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Reasons Why I Didnt Buy FIFA 17 and Why I'm Not Buying FIFA 18

pe pe

Club Supporter
this will be no gameplay related since gameplay should be discussed separately as it is too complex subject

==========

no mods (obviously)

pc catalogue, winter balls and boots dlc not fixed since fifa 13

ok not everyone cares about boots updates - fair enough - but ffs fix generic boot bug (isembargoed column in db, thanks diggerhawk)

lack of innovation. last big „wow” factor for me was addition of all 20 premier league stadiums in fifa 15. this alone was enough to buy fifa 15. how naive was i to expect similar with bundesliga and la liga especially if ea bought their licencies? now we are three years later and it seems like more stadiums are taken away than added; it is almost like all they wanted to do was to lock out konami of these deals, in result no matter if youre fifa or pes player we all are loosers ; )

boring generic stadiums from last gen with static adboards. pes has less licencesed stadiums but they are modern and look way better

small balls, literally psychical size of ball 3d model is too damn small

too dark night lighting, in fact there are lighting/shaders problems since fifa 12

fifa 11 excellent
fifa 12 desaturated, yellow grass
fifa 13 bright as fuck
fifa 14 straight up bugged resulting in black nets, dark boots
fifa 14 wc night darker than 18
fifa 15 and 16 fixed most of it, day perfect, night okayish, though day overcast is ugly and renders ball almost nonexistent especially hivis versions)

nets got uglier than last gen. in fifa 15 they even make selling point out of the fact that post shake when hit and nets go up from the ground, which unfortunately was significantly decreased in 16 even before migrating to frostbite. if you dont care about nets than you probably dont like football. i mean hitting the back of the net is one of the most satisfactory things in this sport! the look, the sound. now the physics are totally messed up, and colors as well (probably due to problems with lighting)

penalties got totally messed up since 17 - why change something that isnt broken? infact it was nearly perfect (at least from the shooter perspective)

awkward set pieces running up animations - i get it that they are fully scanned but it is an excellent example that realism is not always better, overall animations seem more robotic and less fluent probably due to the fact that frostbite wasnt designed with sport simulation in mind; recorded animations look great separately but chaining them in dynamic, unpredictable context results in uncanny valley of failed human movement representation

overall lack of visual variety: weather, pitchwear (does it work even?), pitchpatterns, goalnets - all the same since fifa 12. if you play career mode all the matches look the same, fog in 16 was nice addition but it is too little for almost 10 years.

why nobody at ea has ever come up with an idea to mix kits, shirts and sock? pes 5 had it, hadnt it? this proves lack of creativity and drive to iterate on each version to make end product better so why expecting something more form next versions?

lack of respect to licences and lack of attention to branding related details: efl kitnumbers not updated after promotion to premier league, premier league fonts in cup matches see: https://fifaforums.easports.com/en/discussion/181153/unrealistic-shirts-font

lack of low cut versions of ace, hypervenom, magista despite the fact that ea has deals with both nike and adidas; old anfield, etihad; only couple of teams have third kits; assigning boots to players in match form based on color and not on proper brand and model (rashford with tiempo, ramos with mercurials in fifa15 etc)

since ea has started scanning faces it seems that they would have scanned every player in the world by now, and you know what - they probably have! so why they dont update these faces despite they advertise it? look up starhead related thread in ea sports forum for details such who have they scanned and not updated with pics and vids proof, ffs david silva has same face since fifa 10, see: https://fifaforums.easports.com/en/discussion/270720/fifa-18-starhead-thread

bad ui decisions carried over since forever: winter accesories bug in career mode, only handful of boots selectable in edit mode, selecting game at dusk is hit or miss since hours and stadiums previews are messed up - different dusk time for each season (winter vs summer etc) is realistic but completely ingored by ui, you need to learn from your mistskes; side selection screen inconsistencies resulting in inability to spectate, i.e. cpu vs cpu in career mode is mppssible despite the fact it worked in demo and works in quick game mode (this is more important than you think: this little feature can make game more accessible for people with disabilities who would like to play as manager, make transfers, tinker with formations, squads etc. yet cant due to bad user interface since the ai is there to simulate games in real time)

selectable stadium in fifa 16 menu backgroud was a nice touch that added to personalization but was scrapped in 17 and 18. why? at ea they make unreasonable changes, if you are willing to change something ask yourself if it makes your product better, if not - dont touch it. another example: nerfing body feints and drag backs out of the blue for no apparent reason other than to shake up the meta game (but i guess its gameplay related so i stop here)

lack of quality assurance, bad support and unwillingness to patch bugs - remember how in fifa wc 14 you couldnt select final 23 players squad? you could select only 18 players then game automatically and randomly populated last 5 players for you and in final tournament in team management you had yet again 18 players so even you couldn move someone in an dout of the bench (and the bench in wc shouldnt have all 12 players availaboe?) do you think it got patched? well if ea releases wc 18 will it be fixed or carried over?

...
 

marcas

Youth Team
I strongly agree with the disappointment of game developers removing features... We see it all the time though, not just EA. If developers have a product that's good to begin with - shouldn't they just improve on what's already working!? Why remove stuff??? I don't get that.

And also another big concern of mine about the Fifa series: I noticed that the sound effects quality AND quantity have gone downhill over the last 3-4 years. That really kills the game experience for me. Go back a couple, or few more years, and have a listen to the in-game sounds and how it's developed (or should I say UN-developed) over time... Some sound effects have just been completely removed :(
 

bangus

Starting XI
Do what I do... wait till the game is half price, makes it easier to enjoy when you've only paid 30 bucks for it lol. I played FIFA 16 up until last week. Installed FIFA 17 last weekend and have been having a great time with it... including roster modding with Moddingway's tools. Also, I've seen mods to change players' hair and kits, so I'm not clear why you say there's no modding. Anyway, like all things in life, the glass is either half full or half empty depending on your outlook. I focus on the good things the game offers.
 
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pe pe

Club Supporter
Do what I do... wait till the game is half price, makes it easier to enjoy when you've only paid 30 bucks for it lol. I played FIFA 16 up until last week. Installed FIFA 17 last weekend and have been having a great time with it... including roster modding with Moddingway's tools. Also, I've seen mods to change players' hair and kits, so I'm not clear why you say there's no modding. Anyway, like all things in life, the glass is either half full or half empty depending on your outlook. I focus on the good things the game offers.
That's reasonable thing to do, good for you! I recently rebought FIFA 15 for 5€ since I originally had it only on console and enjoy it as much. Don't get me wrong, I'm not that much of a hater : ) Im not saying that you can't enjoy 17 or 18, they are still a pretty solid games, but for someone who has been buying each version year to year the stagnation, laziness and neglection of details starts to stand out. There is no excitement in awaiting release date when you know not only you wont get anything new but also that old bugs wont be polished and ironed out.

The bottom line is that EA showed with older versions that they can be creative, innovative and attentive to details. Hence the frustration because there were aspects that were better in older iterations and 17 and 18 are feels like downgrade. It is as if the developer team got smaller or someone responsible for game direction has changed. Or they just don't care since all you need to do to have successful release is to cater for FUTheads.
 
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bangus

Starting XI
The bottom line is that EA showed with older versions that they can be creative, innovative and attentive to details... they just don't care since all you need to do to have successful release is to cater for FUTheads.
You're correct of course, these games are mostly developed with the online crowd in mind. And I'd say you're being generous; very little has changed or evolved in any of EA's sports games in the past decade. FIFA, Madden and NHL play almost identical to how they played in 2007. All that ever improves really are graphics and animations. Thankfully we can at least edit FIFA and make it better. I gave up on Madden years ago after EA discontinued the PC version.
 
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marcas

Youth Team
Honestly I regretted buying Fifa 17 very early... and this time around I regretted buying Fifa 18 just like 3-4 days after I've been playing. I was just too ashamed to admit it out loud because I felt like I just wasted the money. I still do feel a bit ashamed tbh. I'm still rockin' hard with Fifa 16 and hope that we will have tons of mods to look forward to :)
 

sonaldo

Club Supporter
this will be no gameplay related since gameplay should be discussed separately as it is too complex subject

==========

no mods (obviously)

pc catalogue, winter balls and boots dlc not fixed since fifa 13

ok not everyone cares about boots updates - fair enough - but ffs fix generic boot bug (isembargoed column in db, thanks diggerhawk)

lack of innovation. last big „wow” factor for me was addition of all 20 premier league stadiums in fifa 15. this alone was enough to buy fifa 15. how naive was i to expect similar with bundesliga and la liga especially if ea bought their licencies? now we are three years later and it seems like more stadiums are taken away than added; it is almost like all they wanted to do was to lock out konami of these deals, in result no matter if youre fifa or pes player we all are loosers ; )

boring generic stadiums from last gen with static adboards. pes has less licencesed stadiums but they are modern and look way better

small balls, literally psychical size of ball 3d model is too damn small

too dark night lighting, in fact there are lighting/shaders problems since fifa 12

fifa 11 excellent
fifa 12 desaturated, yellow grass
fifa 13 bright as fuck
fifa 14 straight up bugged resulting in black nets, dark boots
fifa 14 wc night darker than 18
fifa 15 and 16 fixed most of it, day perfect, night okayish, though day overcast is ugly and renders ball almost nonexistent especially hivis versions)

nets got uglier than last gen. in fifa 15 they even make selling point out of the fact that post shake when hit and nets go up from the ground, which unfortunately was significantly decreased in 16 even before migrating to frostbite. if you dont care about nets than you probably dont like football. i mean hitting the back of the net is one of the most satisfactory things in this sport! the look, the sound. now the physics are totally messed up, and colors as well (probably due to problems with lighting)

penalties got totally messed up since 17 - why change something that isnt broken? infact it was nearly perfect (at least from the shooter perspective)

awkward set pieces running up animations - i get it that they are fully scanned but it is an excellent example that realism is not always better, overall animations seem more robotic and less fluent probably due to the fact that frostbite wasnt designed with sport simulation in mind; recorded animations look great separately but chaining them in dynamic, unpredictable context results in uncanny valley of failed human movement representation

overall lack of visual variety: weather, pitchwear (does it work even?), pitchpatterns, goalnets - all the same since fifa 12. if you play career mode all the matches look the same, fog in 16 was nice addition but it is too little for almost 10 years.

why nobody at ea has ever come up with an idea to mix kits, shirts and sock? pes 5 had it, hadnt it? this proves lack of creativity and drive to iterate on each version to make end product better so why expecting something more form next versions?

lack of respect to licences and lack of attention to branding related details: efl kitnumbers not updated after promotion to premier league, premier league fonts in cup matches see: https://fifaforums.easports.com/en/discussion/181153/unrealistic-shirts-font

lack of low cut versions of ace, hypervenom, magista despite the fact that ea has deals with both nike and adidas; old anfield, etihad; only couple of teams have third kits; assigning boots to players in match form based on color and not on proper brand and model (rashford with tiempo, ramos with mercurials in fifa15 etc)

since ea has started scanning faces it seems that they would have scanned every player in the world by now, and you know what - they probably have! so why they dont update these faces despite they advertise it? look up starhead related thread in ea sports forum for details such who have they scanned and not updated with pics and vids proof, ffs david silva has same face since fifa 10, see: https://fifaforums.easports.com/en/discussion/270720/fifa-18-starhead-thread

bad ui decisions carried over since forever: winter accesories bug in career mode, only handful of boots selectable in edit mode, selecting game at dusk is hit or miss since hours and stadiums previews are messed up - different dusk time for each season (winter vs summer etc) is realistic but completely ingored by ui, you need to learn from your mistskes; side selection screen inconsistencies resulting in inability to spectate, i.e. cpu vs cpu in career mode is mppssible despite the fact it worked in demo and works in quick game mode (this is more important than you think: this little feature can make game more accessible for people with disabilities who would like to play as manager, make transfers, tinker with formations, squads etc. yet cant due to bad user interface since the ai is there to simulate games in real time)

selectable stadium in fifa 16 menu backgroud was a nice touch that added to personalization but was scrapped in 17 and 18. why? at ea they make unreasonable changes, if you are willing to change something ask yourself if it makes your product better, if not - dont touch it. another example: nerfing body feints and drag backs out of the blue for no apparent reason other than to shake up the meta game (but i guess its gameplay related so i stop here)

lack of quality assurance, bad support and unwillingness to patch bugs - remember how in fifa wc 14 you couldnt select final 23 players squad? you could select only 18 players then game automatically and randomly populated last 5 players for you and in final tournament in team management you had yet again 18 players so even you couldn move someone in an dout of the bench (and the bench in wc shouldnt have all 12 players availaboe?) do you think it got patched? well if ea releases wc 18 will it be fixed or carried over?

...

All very reasonable points and I share many of the same frustrations... which is why I'm considering buying a PC for FIFA 18 this year. I don't have a decent PC - or the game - yet as I'm waiting for more information on modding. But yeah, I can't justify spending £50 on an unmodifiable console version of this game anymore.
 

bangus

Starting XI
I'm still rockin' hard with Fifa 16 and hope that we will have tons of mods to look forward to :)
Thanks for the confirmation about FIFA 18 and for saving me the money, just sorry it's at your expense. As much as I love the looks of FIFA 17, it's clear it's a broken game on many levels. I keep switching back to my modded FIFA 16, so much better in the game play dept. there's just no comparison.
 

Sami 1999

Reserve Team
FiFA 15, 16 were really great.

FiFA 18 feels great too. I agree with the lack of features and modding though.

But FiFA 17? Oh no, that game made me want to break the monitor. That unresponsive slow mess. The delay in dribbling felt like I was playing online match with bad lags.


Playing both PES 18 and FiFA 18, I gotta say, FiFA 18 felt better, both graphically and gamplay. Only thing better in PES 18 are the faces, night grass color and day light, LODs. Everything else look worse than FiFA 18. Not that PES 18 is bad though. And PES 18 was more unresponsive than FiFA 18.


FiFA games I liked so far:

RTWC 98
99
2001
2002
WC 2002
2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018.


Edit: Oh, how could I forget FiFA 14? That horrible unresponsive game with horror graphics? Even FiFA online 3 has better graphics and responsiveness than 14.
 

pe pe

Club Supporter
FiFA 15, 16 were really great.

FiFA 18 feels great too. I agree with the lack of features and modding though.

But FiFA 17? Oh no, that game made me want to break the monitor. That unresponsive slow mess. The delay in dribbling felt like I was playing online match with bad lags.


Playing both PES 18 and FiFA 18, I gotta say, FiFA 18 felt better, both graphically and gamplay. Only thing better in PES 18 are the faces, night grass color and day light, LODs. Everything else look worse than FiFA 18. Not that PES 18 is bad though. And PES 18 was more unresponsive than FiFA 18.


FiFA games I liked so far:

RTWC 98
99
2001
2002
WC 2002
2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018.


Edit: Oh, how could I forget FiFA 14? That horrible unresponsive game with horror graphics? Even FiFA online 3 has better graphics and responsiveness than 14.
Actually I have a theory why FIFA14 is such a mess. PS4 and XONE released in 2013 and EA started to prepare "next gen FIFA" so probably the developers got divided into two teams with superior team working on release for consoles. This is a fact. The theory is: EA intentionally made FIFA 14 PC ("last gen") look and feel inferior to make perception that the leap between generations is bigger and (or) boost sales. Sadly I think this trend continues today. Have a look how FIFA 18 looks on PS3/X360, it doesn't live up to Playstation 2 standards even! How is this possible that FIFA 10, FIFA 11 or FIFA World Cup 2010 all look way better on old consoles than much newer relases? It got to be intentional. And worse, they are priced the same!

About FIFA 14. FIFA 14 on PS4/XO is really good. FIFA 15, which is almost the same but with full BPL licence, for me is the all time best in the series gameplay wise. That's the proper iteration: 15 didn't break anything and managed even to improve. The graphics probably are better in 16, especially body models which in 15 are a little cartoonish but they perfectly match animation system without any awkwardness. FIFA 16 started EA's decline. Well, maybe no decline but it feels like EA started blindly experimenting with engine and gameplay without any coherent direction and purpose.
 
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paulv2k4

Youth Team
You've gotta remember 17 & 18 made that awful jump to Frostbite (no doubt a CEO decision). I understand it is cheaper to up-keep one engine but in reality to produce a great game, you need to develop the whole thing designed for it (check out Death Stranding & FOX Engine for MGS). Perhaps sports games could all share the same engine but Frostbite is not a sport engine.

A good example on how awful this engine is, is the Graphics from a distant camera. I suffered the same issues when doing some work with Unreal Engine 4 (and it took some work to fix it!), the LOD goes mad, you end up with weird lighting/shadow issues and it is graphically intensive for absolutely no reason.

My laptop fans go mad when playing FIFA. Yet if I play Final Fantasy 13 its smooth, quiet and looks a bazillion times better in terms of graphics. I can play HITMAN and its outstanding with NO frame drops.

All in all. There are some strange design decisions going on at EA Sport recently. I wouldn't blame the developers but the higher ups. FUT is the money making scheme at the moment and wont go away for a long time.

About Modding: be warned that modding will disappear completely on NON-MOD-SUPPORT GAMES in the near future, as games will be run on a subscription service
 
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pe pe

Club Supporter
You've gotta remember 17 & 18 made that awful jump to Frostbite (no doubt a CEO decision). I understand it is cheaper to up-keep one engine but in reality to produce a great game, you need to develop the whole thing designed for it (check out Death Stranding & FOX Engine for MGS). Perhaps sports games could all share the same engine but Frostbite is not a sport engine.

A good example on how awful this engine is, is the Graphics from a distant camera. I suffered the same issues when doing some work with Unreal Engine 4 (and it took some work to fix it!), the LOD goes mad, you end up with weird lighting/shadow issues and it is graphically intensive for absolutely no reason.

My laptop fans go mad when playing FIFA. Yet if I play Final Fantasy 13 its smooth, quiet and looks a bazillion times better in terms of graphics. I can play HITMAN and its outstanding with NO frame drops.

All in all. There are some strange design decisions going on at EA Sport recently. I wouldn't blame the developers but the higher ups. FUT is the money making scheme at the moment and wont go away for a long time.

About Modding: be warned that modding will disappear completely on NON-MOD-SUPPORT GAMES in the near future, as games will be run on a subscription service

Precisely, I mentioned it in another thread. Frostbite isn't designed with sports sim in mind, it isn't even developed by EA. The gameplay mechanics are mostly ported from last-gen and they necessarily don't translate well on engine with much more complex physics, animations an d collisions. Old engine played better because it was designed specifically for FIFA/NFL and was being iterated on for much longer. Migration to Frostbite should be accompanied with ground-up gameplay redesign, but that is highly unlikely due to annual release cycle - simply devs don't have enough time.

Death Stranding won't be running on FOX Engine since Kojima split with Konami that owns it. As far as I know it will use Guerrila Games engine (don't know the name) from Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn.

FOX Engine is a work of art imho. It looks incredibly good and keeps butter smoth 60 fps on consoles. But does PES really takes full advantage of it? I doubt it, just as FIFA doesn't properly utilize Frostbite. I think they just work best on tpp action games.
 
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Hibee72

Club Supporter
Anyway, like all things in life, the glass is either half full or half empty depending on your outlook.

Just before he died, my dad used to tell me to not trust people dealing with the half full/half empty glass issue.
He told me: "Only water can quench your thirs, not optimism. If there is not enough water in the glass, all the optimism of the world won't go towards quenching your thirst."
Maybe a bit OT, but never heard wiser words.
 

Sami 1999

Reserve Team
I just want a next gen port where dribbling is responsive and smooth and has Ronaldo Nazario and some other legend players in team that runs at 60 FPS in cutscenes and gameplay and LOD.

These criteria are met this time in FiFA 18 almost. The FPS issue is still there with Dx12 and AMD GPUS are getting fuked hard. So EA still has a lot of fixing to do.


I try to play PES every now and then. But there's nothing in that game.
 

Hibee72

Club Supporter
Maybe? LOL.
LOL!
To cut a long story short and get back strictly to the topic, what I wanted to say it's not a matter of optimism. You may like the features of a game or not, and if you don't like them, there's no optimism that will make you to see them in a different light.
IMHO, FIFA 18 is a good game that surely gives me a better "feel" of involvement than 17. But the lack or troublesome (we hope still for a little while) modding still have its weight. So, my twopence worth thoughs are that 16 is still the best chapter of the series. Playing with all correct graphics (kits, banners, flags...and even trophies!) is somewhat priceless in terms of involvement and feeling of the game.
Moreover I think, like many other people stated here, that there were some significant steps BACK on the play ability front.
I know that there are many people fond of "simulation" (let's be honest: the best simulation of football are two backpacks as posts, a ball and a piece of ground!). But there are many people like me who just ask to the game some hours of fun with no excessive requirements.
I'm just a 45 y.o. guy that wants to spend about half-an-hour before bedtime playing football games with his own football team and have some fun. I don't want to spend hours and hours of training to practice just a penalty kick or a free kick. I have no time and no will to do that. It's almost easier to score a penalty kick in the reality than in FIFA...WTF!! :fuck:
 

bangus

Starting XI
I don't want to spend hours and hours of training to practice just a penalty kick or a free kick.
The FK setup -- aiming, kicking, etc. -- is exactly the same as it has been for years. No extra training necessary. The only thing that has changed is the default FK view; just push down on the L stick for the FIFA 16 view. As for penalties, it took about five kicks in practice to get the new system down. Three minutes in other words, not hours and hours.
I have no time and no will to do that. It's almost easier to score a penalty kick in the reality than in FIFA...WTF!! :fuck:

Quick and easy fix for your PK frustration: Edit your FK taker to have 99 FK Skill, Penalties and Curve. You'll score more than enough FK goals after that, it'll feel like a cheat in fact.
 
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marcas

Youth Team
Ok I have to correct myself since I now find that I actually enjoy the gameplay in Fifa 18 - and so it isn't a complete waste of money. Do I like it? Yes. Would I rush out and buy it if I didn't own it? No. Just wait for it to be on sale, and by then there's also a higher chance of mods being available.

Fifa 16 is still my favourite, and it's with this game that I have spent most of my Fifa hours. I would like to have a GP mod that makes Fifa 16 play like Fifa 18. If anybody knows how it's done, please share it with me.
 

bangus

Starting XI
Fifa 16 is still my favourite, and it's with this game that I have spent most of my Fifa hours. I would like to have a GP mod that makes Fifa 16 play like Fifa 18. If anybody knows how it's done, please share it with me.
What is it about FIFA 16 that you want FIFA 18 to be like? I've gone back from time to time to FIFA 16 and FIFA 17 because of certain things I liked in those games. But since I got FIFA 18 running pretty much the way I want -- as good or almost as good as FIFA 16 -- it's the only game I play now.
 


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