the player to cut down those annoying fouls on clean tackles or maybe tweak ones abilities until they are ready to play up to the games difficulty levels. The shot and passing assistance helps a little but if you could turn down the CPU's ability to control the ball or turn up your own ablility to head or cross it could be very beneficial.

There are many other issues involving crowd movement and repetitous commentators, who are often behind the play or just plain wrong about the outcome. But I see these as last on EA's list when it could very well help to make the atmosphere of the game dynamic.

If these things are fixed in fifa 09 I may return to EA and the fifa series. If not I will continue to play sega's series and never look back at EA for soccer or any type of gaming. If You think I'm not serious I have a chared and blackend copy of fifa 08 that says I am.

[StffMtth]

Ok I have read nearly every post on here and the general opinion is that FIFA sucks. Its not just FIFA08, it's the whole FIFA series. I have been playing FIFA for about 10 years and I have to say I am so dissapointed with EA Games. It's almost as if you don't play your own games when making them and not only that, you don't appear to listen to your true fans. Sure, every sequential release displays a finer tuned GFX engine with more whistles and bells than a troup of Morris Dancers but, and this is a BIG but, the gameplay is still lalalala!
Please tell me what the problem is. Is it that you cannot read our comments? Perhaps you choose to ignore us? I suspect it is not the former as nothing really seems to change.
I have to say that I dabbled with Pro Evo 2008 and WOW, Konami have got the gameplay almost spot on. Its just a shame that EA Games hold the official FIFA licence because thats about the only major thing they have missing. The play is smooth, responsive and in essence, extremely playable. Sure there are minor bugs in the game and online play is virtually non-existent but you can see that they have tried to give the punters what they want.

Ok back to FIFA08.
I will try to be as concise as possible with my rant as writing page upon page would only achieve 2 or possibly 3 things:

1. I will get bored
2. I will get ignored by EA Games
3. I may just strike a few familiar chords with fellow footie fans

So here it goes, stop me if this sounds familiar!

1. Why is it that when you pass to another player he will stand there like an utter **** waiting for the ball to arrive at his feet instead of running to it. (This has always been the same since FIFA99 and EA haven't even tried to rectify it, shame on you people!)

2. Button response - This is shockingly poor. Trying to control players is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow, even with the greatest players in the world. Changing direction usualy means losing the ball to the computer and running at defenders is impossible.

3. Directional passing/shooting/through balls - When I first picked up FIFA08 I thought, ooh, you have to aim properly when crossing into the box...perhaps this applies to all ball control? Nope, not a chance. The Computer just does what it wants to do resulting in a pass that usually goes straight to your opponents feet. This is usually exacerbated when in the proximity of your own goal. To add further insult to injury, when you least expect the ball to make it to a player it does and its normally too late, you have pressed another button and the ball is launched into outer-space.

4. Power bar for passing – Why, why, why is this missing? And why, regardless of how long you hold down the pass button does the ball just go as fast or as slow as the computer deems fit?

5. Throw-ins – Why can’t you select who you want to take the throw and why can’t you creep up the line like REAL football?

6. Shots along the ground – You can do this with a free-kick but not when the ball is loose

7. Added time – I have seen at least one other post on this forum about the added time and I have to agree. There doesn’t seem to be any logic or true math behind it. 2 minutes of extra time is not always the same length and the only thing I can see that is good about it is the added pressure, perhaps to score an equalising goal or something. But, its rubbish. At present this feature appears completely random with regard to how much added time there is.

8. Player Values and Transfer bids – Ok maybe I’ve missed something but the transfer system doesn’t really work. If a player is valued at £100,000 then surely that is the approximate price you would expect to pay when trying to buy that player. Similarly if his wages were £5,000 per week you would expect to have to make an offer somewhere in the region of that price. I understand that you should perhaps make an allowance for player demand or maybe he would only join your club for a higher fee but the game gives no indication of that. There doesn’t really seem to be any logic behind how much players are worth and how much they are bought and sold for.

9. Oh referee – What the hell is going on with the ref? I say the ref as I have only seen the 1. Here is a scenario – Trying to take a free kick and the ref is positioned as if he is the one going to be doing the step over or even taking it himself!!! Please tell me you guys at EA have seen this.

10. Game updates/Patches – Please make them easy to install. Why cant you make one installer that automatically detects what version you have and install them automatically for you. Currently I cannot get the patches to work and so I am stuck with the autoswitch player option set to full auto. This is very annoying!

11. Management – FIFA04 worked with Total Club Manager and was a great idea. The only thing that let it down was the FIFA game engine having pretty much the same problems as listed above. The interface of FIFA08 is terrible. Take it from me, TCM2004 interface was great. It showed everything you wanted to know and some and it was totally practical.

12. This is probably the biggest tip of all – PLAY SOME PRO EVO 2008!! This would allow you to see where you are going wrong and where you are going right. If I had my way I would fuse the two but only because PRO EVO doesn’t have the licence. Lose the licence and lets face it EA, you’re lalalala_E_D!!

And so my rant comes to an end but by no means is this Jerry’s final thought. Ii’s about time that EA took some notice of what the people want. It’s the least you can do. You have monoploy on nearly all sport games and so I think it is your duty to provide the best games possible, something I feel of late you cannot be bothered to do as you know people will still buy the games because it has their team or favorite player in. So c’mon, pull your bloody fingers out of your EA-RSES and make a proper attempt at developing FIFA.

Over, but not out…

[StffMtth]

Oh before I forget, what about ladies teams? you could then add a 'Post-match' cutscene in the dressing room ;o)

[PlayFifajo]

make the damn gameplay better it sucks!

[malwood]

One dissappointing thing about 2008 was that the Season is treated as if it were a tournament. Bring back the fact that it is a Season, and within that Season, you can qualify for Cups, be promoted, relegated etc, so I guess you would consider it a career - perhaps to link it to my earlier comments.

I think this would all increase game play for the end user.

[malwood]

I think a way to increase game play for EA Sports is, instead of choosing difficulty level, the player has to start of playing a countries lower league at first and then as either they a) get better because of their Experience Points (earnt in Be a Pro etc) or another option b) as the progressively get better at the game, they can choose better leagues (or stay with the same team because there stats have all got better to be able to compete in that new league). - Just a thought!? - this can also lead to dynamic statistics that could either be updated via XBOX Live or the players performance.

[coopa300]

Tournament play
Me and my friend choose two teams (Sweden and Canada)
The rest is cpu- controlled

Issue: I (Sweden) am about to play a game against USA. Of course my friend wants to play as the opposition, even though it's not his team.

Status: Impossible

Bottom line: If two friends play a tournament and have a team each, then naturally neither of us wants to play games against the cpu. I want to play as the opposition, regardless if it's "my" team or not.

EA: At the screen where you move your controller left or right depending on what team you want to play with (at the pregame screen), please make it possible to play as the opposition regardless if it's your team or not. As it is now, tournament play is useless, because you cannot play as the cpu-controlled teams against your friends team. Therefore you have to sit idle while your friend plays against Cpu= Incredibly boring!

I would appreciate a reply or a fix for this.

Ps. The very same problem has plagued both the NHL-series and FIFA series for years. I remember in NHL 98, for example, this was not an issue because you could play as the opposition against your friends team in season mode. Ds

chickenbox@hotmail.com

[RAMnet]

Of Cheaters, quitters and just overall un-supportive players. I am tired of playing for 6-10 mins and then have a player quit during the game im tired of it...really what xbox live, play online...or w.e the wii has should do is if they do that 2x or more they should be banned or the should not allow the player to quit the game or turn off the system...im tired of these worthless players who can't take a loss..ive had times where my connection is lost cuz i have a terribly crappy cable,internet, and phone bundle package its crappy...but im tired of these quitters tho they hit my string today...we went into penalties...it was 1-1, then 2-1 (i was winning and stopped him) then 3-2 at the end i was ready to stop him i did but he quit a few seconds after and im tired of that happening...