For those of us who have been playing FIFA soccer since the beginning (1994), there are things every year that you love and things that you just can't stand about the new iteration. For someone like myself who can trace his soccer playing back to the days of "GOAL!" on the NES, the FIFA games have always kept me interested in soccer, despite my American tendency to prefer football.
Last season though, one of the major problems with FIFA '09 was the outrageous amount of cheating that was going on. Not only did it make playing online extremely unpleasant, but it also made it impossible to get yourself into the higher rankings online with out cheating yourself.
So what's an honest player to do? Many complained to Electronic Arts and their development team and this season the folks at EA have pledged to make your online experience, whether its 1 vs.1, 5 vs. 5, or even the mighty 10 vs. 10 a whole lot more enjoyable. Here's all five of their pledges to you, the gamer:
- No More Custom Teams in Ranked Games - A popular abuse of the system from last season, EA Producer Christopher Labrune says that this was really just a fixable bug in the system. "Their (custom teams) presence in FIFA 09 Online was a bug, and we are implementing foolproof checkpoint-based loading and unloading of squads in online matches. This also applies to original teams in Clubs."
- Diminishing Returns on Repetitive Matches - Like beating up on the same player to boost your rankings? Well EA is putting a stop to that, Labrune explains, "The more you play someone within a close period of time, the less ranked points you get. Ultimately, it is not even worth the effort." Great, and for those of you sneaky folks who find other ways to compete, Labrune has your number already: "And to those who tried to hide their tracks by playing other modes in the middle of winning streaks … this won’t work anymore. Nice try though."
- No More Game Exploits - Halfway goals (below) are out, goal-keepers 6-second exploits, gone. However, still around is CR7, but you'll be able to bone up your skills against him in Training Mode.
- Cheaters Busted Faster - This is probably the most important pledge of the group as it signifies the lack of tolerance EA is taking with folks who ruin the fun for others. An online surveillance team has been created and will be all over those of you who like to bend the rules, expect to see lots more people getting the hammer down on them this year (and make sure it isn't you).
- Disconnecting Slow Players - No longer will it be acceptable to go "AFK" and grab a soda, use the bathroom, change the laundry, do your chores and change your shirt, all while your poor opponent is waiting to finish the match he's up 3-0 in. Larune says that this way: "No more AFK’s getting control of the ball as the last defender!"
While all we've seen so far are screenshots and teaser trailers for FIFA 10, we can expect this new mantra to be an important one, because as Larune and team found out, cheating can come out of no where.
"In the end, great online features do not matter if we cannot enforce Fair Play. FIFA 09 saw an increase in cheating, which, to be honest, caught us somewhat by surprise," said Labrune. "We were so happy about our offering, that we forgot for a second how petty people can be sometimes. And how willing they are to defeat a system to gain anything out of it.
"Aided by some community members, we were able to track down most cheat mechanisms. We fixed some (custom teams in FIWC), addressed others by punishing offenders (repeat wins against same opponents), while some others had to wait until FIFA 10 to be addressed (original teams in Clubs)."
Hopefully with all these cheating mechanisms fixed, we'll see a much more exciting and competitive version of FIFA Online this fall!
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