EA Sports makes better RPG's than Bioware

I love Nhl 12, and I do not care who knows. My BAP dman will be the next Bobby Orr.

 

A Sandbox FIFA game would be pretty cool. Be a pro.. in a fruit market or a crowded street. Just tricking with the ball, shooting people drinking hot beverages in the head. Breaking windows. Retrieving your ball from grumpy old people. Buying stuff. Disrupting traffic.

 

Football Manager is the ultimate RPG.

 

While we're on the topic, anyone here remember Eastside Hockey Manager? At first it was a freeware hockey management sim, but then it got released by Sega as a full fledged game very similar to Football Manager(and kinda flopped). The Freeware version is awesome and back when I played it there were tons of leagues filled with 29 other players competing against each other, making teams, drafting, trading. Loads of fun. The community may still exist to this day.

 

100% agree... Its freaking sad.

Why are sports game getting the complexity as RPGs are being dumbed down? Its mind boggling.

 

I wrote about this in the NBA 2k thread, but I thought of another reason, and I'll write them all here.

1) The difficulty settings make sense and on the lower settings you can ignore the stats and everybody has an "awesome" button

2) Using sports gives 90% of the players built in knowledge of the mechanics and skills required in a game. Tens of millions of people know that receivers need to be fast, how many people know that DnD sorcerers need charisma?

3) Using real sports mean that most players know at a glance how good enemy NPCs are. Traditional RPGs generally do as much as possible to hide NPC stats from you. The more I think about this, the more I think this is poor game design even if it's more realistic.

 

Interesting.

See I had the opposite problem. I recently started playing sports games blind- Had zero clue what the stats, positions and rules were other than the very mundane basics. I seriously had to do quite a bit of research to understand those stats and rules (many circumstantial) and how to read their "cards" (BB = base on ball. K= strike) and it was far more complex (to me) than typical Fantasy builds.

I so needed the depth missing from the "RPG's" that I had to cross over to Sports game (specifically MLB the show) to get the tactical, RPG itch scratched. I would love a Fantasy RPG with systems this complex, and deep enogh to make you want to "dig in" and learn the system.

 

Can't believe this thread has yet to mentioned the greatest sports-rpg ever created

Tales of Game's Studios Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa




The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041, a day so painful to some that it is referred to only as the "B-Ballnacht". Thousands upon thousands of the world's greatest ballers were massacred in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide. The reason: the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful its mere existence threatens the balance of chaos and order. Among the few ballers and fans that survived the basketball genocide was Charles Barkley, the man capable of performing the "Verboten Jam"...

 

I would add a couple:

4) Sports stats are dealt with in a flat manner. They are what they are, and they represent how good the people will be at the sport. In an RPG, you've got your character stats, but then you ADD weapon stats to them, and armor stats, and stats from magical items, and sometimes even stats from environmental factors. If you want to look at it this way, stats in the sports games are simple +/-, better than/worse than affairs, while RPG stats are an equations with multiple factors, all of which must be taken into consideration.

5) RPGs often have spendable resources - stats that drain away. Equipment stats, like potions. So, yet another layer of stats, this one that you have to use strategically. Sports games don't generally have resource stats.

6) Since you normally don't interact with the stats in a Sports game, even in GM mode, looking at the stats is about the equivalent of looking at the back of a sports card, and in that sense, the presence of lots of stats serves mostly to reassure the gamer that the players on their team are going to play close to like they do in real life. Whereas the stats in an RPG are interacted with directly and often - changing armor and weapons, adding points to skills, casting stat boosting spells. Which means the characters are not the same from battle to battle, or even moment to moment, so the gamer has to understand not just the characters stats as they are, but what potential stats can be reached at any given moment, and how those changes will affect the game.

7) In a sports game, all skills and abilities are related to doing one and only one task - the sport. In an RPG, there's often combat, diplomatic, economic, and stealth skills, all which are rarely utilized for the same common purpose. So, the RPG gamer has to plan how they want their characters to interact with the game, whereas in a Sports game the way you are going to interact is a given.

8) RPGs have classes. Sports game do have different positions, and different players are differently suited to those positions, but it is closer to if an RPG had only different types of warrior classes to choose from than it is a full class list. There is a much steeper difference between a fighter and a mage. In a sports game, everyone is prepped for doing the same task in the same general way. But a mage does not play the game in the same way as a fighter. So, in an RPG you have to learn how to utilize multiple methods of play for each of the classes in your party, plus you often have to assemble a team of highly disparate skillsets, and thus need to understand which skillsets work well together and why. I mean, why can't you take 3 fighters, a ranger, a paladin, and a thief in your party?

So, even the dumbed down RPGs, with their thin character sheets, still have way more stats in play on the characters than the Sports game, because you've got weapon, armor, class abilities, race, equipment, magic items, spell boosts, and environmental stats all in play also - just much less visibly than the character sheet stats.

 

Many sports games nowadays have different equipment, such as boots in PES that affect the player's speed, shot power and so on. I personally dislike it, but it's there. Also, there are usually perks that aren't necessarily negative or positive, but which have a big effect on how you play the game. For example, in a football game you might have a striker who continuously tries to beat the offside line, which may be good if you play on counter-attack, but which can completely ruin your tactics if you try to play possession game. A striker with a high defensive work rate may get tired towards the end of the game. A free-roaming playmaker may forget his defensive duties and cause his team lots of trouble. There are also environmental factors, such as rain and snow, which can benefit certain types of players and give trouble to others.

Sports games have stats that constantly change with time, based on the players' age, training, form and so on. Spendable resources aren't unheard of either. For example the Ultimate Team mode in FIFA has different consumables that give players temporary boosts or permanent improvements on certain stats. The NHL games used to have player cards that pretty much acted like potions or spells by giving buffs to your players or screwing the opponent over (for example, one card made your opponent miss the target every time he shot on goal). This stuff is generally considered too arcade-y to be included in more serious game modes, so it's usually just some fun flavor. Still, there's one resource stat that is almost always important in sports games: money. Whether it's about buying players or renewing contracts, you constantly need to keep an eye on your bank account.

You constantly interact with stats in many sports games. For instance, players usually have their daily form and/or morale which has a direct effect on their stats along with their fatigue level and possible injuries. As a result, the players aren't the same from match to match, and because of fatigue and possible knocks the players aren't even the same throughout the match but usually decline towards the end. You may also choose whether a player takes part in technical training, shooting practice, physical training or maybe a combination of multiple different training types. In Football Manager you can even adjust every player's personal workload, give them extra training, give them tutoring by a more experienced player, try to teach them preferred moves (traits) and so on, which affects everything from their development to their morale, fitness and how likely they are to get injured (and in the case of tutoring even their relationships with other players), although your typical EA Sports games are a lot lighter in this regard. In "single-player" Be a Pro modes you can usually directly put points into different skills as well. In some games there are also ways to interact with the media, which may have indirect effects on your players' stats through morale or other factors.

I wouldn't say that's always the case. In Football Manager players have different personalities based on a few visible stats (stuff that directly affects what the player does on the pitch, like aggression and determination) and a whole lot of hidden stats (more general stuff like ambition, professionalism, controversy and sportsmanship). These stats affect a huge number of things, including how a player interacts with the media, how well he blends in with his team mates, how much training you can give him before he stats complaining, how likely he is to want to leave the team in pursuit of greater glory elsewhere etc. Even purely technical stats may have a lot of different uses based on a player's position and role, especially combined with his other stats and whatever preferred moves he has. For example, First Touch not only has an effect every time a player receives the ball, but it also has an effect on one-two-passes, volleys, one-time shots and so on. A player with a great long shots stat but crappy technique may just constantly blast the ball over the net if you instruct him to shoot on sight. A highly creative player may just ruin your tactics if you otherwise want to keep things organised, or if he doesn't have the skill to do the stuff he is trying to do. Usually you have to do a lot of serious planning about how to best make use of your players' abilities, and you also need to have a back-up plan or two for those cases when someone gets injured or is otherwise unavailable.

Again, FM is kind of a special case, and EA games are much more straightforward, but I don't really see the issue in having acceleration, sprint speed, balance, jumping, agility etc. all as their own stats instead of just having one agility attribute.

You have to set your tactics so that you can best make use of your players' strengths, and you also need to have enough tactical flexibility to change things around when it's required. A tall target man doesn't play football the same way a short speedster does, even if they play the exact same position. So, in sports games you have to learn how to utilize multiple methods of play for each of the players in your squad, plus you often have to assemble a team of highly disparate skillsets, and thus need to understand which skillsets work well together and why. I mean, why can't you take 5 strikers, an attacking midfielder, two wingers, a centre-back and a sweeper in your squad?

 

My favorite game is football, and you are wildly off the mark in this game. There is a huge difference between 300 pound linemen who's job it is to push other people around, and 180 pound receivers who's job it is to run fast, and 220 quarterback's who job it is to throw a ball accurately.

 

Those two are different, but they're playing the same game, so they have the same core block of stats with a few tweaks for the different positions, much like the tweaks between a ranger and a fighter. A mage, on the other hand, has an entirely different set of stats than one of the warriors, since they have access to spells. Using spells, they interact with the game in a completely different way than the fighter since they have a whole slew of separate stats that no one else has (each spell has its own stats).

 

Throw power and accuracy are stats that only matter to 1 person on the field out of 22.

Yes all the players get a rating in throw power and accuracy, but only one of them uses it.

 

Even the old Blitz games had equipment purchases. But these equipment purchases aren't a separate stat block applied to a character that is constantly changing. Instead, you buy your boost, equip it, and walk away. In an RPG, you've got a constantly revolving door of equipment, often with each one having multiple values, and which interact with different characters differently (depending on race, class, and skill-level). So you are constantly changing up your equipment.

And it is the constant interaction, this constant adjustment of your stats with additional external blocks of stats, that I am talking about. At any given moment, you may be switching out weapons, casting spells (with their own stat blocks) which affect the party or an individual, changing their stats, and when you level you even often have to raise stats to achieve unlocks, so you are in constant interaction with those stats. In Sports games (barring the new Be a Pro mode), you don't normally interact with the stats, the game does. Fatigue may be in play, affecting your character down the line, and you may put them on the bench for it, but that is the game interacting with the stats, you just interact with the players.

The weather does affect people, but it is an overall constant, affecting the stadium. The environmental pressures that I am speaking about are enemy spells, hazards (traps and the like), and radials, all of which only work for a certain length of time and only in a certain area. The spell entangle does not affect the entire field, just a small area, so by casting it you cause a slew of stat adjustments to the field, causing certain areas to be much more desirable to be in than others, in addition to direct effects of the spell itself, and the spell goes away after a time.

Money - that's true. But in the main game of an RPG, you're buying weapons, armors, potions, spell scrolls, bribes, occasionally mercenaries, each with their own stat blocks and own purpose. In the Sports games, all purchases are honed to one goal, and naturally so: the sport. In an RPG, purchases could be ingredients for potion-making (a completely different stat set), or magical equipment, or used to bypass a quest without actually doing it. Money at all times serves multiple purposes.

In the Be a GM modes, the game improves the players stats for you. You only weigh the changes and what to do about them. Until the Be a Pro mode, you did not directly change those stats. You just watched them. Like you watch a sports card change over time. There may be lots of stats, but if you don't have to weigh the positives and negatives of how you are going to improve those stats, you are not interacting with those stats. Football Manager, though, is a separate case, as the management sims come at the game from an entirely different angle.

Breaking Agility down isn't the issue; they're trying to reduce the amount if interactivity people have with the stats without eliminating the interactivity. One of the few ways you can do that is to reduce the amount of stats in play, making fewer things that the gamer has to manage - as they're already managing the stats of race choice, attribute choice, skill choice, weapon choice, armor choice, spell choice, and spells cast choice, all of which have their own stats, and many of which can change at a moment's notice, and multiple times (such as if you have multiple weapon sets and rapidly change them out during a combat.)

The mage and cleric play a different game, with an entirely different set of stat blocks (and a huge number of them): spells.

A mage especially all but plays an entirely separate game from a fighter. But it's best to have one anyway. However, most group-based RPGs will let you go out without one. That's your choice. Since the later spell-stat-blocks that the mage gets access to aren't immediately part of the character sheet (until the modern versions), you have to page through the spells to find what mage class you want to take, and what benefits that mage will be to the party. Going by just the mage at 1st level, your party is better off without one, since the mage's advantages come so much later. Which is what naturally happens when you have a whole slew of spell-stat-blocks sitting on top of a character stat block, with those spells acquired as you pick them up in game.[/QUOTE]

 

Also, I used to play a lot of a full-court basketball game on the C64 (which I'm not sure was ever given a store release; I sent away for it, and which I forget the name off) which didn't have the NBA license, so all fictional teams. But you had a team roster, multiple stats, and league play, with different players getting fatigued and injured at a rate determined by age and time kept on the court. And then at the end of the season, you would get a stat pool that you used to improve all your players or to draft, and everybody would age one year. Each player had only like 6 stats, but the interactivity with those stats and the long-term league play is something that Sports games are only just getting back into.

 

That doesn't sound like football.

 

I don't think that's a fair assessment. You might as well say that when you buy stuff in an RPG, your only real goal is to survive whatever nasty stuff the game throws at you. "The sport" is hardly an easily defined goal. For example, instead of buying players you could be hiring new coaches, improving your training facilities or building a scouting network. There's a ton of different ways to spend that money depending on your goals (such as whether you want to just avoid relegation or build a team that will be really strong sometime in the future).

I guess managing your staff is one form of resource management as well, meaning that in some sports games even your resources have stats.

Although you usually can't directly improve a player's stats, you can often affect them indirectly through training. You surely have to weigh the positives and negatives when choosing whether your defensive midfielder should aim to improve his speed or his strenght. There may also be other factors that affect how a player develops, such as how old he is, how much playing time he gets, how well he plays and how motivated he is. It doesn't really matter whether you get to put points in those stats yourself or not.

Well, in football and hockey games you have goalkeepers that have different skills and an entirely different role than any other player on the pitch. In FIFA you may have players that can pull off skill moves that other players cannot, giving them a new set of options that most players don't have access to. They may not quite have access to level 9 spells (well, I don't know about Neymar), but the principle is the same.

But of course not all RPGs have classes or unique skills/stats based on character build, so I don't see why it should be a big deal in sports games either. Technically most sports games use a classless system where characters are defined by a few dozen stats, a bunch of traits and some general info (nationality, weight, height, position, age etc.) In practice there are still classes and subclasses based on the players' position, skills and preferred role, which is something you constantly have to take into consideration when building your team. As far as classless systems go, I think many sports can survive comparison to current RPGs.

 

I was going to avoid this thread. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and used to constantly pick on my brother when he was playing games -- "oh you got the Tires of Turning +2," "what do you mean there's no racial bonuses?" etc etc. Ultimately, there was no conclusion to come to but the obvious -- that prominent stats, mixed with player agency regarding them (be it from character building, or selecting characters from a varied pool) can enhance about any type of game.

But I paid a visit the other day, and he was playing a game with character-building, aging, systematic conversations, resource allocation, time-sensitive quests, choices with stacking consequences which then in turn affect the available choices, the feedback and abstraction required to naturalistically play in character, and its "combat" resolved with one's choice of either a phase-based 3/4-view deck-building game, or a well-illustrated series of hands-free primary rolls and Save checks.

Yeah. NCAA Football. Those mother fuckers.

 

Football has the problem of a field of play that is too large. Most of the time I see the players stand around while watching someone move the ball across the field for a minute or 2 with 1-2 defenders actively trying to stop the progress. I would say... cut off 1/3 of the length and 1/5 of the width of the field and the game would become a lot more interesting.

American football has the problem of watching players stand around for 30 seconds between every 3 seconds of action. If they changed the rules to more like rugby the games would be more interesting, but then the fat 300+ lb linemen would have heart attacks.

 

People are both more retarded and less retarded than game developers think they are.

That's the real issue.

 

Why do the americans always want to change the rules of football? had it been your way we would have had 4 quaters 15 or 20 min each with 15 min ad breaks in between. thank god fifa is not based in ny.

The biggest problem with american football is the constant game stops every 30 sec or so with ads in between for 5 min - makes it completly unwatchable

 

I never said the rules had to be changed, just the field size. Everything else about football is pretty awesome.

 

And racial bonuses are implemented by default, even if no one notice that.

 

In professional football there are rules on how large/small the pitch can be...