The last straw

I switched it on yesterday again, still terrible gameplay. In particular the passing is just so woeful, 3-4 times a match the ball goes to completely the wrong player. The attacking AI is woeful if you try and build an attack.

I conducted an experiment: I played a full round of gauntlet, decided I didn’t care if I would win or lose, went to the meta 4411 (which I hate) and I focused purely on maxing out my right stick lane covering in combination with second man press. Utterly negative, in creative but ruthlessly efficient defending. 

The result was I managed stop 70% of the attacks I was conceding pre TOTS, the opposition ran out of options, lost the ball in more vulnerable positions, and I was able to to get the ball to CAM/ST fast and perform a counter and score. Then once 1 or 2 goals up the mechanics shifted in my favour and I could play slight more progressive football.

This is why I hate this game, you only get rewarded for mind numbing, horrible, destructive anti-football, anti-realism tactics, where you don’t learn, you don’t develop your skills and you embrace the flawed mechanics of the game.

With that highly boring tactic, I finally got a perfect round and packed the same 91 TOTS breakthrough player with my bonus group reward.

for me, this game is not about the packs, though I enjoy packing a great player of course, it’s about progression. I first started playing fifa with Road to World Cup 98, I’ve more or less played a version of the game every year since is was 14 years old (now 41). 

So anyway, you can’t stop the new dribbling meta and your defenders being on ice skates, but you can max out your lane covering & right stick in combination with conservative second man press to minimise it and rely less on manual tackling.