Paul Hossack's response to NG Debate

[Baker011]

I asked Paul to answer some of the major questions being raised right now and he kindly replied with the following:

Hey guys.

I was very excited to hear your reactions to the FIFA 09 PC demo when we released it last Thursday, and I’ve been reading the forums a lot since. [I’m writing this Monday night – baker011 will be posting it shortly.] Thanks a lot for all the posts and feedback, the good and the bad – just as long as you keep it clean. Let me tackle three types of comments that have been repeated.

· Positive Comments

· Feedback/Bugs

· PC vs. 360/PS3

Positive Comments:

Obviously, thanks for the support. The team has worked really hard on the PC version this year and I’m very proud of what they accomplished. More so than any year in recent memory. A lot of the work we did this year was based on suggestions from the community. I even talked with some pro-gamers a month ago and we got in a couple final fixes based on their feedback. See FIFA 09 PC as the important, first step towards a better and better FIFA game on PC. Other things to check out:

· More Active Shielding: Just hold Sprint while not moving in any direction. Your player will actively protect the ball. Outcome based on strength and speed of both players.

· Scoop Turn: New trick move from standing position. I like to use it after going into shielding and releasing Sprint. Take right analog out to the side and do a half-circle in front of you. Time it well to turn to the opposite side that the defender is coming around.

· Rainbow Flick: New trick move from standing position that I also use after shielding. Use only with high skill dribblers. Take right analog out forward and do a half-circle to either side finishing behind you.

· Player Run with Mouse Controls: Scroll the ‘scroll wheel’ over empty space to send a team-mate on a run to that spot. If you left-click at the same time, your pass and team-mate will converge on the same spot – can lead to great passing build-up.

Feedback/Bugs:

As I read through your comments in the demo thread, I’m passing on the common ones to the team. It’s incredibly late in our process now, but we are trying. The demo is very close to the final quality of the game – we have just fixed a couple more bugs since the demo, and you’ll be able to play the full game soon. Let me address some of the most-often raised points:

· Control Issues: I have read a number of comments around controls and control mapping. For 09, we’ve added fully customizable controls and added support for more controller types.

o If you would like a different control layout, you can customize your own controls. Whether it’s which button is the trick modifier in the mouse-controls, or anything else. You have the control now.

o For actual functional control bugs, we did a lot of testing around the keyboard/mouse and our supported controllers. That said, I’ve forwarded some of your posts to the team to investigate if the issue is in the final game.

· Through Balls: Some gamers have mentioned they’ve had problems with through balls. In FIFA 09 PC, they are set to Manual by default. This means you have to have very good aim to play a great through ball, but it also means that you can play the exact ball that you want with the right practice. This is something we added in 08 and I love the challenge. If you prefer the automatic through balls, you can turn off “Manual Through Balls” in the controls screen.

· Ball Size: The ball size was not changed this year at all. It’s a trade-off between how it looks in the NIS’s and how it looks from the main gameplay camera. The ball is the size it is based previous usability feedback from the gameplay camera. I can tell that this is an important issue for you guys – we’ll look into possibly handling both situations through different sizes for different cameras, but that will have to wait for next year due to the potential knock-on effects of a change like that.

· Nets: Unfortunately, we are too late to make any changes to the look of the net at this stage. We are definitely taking this as high priority feedback for the future.

PC vs. 360/PS3:

And saving the best (or hottest topic) for last, I’m going to give you the straight goods here. We heard you last year when many of you on the forums were asking for “NG on PC”. On FIFA 08 360/PS3, the gameplay and the rendering were both different than FIFA 08 PC. At the start of the FIFA 09 PC cycle, we looked at what it would take to get 360/PS3 gameplay and rendering to work on PC. What we learned quickly is that there is a big difference between the gameplay and the rendering. For the rendering, it was very scalable – same as Crysis, CoD4, etc. The better your graphics card, the better we could make FIFA PC look. If you didn’t have the best card, the game would play the same, but wouldn’t look as great. That’s what you expect for any PC game. When it came to gameplay, the story was different. When we re-wrote the gameplay for FIFA 360/PS3 a couple years ago, we took full advantage of the multiple, multi-core processors (actually 3 essentially dual-core CPU’s on 360, and 6 available Cell processors on PS3). The bottleneck for getting “NG on PC” was the CPU (i.e. it was AI, not graphics). Unfortunately, unlike graphics/rendering, you can’t scale gameplay depending on the CPU in the machine because the game needs to “play” the same on each machine – you can't just turn off the decisions, positioning, or inverse kinematics for some of the players. Why does FIFA 360/PS3 gameplay use so much CPU compared to Crysis, CoD4, etc.? It’s because of the depth of the gameplay (21 players making 1,000 decisions/second, the new animation system, etc.) – very different from the amount of gameplay ever running in an FPS. This meant if we ported the 360/PS3 gameplay to PC and optimized it, we would have to increase the minimum spec on the CPU to a level where only around ~5% of FIFA PC gamers would meet it. As much as any of us wanted to do this, it did not make sense.

Instead, we decided to do the work of bringing a big improvement to the graphics (as many of you have noted), further polish and enhance our deep gameplay engine, and work on some PC-specific features. We didn’t want to just give you a port, but rather the best experience for FIFA on the PC. This included the mouse controls for the keyboard gamers, the online widgets, the higher-res menus, and fully customizable controls.

Hope you found this helpful. For those who have been with FIFA on the PC for a while, you’ll recognize that FIFA 09 is the biggest investment we’ve put in the platform in a while. It’s a sign of things to come.

Thanks again and keep the feedback coming!

Cheers.

Paul

[stankefa90]

So,when can we expect the "full NG" on pc??

[AlaaEG88]

So he only talked about critical forum issues not critical football issues regarding how the game plays like bouncing balls, bad defense etc...

[miharuhk]

I will not buy this until it completely move to NG.

[EpiQ7]

Actually,You are Stupid....Paul!

[PlayFifajo]

PES can do the same game on every platform , only EA can't...This means the programators of EA are incompetents.

[miharuhk]

Originally Posted by PlayFifajo

PES can do the same game on every platform , only EA can't...This means the programators of EA are incompetents.

Only Fifa PC programmator is lalalalalalaed. Other EA series such as Need for speed run smooth in my PC.

[Anubis2612]

one thing is for sure, fifa 09 does not have LEADING EDGE GRAPHICS!!! how come pes looks sharper than fifa this year too? i understand the lalalala about AI but what about the graphics?

you have SHADER MODEL 2 on this game and you call it Leading Edge?????????????

somebody from EA please answer me on this matter...

[Raiden]

Who says that paul is stupid does not understand anything ... hossack less evil that is interested in our feedback ... suggests that the PC version evaluate .... I am very very much agree with paul on porting-X360 PC over time we as well ...

for me it's perfectly net that are improved for next year .. as the Triad arbitration and untucked shirt ...

excellent hossack continues.

[OVRLOAD]

Lol Paul Hossack fifa on ps3/xbox 360 users more cpu power than is CRYSIS ON THOSE CONSOLE NO ea sports come up with excuse after excuse

[himel7403]

Originally Posted by EAUK_Baker011

I asked Paul to answer some of the major questions being raised right now and he kindly replied with the following:

hey paul, what about the 'PC' tricks?
u told only about controller, but i think it was told that FIFA09 PC was built for PC. So please tell us how to do these 2 tricks with keyboard and mouse both...
Baker please convey my post to EA desk..

[Stoyanis]

You know, I think the time has come for the GPU to process physics calculations. You have plenty of time to work on new pc engine for FIFA 2010.

After all this demo was not 2-3 months old but rather a release candidate version. And , if I can remember correctly, has always been like that during the last 10 years .

[AlaaEG88]

Originally Posted by stoyanis

You know, I think the time has come for the GPU to process physics calculations. You have plenty of time to work on new pc engine for FIFA 2010.

That would be a big plus! I would have loved if they also scaled down the AI from next gen(as long as they insist that %5 only are capable of playing the game) i.e. a NG game that works on their target PCs. Not a CG game with new graphics copied from NG and pasted on the PC version. I can do that copy and paste work if EA are willing to pay! But it takes some MORE work to produce a GOOD game.

[jacklasbof]

mmmm.... dear Paul...not total porting ok ok...but..
1) ball physique..it is possible!!
2) proportion ball/player/widht of field..possible!
3) 3d crowd,waving flags,,possible!
4) better ai (not ng)....wing play,offside tactic (ng style)....possible!!

..... Ball Size: The ball size was not changed this year at all. It’s a trade-off between how it looks in the NIS’s and how it looks from the main gameplay camera. The ball is the size it is based previous usability feedback from the gameplay camera. I can tell that this is an important issue for you guys – we’ll look into possibly handling both situations through different sizes for different cameras, but that will have to wait for next year due to the potential knock-on effects of a change like that.
absurd lies!!!! in fifa 06 ball size/widht of field perfect!!! i want a great tuning in final version,one day of job!!!

[jazd]

What complete bull****. Of course if they just tried to "directly port" the NG console version it wouldnt work. PC's are definitely powerful enough but they have a totally differnent architecture so it would require a lot of re-engineering of the game. EA is just unprepared to put any effort into the PC version of this game. They just want to try and pretty it up and ship out another game without putting any money into it.

[FDBonline]

I can just quote these two opinions which speak my mind perfectly

Originally Posted by Anubis2612

one thing is for sure, fifa 09 does not have LEADING EDGE GRAPHICS!!! how come pes looks sharper than fifa this year too? i understand the lalalala about AI but what about the graphics?

you have SHADER MODEL 2 on this game and you call it Leading Edge?????????????

somebody from EA please answer me on this matter...

And

Originally Posted by stoyanis

You know, I think the time has come for the GPU to process physics calculations. You have plenty of time to work on new pc engine for FIFA 2010.

After all this demo was not 2-3 months old but rather a release candidate version. And , if I can remember correctly, has always been like that during the last 10 years .

Although I really appreciate the fact that Paul sat down to answer to us.

[MAVIYILDIZ5]

paul hossack are you crazy or we are stupid? can you answer me plz

[FDBonline]

What Paul says makes sense. It always does. Everytime someone from EA come to make us chill, they come up with something that makes sense, or at least it does for the next hour until we realise they're lying again, or they're making up excuses.

When KONAMI realsed PES 5, they made a huge step forward and they stop caring about the less fortunate people with poor PCs specs, like I used to have. They just switched their aiming to another part of the population, the part that would be able to play the game on PC the EXACT SAME WAY they'd do on a PS2, and later on, on a PS3 or on XBOX 360. So every fan of PES had no other choice but to upgrade their systems or buy a new console. And if you're a true fan you'd do anything to get your game, and play it the way it's supposed to. I upgraded my system just because of PES 6. Then I bought a XBOX 360 just because of FIFA 08/EURO 2008/FIFA 09, because I realised the NEXT GEN versions of FIFA were amazingly better than any PES out there, and that it would never be the same on PC.

Again, if KONAMI can make the same game on every platform (XBOX 360, PS3 and PC), it's because they stop caring about the low end PCs since PES 5.

EA have to start looking tot he future, because sooner or later they'll have to increase the MINIMUM SPECS, a lot. So why don't do it now?.



I wish Paul will take some time out and keep on replying to us, more frequently.

[MAVIYILDIZ5]

paul hossack you play ur suck fifa09 pc version ok this year i will play pes 09 on my pc

[Arsenal4eva179]

· Nets: Unfortunately, we are too late to make any changes to the look of the net at this stage. We are definitely taking this as high priority feedback for the future.

At least we know now tht they havent worked on the nets..

[Mamadu]

Pall say to people when we will have good football game on pc ? Next year ? 2011? Tell us plz what do you think about petition about ng fifa in 2010?

[SoccerPC]

First of all I thank hossack to take time and try to answer some of the flaming issues in fifa 09 pc section.

About the PC ps3/xbox360 port , i dont know who speak these things but a port can never a solution .Port is something like emulating ps3 or xbox on pc which is the worst thing performance wise. for an example , like if i use an ps2 emulator and try to run a simple ps2 game on my pc , it crawl down even my moster pc.But i know my pc can handle much more heavy work than that old gen graphics.
Just like this ps3 port is not the answer for PC.I think EA done the right job making a separate version for pc. Having said that , we expect no a single drop of anything less than ps3/xbox360. You guys said graphics is scalable but the graphics of pc fifa09 is not the same as of ps3 and xbox 360, how will you define that? if its scalable , why not make same graphics like ps3 if not better?
I think if the Ai was coded solely for pc , it wouldnt take much of an pc power.I never heard any game crawled jsut for the pressure of AI, ITs just a pure myth. its redeculous.If its so why not keep the provision of using either of the AI when loading the game ( just an idea ).who can hadle so called hungry AI can choose between 2 ( i dont know how pes do it )But no excuse why the graphics is not the same. you yoursef told its scalable. and dont say pc cards cant hangle next gen graphics also.PC has even directx10 even.PC now is using GPU powered mathmatical Calculations besides graphics ( nvidia physix) so, i dont know how long you can hide the fish with rice. Just give us nextgen , pure nextgen !

[AlaaEG88]

About manual through balls/crosses, only 8 directions are supported! Which makes it very limited sometimes, like when a player is running outside of your 8 D and you can't make the through pass! It could have been improved to allow the game to tune those passes because I choose the right direction but the player is a little bit ahead of the ball! I also can't choose to curl the pass which can also be tuned.

In a nut's shell, manual through passes/crosses are not implemented that good in 09, it is not just about having some "good aiming".

[Stoyanis]

Originally Posted by AlaaEG88

About manual through balls/crosses, only 8 directions are supported! Which makes it very limited sometimes, like when a player is running outside of your 8 D and you can't make the through pass!

that's why there is no advantage of using a pad

[lelentz]

Ok...let's say that the gameplay CAN'T be ported on PC BUT...I think you can do the crowds, ball, cameras, untucked shirts, commentators, nets, menu, skills same as PS3/360 version! If FIFA 09 on PC had that and the same gameplay will be a much better game!

I WANT AN ASWER TO THAT FROM YOU PAUL/BAKER011 !!!!!

ps: Sorry 4 my english!