With FIFA Street news tailing off, at least until we play it, and the recent TOTY announcements, all the FIFA buzz is currently centred around FUT. A recent Twitter conversation with European Community Manager Al Reid led to me writing this for EASF. I’m pretty new to FUT so this was basically a bit of an experiment that turned into a post. I figured I’d repost it here in full.

FIFA Ultimate Team has been a part of FIFA since FIFA 09, and has grown to become a massive part of the game, for some being the only mode they play. I’m guilty of never really trying it up until now because whilst I liked the idea of crafting my own team I honestly didn’t like the card system  and was looking for a more authentic experience, so I’ve stuck to playing Manager/Career Mode.

That said, I have dabbled and created an Ultimate Team each year, but I’ve never really done anything beyond opening the free packs you get and playing the odd match here and there. I’d never tried to understand the mechanics of what makes a good team and never really applied any thought to trying to achieve a good level of team chemistry. They say pictures speak a thousand words, so here is my FUT Generations Squad, untouched from when I last tinkered with it.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a bit of a mess and the only reason the chemistry isn’t lower is because I unwittingly managed to cobble together some sort of French connection on the right hand side. I present it only as evidence that I really didn’t know what i was doing.

My current Squad looks like this:

Although those two teams are worlds apart, getting my head around UT and  the importance of organisation and structure was actually pretty straightforward. There are excellent examples out there, made by hardcore FUT players, aimed at gaming the markets to maximise profit, hoarding cards to artificially inflate values and so on with the express intent of earning massive amounts of coins to spend. I’m sure they work, but I didn’t use any of those methods. I just used my free monthly packs that come from redeeming the code in the Special Edition of FIFA 12 and some patience.

I’m not claiming to know very much (or anything at all really) about FUT and any Ultimate Team veteran reading this will probably roll their eyes, but I’m writing this to show you that you can genuinely create a decent team with no outlay, even with no FUT experience, if you just take the time to look around.

The hardest part was deciding what type of team to actually build. The options available are near endless, and will affect what tournaments you’re able to enter once you’re finished. I’ve heard of people building squads of only left footed players, or bronze squads that are so finely balanced they can take on anything in their path, really creative stuff, but as you can see, I’ve gone for a fairly standard Gold Squad, all Brazilian nationals, all with 4-4-2 as a preffered formation.

In my January set of free packs I picked up a few Brazilian players, which was when this team began to take shape. I already had a fairly strong Brazilian prescense in the squad through sheer luck and decided to start looking at what their preffered formations were. 4-4-2  was the most popular and so that was that. I set about building the best Gold, Brazilian, 4-4-2 team I could with the resources I had available, which was basically what I’d already got from my free packs and daily gift promotions.

Once I’d decided what I was trying to achieve, the first thing I did was start stripping out players that didn’t meet my criteria. I moved all non brazilian players I had into my trade pile, which was where I hit my first hurdle. I had no idea what any of them were worth.

A look at the markets helped, but don’t provide anything concrete. I started them off at what I thought were fair prices but they wouldn’t sell, leading me to gradually reduce the prices to shift them. I preffered to stick to short auctions, as I found they weren’t getting any interest until the last few minutes anyway. Once I did that, I started shifting players a lot faster. For the most part I did fairly well but some people definitely picked up some bargains in my desperation to offload players and raise coins for my squad.

Whilst the auctions were ticking over I hit the markets and simply used the search criteria tools to narrow down to what I was looking for. The prices surprised me, with large fluctuations in price for the exact same card, literally seconds apart. I’d previously thought that prices would be almost rigid, but if you search narrowly  and at the right times, the bargains you’ll pick up are staggering. I worked my way through the team, upgrading one position at a time, dropping lower qualty players onto the bench and the players they replaced into the trade pile. The main thing I picked up pretty quickly was not being afraid to back out of an auction, no matter how much you want the player. If it starts getting too pricey, remove it from your watch list and search again, you can be sure that ten more of that card will turn up within minutes and if you’re prepared to juggle auctions and resell duplicates, you’ll get some great players for next to nothing.

The total cost for the entire squad was £78,250. £23,250 of that was spent on my last purchase, Maicon. As much as I was trying to do this on the cheap, my hand was forced. There are only 2 Brazilian RBs who fit into a 4-4-2 team and are rated over 80, Maicon and Alves. Alves was completely out of the question simply because of the expense. Maicon on the other hand tends to range between 25-30,000 so I managed to get a slight deal on him. He is still far and away my most expensive player though and even with his inclusion, the total cost of the entire squad is still less than the buy now price of most Alves cards.

There are some improvements that could be made, certain positions do have better players in that bracket available, but I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve done in just over a day and without getting into the “silly money” realm of UT. Now that I know how simply and quickly a squad can be built, I’m going to play a few tournaments and put the profit towards another squad, perhaps something a little trickier like a Bronze Championship squad.

Replay Theatre – Dave

In fairness, David Rutter did admit quite early on in the release calendar that EA have done very little with Replay Theatre for FIFA 12, and whilst that may have been the correct decision in terms of resource allocation, I can only review what’s in front of me.

The good news is that the limit of saves in Replay Theatre has been upped from FIFA 11’s meagre offering to a bulging 50 saves. Sadly that’s the end of the positivity because beyond that, Replay Theatre is feature and quality identical.

The main issue is that the replays you save aren’t actually replays at all. They’re heavily compressed, poor quality, video files which can’t be re-edited after saving. Even more disappointing is that they’re limited to an astonishing 11 seconds in length, which makes capturing any kind of build-up play virtually impossible.

When you see what Activision and Bungie have done in recent times with their own versions of Replay Theatre for Halo and COD respectively, it really does emphasise just how far away FIFA’s lacklustre offering is from an acceptable benchmark. I really can’t stress enough how poor Replay Theatre is and to be frank, in its current state it’s only wasting valuable disk space.

You’re only as good as your worst feature.

4/10

Game Face -Dave

I’ll be honest; it is odd for an application which has been widely available for two years to still be in beta, but none the less that’s the current state of play with EA’s Game Face technology. Even though it’s still classed as in beta the million dollar question is, has it improved?

For FIFA 12 I decided to create my Game Face again and thankfully the photos I used last year were still stored against my EA ID. Anything which saves the uncomfortable process of capturing a gormless self-portrait gets my vote so very much a +1 to Game Face on that front.

Visually Game Face looks the same, the instructions are the same and the steps to completion are exactly the same. This could fool you in to thinking that the result would be the same, but it’s not. In fact once my FIFA 12 Game Face had been created I barely had to tweak anything, it just worked. In previous years I’ve always had to spend hours upon hours tweaking sliders, gradually making the Game Face look less and less like me as I went.

It’s pleasing to see that the development of Game Face has been solely focussed on the outcome and that’s without doubt the right strategy. The evolution of Game Face has been slow, but finally the rewards are beginning to be reaped.

7/10

Custom Audio – Tom

EA obviously have some limitations as to what can and can’t go into the game, which is why over the last few years we’ve seen so much customisation handed back to the users. Custom Audio was one of the tools provided to do that. The first outing was good, aside from some bugs which we’re assured have been fixed and haven’t experienced ourselves this year, although others reportedly have. Sadly, aside from that bug fixing, Custom Audio hasn’t been touched. The process and features remain the same as FIFA 11, and if there have been any changes to quality behind the scenes it’s not immediately noticeable.

There are still useful options missing such as preview functions for playlists from within the game so that you could test how the audio sounds against the backdrop of the crowd and make adjustments if needed.

That said I still spent the best part of an evening carefully sorting my playlists and assigning everything properly before I’d even thought about starting a Career Mode because this is an excellent feature that, used properly, can help boost the atmosphere of matches, it just needed some attention. So whilst the premise remains solid and still has the impact it did in FIFA 11, the lack of new features or innovation this year makes you wonder if EA have decided that it’s as good as it needs to be.

6/10

Edit Mode – Dave

The actual contents of the in-game edit mode in FIFA 12 haven’t really changed a great deal from FIFA 11 but with Creation Centre now picking up a lot of the slack in this department it hasn’t needed to. What’s there is good and it works well but there are two main issues hampering our creative juices.

The first is that you’re unable to edit the appearance of licensed players. I guess this is restricted by one of the many weird and wonderful license agreements but with the vast majority of FIFA’s roster still without 8-way facial capture it’s a disappointing miss. Seeing Phil Jones running around with dark brown hair rather than his expertly highlighted golden locks isn’t ideal and it should be easy for us to amend.

There is some hypocrisy in the AWOL Appearance tab though because the current settings will allow you to set Wayne Rooney as a goalkeeper, but not make Phil Jones blonde. Which is worse from a license perspective?

The other problem is that once you change aesthetic items like boots, the game treats your default squad file as “customised” and if you then wish to use these changes in Career Mode you have to waive the right to be on the leader boards. Now if I’m transferring players around I totally understand that restriction but for aesthetic changes only it’s an incredibly harsh price to pay. I’ve always said that accessory changes should be contained within their own data file rather than modifying the default, to allow you to re-apply should the default fail or corrupt. I hope EA take that feedback on board.

Beyond those issues the usual options for tweaking Team Management, Rosters and Stadiums are all present and with Creation Centre backing Edit Mode up there’s an awful lot of time you can invest in customising FIFA 12 should you wish to.

An overhaul visually is needed going forward and also a change of strategy with regards to how aesthetic changes are saved and applied but on the whole it’s fairly decent.

6/10

Creation Centre – Tom

You could almost forgive EA for the lack of attention paid to the above considering how much has been changed in Creation Centre. Almost.

The turnaround in the 12 months since it was first released is astounding, with several huge changes being made. Stand outs include being able to customise your created clubs badge and sponsor, which, when coupled with the extra kit options, allows you to create pretty much any team past or present that aren’t in the game, including your sunday league team. The ability to make use of licensed content is a great addition, as is the ability to spread your Creation Centre content further into the game than the exhibition and unranked matches that were available last year, with certain content accessible through CM.

Things haven’t changed drastically in terms of editable stats in player creation but the using the unity plugin that powers gameface to allow player faces to be designed in 3d is a big step forward, allowing more face types to be used. There are more boot and kit options for people that like that kind of thing.

New to Creation Centre is create a tournament which allows you to create a custom tournament of up to 24 teams with customisation of balls and screen overlays which can be downloaded to play in certain modes, which people have already used to recreate full leagues unavailable in game.

The app is easy to navigate and generally solid. There are a few overhanging issues with content from FIFA 11 currently unable to be deleted, but we understand a fix is incoming for that. I experienced the odd crash whilst editing the FSB team, but if you use quick save frequently enough you won’t lose anything. Another downside is that when you’re viewing teams for bookmarking, you can’t see the kits, so you’ve no idea how faithfully it’s been reproduced until you download and use them in game.

Now some of the features above need to be paid for, unless you have an EA Sports Season Ticket, but I have to admit I was shocked at how cheap the add ons are and as long as that money is put back into Creation Centre next year it’s fine by me. The key thing is that you don’t have to own the premium content packs to be able to download content that has been made with them, smart move by EA, as is breaking down the premium content in to packs, letting you pick and choose which features you want to bolt on.

The doors that Creation Centre unlocks are vast and a quick look at the figures at the time of writing shows that, over four million item downloads so far today. There are people that have used the tools for unsavoury purposes, namely creating teams for Virtual Pro boosting, but that aside Creation Centre needs to stay and needs to keep improving in the way it has.

8/10

Features Total 31/50

*This is not the final score for the game. It’s the score for this portion. The final score based on all aspects considered will be live at 3pm*

You have no idea how hard its been to keep that a secret  but thankfully the lid on Career Mode has now been lifted. Which means we can give you a run down of the new features which grace FIFA 12′s Career Mode. We won’t be posting any opinion/impressions yet because we’re playing a newer build of Career Mode today and want to take that in before nailing our colours to the mast.

Career Mode: The New Features

Visuals: Visually things are pretty similar but the whole front end has been nicely polished. The calendar for advancing matches now embeds in the main screen allowing you to track news and events while the game progresses. You can also halt the advancement at any time if you want to stop and read an article or deal with a transfer deal. There are new colour coded calendar items for league, cup, friendly and European matches too.

Scouting: Yes, scouting is finally back in Career Mode but only for  youth players players. You can hire up to three scouts and send them to different regions around for a duration of your choice. The scouts themselves vary in quality with the best scouts demanding the most cash. To get accurate data on the quality of the youth prospects in a region you may need to scout multiple times, however if you wait too long a rival club could step in and sign the player you’re after.

Youth Academy: And once you’ve scouted your young prospects and decided to sign them they get added to your Youth Academy. From here you can track their development and when the time is right either move the players in to your first team squad or realise you made a terrible mistake and send them packing.

Player Stories: Throughout the season players will now approach the manager voicing their concerns or happiness at certain decisions. The topics range from injury worries, lack of game time, unhappy about a new signings, being played out of position, morale, retirement and many, many more. How you deal with these issues is entirely down to the manager.

Transfer Deadline Day: Is now a fully fledged feature of its own in Career Mode and on transfer deadline day the game advances hour by hour to allow you to wheel and deal before the window slams shut. You also have the option to stall transfer deals to allow your self more time to decide between multiple targets.

Form and Morale: Are both back and will need to be delicately managed over the course of the season. These two features plugin to the ‘Player Stories’ system where players will become and unhappy for any number of reasons.

Player Growth: Is allegedly fixed, but we’d need to play for multiple seasons to confirm this. However one very positive example came up when playing a Career Mode as Southampton. Just 3 games in to the season Alex Oxlaide Chamberlain recieved a substantial amount of growth receiving around 10 stats improvements. Most were just +1 but there were a few, +2 and +3 upgrades too. Which when compared to FIFA 11′s +1 growth for an entire season is surely a good sign. Alex is a player who you’d expect to have fairly rapid growth too so the scenario seemed to fit well.

This post covers the Career Mode features we saw six weeks ago but we’ll bring you an updated post with impressions as soon as we’re back from the Guildford play test.

To see it, click the read more button below.

The following is what determines your attributes:

I think the fastest Virtual Pro in the world, who will be someone with a build that allows them to reach this speed, will be 96, although he won’t be 96 every match, unless he’s very very good! And he also will never be able to be the strongest player out there, by quite a distance.

…

And a little bit more info, including store upgrades…

I don’t want to talk about the “boosts” loads as I really don’t think it’s worth the continued discussion, but lets just say that if you play the game you can get into the 90s overall, boosts might help you get nearer and around the 80 mark, for a time as they are limited to a certain number of matches, but there will quickly become a time where it is not something that will interest anyone has been playing the game, as there player will have been improved through gameplay. They really are either a “help you get started” or a “catch up”, if people choose to use them.

Also please note that since this podcast was recorded, Mike Takla – who has worked on FIFA 10′s Virtual Pro mode – had the following to say about the stat boost DLC which has put my fears to rest (a little bit at least):

You can buy an upgrade yes. It will improve some of your technical attributes for a limited time. It won’t make you stronger or faster and it won’t put you in a position where you can have a player better or even equal to someone who plays the game regularly.

There seems to be some concern that this will ruin the mode, but we’re talking about people being able to make some of their atttributes 5-10 points better for a few matches, compared to being able to make them 20-30 better forever by playing as well as able to improve a lot of other skills you can’t get from the Store.

As always, hit the forums and let us know your thoughts on this podcast’s topic in the podcast thread – and remember you can download our podcasts via iTunes using the keyword FIFA SOCCER BLOG!

According to his thread here, some Live Season 2.0 information can be found in the Multiplayer.it gameplay video posted yesterday.

The following German quote appears in the game:

Live Season liefert dir die reale wöchentliche Form und bietet dir jetzt mit dem neuen Spielmodus My Live Season auch die Möglichkeit, den Lauf der Geschichte zu änderen!

A rough translation is the following (if any native German speakers would like to offer any refinements to this translation please do!):

Live Season updates the form of the players every week and with the new feature My Live Season, you can change the course of history!

Intriguing eh?

But more than that, on the EA forums, Mr. Takla has been answering the public’s concerns about facing teams filled with 7ft 8in Virtual Pros, along with other possible exploits. Take a look at his answers below:

To save you from having too many nightmares I thought I’d let you know that when creating or editing your Virtual Pro their physical build affects their physical attributes. For example:

I make a player who is 5’9″ & 150lbs.
You make a player who 6’4″ & 230lbs.

My player will have better acceleration, agility and sprint speed, your player will have better strength, aggression, jumping and balance.

The above maybe not 100% accurate with regards to what affects what, but that should give you the general idea I hope.

My favourite bit is below but to read the entire article, click here.

Pro Club Championship
Take your Virtual Pro online and compete in EA SPORTS 10 v 10 Pro Club Championship. Clubs can join one of the 11 regional leagues, win trophies each month, as well as climb to the top of the overall World Leaderboard. Up to 50 friends can sign for a Club and once you’re in a Club you can also download your friends’ Game Faces.

For those of you who missed the event, click the read more button below for a brief rundown of what was spoken about.

ONLINE
Improved matchmaking
Filters included such as team star rating, controller setting, etc.
Fair play system for rankings

VIRTUAL PRO
Photo Game Face now in
Create A Club in FIFA Clubs
Regional leagues in FIFA Clubs
Get spotted by other teams whilst playing
Have your entire team’s real faces in the game
200 accomplishments available when you play as your Virtual Pro (such as score a long shot)
As a Virtual Pro your attributes can grow, you can “win” player traits and choose your celebrations

PRACTICE ARENA
1-on-1 play, practice set pieces (free-kicks, corners and throws)
Full match with other players offline

GAMEPLAY ENHANCEMENTS
Intelligent runs that change based on the defender positioning
Better shooting, more variety in the goals you can score
Urgency applies to attacking, defending and goalkeepers too
Defensive urgency means fantastic clearances, reflex blocks, sliding blocks, and stretch blocks
Goalkeeper intelligence means second chance saves, better positioning, desperation saves and playing it safe
Set piece creator allows 8 regions, with up to 9 players moving, with 4 set pieces per region allowed in-game
Protecting the ball is much more realistic
Physical battles look real and feel real
360-degree paths to goal look incredible

MISC
Lots more DLC for the game will be available
The Bernabeu will return in FIFA 10 (possibly as DLC?)
Live Season 2.0 was announced but will not be detailed until early September

Wow. This is by far the best FIFA 10 trailer to date.

Keep an eye out for some new features being mentioned…