FIFA 20 Gameplay Changes To Address A.I. Defending, Shooting, & Goalkeeper Movement
When the new FIFA 20 title rolls out several months from now, the EA developers will have made a number of changes to try to improve gameplay. Just recently, EA unveiled exactly which areas of the game received the most attention. They’ll include important areas such as A.I. defending, passing, and goalkeeper movement. Here are more details on the FIFA 20 gameplay changes that will be part of the new football title.
FIFA 20 gameplay will have better A.I. defending
Since the EA developers were collecting feedback on FIFA 19 throughout this past season from players, they’re putting particular attention to the A.I. defending in FIFA 20. They indicated that this was a “point of community concern” during this year’s game.
With that in mind, they revealed the following changes coming for FIFA 20 gameplay:
- Renewed Defending System the defending systems are being renewed, with revised positioning and adjustment to the cadence and flow on the pitch. Manual defending will be emphasized and result in more rewarding results for those who do so.
- Planned Tackling is a new system that favors manual tackling by making sure that the defender that tries the tackle does so in a favorable context to your team (like recovering the ball or kicking the ball to a nearby teammate when tackling, for example).
- Contain and Secondary Contain Effectiveness will be reduced, keeping the positioning of players/AI Teammates at a further distance and having a slower reaction to directional changes from the dribbler, rarely resulting in an auto-tackle or an auto-block. This will make manual defending not only more effective, but also more rewarding.
- Improved Jockey System will be implemented with more agility and precision, rewarding players that decide to take control of their defenders.
These tweaks and improvements should give many gamers something to look forward to as it may cut down on in-game mistakes as a result of bad A.I. teammate actions.
Improved timed Finishing, 1v1 Scoring
The timed finishing in FIFA 19 was one of the game’s newest features. It received praise and criticism, with the bulk of the criticism on some of the unreal shots that players scored. EA notes that FIFA 20 will look to tweak that aspect of the game going forward, as follows:
- Green Timing Window for timed shots has a reduction (from 2-4 frames to 2 frames for all shots), which will make it harder and require more skill to perform.
- Timed Shot Accuracy will have tuning to result in slightly less precise shots. However, Green Timed Shots will still be more accurate than ‘non-timed shots’.
- Difficult 180° shots will have tuning to result in less powerful shots, even when timed perfectly.
EA developers also looked into improving those situations where gamers had easy 1v1 scoring opportunities against the goalkeeper. This is another area of improvement for the new video game which should arrive for this fall.
- 1v1 Shooting Accuracy will get improvements, resulting in more shots on target and better consistency in easy situations inside the box.
- Open Goal Situations are getting tweaks. They will see players rewarded for 1v1 situations and create greater chances of scoring “easy goals” – as pointed out in many community examples.
- Goalkeeper Reactions will also have tuning – specifically against 1v1 situations – resulting in less ‘superhuman’ reactions, which will humanize the goalkeepers movements and result in better scoring opportunities for the attacker.
- Outside of the Foot Shot situations will have improvements and should only happen for players with the Outside of the Foot trait.
- Shot Elevation/Power Tuning will allow for low powered shots to result in shots similar to Driven Shots, creating more consistency, and resulting in better scoring opportunities.
FIFA 20 manual goalkeeper movement & more
The ability to control one’s goalkeeper in FIFA 19 is great. It was available offline through past FIFA titles but became available online in FIFA 19 gameplay. However, it won’t be quite as effective when you use it in FIFA 20. EA indicated that they’re developers are making the goalkeepers move “with a slower and more realistic move speed.”
Gamers are also going to see more of a “risk/reward element” in the manual goalkeeper aspect of the game. They’ll need to “commit to a direction” using the right-stick on their manual goalkeeper movement. EA said they’re already getting good feedback about how this particular aspect has been adjusted.
There are a number of other areas in which FIFA 20 gameplay will get some interesting improvements. These include aspects such as passing, player switching, chained skill moves, set-piece positioning, volley crossing, and shooting. View the complete EA pitch notes to get more details on major FIFA 20 gameplay updates.
EA hasn’t revealed a release date for FIFA 20 yet. However, they’ll have an early demo at EA Play on June 8 in California. During that time, we’re expecting to get more of a look at what FIFA 20 gameplay brings to the table.
Get more of our recent FIFA news here as game updates arrive.