Hello Fidel.
I absolutely love your mod. I've been playing it since the 2.4 version and have been consistantly impressed. However I do have a few issues...
Shooting & Saving
> I'm not convinced by the ball physics. The ball is too light and it rises too easily with weak shots, yet travels far too slowly with long shots. Also the ball doesn't dip (or curl) downward quickly enough. For me this is the most pressing problem of the current version!
> Goalkeepers are too quick to react. If you watch them in slow motion replay you see that they respond to a shot almost instantanously after it happens. I don't think this is realistic and it makes it too difficult to score long shots. In Fifa 09 (which I privately modded extensively) I made goalkeeper's reaction speeds slower, but their reflex saves much faster. The result was very pleasing! Clever shots or shots from unexpected positions paid off more, while conversely it was much more difficult to score low sliding shots. Considering Fifa 11's massive overeliance on this type of shot, I feel it would be a really positive thing to try out.
> Sometimes goalkeepers too easily catch what should be powerful shots. On the other hand this might be solved by making the ball fly faster...
> Heading is pretty much perfect for most of the pitch, but in front of goal I still find it too difficult to put it in the back of the net. However on this one i'm not sure it's not just me. But in real life I think the statistic is one in every 5 goals is a header. But for me and the computer (Legendary / Semi-Assisted) it's more like 1 in 10. The problem seems to be a combination of poor off the ball movement, poor header auto-aiming and dodgy header aiming controls. But again, this one could be mostly me
Defending
> Although it seems to have been reduced a little, defenders can still too easily clear from pretty much anywhere they want to from any angle and seemingly no matter if they are off balance or sprinting backward. This is really frustrating if you like to build attacks. I try to avoid doing it because it's so overpowered it feels like a cheat.
> Additionally clearances aren't random enough. In real life desperately clearing the ball will often mean the ball ends up back at the opponent's feet, but currently it feels like 75% of clearances end up with that team's player.
> I really like the new defending, it's a vast improvement even over (great) recent versions. However I think that strikers actually don't close down defenders enough, and when they do they hesistate too long and the defenders almost always seem completely unfazed rather than panicky. If you watch RL football poacher goals are actually pretty common and defender's are generally more nervy and more prone to make mistakes when being closed down. + It also makes it slightly too easy to build attacks from the back with short, cynical passing.
> I feel the delay between pressing for a sliding tackle and it happening is too long. On the one hand it works quite well in stopping you over-using it, but sometimes you miss easy tackles.
Referee
> The referee is still not harsh enough. He doesn't award yellow cards often enough and almost never gives straight reds. Considering the relatively short matches (for reference I play 6 minutes per half) it's pretty rare that anyone ever gets sent off. I play a quick passing game with empahsis on wingers cutting inside (think Aston Villa in RL) and the computer keeps fouling me. A few times maybe they'd get away with it. But if they keep doing it I should be getting freekicks.
> The referee never gives hand balls. Never. However I suspect this might be an issue that came with the original version.
Crossing/Long Passing
> Crosses from near the byline are far too regularily targeted at or right next to the goalkeeper. I've tried Assisted, Semi-Assisted and Manual and this problem persists. If you could fix this it would be amazing
> VERY irritating: When defenders do cross-field passes the balls are almost always too low and about half the pace they should be. I have pretty much abandoned long passes in defence because what should be easy passes keep getting intercepted in mid-air by strikers.
Pace/Physicality
> As others have mentioned it would be nice if we could get a better sense of player's physicality and individual pace. In my ongoing Everton game I have a generated player with 93 pace and 85 acceleration but it's really very hard to tell sometimes.
Attacking
The attacking AI is vastly improved, but I still feel they don't take the game to me enough. Usually it fails to build attacks because it still tends to play the ball a little too fast and very rarely makes backwards or sideways passes. Just one or two passes like this would give their players time to get better numbers into and around the box.
---
Otherwise, pure genius! And many, many times better than the original
I absolutely love your mod. I've been playing it since the 2.4 version and have been consistantly impressed. However I do have a few issues...
Shooting & Saving
> I'm not convinced by the ball physics. The ball is too light and it rises too easily with weak shots, yet travels far too slowly with long shots. Also the ball doesn't dip (or curl) downward quickly enough. For me this is the most pressing problem of the current version!
> Goalkeepers are too quick to react. If you watch them in slow motion replay you see that they respond to a shot almost instantanously after it happens. I don't think this is realistic and it makes it too difficult to score long shots. In Fifa 09 (which I privately modded extensively) I made goalkeeper's reaction speeds slower, but their reflex saves much faster. The result was very pleasing! Clever shots or shots from unexpected positions paid off more, while conversely it was much more difficult to score low sliding shots. Considering Fifa 11's massive overeliance on this type of shot, I feel it would be a really positive thing to try out.
> Sometimes goalkeepers too easily catch what should be powerful shots. On the other hand this might be solved by making the ball fly faster...
> Heading is pretty much perfect for most of the pitch, but in front of goal I still find it too difficult to put it in the back of the net. However on this one i'm not sure it's not just me. But in real life I think the statistic is one in every 5 goals is a header. But for me and the computer (Legendary / Semi-Assisted) it's more like 1 in 10. The problem seems to be a combination of poor off the ball movement, poor header auto-aiming and dodgy header aiming controls. But again, this one could be mostly me
Defending
> Although it seems to have been reduced a little, defenders can still too easily clear from pretty much anywhere they want to from any angle and seemingly no matter if they are off balance or sprinting backward. This is really frustrating if you like to build attacks. I try to avoid doing it because it's so overpowered it feels like a cheat.
> Additionally clearances aren't random enough. In real life desperately clearing the ball will often mean the ball ends up back at the opponent's feet, but currently it feels like 75% of clearances end up with that team's player.
> I really like the new defending, it's a vast improvement even over (great) recent versions. However I think that strikers actually don't close down defenders enough, and when they do they hesistate too long and the defenders almost always seem completely unfazed rather than panicky. If you watch RL football poacher goals are actually pretty common and defender's are generally more nervy and more prone to make mistakes when being closed down. + It also makes it slightly too easy to build attacks from the back with short, cynical passing.
> I feel the delay between pressing for a sliding tackle and it happening is too long. On the one hand it works quite well in stopping you over-using it, but sometimes you miss easy tackles.
Referee
> The referee is still not harsh enough. He doesn't award yellow cards often enough and almost never gives straight reds. Considering the relatively short matches (for reference I play 6 minutes per half) it's pretty rare that anyone ever gets sent off. I play a quick passing game with empahsis on wingers cutting inside (think Aston Villa in RL) and the computer keeps fouling me. A few times maybe they'd get away with it. But if they keep doing it I should be getting freekicks.
> The referee never gives hand balls. Never. However I suspect this might be an issue that came with the original version.
Crossing/Long Passing
> Crosses from near the byline are far too regularily targeted at or right next to the goalkeeper. I've tried Assisted, Semi-Assisted and Manual and this problem persists. If you could fix this it would be amazing
> VERY irritating: When defenders do cross-field passes the balls are almost always too low and about half the pace they should be. I have pretty much abandoned long passes in defence because what should be easy passes keep getting intercepted in mid-air by strikers.
Pace/Physicality
> As others have mentioned it would be nice if we could get a better sense of player's physicality and individual pace. In my ongoing Everton game I have a generated player with 93 pace and 85 acceleration but it's really very hard to tell sometimes.
Attacking
The attacking AI is vastly improved, but I still feel they don't take the game to me enough. Usually it fails to build attacks because it still tends to play the ball a little too fast and very rarely makes backwards or sideways passes. Just one or two passes like this would give their players time to get better numbers into and around the box.
---
Otherwise, pure genius! And many, many times better than the original