Gaming FIFA 19

[iluvoursolskjær]

Might give this one a miss. Only ever played FUT but I do this stupid thing where I pump hundreds in to the game cos I cba with 40 weekend league matches every bloody week or spensing hours trading, but then just completely stop playing and lose millions in coins as player values plummet.

 

[100]

This edition will likely be skipped by lots of people who are anticipating FIFA 20.

whats happening with Fifa 20?

 

[Giant Midget]

Might be the first year I don't buy FIFA. I mainly play it for Pro Clubs, but I'm moving back to Dubai in September and the ping is so shit that there's no reason to bother.

Plus, if I skip a year then maybe then I'll notice a real change when FIFA 20 comes around because its the same shit every year.

 

[Redplane]

Might be the first year I don't buy FIFA. I mainly play it for Pro Clubs, but I'm moving back to Dubai in September and the ping is so shit that there's no reason to bother.

Plus, if I skip a year then maybe then I'll notice a real change when FIFA 20 comes around because its the same shit every year.

Hmm I kinda figured that with all the crazy investment in Dubai their broadband access would be top notch, no?

 

[Giant Midget]

Hmm I kinda figured that with all the crazy investment in Dubai their broadband access would be top notch, no?

It's absolute shit. It's a government monopoly, and its supposedly one of (if not the most) expensive $/per MB ratios in the world, on top of being unreliable. The fastest you can get is 50 mpbs and that costs the equivalent of 120 pounds a month.

They also block most VOIP, so you can't use FaceTime, Whatsapp Calls, Skype or any other VOIP apart from the buggy, expensive VOIP they offer themselves.

 

[Redplane]

It's absolute shit. It's a government monopoly, and its supposedly one of (if not the most) expensive $/per MB ratios in the world, on top of being unreliable. The fastest you can get is 50 mpbs and that costs the equivalent of 120 pounds a month.

They also block most VOIP, so you can't use FaceTime, Whatsapp Calls, Skype or any other VOIP apart from the buggy, expensive VOIP they offer themselves.

Interesting. Not that the US is all that great compared to the rest of the developed world but at least it sounds like we re not quite at that level bad. Thanks for explaining.

 

[muller]

I won't buy a FIFA until it comes under £20 - They invest 75% of their time into developing Ultimate Team, i'm not paying for that and I dont play it enough to get good at it.

Be A Pro and Journey have potential but they havent done anything near enough with it. Years ago Madden nailed that mode - I think it was in 2008 - it had Vince Young on the cover. Or years before.

Then suddenly EA stripped most of it away.

You could choose your agents, make money to improve and target training areas, speak to your coaches and the media.. it was awesome.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

This edition will likely be skipped by lots of people who are anticipating FIFA 20.

Why?

 

[Loublaze]

Why?

My guess is next gen, PS5. Possibly

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

My guess is next gen, PS5. Possibly

Ah.

I hope next gen is FIFA 20 then.

Hopefully it makes EA abandon the abominable frostbite engine.

 

[Loublaze]

Ah.

I hope next gen is FIFA 20 then.

Hopefully it makes EA abandon the abominable frostbite engine.

Worked for Battlefield! Im expecting better as well.

 

[Bojan11]

My guess is next gen, PS5. Possibly

Why would people wait a year to play a game?

Fifa 20 will be on PS5 most likely. But I don’t see anyone skipping Fifa 19. Every year people say they going to do it and I read a lot of it on the EA forums but come launch they moaning about something.

 

[AgentP]

My guess is next gen, PS5. Possibly

PS5 will be out in 2021. That's three years from now.

 

[AgentP]

I won't buy a FIFA until it comes under £20 - They invest 75% of their time into developing Ultimate Team, i'm not paying for that and I dont play it enough to get good at it.

Be A Pro and Journey have potential but they havent done anything near enough with it. Years ago Madden nailed that mode - I think it was in 2008 - it had Vince Young on the cover. Or years before.

Then suddenly EA stripped most of it away.

You could choose your agents, make money to improve and target training areas, speak to your coaches and the media.. it was awesome.

That sounds really fun. I always enjoy the player career mode and if they include these options it would make the game way better.

 

[Loublaze]

Why would people wait a year to play a game?

Fifa 20 will be on PS5 most likely. But I don’t see anyone skipping Fifa 19. Every year people say they going to do it and I read a lot of it on the EA forums but come launch they moaning about something.

Yep. They always buy it anyway.

PS5 will be out in 2021. That's three years from now.

Sony haven't released a date. Its still all speculation but late 2020 seems to be the year many analysts think it will be released.

 

[muller]

That sounds really fun. I always enjoy the player career mode and if they include these options it would make the game way better.

I think it was called Superstar on the old SCAA Football games - that was incredible.

 

[Carolina Red]

Hopefully it makes EA abandon the abominable frostbite engine

I’ve never been computer savvy enough to know what difference changing from Ignite to Frostbite made...?

 

[Kostur]

I’ve never been computer savvy enough to know what difference changing from Ignite to Frostbite made...?

Well basically one is hot and the other is pretty cold.

hth

 

[Carolina Red]

Well basically one is hot and the other is pretty cold.

hth

Blimey

 

[Solius]

I played FIFA 19 for an afternoon at a recent hands-on preview event, and what stood out for me were the new animations.

I've already reported on the new timed finishing mechanic, but it's worth going into detail on the animations that form a part of FIFA 19's active touch system.

New animations are hardly revolutionary for FIFA, but as someone who's put a lot of time into FIFA 18, I can report FIFA fans will definitely notice them - and they do let you do things you've never been able to before.

FIFA 19 has new animations for pretty much everything. There are new animations for passes and shots, new animations for striking through the ball, stretching for the ball and even bicycle kicks.

These new animations look nice, but they're also useful. If a ball is in an awkward position, maybe behind the player you're controlling, you can still pass it because there are new animations that support the pass request. You can, for example, do a diving header to get a pass away. Your player might find one of the new animations that lets them stretch to keep the ball in play, too.

Controlling the ball is perhaps the area that benefits from the new animations most. You can control a ball that's behind you or to the side - areas players struggle with in current and previous versions of FIFA.

A lot of the new animations are contextual, but there are new manually triggered animations to get to grips with. For example, you can spin with the ball with your first touch. The new disguised first touch technique, which you can request on demand using the right bumper, lets you fake as if you're going to turn with the ball but at the very last second change directions. Toni Kroos of Germany and Real Madrid does this a lot in real world football.

You can also flick the ball up with your first touch - in any first touch situation - using any part of your body. This lets you set yourself up for a volley, or you can flick the ball up in a particular direction by flicking the right stick in the corresponding direction, which is useful for beating a nearby player. The longer you hold the right stick down, the higher the ball will go, so you can set yourself up for different kinds of shots. If you're dribbling on the ground, clicking the R3 button in flicks the ball up to set yourself up for a volley.

Talking of cool skills, one of the new skills in FIFA 19 lets you bounce the ball down with the sole of your player's boot to flick the ball over your onrushing opponent (a skill move the developers spotted on social media after a video of a footballer doing it went viral). This skill move is connected to the left trigger, and is only possible with players with the flair trait. So, if you're controlling professional tumbler Neymar, for example, you can hold the left trigger then flick the right stick forward to trigger the new animation.

EA Sports says the new active touch system gives FIFA 19 a greater level of responsiveness and fluidity of animation, as well as more variety. Playing the game, you do get a sense of this, but I'd hardly call it a gameplay revolution. FIFA 19 feels better because there are more animations at play, more ways to control the ball and more skill moves, which you kind of expect with each version of the game. There's added variety to the way you manipulate and come into contact with the ball, which as someone who's pumped hundreds of hours into FIFA 18, I definitely appreciated, and there were multiple points during my hands-on when a new animation let me do something I can't in previous versions, but otherwise FIFA 19 gameplay feels pretty familiar. I didn't detect a significant change in game speed, and I found success playing the game as I play FIFA 18 - quick, accurate passing, plenty of one-twos and low driven shots (although I quite like the new shooting mechanic, which, again, adds variety).

 

[Solius]

Elsewhere, there's a new system for 50 / 50 battles which means your player should get stuck in more. In FIFA 18, your players sometimes avoid the ball in a 50 / 50, which is one of the more frustrating aspects of the gameplay. In FIFA 19, your player will go in for a 50 / 50 - as long as you mean to make the challenge. You may not win the 50 / 50, but at least your player will try.

The result of a 50 / 50 in FIFA 19 is determined player input, the game's physics system and the attributes of the players involved. Do you go in aggressively with a tackle or stretch for a pass or a shot? Is your player big and strong? All this is factored into working out the result of a 50 / 50 in FIFA 19.

I found myself aggressively going for loose balls a lot more than I normally would during my hands-on with FIFA 19, but a lot of that had to do with testing the new system. What I will say is the collisions certainly look the part - both players smash into each other more realistically than in previous games. But this is FIFA, after all, and you do end up with some hilarious animation tangles that look like some nightmarish ragdoll crumpling. I don't think these are necessarily bad - just part of the FIFA charm.

 

[Hoof the ball]

New upload. Man Utd vs Citeh in Europa League final. Can clearly see the new animations. For me, the best thing in it is that there is some unpredictability now with regards to the ball bobbling and two players physically contesting something. Much less instances of the ball simply gluing to the person with the ball.

 

[Solius]

One of the biggest changes for FIFA 19 this year has to do with shooting - and the addition of a skill-based mini-game to give shots some swaz.

The developers at EA Sports have added a risk / reward mechanic to the shooting that lets you go for more power and more accuracy by nailing the timing of a second press of the shoot button. But if you mess it up, your shot will fly into row z.

This is the idea: press the shoot button to shoot, as normal, then time a second press of the shoot button so that you tap the button just as the player connects with the ball. If timed correctly, this adds extra power and accuracy. And it works for every type of shot: normal, volley, header, whatever.

FIFA 19 visualises this in a couple of different ways. With the trainer on, you'll see the shot timing bar above the shooting player, with two white lines moving to the centre of the bar. If you time your button press for when the white bars meet in the middle (the green area) you'll get a power and accuracy boost. If you miss-time the press, your shot is likely to go high and wide - and the game will tell you you've miss-timed the shot, too.

Here are some other observations from a few hours playing FIFA 19:

The grounded through ball feels much more useful. You're able to ping grounded through balls with a directness and pace similar to the driven pass (which returns for FIFA 19). I found success using the grounded through ball to play in forwards who were running off the shoulder of defenders (forwards seem to do this a lot better in FIFA 19 than in FIFA 18), and from all sorts of interesting areas of the pitch, too.

Crossing has been tweaked again. The crosses felt more direct and less floaty than in FIFA 18, but I initially struggled to use them effectively. On more than one occasion I whipped in a cross that whizzed past my onrushing striker, who lunged to hit the ball in vain. It's early days so it's hard to judge the new crossing, but my first impression is it's a bit more subtle than the one-note crossing in FIFA 18.

The new Active Touch system is a lot of fun. You can now fake trap the ball as it's coming to you. By holding the bumper and clicking the stick one way, your player will look to trap one way, but then you can flick to stick the other way at the last second to have your player trap the ball in that direction instead, which adds a nice mind-game to the flow of passing. (This works against the AI as well, Prior said.)

 

[Kearnkoff69]

Not specifically 19 related, but thought it was relevant considering how many people play UT. Pretty insane numbers in here, although not in the least bit surprising how sneakily the in-game purchases add up.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-over-usd10-000-in-two-years-on-ultimate-team

 

[Grib]

Is there any news on them introducing a new lower division to one of the league's like they did with German in 18?

 

[Annihilate Now!]

I think FIFA 18 is pretty crap, but I still bought it and play the shit out of it.... I'll probably do the same with FIFA 19 I'm sure.

 

[AltiUn]

I think FIFA 18 is pretty crap, but I still bought it and play the shit out of it.... I'll probably do the same with FIFA 19 I'm sure.

I'll moan about Fifa till I'm blue in the face but it never stops me spending £50 on the new one I only play clubs these days which makes the game much more tolerable.

 

[Kearnkoff69]

I think FIFA 18 is pretty crap, but I still bought it and play the shit out of it.... I'll probably do the same with FIFA 19 I'm sure.

I thought 18 was OK. It was nice that it was much slower than 17, which felt arcadey as hell to me. Of course, EA always ends up patching the gameplay down the line and all the games end up feeling similar by the end of their life span. I've already resigned myself to buying 19 this year. I live in Career Mode and hope every year that they'll beef it up but they never really do. They drip feed us just enough tiny updates to sucker us into thinking it'll be a huge improvement, though. I've been told to play PES but haven't been able to get into the gameplay since PES 6, so EA has my money for now.

 

[Solius]

I'm the same. It could be so much better but it's just great to casually play when you're bored.

I started a career the other day and for some reason after finishing the first season Chong, Dalot and a few other young players had just disappeared. Ruined it for me so I stopped playing it.

 

[ravi2]

FIFA 18 is the most scripted fifa ive ever played but ive invested too much money into it to be bothered to buy 19 when it comes out
I'll keep playing 18 to get my moneys worth.

Last good fifa was 15 imo

 

[luke511]

FIFA 18 is the most scripted fifa ive ever played but ive invested too much money into it to be bothered to buy 19 when it comes out
I'll keep playing 18 to get my moneys worth.

Last good fifa was 15 imo

Fully agree with you, I'm not gonna buy another until the AI assisted defending has gone, completely sucked the fun out of the game. 15 was so good because you could play with freedom and the opponent actually had to manually defend instead of letting the AI do all the work.

 

[Redplane]

Wonder when we re going to play career mode and have the ability to manipulate the news, post to in-game social media accounts, refuse to show up to training sessions, spend money on fancy trips, parties and clothes and evade paying taxes. I want the real experience.

 

[Macern]

Looking forward to this. Hopefully @Eddy_JukeZ is up for a game some time? My track record against top 100 players is pretty good so it shouln’t be too embarrassing

 

[kouroux]

Adding swaz to a header Are they for real with this shit ?

 

[Handré1990]

I'll moan about Fifa till I'm blue in the face but it never stops me spending £50 on the new one I only play clubs these days which makes the game much more tolerable.

I’m exactly the same. Proclub is the way to go.

 

[Carolina Red]

I'll moan about Fifa till I'm blue in the face but it never stops me spending £50 on the new one I only play clubs these days which makes the game much more tolerable.

I’m exactly the same. Proclub is the way to go.

I’ve never played that mode. Sell me on it.

 

[Carolina Red]

I live in Career Mode and hope every year that they'll beef it up but they never really do.

I’m right there with you.

I wish in career mode it wasn’t just “manager” mode, but something like a DoF mode, where you not only can play, and sign and sell players, but sign and fire managers too.

 

[Handré1990]

I’ve never played that mode. Sell me on it.

Well, ideally you should have some friends/aquaintances who also play. You form a team, make your own player (in 18 there was a new ‘quick’ feature where you could make three versions of your player - three positions, i.e St, SAM, CM)

You control your player, and your friends control theirs. You can choose to have one of you control ‘the rest’, or let the AI do that. You have to be two players minimum (which is too few and boring ofc).

You rank your player up by points and experience. Points for special boosts, xp for playing games (scoring, passing, tackling, crossing etc). Your team follows a league system 10. - premier division, like in single season mode.

Edit: The points give you special advantages, like ‘flair’, ‘second wind’ etc. You always start with a given amount to get going (rank up from 73tot to around 77tot)

Have played it since it was introduced. Used to be manic about winning single mode seasons in the past, but on 17&18 I’ve only played single to get acquainted with the gameplay.

Puh! Sorry for the long reply (less is more I know). Generally it’s great fun while you chat shit with your mates.

 

[Kearnkoff69]

I’m right there with you.

I wish in career mode it wasn’t just “manager” mode, but something like a DoF mode, where you not only can play, and sign and sell players, but sign and fire managers too.

Totally agreed. Give us the FIFA equivalent of a GM mode and I'd be happy and busy all year with the game. They've spent too long ignoring CM to focus on its cash cow FUT and I have a feeling people will jump ship if PES improves and EA allows other game modes to remain stagnant.

 

[Dirty Schwein]

Haven't played the last two so might get this one. Only play multiplayer local and occasionally online.