NosmircPlayer wrote in fifa forums
So yesterday I went to GCA in Singapore as I learned that 1. EA would be showing Fifa08 there and 2. it was free entry for the public, so I went there and was very fortunate to spend about 20 minutes chatting to an EA Content Producer* as well as playing a couple of games of 08 on the 360 (one against the EA guy and one against another member of the public).
*Unfortunately because of the immense noise I didn't get the guy's name or job title, it was something like "EA Content Produder", or "EA Product Producer" or something, basically he somewhat oversees and has to know about all EA products, he was a fountain of knowledge on Fifa and was a very friendly, affable guy so I thank him greatly for spending the time to chat with me, if any admins from here know who he might have been please speak up now!
In the Evoweb forums I posted a bunch of long posts about what I saw and was told and also answered a bunch of questions from the Evo web guys, so what I'll do here is copy over the information I posted and then copy over a Q&A, then if anyone has read all of it and still has questions I'm obviously more than happy to answer them Smile
I'll also post the videos and photos I took, please note that the videos I captured are of extremely poor quality because all I had to capture them was my mobile phone
Overview: I probably spent about an hour or so in the EA booth, first I chatted to the producer for about 20 minutes, then he showed me some stuff in the game for about 5-10 mins, then I played a match against him, had a little look around the menus and finally was asked by another guy there if I wanted to play against him which I did Smile
I played two full matches in total 6 minute halves, Sheffield United (the EA producer) v Sheffield Wednesday (me), lost 2-0 but it was a really good match, I made loads of chances but couldn't convert them (just like real life!). Dirty cheating blades had Lee Hendrie sent off for two yellows!
Second match was Arsenal v Liverpool, me as Liverpool against another visitor who was there, I won 4-1, 1st 60 mins was really close but I pulled away in the end with a couple of quick goals.
Player Attributes: We (the EA guy and I) ended up doing a lot with Gary Neville because I used him as the example for the concern a lot of people have for doing skill moves (a little more on that later), so Neville ended up as the player selected in the Arena and then the guy showed me Neville's stats (I specifically asked if I could see what attributes make up each player).
(ignore the fact that the first pic doesn't show Neville, that's because there's a slight pause whilst it loads the selected player and my photo finger was a little faster than the 360!)
I didn't manage to catch all the stats as he scrolled through but as you can see from the scrollbar there's something like 20-30 stats and attributes so they really add up to making a player unique from another player, also something which I only just noticed now is that a player finally has more than one position if applicable, Neville as you can see is listed as RB/CB/RWB and his "top attributes" are about what you'd expect them to be for Neville.
Videos: In total I have 5 shakeycam videos that I captured on my phone, 3 are essentially useless, 1 is the opening cutscenes of the Sheff Utd v Sheffield Wednesday match and the other is me using Yoann Folly in the Arena trying to do skill moves one handed whilst holding my phone at the TV!
The five videos are available separately and untouched as they came off my phone (including the awful amount of background noise we had to try and talk through), as well as merged together and muted on youtube
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dj9txntd4bn
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8y3e9d5ntmj
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?e4mbowtnlvh
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?axanxnmmidx
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2nymtvmmz1c
Tricks and the "Gary Neville" factor: I said to the EA guy that whilst a lot of people seem excited about Fifa 08's tricks one of the biggest concerns is that players like Gary Neville will be running around doing flipflaps and Blanco jumps and what not, he told me this wasn't how it will be, and that the ability to do tricks for each player is primarily stat based, with attributes such as agility, ball control and others being what define what tricks a player can do.
There are 3 levels to the tricks, the basic ones such as feints, the middle ones such as step overs and then the highest level of tricks that only the very, very best players can do such as flipflap, Blanco's jump, Christiano Ronaldo's turn etc. etc.
Now this is the bit some people will disagree with but I think is realistic, even Gary Neville can do the most basic tricks, such as feints and such, although because of his stats they will be much slower than if a "good" player was doing them, I think this is correct because anyone, even a 60 year old granny can stand next to a football and do a feint, it's just a shoulder/leg movement, just if a granny (or Gary Neville) does it then it will be slow and pretty much ineffective.
The inverse is also true for the top level of tricks, example Ronaldhino can do Blanco's jump, or Christiano Ronaldo's turn, and again I think that's accurate, if Ronaldinho is skilled enough to be able to do the tricks we know he can do such as the flipflap, he could just as easily learn to do Blanco's jump or any other trick that the best players pull off.
Finally regarding tricks, I asked the EA guy if we will see the AI utilising the tricks, for example if we play as Chelsea v Barcelona will we see Ronaldinho running around doing tricks even if the AI are controlling the team and he confirmed that is the case, which is good news Smile
Quick change FK taker: one of the things that bugged me about 07/UCL next gen is that when you get a freekick/corner there's no quick way to change the freekick taker (in 07 PS2 you hold down R1 then scroll with the D-pad, works great), I asked the EA guy if there would be a way to quickly change kick takers, the strange thing was when he went to do it to show me it was no longer working, so it looks like for some reason it was removed/disabled from the build they were showing in GCA, so I'm hoping that means there's a chance it will be in the release version (it looked like he was trying to press "LB" for it).
Be a Pro 5v5 outside EU/USA: there's been a little confusion about the availability of Be a Pro 5v5 and why it won't be available in certain regions. The EA guy confirmed to me that sadly it won't be available in Asia or any other continent outside the USA/EU (I didn't ask about Canada but I'm pretty much assuming it will be available there)
The reason that for example Australia/Asia won't be able to have be a pro 5v5 is because there aren't sufficient EA Servers in these regions so the latency would be so bad it would make the mode unstable and unenjoyable to play. The good news is that EA want to make the mode available worldwide and are currently investigating what needs to be done and where to make this possible. I asked if he had any idea of a time-scale for Asia or other parts of the world (I asked if perhaps we'd be able to see it before Fifa09) and he answered that they honestly didn't know.
Be a Pro Arena Mode: not a very big thing but something I noticed, when you set up a Be a Pro match, during the loading of the game it appears that the player you chose to control is automatically the one you have available to you in the Arena as the game is loading (I accidentally chose Yoann Folly as the player I was controlling in be a pro and whilst loading it was Folly I had in the arena, hence the video of me doing tricks one handed with him Wink), it seemed like a good, simple idea as you then can take a little time familiarising yourself with how that player moves and shoots, or if you chose Drogba you can familiarise yourself with how he throws himself to the ground as if shot by the 2nd sniper on the grassy knoll every time he's tackled Wink
Core makeup of current gen/next gen teams: we talked a little about feature content of both current and next gen, how current gen seems to have more of the little touches and features we would like next gen to have (pre-season friendlies, keepers that can be sent off or injured, etc. etc.), I told him that a lot of people were unhappy about the apparent lack of "extra pazazz" in next gen, I also told him that the new updates to the FAQ had been badly received, that it was basically "is this, this this and this in next gen, answer no, no, no, no". He went on to explain to me that with Fifa08 the current gen team constitutes a larger portion of designers (because the graphics and AI have reached a level where they are at the extremes of what the systems can offer), whereas the next gen dev team constitutes a larger portion of programmers (for the AI, movement, tactical awareness, threat mapping and all that) and "graphicians" (all the extra kits, stadiums, balls and what not of 30 leagues needed creating by someone). So that reason is part of the reason that next gen (in comparison to current gen), looks like it's lacking a little love, feature wise, now that everything has been created for 08 it should mean that less stuff needs to be made from scratch in 09 and there is more room in the team for extra love/features/pazazz in 09 Smile
Lifespan for current gen I asked him if there would reach a time where they stopped making a current gen version of Fifa, he said that whilst it still indicated there's a market for current gen they'll keep making current gen versions.
Edit Mode: one question I asked him about edit mode was to clear up some confusion I'd been reading, we were told that for the star players with real faces we couldn't edit their face (which of course makes sense), but the question was whether or not we can change their hair/facial hair? Beckham being the perfect example, for two weeks he was bleached blonde so appears that way in all EA's Fifa08 shots and then in his last Galaxy appearance we see he's shaved it all off, so obviously a year with Beckham's white hair would be annoying. Unfortunately the EA guy confirmed that for players with "real" faces we will not be able to change their hair/facial hair, I pointed out to him that PES lets us do that so I think he took it on board Wink
According to the EA guy, there is no hard coded limit in edit mode for next gen other than the storage space you have available (for example memory card/hard drive), I should mention he was going from memory and he's not 100% certain, but if it's true that's really great news.
One thing I was very keen to look for was the edit mode, I wanted to see if for example you can change the skin tone of a player easily, just playing as Sheffield Wednesday I saw a couple of players that need some adjusting (Wade Small in game is light black but in real life he's very black black), unfortunately I couldn't find the edit mode, I went into creation centre/edit player but all I could see was the usual edit stuff such as name/DOB/nationality/tape or no tape/shirt tucked or untucked and where you edit his attributes, so either I wasn't looking in the right place or it was disabled in the build I was playing, the EA guy had left at that point so unfortunately I couldn't ask him about it.
I have to admit that there's something he told me that he then asked me to not reveal, but we talked about so much I can't remember for the life of me what it was, so hopefully if it is something I've revealed he won't get into too much trouble Wink
Here's a couple of random pics, one of Fifa 08 on the wii (at GCA they had 2x Fifa08 360, 1x Fifa08 Wii then about 20 linked PCs playing "Fifa online")
hahahahaha pesfanboys
So yesterday I went to GCA in Singapore as I learned that 1. EA would be showing Fifa08 there and 2. it was free entry for the public, so I went there and was very fortunate to spend about 20 minutes chatting to an EA Content Producer* as well as playing a couple of games of 08 on the 360 (one against the EA guy and one against another member of the public).
*Unfortunately because of the immense noise I didn't get the guy's name or job title, it was something like "EA Content Produder", or "EA Product Producer" or something, basically he somewhat oversees and has to know about all EA products, he was a fountain of knowledge on Fifa and was a very friendly, affable guy so I thank him greatly for spending the time to chat with me, if any admins from here know who he might have been please speak up now!
In the Evoweb forums I posted a bunch of long posts about what I saw and was told and also answered a bunch of questions from the Evo web guys, so what I'll do here is copy over the information I posted and then copy over a Q&A, then if anyone has read all of it and still has questions I'm obviously more than happy to answer them Smile
I'll also post the videos and photos I took, please note that the videos I captured are of extremely poor quality because all I had to capture them was my mobile phone
Overview: I probably spent about an hour or so in the EA booth, first I chatted to the producer for about 20 minutes, then he showed me some stuff in the game for about 5-10 mins, then I played a match against him, had a little look around the menus and finally was asked by another guy there if I wanted to play against him which I did Smile
I played two full matches in total 6 minute halves, Sheffield United (the EA producer) v Sheffield Wednesday (me), lost 2-0 but it was a really good match, I made loads of chances but couldn't convert them (just like real life!). Dirty cheating blades had Lee Hendrie sent off for two yellows!
Second match was Arsenal v Liverpool, me as Liverpool against another visitor who was there, I won 4-1, 1st 60 mins was really close but I pulled away in the end with a couple of quick goals.
Player Attributes: We (the EA guy and I) ended up doing a lot with Gary Neville because I used him as the example for the concern a lot of people have for doing skill moves (a little more on that later), so Neville ended up as the player selected in the Arena and then the guy showed me Neville's stats (I specifically asked if I could see what attributes make up each player).
(ignore the fact that the first pic doesn't show Neville, that's because there's a slight pause whilst it loads the selected player and my photo finger was a little faster than the 360!)
I didn't manage to catch all the stats as he scrolled through but as you can see from the scrollbar there's something like 20-30 stats and attributes so they really add up to making a player unique from another player, also something which I only just noticed now is that a player finally has more than one position if applicable, Neville as you can see is listed as RB/CB/RWB and his "top attributes" are about what you'd expect them to be for Neville.
Videos: In total I have 5 shakeycam videos that I captured on my phone, 3 are essentially useless, 1 is the opening cutscenes of the Sheff Utd v Sheffield Wednesday match and the other is me using Yoann Folly in the Arena trying to do skill moves one handed whilst holding my phone at the TV!
The five videos are available separately and untouched as they came off my phone (including the awful amount of background noise we had to try and talk through), as well as merged together and muted on youtube
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dj9txntd4bn
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8y3e9d5ntmj
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?e4mbowtnlvh
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?axanxnmmidx
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2nymtvmmz1c
Tricks and the "Gary Neville" factor: I said to the EA guy that whilst a lot of people seem excited about Fifa 08's tricks one of the biggest concerns is that players like Gary Neville will be running around doing flipflaps and Blanco jumps and what not, he told me this wasn't how it will be, and that the ability to do tricks for each player is primarily stat based, with attributes such as agility, ball control and others being what define what tricks a player can do.
There are 3 levels to the tricks, the basic ones such as feints, the middle ones such as step overs and then the highest level of tricks that only the very, very best players can do such as flipflap, Blanco's jump, Christiano Ronaldo's turn etc. etc.
Now this is the bit some people will disagree with but I think is realistic, even Gary Neville can do the most basic tricks, such as feints and such, although because of his stats they will be much slower than if a "good" player was doing them, I think this is correct because anyone, even a 60 year old granny can stand next to a football and do a feint, it's just a shoulder/leg movement, just if a granny (or Gary Neville) does it then it will be slow and pretty much ineffective.
The inverse is also true for the top level of tricks, example Ronaldhino can do Blanco's jump, or Christiano Ronaldo's turn, and again I think that's accurate, if Ronaldinho is skilled enough to be able to do the tricks we know he can do such as the flipflap, he could just as easily learn to do Blanco's jump or any other trick that the best players pull off.
Finally regarding tricks, I asked the EA guy if we will see the AI utilising the tricks, for example if we play as Chelsea v Barcelona will we see Ronaldinho running around doing tricks even if the AI are controlling the team and he confirmed that is the case, which is good news Smile
Quick change FK taker: one of the things that bugged me about 07/UCL next gen is that when you get a freekick/corner there's no quick way to change the freekick taker (in 07 PS2 you hold down R1 then scroll with the D-pad, works great), I asked the EA guy if there would be a way to quickly change kick takers, the strange thing was when he went to do it to show me it was no longer working, so it looks like for some reason it was removed/disabled from the build they were showing in GCA, so I'm hoping that means there's a chance it will be in the release version (it looked like he was trying to press "LB" for it).
Be a Pro 5v5 outside EU/USA: there's been a little confusion about the availability of Be a Pro 5v5 and why it won't be available in certain regions. The EA guy confirmed to me that sadly it won't be available in Asia or any other continent outside the USA/EU (I didn't ask about Canada but I'm pretty much assuming it will be available there)
The reason that for example Australia/Asia won't be able to have be a pro 5v5 is because there aren't sufficient EA Servers in these regions so the latency would be so bad it would make the mode unstable and unenjoyable to play. The good news is that EA want to make the mode available worldwide and are currently investigating what needs to be done and where to make this possible. I asked if he had any idea of a time-scale for Asia or other parts of the world (I asked if perhaps we'd be able to see it before Fifa09) and he answered that they honestly didn't know.
Be a Pro Arena Mode: not a very big thing but something I noticed, when you set up a Be a Pro match, during the loading of the game it appears that the player you chose to control is automatically the one you have available to you in the Arena as the game is loading (I accidentally chose Yoann Folly as the player I was controlling in be a pro and whilst loading it was Folly I had in the arena, hence the video of me doing tricks one handed with him Wink), it seemed like a good, simple idea as you then can take a little time familiarising yourself with how that player moves and shoots, or if you chose Drogba you can familiarise yourself with how he throws himself to the ground as if shot by the 2nd sniper on the grassy knoll every time he's tackled Wink
Core makeup of current gen/next gen teams: we talked a little about feature content of both current and next gen, how current gen seems to have more of the little touches and features we would like next gen to have (pre-season friendlies, keepers that can be sent off or injured, etc. etc.), I told him that a lot of people were unhappy about the apparent lack of "extra pazazz" in next gen, I also told him that the new updates to the FAQ had been badly received, that it was basically "is this, this this and this in next gen, answer no, no, no, no". He went on to explain to me that with Fifa08 the current gen team constitutes a larger portion of designers (because the graphics and AI have reached a level where they are at the extremes of what the systems can offer), whereas the next gen dev team constitutes a larger portion of programmers (for the AI, movement, tactical awareness, threat mapping and all that) and "graphicians" (all the extra kits, stadiums, balls and what not of 30 leagues needed creating by someone). So that reason is part of the reason that next gen (in comparison to current gen), looks like it's lacking a little love, feature wise, now that everything has been created for 08 it should mean that less stuff needs to be made from scratch in 09 and there is more room in the team for extra love/features/pazazz in 09 Smile
Lifespan for current gen I asked him if there would reach a time where they stopped making a current gen version of Fifa, he said that whilst it still indicated there's a market for current gen they'll keep making current gen versions.
Edit Mode: one question I asked him about edit mode was to clear up some confusion I'd been reading, we were told that for the star players with real faces we couldn't edit their face (which of course makes sense), but the question was whether or not we can change their hair/facial hair? Beckham being the perfect example, for two weeks he was bleached blonde so appears that way in all EA's Fifa08 shots and then in his last Galaxy appearance we see he's shaved it all off, so obviously a year with Beckham's white hair would be annoying. Unfortunately the EA guy confirmed that for players with "real" faces we will not be able to change their hair/facial hair, I pointed out to him that PES lets us do that so I think he took it on board Wink
According to the EA guy, there is no hard coded limit in edit mode for next gen other than the storage space you have available (for example memory card/hard drive), I should mention he was going from memory and he's not 100% certain, but if it's true that's really great news.
One thing I was very keen to look for was the edit mode, I wanted to see if for example you can change the skin tone of a player easily, just playing as Sheffield Wednesday I saw a couple of players that need some adjusting (Wade Small in game is light black but in real life he's very black black), unfortunately I couldn't find the edit mode, I went into creation centre/edit player but all I could see was the usual edit stuff such as name/DOB/nationality/tape or no tape/shirt tucked or untucked and where you edit his attributes, so either I wasn't looking in the right place or it was disabled in the build I was playing, the EA guy had left at that point so unfortunately I couldn't ask him about it.
I have to admit that there's something he told me that he then asked me to not reveal, but we talked about so much I can't remember for the life of me what it was, so hopefully if it is something I've revealed he won't get into too much trouble Wink
Here's a couple of random pics, one of Fifa 08 on the wii (at GCA they had 2x Fifa08 360, 1x Fifa08 Wii then about 20 linked PCs playing "Fifa online")
hahahahaha pesfanboys
