Today we hand over to Mike Takla, a Producer on the X360 & PS3 FIFA 10 with some great insights into Virtual Pro.
Over to you Mike.
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FIFA 10’s Virtual Pro – Welcome to the start of your Virtual Football Career!
Hello everyone, I’m Mike Takla one of the FIFA 10 360/PS3 Producers here to tell you about Virtual Pro, one of the new features for this year, as well as give you a quick introduction to our new Clubs feature, the EA SPORTS™ Pro Club Championship.
As it’s quite a deep feature I’ve broken the blog down into a few sections; firstly there’ll be a quick intro, then I’ll talk about Game Face, growing your Pro, taking him online and finally a little bit about my Pro’s career so far. I’ll also do my best to answer any questions you have so feel free to ask away by logging in to the site and adding these as comments.
Virtual Pro Intro
At the start of FIFA 10 pre-production (the Producers favourite time of the year – when we brainstorm ideas for the upcoming game) we found a lot of the dev team, along with our community, commented on how they enjoyed being able to create a player to use in Be-A-Pro Seasons, Manager Mode and the other game modes but found it a little frustrating that for many of the modes they’d have to create a new player and that none of their previous achievements counted for anything. Other feedback included people wanting to use their created player online in team play, as well as suggestions that our create player feature didn’t allow you to achieve the same level of likeness you’re able to in other games. So the Producers gathered together and created Virtual Pro; a feature that would allow you to do all of the above and much more….
EA SPORTS™ Football World & Game Face
One of the first bits of feedback we started working on was trying to improve the level of physical likeness you are able to achieve when creating a player. I’m sure you’ve all seen Game Face in other EA SPORTS™ games and although it might seem like we just need to take what they’re doing, it’s far more complicated than that, with each game using different character models and other technology that as a Producer (we’re the ideas men!) I’m probably not the best to talk about. But anyway, we knew that getting Game Face into FIFA 10 would be a big win for Virtual Pro so immediately started discussing with our friends who run the Football World website how this could be achieved. Thanks to a lot of meetings with a lot of clever engineers we finally worked out how to get a head created on the web into the game and ‘Download Game Face’ was born.
The way this works for FIFA 10 is you can upload 2 photos to the web and using the Game Face tool, create your head and get it ready to download. Once you’ve created a Virtual Pro in the game you can download the head and it’s automatically applied to your player in game. You can make changes to your face on the web at any time and get your new face into game. Your Game Face will also be used as your Avatar when connected, and this can be viewed by others when playing online but maybe the best Game Face feature of all is that you can also download the faces of your friends if you’re playing in an online Club – seeing your friends smiling face after scoring a goal still gets me every time!
Growing your Virtual Pro
As I mentioned earlier, one of our goals for the feature was to allow you to play with and continue to grow your Pro throughout FIFA 10 – so you’ll be able to take him through the four Be-A-Pro Seasons, have him follow you around in your Manager Mode career or use him in Kick-Off, Tournament and Lounge Mode. You’ll also be able to use and grow him online, in a couple of specific modes which I’ll come to shortly, and unless you decide to select another player he’ll also be your man in the Arena.
In all the modes you can unlock EA SPORTS™ Football World Accomplishments to improve your player’s skills. There are over 200 Accomplishments to complete on the pitch with the rewards related to the challenge. For example you can improve your finishing by scoring different types of goals, passing by creating assists in various ways, and boost your tackling by winning the ball regularly. Of course with each player having 28 attributes it’s far more complicated than that and there is a wide variety of different challenges – learning skill moves, making a goal line clearance, or reacting 1st to a rebound off the post are just a few more examples of the type of things you’ll need to do to take your Pro to his best.
As well as improving Attributes you can also unlock player traits, new celebrations and kit. Some of the traits that you can unlock include the new ‘Giant Throw’ made famous by Stoke City’s Rory Delap, the new ‘Skilled Dribbling’ controls, as well as some old favourites such as ‘Outside of the Foot’, ‘Power Header’ & ‘Flair’. Whether you’re after a trait, a hand stand celebration or some shiny gold boots there’s lots to unlock to make your Pro unique.
As we know some people don’t have the same amount of time as others when it comes to improving created players, so we’ve tried our best to ensure that the difference between newly created players & those that have spent more time playing with their Pro is not too extreme, not just to give newcomers a chance but also because we believe at the end of the day when it comes to online play user skill level should always be the main reason for success. We’ve also tried to balance the effect of the Physical attributes so when you’re creating your Pro you’ll notice these change based on his Physical stature – so for example if you’re 6’7” you won’t be the fastest guy around (sorry Usain Bolt!) & likewise a smaller player will be less likely to win a physical challenge. You can change the course of your career at any time by altering your Pro’s preferred playing position and their build, so it’s not the end of the World if you realize you’re not the best Striker out there and maybe fancy a go as a full back.
Well that’s plenty about growing your Pro, but I did also want to mention the 1 last thing that will influence your players ability; recent form. All your Pro’s matches are tracked and the stats from your most recent games will be used to award you a small form bonus from match to match, so it’s not just about building up your Pro, being consistent also counts.
EA SPORTS™ Pro Club Championship
Online Clubs was a big success in FIFA 09, but also highlighted a lot of things we wanted to improve this year. Aside from addressing the issues raised by the community, one of the things we really wanted to do was give Clubs more ‘goals’ so that those that joined in at a later date, and those that do not play the game as frequently as others still felt there was something to achieve as a team. To do this we created a new League system. On top of the Leaderboard we had last year, that tracks every Clubs record over time, and places them in Divisions, we’ve added ‘Regional Leagues’ and ‘Seasons’. There are 11 Regional Leagues to join, with each having its own Leaderboard and each month is defined as a Season. So at the start of each month the Leaderboard is reset, and the new season and the battle for the title begins again, while at the end of a season the top clubs in each League are awarded trophies. Regional Leagues and Seasons means that whether you’re a newly created Club, or playing your 10th Season, there is always a goal for your Club over the next month. Of course, to prove yourself as the best Club around getting to number 1 in Division 1, in what is now called the World Standings, is still the ultimate goal.
Another of the big things we wanted to do this year was to make creating and joining a Club easier. When it comes to joining a Club you’ll now get a list of the Clubs your friends are in and can search for ‘Public Clubs’ – Clubs who are open to new players immediately joining without needing the Managers approval. As well as making it easier to find a Club, we wanted to improve Club Managers ability to find players. This year, managers can view players previous match ratings, recruit free agents (people who are not a member of a Club) via the Pro Leaderboard as well as play Pro Ranked Matches. Pro Ranked Matches are quick ranked Online Team Play games where 20 Pro’s are put together for ‘a friendly’, although with all your stats tracked and Accomplishments up for grabs friendly is maybe not the right word. Managers can use the Pro Ranked Matches to recruit new players, while others can take the opportunity to build up their stats in the hope a top Club will come calling.
I can’t talk about all the changes to Clubs, as I’d be writing for too long, but I did also wanted to mention how we’ve gone to town when it comes to Club and Player stats. This year the top players in each Club will be called out on the Club home screen – the top Goalscorer, the player with the most assists and the highest rated defender, midfielder and forward. All your teams’ match stats can be viewed in the Squad Stats screen, which along with the expected games, goals and assists stats, also has info such as Pass, Shot and Tackle success for each player. Lastly, along with being able to view your own teams’ stats you can also view the Pro Leaderboard and compare yourself against the top Pro’s from around the globe.
My Virtual Pro
As one of the Producers responsible for the feature of course I play with my Virtual Pro a lot, and for me it adds another dimension to my offline game modes as well as making me take my online play a lot more seriously, as now I’m playing with Mike Takla I have a reputation to keep up! As a United fan (yes I’m a glory hunter…) I normally assign myself to their squad, taking my hero Eric Cantona’s number 7 shirt (sorry Michael Owen but you haven’t earned it just yet). I also go and make myself Captain using the Edit Teams feature, and normally assign myself to corners, free kicks and penalties, which is a bit greedy but seeing as that spot is open now Ronaldo’s gone I thought I’d try to impress Fergie. Time to unlock some Accomplishments and get my Pro ready for the weekly Clubs match we have here in the studio…
I start off by trying to unlock some Accomplishments in the Arena, juggling the ball, a Free-Kick, a Penalty and scoring with both feet is a good way to get started. Juggling the ball unlocks some new Skill Moves so I practice those to get myself some more tricks – as I play the game a fair bit I can normally get myself to 5 Star Skill Moves pretty quick nowadays, but there’s a check list and instructions if you’re not sure what you’ve done or if you don’t know the controls for the new moves you’ve unlocked.
Next up, some Be-A-Pro Seasons. Let’s see if I can get myself in the United 1st team and maybe earn some England caps. I unlock a few Accomplishments and increase my rep in the mode but decided to play some of the new Manager Mode, as it’s just too tempting. I start in the Championship with my 2nd favourite team, Coventry City, as there’s an Accomplishment for helping get a team promoted. My Pro’s not bad for the Championship as I’ve still got the attribute improvements I unlocked in the Arena and in Be-A-Pro. After a long hard season, and a lot of unlocked Accomplishments (still haven’t scored a bicycle kick!), I’ve got a Pro who’s going to surprise a few of the guys in the office in the weekly Clubs match, and I’m sure they’re going to be jealous of my yellow boots!
The day of the big Clubs Match arrives, it’s the game modes guys versus the gameplay team, they normally beat us pretty bad, but I’ve got my improved Pro this time, they are in for a surprise! My boots get a few comments, some not as nice as others, and having Skilled Dribbling gives me an edge, but they’ve got a pretty good defence, despite playing with brand new Pro’s. Finally we win a throw in, I can launch a giant throw! I launch one into the box but there isn’t an attacker in site, what a waste of my talent! We end up losing, and my Pro’s superior skills didn’t quite make the difference I’d hoped, but only because of the opposition (the gameplay guys are good!). A bit more training and I’m sure I’ll get my 10th league goal of the season, it’s been a 3 game drought! Oh well, maybe next time, too early to give up on getting to the top of the Pro Leaderboard just yet!
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