Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
This has been going on in my head for a while, I think stat based ratings are outdated, do not offer a modern take on sports and are keeping us away from some cool alternatives. Long post ahead, apologies.
To highlight some cool things that have been brought forward: in soccer games we have fatigue carrying over from the previous match and PES has a mental modifier as well as a form modifier. These are realistic and easy to understand, but they're not used properly.
The main problem is that most games didn't tackle this issue from a new perspective, instead they doubled down on stats. Resulting in most players having to google which stats are "the good stats" to improve. Its broken, its not player friendly and worst of all, ITS NOT ACCURATE. Its impossible to quantify whether Xabi Alonso's ability to finish is 70 or 80 (he barely ever shoots!) so imagine some dude riding bench in a middle of the road team ... Hell, Im watching La Liga now and the Betis GK (last team in the table) just did the splits in an attempt to stop a shot. Thats incredible athleticism! In Fifa, the GK for the bad team might as well do this
A secondary problem is that aside from the 5 star teams in a soccer game (soccer heavy thread, sorry!), the rest of them teams, which make up 90 percent of the roster, play like a special needs 10th grade team. Professional soccer players in real life can do every single trick in the book, all can do bicycle kicks and run faster than anybody you know, yet most games try to make their stars look so good that that what ends up happening is that everybody else gets handicapped to a ridiculous, unrealistic level.
But anyways enough bitching, lets talk about solutions, or at least things Id like to see happen:
Numerical stats should still be present, just NOT VISIBLE TO THE PLAYER. This is what fighting games do and it works wonders for them, it allows for the following:
-The player to experiment and discover rather than straightaway thinking "this player/team is shit" Right now I never play some of my favorite players because their rating is lower than others, that shouldn't happen
-You will actually play players in the right positions. Ive seen people exploit Fifa by placing players outside their positions because the ratings are above common sense
Team play style > Individual player skill
-For the most part, sports players succeed in a system that caters to their strengths and perform worse when out of such a system. Take Steve Nash in basketball or Messi in soccer. If you put Nash in a slow tempo team or put Messi in Argentina (lol) all of a sudden they don't contribute like they usually do.
-When you look at a team, don't have a star rating, just an indication of playstyle, a plus and a minus.
-To elaborate on that, instead of numbers and stars, simplify it by saying what a player/team is good at and what they're bad at. Limit it to 3 max on each side and have different categories, for instance. This is what I would do for Xavi, the Barca midfielder
-----------------Xavi-----------------
+Tempo +Vision +Leadership
-Aging -Goalscoring
That tells you everything you need to know about him, he possesses talents that are truly difficult to have but hes getting there in age so he cant replicate that quality on a game by game basis and you're probably better off letting somebody else shoot on goal.
Lets take a middle of the road midfielder like Granero, who plays at Real Sociedad
-----------------Granero----------------
+Combinations +Vision
-Injury -Ball Possession
Thats Granero for you, can make a killer pass every now and then, but I don't trust him all that much and hey, his knee blew up, great. He obviously doesn't get the grand accolades that Xavi gets (leadership!) but he can get some good things done.
Mental state, Chemistry and location matter!
-Lets say you ignore player "x" all game and then get all of a sudden you need him to make a great run or a good pass ... but he cant execute because hes been ignored all match long and he doesn't have his head in the game. In real life Ive seen that happen plenty of times. Players that have been alienated throughout the match tend to have a hard time performing well, the same should happen in a game, with some key players being able to perform no matter how involved they are in the game (Messi being the obvious choice, this year hes spent most of his time on the pitch walking)
-Some players have a hard time getting motivated playing shit teams, and thus underperform, some teams play to the level of the competition so they look amazing against Real Madrid and play like ass against Phlegm CF. Some players are very professional and can perform the same throughout, so a game should reflect this as well.
-The state of the pitch should be key. Passing teams like Barca rely on really well maintained pitches that are slightly wet in order for the passing game to flow well, so sometimes some teams turn their own field into a potato field in order for the opposing team to have a harder time. There should be stadiums in a variety of conditions, and they should affect teams differently.
Theres a lot more examples that could be brought up, but I dont want EA to steal all my ideas
The main idea is to REPLICATE the way fans talk about soccer players, we dont have those numbers in real life, its fun to discover things you didnt know about a player, or to prove somebody else wrong about another player, this method would go a long way in making that happen.
I honestly think this would be a huge boost for sports games. Right now you go online, or even offline and people always pick the best ranked teams, go online search for a team ranked 4 or below and YOU CANT FIND PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH. Its a broken system that I dont find users ever being happy with (bitching about what ratings a player got is like a national internet sport)
Thank you for reading this long
To highlight some cool things that have been brought forward: in soccer games we have fatigue carrying over from the previous match and PES has a mental modifier as well as a form modifier. These are realistic and easy to understand, but they're not used properly.
The main problem is that most games didn't tackle this issue from a new perspective, instead they doubled down on stats. Resulting in most players having to google which stats are "the good stats" to improve. Its broken, its not player friendly and worst of all, ITS NOT ACCURATE. Its impossible to quantify whether Xabi Alonso's ability to finish is 70 or 80 (he barely ever shoots!) so imagine some dude riding bench in a middle of the road team ... Hell, Im watching La Liga now and the Betis GK (last team in the table) just did the splits in an attempt to stop a shot. Thats incredible athleticism! In Fifa, the GK for the bad team might as well do this
A secondary problem is that aside from the 5 star teams in a soccer game (soccer heavy thread, sorry!), the rest of them teams, which make up 90 percent of the roster, play like a special needs 10th grade team. Professional soccer players in real life can do every single trick in the book, all can do bicycle kicks and run faster than anybody you know, yet most games try to make their stars look so good that that what ends up happening is that everybody else gets handicapped to a ridiculous, unrealistic level.
But anyways enough bitching, lets talk about solutions, or at least things Id like to see happen:
Numerical stats should still be present, just NOT VISIBLE TO THE PLAYER. This is what fighting games do and it works wonders for them, it allows for the following:
-The player to experiment and discover rather than straightaway thinking "this player/team is shit" Right now I never play some of my favorite players because their rating is lower than others, that shouldn't happen
-You will actually play players in the right positions. Ive seen people exploit Fifa by placing players outside their positions because the ratings are above common sense
Team play style > Individual player skill
-For the most part, sports players succeed in a system that caters to their strengths and perform worse when out of such a system. Take Steve Nash in basketball or Messi in soccer. If you put Nash in a slow tempo team or put Messi in Argentina (lol) all of a sudden they don't contribute like they usually do.
-When you look at a team, don't have a star rating, just an indication of playstyle, a plus and a minus.
-To elaborate on that, instead of numbers and stars, simplify it by saying what a player/team is good at and what they're bad at. Limit it to 3 max on each side and have different categories, for instance. This is what I would do for Xavi, the Barca midfielder
-----------------Xavi-----------------
+Tempo +Vision +Leadership
-Aging -Goalscoring
That tells you everything you need to know about him, he possesses talents that are truly difficult to have but hes getting there in age so he cant replicate that quality on a game by game basis and you're probably better off letting somebody else shoot on goal.
Lets take a middle of the road midfielder like Granero, who plays at Real Sociedad
-----------------Granero----------------
+Combinations +Vision
-Injury -Ball Possession
Thats Granero for you, can make a killer pass every now and then, but I don't trust him all that much and hey, his knee blew up, great. He obviously doesn't get the grand accolades that Xavi gets (leadership!) but he can get some good things done.
Mental state, Chemistry and location matter!
-Lets say you ignore player "x" all game and then get all of a sudden you need him to make a great run or a good pass ... but he cant execute because hes been ignored all match long and he doesn't have his head in the game. In real life Ive seen that happen plenty of times. Players that have been alienated throughout the match tend to have a hard time performing well, the same should happen in a game, with some key players being able to perform no matter how involved they are in the game (Messi being the obvious choice, this year hes spent most of his time on the pitch walking)
-Some players have a hard time getting motivated playing shit teams, and thus underperform, some teams play to the level of the competition so they look amazing against Real Madrid and play like ass against Phlegm CF. Some players are very professional and can perform the same throughout, so a game should reflect this as well.
-The state of the pitch should be key. Passing teams like Barca rely on really well maintained pitches that are slightly wet in order for the passing game to flow well, so sometimes some teams turn their own field into a potato field in order for the opposing team to have a harder time. There should be stadiums in a variety of conditions, and they should affect teams differently.
Theres a lot more examples that could be brought up, but I dont want EA to steal all my ideas
The main idea is to REPLICATE the way fans talk about soccer players, we dont have those numbers in real life, its fun to discover things you didnt know about a player, or to prove somebody else wrong about another player, this method would go a long way in making that happen.I honestly think this would be a huge boost for sports games. Right now you go online, or even offline and people always pick the best ranked teams, go online search for a team ranked 4 or below and YOU CANT FIND PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH. Its a broken system that I dont find users ever being happy with (bitching about what ratings a player got is like a national internet sport)
Thank you for reading this long
