Biggy's Gameplay Update for FIFA 07 (PC) (Discussion Thread)

Hey guys,

The season of FIFA 07 has started, and I'm kind of happy with the improvements that EA had made to the game engine. It make me wonder why haven't they implement these new values in earlier versions?? Anyways, we all know that this game is and will never be a perfect game, maybe it is an EA plan, or something, but in all cases I believe that we can do some little tweaks that can improve the game play in general.

I have to make it clear from now that many aspects can not be covered by me or any editor outside the EA company, simply because we don't have that much knowledge and technology!

So, for now, I would like to hear some suggestions on how you think that I can improve the game play of the FIFA 07 to make it even better? Give me what you have in mind and your overall feeling. being specific can make my life easier, but I don't mind general ideas.

I'll always be clear with you'all on if I will or will not change the suggested idea.

Please, let us make this thread a clean place to discuss your ideas and opinions on my game play updates. I will always try hard to fix stuff in the right way and track.

Enjoy! and I'll be waiting for your brain juices.

Hey Biggy,

I've noticed that with FIFA 07 the CPU doesn't attack very much or they aren't able to hold onto the ball often.. After the game, i'll look at the match facts and i'll see that i had 20 shots to their 3-4.. I dont like this. Also, I will have like 60-65% of possession. This is on World Class too! I've tried Legendary, but that seems easier than World Class for some odd reason.

The results are still realistic, I still lose games, but they're cheap losses! I'll have 10-15 more shots and heaps more possession and the CPU will slot a goal through from 2 or 3 shots on goal, totally against the flow of the game!

If you can edit something to make the CPU play more possession/attacking orientated that'd make FIFA great.. I really like this years version, its the first time i've played a FIFA for a good 2-3 years now..

I want the audience also to be playable, like running naked over the field...

and seriously, I said it before, this game needs bigger differences between good and weak players / teams. It would give the game so much more depth if I actually had a much weaker opponent when I'm playing a 4th division team in fa cup, and a very good almost unbeatable opponent in champions league. This should be possible since there actually is a small difference. Just not enough.

If nobody wants that, I would appreciate it very much if someone could explain what I can do in ai.ini to achieve it. Someone must know it!

lubes, I understand what you are talking about, I already looked at this issue. I tried a couple of methods and they seem to be great. I'll keep testing though for better results. I always wanted to have matches where my shots are less than the CPU's shots. Another thing lubes, can you tell me the number of your team's and the CPU's "shots on goal" not only "total shots"...

August, You made me smile there with the first comment. HAHA... Anyways, I also looked at your suggestion, and I tried it my self, I'll test it more and more to make sure that everything is going alright.

A good thing to do in order to make weak teams feel weak and strong teams feel really tough to beat is to change the value: "MOMENTUM_ENABLED" from "0" to "1". the result should look like this:

MOMENTUM_ENABLED = 1

This value line is inside the ai.ini file. in the first 20 to 30 lines. At first I thought that this value is made for manager mode or such, but I really felt some deference when i tried it in regular fast matches. check it out and test it, then tell me if it is worth changing.

Enjoy!

Thank you for your answer, I tried this line before, since it says that players will "play better/worse via altered attributes" but confusingly it seemed like it had no effect. I should test it tomorrow again with better comparable matches and tell then. But I am also confused by "momentum enabled" - momentum? what has that got to do with "playing better/worse"? I don't really understand the commentary, and I don't understand why it says that the value will be 1 in the "final game" - but it's 0!?

I also experimented with those values that end with _poor, _avg, _good and _ex. I thought they might differ between poor, average, good and excellent players and have different values for their speed, tackling etc. - But why has every player attributes from 0 to 100 if it all sums up to 4 different attributes? And why does changing these values even to extremes, like this

TRAP_DIST_POOR = 1000
TRAP_DIST_AVG = 250
TRAP_DIST_GOOD = 30
TRAP_DIST_EX = 0

have absolutely no influence?

It's all very strange. But thank you for your efforts, it's good to hear someone works with the ini's because they seem to have potential. We just have to decode it...

If you are wanting to change the gameplay then you will need to edit the two ai.ini files plus the cpudiff.ini i noticed that the one located in the ini.big dose something to the gamplay but very minor you can change all the values but it doesn't really do anything you have to edit the one located in the config.dat to change the gameplay.

this dose change the gameplay CPU act more human like.


this makes the keepers use there stats to do saves rather than all being the same i found this makes the keepers better setting it to 0.


i have changed this this makes the keepers move out when you entre the box to close down your run.

i have changed alot of other values to enhance the gameplay like ball physics, passing speed, game speed and jostling i have edited more aswell you can check them out in the xbox mod post i have uploaded them to there.
Pc and xbox are the same files so they should work for pc you will also have to edit the cpu difficulty aswell iam still in the process of editing these files to get the best gameplay i can because iam a die hard pes fan and fifa was sh*t till this version came out but its still not as good as pes so iam trying to make its as close to pes as i can.

Some things that need to be changed !!

1) Difficulty

I have been playing fifa for some years now and the last years the game is getting to easy for me. In my carreer mode i am playing with Tottenham on LEGEND and i cant really lose. Not even against Man. United and Arsenal.
I do lose against friends sometimes so i think its very strange that i always win my so called Legendary games.

2) CPU AI

I think the CPU AI is very low. After playing the game for some weeks i can see what they are going to do in offense. Some examples:

-CPU almost never has build up play.
-Not going trough the center of middfield very often
-CPU shoots at strange moments
-cornerkicks are often to a player runnin in close wich is not verry realistic
-there try to dribble my defence but without any intelligence ( tricks )
-When cpu does score against me its always an amazing goal even with bad players

3) Goalkeepers make huge mistakes

In fifa 06 many times it was to hard to score against goalkeepers from close range and in free kicks as well. In fifa 07 u can see they tried to fix the problem resulting in some good things but also a lot of bad things:

-Goalkeepers are very bad at diving and really just letting them selves fall to a side wich becomes very clear at free kicks
-They goalkeepers dont come out of there goals early enough both with free kicks and corners.
-Its 2 easy to score from close range and gk look like there scared in a 1 on 1 situation

4) Shooting

I think the overall shooting system has improved alot with fifa 07 but again here are some things i think arent good:

-Its to easy to give huge amount of effect to the ball even with less skilled players
-I think the succes rate is a bit to high. Of course it cant be as low as in real life since u dont wanna play 90 minutes so games always have to be a bit arcade

5) Positioning

The positioning of the players has improved again under fifa 07. For example with the right formation your wing backs arent running in the wrong places like in fifa 06 and also players take over positions and running creative. Still some thing about CPU positioning i dont like:

-My attackers get to much space in the box from CPU deffence
-In some games CPU atackers are completly on an island

6) Simulation

At the top of my post i writed that i was in manager with tottenham standing on first place. Some other top teams in the table are really doing bad. I could say historicly bad!! Arsenal is on 9th place and Manchester in 5th. Liverpool is on 14th place and Chelsea 6th. I think this a huge negatife aspect of this game and i hope it can be fixed.

Conclusion:

The key areas to my opinion that need to be changed are :
-The AI of pc. So more creativity
-The defence of pc needs to get better
-GK needs to be bettter
-If its possible better simulation

If this could be tackled its one of the greatest games ever but for now ( only my opninion ) its average.

Hope this can help you BIGY. I really loved your stuff before. KIU !!!

Here is a pic of the stats with my new values i only one by the skin of my teeth.

WC Modded values and ini's
Rangers xxx\ vs Barcelona xxxx\


WC Modded values and ini's
R. Madrid xxxx\ vs Lincoin City x\

Nice stuff Rocky5.

About these codes:

NEARTHIRD_LINEDISTANCE =7 //8
MIDDLETHIRD_LINEDISTANCE =37 //21
FARTHIRD_LINEDISTANCE =68 //41
DEADZONE_X =54
DEADZONE_Z =42 //30

Don't you think that the values of the LINDEISTANCE are too much? I mean I can do many tricks such as shooting at goal from far away easily, which can become annoying! Anyways, I'll give it a try and tell you my results.

Nice match results by the way. but too much shooting is involved. I did some tweaks here and there and my last match between me (Barca) and the CPU (R. Madrid) ended with a 0-0 and the total shots were 1 for me and 2 for the CPU!! Most of the play was at midfield which is turing out to be interesting.

keep me updated with what you have inmind.

*************

kolleberga, Nice suggestions.

1. I think that the difficulty is good right now. What we need to fix is the way the CPU uses this difficulty level. I don't want to touch the difficulty settings, many have lots of tastes and I'll try to keep it the same as it was from EA, but with tweaking the CPU actions to more human type.

2. Better AI: I'm working on this issue, and as I told Rocky5 here, that my last match ended with a 0-0 and with 1 shot for me and 2 shots for the CPU, which means that I'm letting the CPU have more human thinking and less CPU acts! They don't use tricks and dribbles a lot, only few times during the match.

3. Goalkeepers: Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the goalkeepers are always going to be stupid, that's what I think. EA simply loves the stupid goalies, so we have to bare with them. The only thing I can fix is the time the goalie will react and the distance he'll run, and stuff like this. but many many bugs such as "not running to the ball when it's heading to the back of the corner line and no one is actually around him" can not be fixed now!!!

4. Shooting: I already started fixing these issues. in my last tweak I had a shot flying waayy up high, just like real life (Based on the situation), and most of the shots were not successful.

5. Positioning: I'll see what I can do about this. probably it is editable.

6. Simulation: Can't do anything about it. Sorry


Enjoy!

@rocky

I just looked up what the word "flamboyant" means and I can't really think what it means in that context... but i trust you.
I always changed both ai.inis and sometimes I really felt a change but not when its about good/weak difference.

@kolleberga

I think its (that's part of my problem, too) because the teams in one league are
too... uh... close, I mean their skill ratings are almost the same. Without looking it up I would guess chelsea has aa average of about 80-85 and Reading of 65-70. There are more numbers between 0 and 100! A solution would be to make chelsea and the the other top-clubs better, about 95 average. But this is a lot of work, and you would have to change EVERY players abilities to spread the skill values in the game. At the moment the very best teams (chelsea, barca etc) have an 85 average, the weakest (English fourth div etc) about 45. If you change everything you might end up with 95 instead of 85 and 10 instead of 45, and everything in between according to that. But this is much too much work!
A solution which I can't deliver, unfortunately, would be a kind of Database program or creation centre where you can increase or decrease the skill values of a complete team. This should be possible since last year's cc had an option to make all values of a player "good", "very good", "weak" etc. by one click.
It would be great if that would be done.

@biggy

I guess it's avery good thing to make it harder to get to the goal for both sides so that freak results like 7-3 become rarer.
I also always had the problem with every game that results were too similar (this also has to do with my main problem...), that in a whole career on fifa06 I always had almost the same results like 2-1, 2-0, 3-1, 2-2, 2-1, 2-0, 1-2, 2-0, 2-1, 3-1 without a result breaking out like 5-0, 0-5, 7-3 or even 0-0 or 1-0.
But I have no clue how to fix that...

thanx biggy for your response!!
Maybe your right about the difficulty level. But for me its way to easy and i now many more people. And since there are 5 levels to play in i think the there should be something for all people since almost everybody can at least play amateur.
So i hope i can be made a little bit harder

August, don't you think that the scores you are getting are realistic? I mean most of the game I watch on TV are almost the same as these scores. I'm testing out the TRAP_DISTANCE values and I'll let you know what results I got. As Rocky5 said, remember to replace the ai.ini files inside the config.dat and the ini.dat they both work inside the game.

Kolleberga, I'll see what i can do about it. I can not assure you that the CPU will be harder (To be fair with everybody), But I can 90% assure you that the game play in general will be more real, meaning harder actions.

Enjoy!

I do, Biggy! The scores ARE mostly realistic. But sometimes there are many goals in a match like 3-3 or 5-2, sometimes not so many like 0-0. I never played 0-0 in fifa07. I want that sometimes strange things happen. I want three goals in 10 minutes! I want to have 3 matches in a row in which I am not scoring!

I always replaced both ai.inis, even though it's difficult to imagine the game uses both. If it did, it would crash if the ai.inis are different. But it doesn't.

There's more values that end with poor, avg, good and ex, most of them I don't understand. It's so much trying and testing it could fill a full-time job. I wish the commentary inside the inis was better understandable. And not stuff like that:

//why does this sound like a Sailor Moon attack?? it's meant to be the minimum aggression rating to be considered flamboyant

Hi all
first of all i want to thank Biggy for his effort to tweak Fifa gameplay e for his availability to share his knowledge.
This said, please also consider that cpu is now able to shoot too much quickly although pressed.
About 50% of these shots are irrealistic because done "on flight"..
The correction of CPU_MIN_TIME_UNMARKED_LONG_SHOT parameter seems not to address this issue.
What do you think Biggy?
Another little question, do you know how to force the cpu to do 3 subs?
Cheers

sa33ood said:

I'm testing out the TRAP_DISTANCE values and I'll let you know what results I got

Click to expand...

I'd be surprised if they make any difference since the FIFA 07 executable doesn't look like it reads those parameters (the names don't appear anywhere). The INI files seem to have filled up with detritus over the years and there are a fair few parameters that are no longer used.

Biebrich 02 said:

I always replaced both ai.inis, even though it's difficult to imagine the game uses both

Click to expand...

I am of the opinion that it isn't necessary to update the CONFIG.DAT and/or INI.BIG files, but rather than repeat myself I'll just reference this post in the FIFA 06 forum. A quick check of FIFA 07 file processing suggests that the process is still the same, but who knows what is actually going on internally??

One thing I don't like is that when I/opponent shoot a really powerful shot close to goal and keeper saves it then ball should fly really far away but it stays right in front of goal where other striker usually scores. It kinda ruins the game when most of my and CPU goals come like that.

When I made changes suggested by Rocky5 the game became more real, but there are a lot of work still to do.
IMHO you must make CPU defence more qualified. It is very easy to run over all opponent team and score a goal. I score such goals very often. I take ball in the cenrte of the pitch by Sergio Aguero, run to the goalie and score. This is all my game. It isn't too interesting;-((

Which parameter of which file do I have to modify to increase the sprint speed ?
(I mean the sprint you get by pressing sprint key)

Hey Biggy you Gameplay God!
Hoping you and Ockham will get together soon for the next CEP.
I really enjoyed the last gameplay mod in CEP.
Good luck and thanks!

About replacing the files in both ini's: I think that it dose affect in some way or another, I mean I use to edit many stuff in FIFA 06 and when I try them inside the game nothing use to happen, but when I replace both files it use to affect the over all thing, so, I prefer replacing both files (for readers: If you don't understand this part please do not try it!)

I've tweaked the goalies a little, but still I need some more work to do, I'm almost there though. The keepers run to the ball more often and will not catch a speeding ball shot from 2 meters away from them! EA keeps doing the same mistake and we have to fix it each time, but all in all, it is turning out to be a good tweak.

I've also tried to make shots more "errored", meaning that the shooter will miss the ball much more times when in a bad situation (tackling moments). At first I thought that it would make the game lame, but it turned out to be "wonderful"; less goals, less chances, go crazy!

Talking about chances, I tweaked the ball in a way that it acts more real, it leaves the feet of players more and it acts on its own, adding to this I made defenders more equal with attackers, so, with the tweaked defence and ball most of the matches play in the "midfield", which I think is cool.

I'm still testing, we still have time to do our best. If anyone comes up with an idea that they tried or want me to try then please share it here, I got 2 ideas until now and they both made the game better in some way.

paldrive, there use to be some values to control the sprint speed of the players in FIFA 06 and before, but EA removed it from FIFA 07, maybe for the better. Anyway, here are the codes, and if you know what you are doing, paste them in the ai file and try tuning them out (change the numbers only), then tell us what you got. (the numbers are not the original ones):

SPRINT_SPEED_POOR = 6.0 //Edit by biggy
SPRINT_SPEED_AVG = 6.5 //Edit by biggy
SPRINT_SPEED_GOOD = 6.7 //Edit by biggy
SPRINT_SPEED_EX = 7.2 //Edit by biggy

Enjoy!

gamo333, thank you mate!