So Sick Of EA's Random "Difficulty" Coding

[bangus]

This really is the bane of my existence. Every year it's the same thing:

1. I spend hours tweaking the files and players and teams to play on NORMAL difficulty, in a REALISTIC manner.

2. I have a night like last night. Playing a series of exhibition matches, the game plays beautifully! Game after game is perfect. Balanced, slow. No sense of the dreaded boost cheats, no cheap goals, nothing.

3. I have a morning like this morning. I start the game up -- exhibition mode again, same teams, same settings, haven't touched a thing -- and the game has sped up to insane levels. CPU players are jumping and running and swarming and attacking like it's the zombie pandemic from World War Z. It. Is. Damn. Ridiculous.

What is wrong with EA that they would program this idiotic and unrealistic BS into FIFA? I bought PES 2018 last week on sale for $9. It's the same old ugly, clunky red-headed stepchild it's been for years. But one thing it does right: Set it up the way you want it to play in exhibition mode, and it plays EXACTLY THE SAME, every game, every time.

 

[bangus]

Seriously, it should not be a chore and headache to play a video football game. But FIFA's random difficulty code makes playing the game a hair-ripping anger-fest. Even on Amateur, so it's not something you can change with the difficulty settings.

All I want, is to fire up the game and have an easy-going, relaxed, fun match where I casually kick the ball around in my end while taking the occasional shot on goal. And that's what I get when I play PES: If I want, I can spend 30 minutes tapping the ball back and forth between my defenders. Too bad it's so awful to look at, ha. Oh that's another thing that's great about PES 2018: the manual passing touch is phenomenal, light years beyond FIFA. Stand still with your player, and gently tap the pass button. He flicks his toe and the ball rolls over to his teammate, it's just so perfectly programmed. Looks and feels like the real thing.

 

[qasar80]

No need to poison yourself with this kind of stuff, it will get you ill.
You said that yourself to me when I was shouting about the lacks in the game especially when these are fixable for years and EA just spits on our wishes, choosing instead to take care only to that FUT thing, which earns them money on a constant base, not just once a year.
I kept trying this year to do something about my wishes but in present situation there is no more fun in playing fifa 18 and will wait for fifa 19 though I would not hold my breath to be a big upgrade, just a few licenses more added in reality.
We are outmatched by FUT players. which are many more than career mode players and do not give a dime about stadiums, licenses, kits and every other stuff that interest us or even gameplay because they are mostly playing each other. As far as they are concerned a green rectangle as a pitch and a simple genric white or black kit is enough to be happy and spend money every week on points or what the hell are they buying and loose track of time. So, if we would be the producers, would we listen to career mode players and their annoying requests which would only take away money in order to license more teams, leagues, stadiums or we would praise the FUT players and give them some pack as a gift once in a while, with no investment from us???

 

[Sami 1999]

So this is the day bangus finally snapped

RIP

 

[bangus]

in present situation there is no more fun in playing fifa 18 and will wait for fifa 19 though I would not hold my breath...
We are outmatched by FUT players.

Let's not even pretend FIFA 19 might be any different. This is the way the game has been coded for a decade. It is not going to change. I'm considering moth-balling my tower so I don't have the urge to buy FIFA 19 in September. If my PC is in the closet, maybe I'll forget there's a new game out.

As Paul pointed out in his GP thread -- something I have noticed myself with regards to player rating effectiveness in particular -- EA have even made things worse the past two years. The game barely relies anymore on player ratings, sliders or team settings. Now, CPU ability and behavior is almost exclusively determined and controlled by this preset and entirely random difficulty coding.

I'll give you an example: Circa FIFA 13, you could edit players' short passing ratings to 99, and then watch the CPU ping-pong the ball around like useless Spain in WC 2018. But that doesn't work anymore. You edit those ratings like that now, you will see no obvious change or difference in the way the CPU moves the ball around. All of that is now determined somewhere else in the game files, in some embedded coding EA has hidden away.

I know I've said some things to you, like "Just enjoy it, it's a great game!" But yes, I also agree with you that the problem here is that EA has essentially abandoned the offline game in their pursuit of online $$$. I know we are outmatched by online gamers. And that won't change. It will only get worse. Literally, our only recourse is to not get sucked into buying FIFA 19. Fool me once, shame on me etc.

 

[bangus]

So this is the day bangus finally snapped

RIP

Lucky I bought PES 2018 last week for 9 bucks. I'm playing it now, it takes my mind off FIFA's nonsense. And as usual I'll be sick of PES in a day, and will gladly go back to FIFA, knowing I will give in and put up with the stupid stuff, because there's also a whole bunch of good stuff to like.

 

[Sami 1999]

Lucky I bought PES 2018 last week for 9 bucks. I'm playing it now, it takes my mind off FIFA's nonsense. And as usual I'll be sick of PES in a day, and will gladly go back to FIFA, knowing I will give in and put up with the stupid stuff, because there's also a whole bunch of good stuff to like.

PES 18 does get repetitive after playing for few days.

But yeah, I buy both Pes and Fifa. That way I can switch between two when I get tired of one.

 

[qasar80]

Isn't that ironic that the European Union considers choosing a FUT pack as online gambling and therefore illegal???
You all saw I presume that in the second that came to light, EA responded with all they got, doing all in their power to fix this.(it shakes the money bag)
Maybe all we have to do is to convince the European Parlament that the game is bad when it could be much better in order to have a better chance to an improved game rather than asking EA. The odds would be higher anyway.

 

[bangus]

PES 18 does get repetitive after playing for few days.

But yeah, I buy both Pes and Fifa. That way I can switch between two when I get tired of one.

PES, for me, is repetitive in that it's very static and linear, editing-wise. It's almost impossible to create different game "styles." The biggest reason by far is the lack of sliders, the game play can't be customized at all. Another is there is almost no difference in player rating effectiveness: 40 speed is almost exactly the same as 99 speed. So not much point in editing player ratings, period.

In FIFA, you have the sliders, plus certain player ratings like speed make a huge difference in how the game plays. So there's always a new way of playing to test and create. That's why I don't find it repetitive. I always have different projects going, different ways I edit the db, in order to create different styles of game play.

One style for example: I assign set speed ratings to CFs, another to CMs, and another to CBs. What that does is slow the game up when the CPU attacks (less boost cheats, plus easier on my nerves). More importantly and the real inspiration for doing it: it adds serious speed to the (User) attacking game, just like real football has at times. One day I just got sick of the plodding "low game speed" edits. I wanted to add some real speed somehow. And so this speeds the game up considerably when I'm on the attack, which is great fun. Plus it improves the game in that it helps the CPU play better defense.

With PES, there's nothing like that. You have 3 settings choices only, just 3 ways to play: set the difficulty on lame-ass easy, medium, or gtfoh hard.

 

[bangus]

Yeah, that's one area where FIFA difficulty coding (for all my complaining) >>> PES difficulty coding.

FIFA is still random difficulty. The CPU might be boosted so it's 30% faster than you, but the on-pitch events are entirely random. It will out-race you for the ball, but then will fire it wide sort of thing.

PES is pre-determined difficulty. On the higher difficulty levels, the CPU will grab the ball, your defenders will step aside and run away in the opposite direction, the CPU will shoot, your GK will stand still, the ball will fly into the net, and then your GK will dive for it. And you will see this exact same scenario play out again and again and again. It really and truly is that bad and that obvious.

 

[Sami 1999]

Yeah you nailed it. That's exactly what happens in FiFA and PES.


FiFA could be almost perfect if those random boosts and events could be disabled. But no matter what we do, the game manages to go ape shit randomly. It doesn't happen in all matches but when it happens, it results in frustration.

And on PES, repetitiveness is not the only issue. There are too many errors in basic mechanics which are hard to ignore.

 

[bangus]

FiFA could be almost perfect if those random boosts and events could be disabled.

That's the thing, it is perfect without the random difficulty stuff. I played for 2 hours last night, played 4-5 games. Every game was perfect, even tried typical boosted teams like Liverpool and I was still having fair, balanced games.

This morning the game plays like crap. Maybe the answer is restarting FIFA a dozen times until you luck out and the game resets back to normal game play.

 

[darthusa]

FIFA 18's gameplay was nearly perfect when they released it(there was a topic about this, someone wanted to turn the game back to vanila), until the first update they released.. after that update all they said in changelog was "Fixed goalkeeper reflexes" but overall they changed the whole gameplay, coding. And this process is still going on, everytime they release an update the whole game changes

 

[bangus]

FIFA 18's gameplay was nearly perfect when they released it(there was a topic about this, someone wanted to turn the game back to vanila), until the first update they released..

Yup and it's the same story every year. The demo plays perfect because EA doesn't include the random difficulty coding in the demo files. No doubt because it would screw up the feel, given the demo only allows for 2 minute halfs. I wish they would just release the demo version each year as the full game. But I guess as the year goes by, they alter the game play according to the online feedback they get.

 

[Sami 1999]

FIFA 18's gameplay was nearly perfect when they released it(there was a topic about this, someone wanted to turn the game back to vanila),

You can still play the un updated version if you download a pirated copy. Maybe it will even work on legit copy if you replace the files and don't update it from origin.

 

[qasar80]

What has become of us...
I hoped we will never see the day when we'll consider using the pirated version because it's better than the original but that day arrived in my opinion with fifa 17.
I wish I could refuse buying the game in september but it's part of me, having bought every edition since 2004 I think and is that feeling just before the release and the joy when you play it for the first time plus the hope it's better than last year. Ofcourse, the frustration after a while is imminent.
I bought pes almost every year since and do not have the same feelings.

 

[1440p]

So it doesn't make difference whether or not you play in offline mode?

 

[Sami 1999]

So it doesn't make difference whether or not you play in offline mode?

If you keep Origin in offline mode, then Origin won't download updates when you start a game, even if it detects update [in case you accidentally went online].

It's better than Steam [Steam forces updates right through your ass once it detects update, offline mode doesn't help either] but it's not a long term solution.

Cause you might have to do a clean reinstall of windows/ or buy another pc/ change hdd, etc etc. And then when you redownload your game, Origin will download the game along with all the latest updates.

 

[bangus]

If you keep Origin in offline mode, then Origin won't download updates when you start a game, even if it detects update [in case you accidentally went online].

Origin forced me to download the WC update. I have never had auto updates on, but on at least 5 occasions Origin has blocked me from playing FIFA until I downloaded the game update.

 

[Sami 1999]

Origin forced me to download the WC update. I have never had auto updates on, but on at least 5 occasions Origin has blocked me from playing FIFA until I downloaded the game update.

That's weird. Did you try opening the exe file instead of launching it from Origin? See if that works.

I will check if update gets forced on me next time there's an update for Fifa 18.