Hello Hello.
I havent been online too much recently. There was a slow week in the GFL and because of it Kappa decided to hold back the latest fixtures until some more games had been completed. As such i have only played 3 GFL games in the last 10 days or so. The deadline for fixtures and the last remaining cup tie is tonight, so hopefully once i wake up tomorrow i will be able to see whats going on next week.

The lack of league games and just generally being a little frustrated at online ranked games at the moment (for reasons i will cover in a bit) has led to me exploring what the game has to offer offline a lot more.

I have a BAP career running, which i started when the game first came out. I am currently about 2 or 3 games into season 3, which shows how much i play it. There just isnt enough depth to the mode for me. Its just game after game and the overall goal of making your created player a Legend isnt enough of a draw to keep me playing it, i tend to dip in a play one or two games when nothing else is going on.

I started as an Arsenal player and the early games were great, playing in the reserves, but i was quickly promoted to first team football and at the end of season one Barcelona were keen to secure my services. Not realistic at all. I signed for Barca, had an amazing season there, and at the end of the season, the best club i could look at moving to was werder bremen. No consistency. Another thing i have noticed is that there isnt any activity elsewhere in the mode. All teams and players remain the same for the duration of your career. My final BAP gripe is that when i got to Barca i took Eto's place in the first team and he dissapeared from the game altogether. So i was stuck playing every game with Messi and Henry, i guess it could be worse, without the option to rotate Eto into games. Most likely a bug but a fairly big and annoying one!

I play lounge modes whenever my mates come round for beers and would recommend them to everyone. We usually pick one lower rated team and one higher rated team each, and then get stuck in. The cheap shots make things really interesting, Playing as Sheffield Utd with reduced stats against a boosted AC Milan is only funny after the correct amount of beers. Its nice to see the league tables at the end of the evening too, as long as you have the bragging rights.

Manager mode has been a weird one this year too. I have three running at the moment, one as Aldershot, one i started as Arsenal when the game came out and one as fenerbahce which i set up to practise playing with them on. As with BAP i find it really really hard to stay interested, i literally feel like i am slogging through every game just to get to the next transfer window to add a little variety. I used to love MM but i have seen the same format for so long its hard to find anything fresh about it. The AI is pretty bad offline and there doesnt seem to be any difference between playing one team and another besides the shirts.

So its back to online for me. I am going to have to suck it up and get back out there amongst the QRM players. Playing Man utd and Barca every game is no more or less repetitive than playing offline i guess. All i want is a little variety. Which is why I have been trying to gather together a load of information regarding Manual leaderboards being seperate from the main boards.
See the post before this one for details of the thread on the Official forums and how to contact me if you have any feedback or anything to add. I really think EA need to add the option for manual players to be able to matchup against each other easily online and  play ranked games. Waiting in lobbies is tedious, and the assisted players dont have to do it. There is a massive difference in the control schemes, its almost a different game mode, so i dont think wanting to be treated seperatly is unreasonable. As i have mentioned a few times, the amount of manual players is increasing daily and adding Manual leaderboards and making manual matchmaking easier would boost and continue this trend. So far people have responded well to the idea and i have made some progress on my mission to dig out all of the past feedback on the matter out from the fifa forums.

Cheers guys

Tom

For those people who havent seen it, i started a thread on the fifa10 forums about separate rankings for Full manual players.

Please read, vote and add your comments here:

I have put together some stuff for EA, if anyone can help me straighten it out or has anything to add drop me an email@ tmills@dataquestuk.com

I've got to say im in a very good mood. it's saturday night, im full of imported lager (morrisons have a blindin deal on, i picked up 3 660ml bottles of kingfisher, 3 of peroni and 3 of san miguel for £15! thats a fair bit of beer, and im just finishing the last bottle of kingfisher, which is probably my favourite), i have a packet of chocolate limes, My itunes shuffle has been on form, dishing up a wide variety of songs, and i dont have to get up early. This is an Anti-rant.

I have played 2 league games since i last posted. The first was against I will bat joe. My mentality going into the game was schoolboy. I play a lot with Kappa, and our results are mixed. probably over the whole time we have been playing manual against each other its about 70-30 in Kappas favour in terms of wins. In one of our games i mentioned that I will bat joe was my next league  game. Kappa had already  played him, and told me that he was a decent player, likes to use the trick stick and could finish his chances. He beat Kappa 4-0, so things didn't look good. I went into the game with damage limitation in mind, which i shouldnt have. It was a tough game, i found myself endlessly soaking up pressure and breathing sighs of relief when chances were missed. Typical of football, i created a good chance late in the first half (or was it early in the second half?) and managed to put that chance away. So 1-0 up against what i saw as one of the most threatening players in the league, what do you do? push for a second and risk opening yourself up? sit on the lead and defend for your life?  i chose the latter (fuck it, its worked for me before). im confident in my defending, and actually feel more comfortable clearing off my own line than i do trying to stick the ball over someone elses. I managed to hold out and won 1-0. i have to say i will bat joe was a top bloke and a very good player. he caused me loads of problems, and when i won he sent me a light hearted message about him hitting a non scoring streak. We need more players like that on 09 in general.

My second league game was against laddsy76. Long overdue in terms of league fixtures, but with time differences (he lives in australia, i live just outside london) we found it hard to tie up. It was a very different game. i found the button lag hard to deal with. notice how i specifically said button lag. Not general lag, there was no distorted animations, in general the game flowed very well, but button presses were delayed noticeably. Anyone who has read the online changes thread will have their own opinion, but this did surprise me. The whole game, visually, was perfect, there were no skips,  but i had delay on my button presses and i can only assume laddsy did too.

We could not be much further, physically, from each other, and delay is to be expected, but it doesn't make sense that i can have a pretty good game with a guy 17,000KM away, aside from the button lag, and then straight after, play a laggy, skippy, game against my mate who lives about 4 meters  away, i could  spit on his windows from my flat and we are both on the same exchange. Gotta love technology, i get paid to make sense of it and largely end up confused. Anyway i won 3-1, i probably got a bit lucky, but a win is a win.

Which leaves me Played 9-Won 4- drawn 3- lost 2, with a GD of +3. Joint top of the league in terms of points! the only problem is that there are 2 other teams on 15 points who have a game in hand, and TONYG who runs/plays as l.a. galaxy is on 14 points and has 2 games in hand on me.

All that considered, im really happy with my position, i am exceding my early expectations, and if i can keep the results in my favour i will be happy. To be honest playing a decent game is the most important thing. I got beaten 3-0 by  guy from the forums, Bis4brutus, earlier. He was very good, really creative, which allowed me my own space, and certainly wasnt afraid to take a shot from range. All in all a good game even though i lost and i look forward to having another game with him. I also played t3h 3n3my, who is fairly new to manual, he beat me 2-1, which shows how open the games can be. Again, he was a top bloke and a really decent player, no spamming through balls, no stupid formations, not pace abusing, just a decent game of footy, i am happy to lose fairly, that doesnt worry me, it helps me see my flaws and patch them up, i just hate to lose to assisted noobs. thats not a knock to assisted players, i just dont like playing them. 99% of the time they use the same tactics, and demented formations that bastardise football.

There has been a huge interest in manual controls recently, which is really exciting to me. Loads of manual threads started, old ones being bumped and picking up pace, it seems that the football fans of the fifa community are becoming more self aware, have realised that manual controls put all the tools to play and create good football in your hand  and they are now comfortable with making the "i play manual" statement, which can alienate you. There is an obvious divide of late between manual and assisted players, which i think is a good thing. I want to see manual leaderboards, im not saying i am better than assisted players, tonnes of them could tear me to bits. but how many could say they did it with skill? none. because on a 360 A,A,A,B = Goal. Too easy. No concentration or thought required. Hopefully this massive switch of players from assisted to manual will make EA consider giving manual players their own leaderboards. We need this.

Cheers for reading.

Tom

The weather recently has been far to good to be stuck inside playing Fifa, but i have managed to get a few games in here and there. Racked up a second league win and progressed to the semi finals of the GFL Cup. Needless to say, I'm well chuffed. On Tuesday night i played Kingofslackerz in the cup. My Fenerbahce ran out 3-0 winners over his Rangers. It felt strange going into the game, a look at his league stats, Played 7 Won 0 drawn 1 lost 6 GD -11, made me feel pretty confident, but prior to the game i took a 5-0 thumping which knocked me a bit.

I managed to score early which helped settle me into the game and added a second shortly after which was slightly....... not unfair, just a bit of a nightmare for him. I was breaking into the box with my left winger, he rushed his keeper and made contact with my player and the ball at the exact moment i shot. The ball pinged off the keepers chest, back off of me, across the box and was heading out for a goal kick. One of his defenders was rushing back to cover the line and rather than let the ball run out of play, did one of those "brilliant" traps where they knock the ball 5 yards in front of themselves. Unfortunately for Kingofslackers the goal was only 3 yards away, so in it went. It felt a bit cheap, but what can you do, there was the prospect of virtual  silverware at stake ;). Shortly before halftime he mistimed a tackle in the box, conceding a straight red and a penalty at the same time. He saved the penalty and we went into the break at 2-0.

Second half he gave me a lot more grief. he threw his team forward and penned me in, but with him being so light at the back, when i did break forward i looked very dangerous. It says a lot about my finishing that i was only able to add one more goal in the second half. You can read the tongue in cheek match report here.

Last night i played Wexicoish in our second league game. It was as usual a tight game. Probably.

Ill have to admit i was lightly pissed, so i cant actually remember much of the game, or my first goal, but i do remember i scored my second in the 90th minute.

So i still have three fixtures outstanding, to be completed by the weekend, and after 7 games i have Won 2, Drawn 3 and lost 2. Goal difference is back to 0 after the two goals i scored last night, i would prefer it was a positive number, but at least i am scoring as many as i am conceding. I am currently 5th in the league. You can view the tables here.

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Im sure everyone is aware that the Fifa10 NDA's have expired. i wasn't sure about what to expect to be honest. A lot of people on the forums were really hyped, almost like they were expecting a full feature list and full game details with release date. It was clear that this wasn't the case. The guys who went to the community day were pretty much only exposed to gameplay and it's a very early build.

 Jesus that sounds so cynical, but what i mean is, i wasn't expecting too much info regarding game modes and new features. All reports claim the game is superb, which is great news as it is rumoured to only be about 60% complete. The main thing i want to get my hands on is 360 degree dribbling. I have mentioned many many times that manual controls freed the game up for me, and this can only improve things in my opinion. Running with the ball is supposed to feel a lot better now, with no more changing direction in increments, and the shooting physics have been touched up so hopefully no more balloon shots.  Wepeelers "Fifa 10 - first look" thread is a great read and details what information the guys from the community day have well. All of the improvments seem to be subtle but needed, so hopefully the game will feel like a beautifully rounded Fifa09 with that something extra that will make it a truely epic title. Thats what im hoping for anyway.

Glen has mentioned that he brought the problem with manual short passing up directly with the right man to deal with it, and the guy listened, went away and came back with his ideas for resolution quickly. Very very pleased about that. I guess manual players will be resigned to relearning the controls come october, but its a small price to pay. I keep hearing rumours about a "whole new learning curve" to the game anyway, which i now assume is the 360 degree dribbling, so i guess everyone will be in the same boat.

Check me out, i have managed to write three paragraphs about a game thats no where near completion without ever playing it, with only other peoples opinions and 40 screenshots (many of which were duplicates) as reference points. Oh dear.

Tom