FIFA 11 - Main Thread

During a short 10 minute interview with David Rutter I got to ask some questions based on the feedback given on here.

Indoor Football - There wont be indoor football in FIFA 11 however it may included in future versions. The main reason is that there has been a huge amount of work put into FIFA 11 to improve it on FIFA 10 and the work involved to try incorporate indoor football aswell would just be too much. A lot of work would have to go into developing the physics for rebounds off the wall etc and changing the keeper physics and AI to work with the smaller and lower goals.

Custom formations - Custom Formations at present have not been removed and are still part of the game. The developers however do have a kill switch which they can activate which would ban custom formations from all ranked modes. They however have not made a decision on whether or not to implement this as part of the game or not.

Manual Chips - As far as David Rutter is concerned the manual chips have been fixed for FIFA 11. Having played FIFA 11 myself I can say I agree and anyone who has played the World Cup game can see the improvements made in it also even though its made by a different development team. David did however point out that while they have fixed the manual chip no doubt people will look for and find some other exploit to use in FIFA 11.

Finesse Shooting from long distances out - Finesse shooting has changed a lot in FIFA 11 with the addition of Personality+ where individual players wont be able to accuratly achieve the same results doing the the finesse shot. So only skilled finishers and more accurate players will be able to score them and only from closer distances. David Rutter admitted himself to being a "finesse shot monster" and having to change his gamestyle for FIFA 11.

Save Language on start up screen - David wasnt aware that this appeared everytime and said that on his version it doesnt but that maybe on the commercial release it had been set that way. He took note of it and will look into it with the development team to see if its still an issue in FIFA 11.

Spectator Mode - Spectator mode isnt available in FIFA 11. Again due to the vast improvements and work gone into FIFA 11 this is something that may be considered down the line in future versions of the game.

Live Season matches and being paired with players who have live season when you dont - This one lead to a bit of a debate between myself and David. Obviously EA see Live Season as a way to generate revenue and also offer players something they can pay for which will give them an advantage over other players. I suggested that in reality while this is true it probably a) puts people off playing ranked matches and b) encourages quitting. I suggested that those with Live Season only be paired with those that have it, again he took note of the feedback and will discuss it with his development team.

AI in clubs - The AI in clubs has been improved so you no longer have a huge gap between that stats of the Pros and the otherplayers on the pitch.

Option to save replays and share with friends - As described above this feature is in FIFA 11 in the form of the FIFA Theatre.


Manager Mode glitch - Manager mode has been removed and replaced by the new career mode and they have looked into these glitches from the previous manager mode and looked to remove those.

Gameface for Mac - This will be available and should be finished at this stage.

Removing the crossbar glitch in clubs - This was one David wasnt aware of so he took note of the glitch to pass on to the developement team.

Quittters - Again this lead to a bit of a debate between myself and David. His argument was that sometimes people have a genuine reason for quitting and that the system gets sent a signal only after someone quits which is where the 3-0 result comes in. I suggested that anyone who has a genuine reason to quit will be turning off their console anyways and that in my opinion there is no need for a quit option in the menu during the game at all. That this made it to easy for quitters to simple pause and quit when they began to lose. That if there was no quit option it would be too much hassle for them to have to switch off the console or go to the dashboard and load the game up again. He acknowledged this and said he will look at it as a possible solution and removing the quit option from the menu.

Handball option - There is a handball setting this year in the game however it you need to turn it on in the options it isnt on by default and it isnt "controlable" during gameplay i.e the option to deliberately handball.


What I found from the interview and the day overall was the EA and David Rutters team are very open to feedback from the community that play the game. They have a facebook page and regularly read it and take note of comments and feedback along with the EA forums.

This feedback all gets compiled in a system they have called Dev Track which I got to see examples of on the day. It contains a worklist for the developers based on bugs and glitches they are working on themselves while creating FIFA 11 with individuals assigned to specific issues. It also contains a whole section with End-User Feedback (EF) which is a list of all the feedback people have given on the EA forums and facebook. These are all the bugs and glitches people reported in FIFA 10 and they assign people to work on these and fix them in FIFA 11.

I would suggest that people make use of the EA forums and the FIFA 10/11 facebook pages and voice their thoughts and opinions on the game and the bugs and glitches as these only help to improve the game each year and from talking to David that is his aim each year, to bring the fans and bigger and better game.

Just to note at the time I went over the game was 75% complete but still looked very polished and smooth. The gameplay has improved a great deal and the new personality+ and pro passing really add to the game and make it more realistic and more challenging. Im sure between now and the release at the start of October more details will be released and further tweaks will be made but at 75% I was hugely impressed by it compared to FIFA 10.

Thanks to David Rutter for his time and answering some of the questions put forward by our league members and to Boards.ie and Aoife and Sarah at O Leary PR for organising the trip!

neil_18_ wrote: »

What?! :eek:

Do you have to start as a player or is there an option to start as a manager?

You can start as a manager aswell and play a 15 year career. Along with the options of being a player or player-manager.

neil_18_ wrote: »

Phew. Thanks for all the info. I never post in here but i've been lurking around everyday since you met with the producers!

No problem!

joe123 wrote: »

I know its not the place to debate the whole custom tactic thing again. But when teams in the world cup had defensive formations they werent just able to counter attack so quickly. In fifa its like wall of defense....bypass midfield and you then have four forwards v four defenders. That never happend in the world cup.

Its not the place to debate it as you say and its been done to death at this stage so theres no point. But based on FIFA 11 and the new features this is one of the reasons for the pro passing, you cant do the quick ping pong passing from FIFA 10 and just pass the ball up to the striker perfectly from the defence with 2 or 3 passes that go exactly to each player.

These are the improvements they are putting into it to try and counter other issues without taking out elements completely. I dont know if they will turn off the custom formations during ranked matches or not, its something that will be revealed closer to the time if they decide to but even if they dont the game play has noticeably changed a lot with these new features that people will have to adjust to a different style of gameplay and tactics and how they generally play the game.

Helix wrote: »

also, i have to say, when i played it in may i found there to be bugger all difference between 11 and 10

Im not sure how complete the game was in May when you played it but I find that impossible to believe to be honest. The way players jostle alone is a huge difference in gameplay, players jostle for control to win the ball back, shield the ball while running with it or position themselves shielding the opponent before receiving the ball, they control the ball while running moving it away from the person jostling with them to keep it out of reach.

The headers are completely different too with different header animations depending on the position of the player and the type of header required, whether a power header when attacking the ball like say Puyol in the box attacking from a corner for Spain or a defensive header just knocking it down to a team mate.

Each of these has a different animation assigned to it. The graphics are more crisp and there are more details gone into each player including facial expressions. Thats just some of the features from playing it for the while I did a few weeks ago.