FIFA 20 hasn’t been officially announced just yet but that hasn’t stopped EA from providing fans with some interesting details about gameplay improvements they can expect in this year’s entry to the beloved sports franchise.
According to the developer in a post on the FIFA blog titled “Gameplay Beyond FIFA 19”, the gameplay team has been listening to player feedback through the year and are prioritizing AI defending is at the top of the developer’s priority list from improvements, with the intention of placing a greater emphasis and more incentive on utilizing manual defending as opposed to allowing the CPU to defend on your behalf. One of the ways in which EA will achieve this is by increasing the chance that the use of a manual tackle will direct the ball to a teammate. In addition, the reaction times of automatic CPU defending will be reduced and therefore, AI defending will be considered less efficient.
- Shooting: According to the developer, players will be rewarded for facing the goalkeeper in the next iteration with developers adjusting the accuracy, realism, and consistency of 1v1 encounters inside the box. The results will hopefully see more shots on target, more realistic reactions from the keeper and more consistency with the use of the power gauge.
- Passing: Players have apparently provided an enormous amount of feedback regarding passing during the FIFA 19 cycle and the gameplay team intends to address this by making difficult passes, such as 180 passes and pressured passes more realistic as well as making simple passes more accurate.
- Player-Switching: In some instances in FIFA 19, players would be locked to a loose ball and it would be impossible to switch to another whenever this took place. The team is apparently working on fixing this issue and providing a more intuitive system of assisted switching. In addition, the overall accuracy of player switching, particularly during air balls, deflections, and crosses will be adjusted.
We don’t when FIFA 20 will officially launch but we expect it to be announced soon as previous iterations in the series have maintained a September release date. There is also plenty of speculation as to who will be on the front of this year’s installment but only time will tell, perhaps after Liverpool’s stunning comeback against Barcelona in May of this year, we’ll see Mo Salah take the cover for the 2020 cycle!
