Regarding AI in division rivals (constructive suggestions)

As long as we’re talking about AI… How about teaching it that long shots from over 30 yds out are exceedingly rare in professional matches (yet they occur frequently in Manager Mode if you crank up the shooting tendency). Alas, I tried turning down the shooting tendency to avoid these wasteful shots only to watch some of my top attackers fail to take open shots in the penalty area. Confronted with this lose/lose choice I really have no choice but to leave the shooting tendency high, but it makes me grind my teeth every time I see a ball  that has almost no chance of scoring launched from +30 yds.

I think the bottom line is that when you watch the AI do its thing in Manager Mode you see a variety of actions that just don’t occur in high-level professional matches. The above is just one of the more egregious, but another is defenders standing stark still and doing nothing to close down an attacker (who has made no skill move to freeze their defender) as they take a touch to set up an uncontested shot in or around the penalty area. Yet another, is the so-called “offside trap” which doesn’t appear to do anything! A team playing an offside trap will invariably hold a very disciplined straight line in defence, yet when I select the offside trap my defenders are all over the place (i.e., my back line is not straight and the opponent is almost never caught offside). To people like myself who grew up playing the game and who routinely watch multiple matches a week, it’s pretty frustrating to watch the AI get some of these basics so totally wrong. It ‘s not only frustrating in the moment, but it leaves users with the sense that EA either doesn’t care about getting the game right or doesn’t know enough about the sport to realize it’s not getting it right (or both). Either way, there are thousands of top-level matches on which to train the AI and (if it’s truly AI) one supposes some of these gross inaccuracies are easily corrected—if only EA cares enough to get them right.