Hello NK. I'm glad you'll be working with FIFA again this year.
From about 150 matches of experience on World Class difficulty, I feel that the flow of gameplay is biased towards the opponent AI.
Their defensive discipline is pure gold and unseen in previous FIFAs which is a good thing.
The attack AI is "ok." Needs a little tweaking in their goalscoring methods. Ie; the opponent CPU only scores these breakaway goals. In 150 matches, the CPU has scored only one longshot against me, and NO HEADERS at all!
It's all very repetitive.
In my opinion, the opponents defence should not be tweaked because it's very good and balanced. The attack should be tweaked a little.
However, what I think is wrong in this year's version, is that the player team's AI is VERY passive when compared to the opponent's whose is great.
I mean, your defence just flocks on the CPU attacker with three players, literally not trying to tackle at all. And when you select one defender from the flock and try to take the ball off the attacker yourself, it makes no difference because he just automatically tries to tackle too early which results the opponent just running through the defence, because it's so passive!
The passiveness also shows in your attacking gameplay. Team mates don't try to position themselves any better and don't make nearly any runs. They just stand there.
Also, the higher you set the difficulty, the more all the physics and ball behavior is biased against the player. Ie; the CPU wins more of the loose balls and so on and tackles from BEHIND with great frequency and success!
Currently I play on Professional because it's more balanced and REALISTIC than the higher levels because it doesn't base 'difficulty' on unrealistic things such as biasing the physics against the player. The player defence is still just horrible, though. It was great in 07. I don't understand why EA messed it up!?
I hope you take my experiences into account for your gameplay patch!
Cheers
EDIT:
PS: The shooting is VERY GOOD this year so I think it doesn't need very much tweaking! (except on opponent AI's part)
I get long shot goals frequently enough, and frequently not. It's balanced.
