Cornballer said:
Errr, not exactly. I'm talking a geographic split - maybe East of the Mississippi and West of the Mississippi? It just seems like keeping the regions a little tighter is going to help us all out.
I thought they were trying to find people closer matchups this year - e.g. if you're playing in North America, you'd be much more likely to face opponents from here. Not sure if I'm remembering that correctly...
On top of what QVT's already mentioned, they've only said this much about matchmaking (posted earlier, you might have seen it):
A lot of the problems people have experienced with FIFA 11 comes down to people being inappropriately matched for games. FIFA 12 will include improved matchmaking to prevent less than ideal matchups. Additionally, we have moved authentication and matchmaking servers (what we call central servers) to Europe now, which will mean logging in and navigating online screens should be much snappier for most people.
http://forum.ea.com/uk/posts/list/933577.page
My club would usually get matched up against others from HongKong or Japan but it's pretty rare that we get to play home games. And I think this is because the Asia server (the one that hosts our games and not the central server that handles matchmaking) is located in HongKong and it picks whoever's nearest to be on the home side. So in the few instances where we ARE playing home, it's only because we got matched up against a bunch of dudes all the way in Europe. Those guys would be lagging like shit (pretty obvious when they quit early or make tons of silly mistakes) and it's most likely due to the fact our games are hosted by that same HongKong server.
Something else that I've noticed is how the matchmaking seems to expand the ping range gradually while it's searching for potential clubs. So if we haven't found anyone to play with after 10 seconds, we'd hit cancel and do the search again to make sure we'd be matched up against the closest club (lowest ping)
ANYWAY, a few offscreen gameplay videos from last week's public playtest:
In other news, they've confirmed the list of sliders available in the game. Good to know you're able to tweak these in the middle of a match but I still stand by my opinion that those positioning stats belong in the formation/tactics settings:
EA are introducing sliders this year to allow you to customise your own experience. Each slider can be changed for both the user and CPU teams seperately and can be done, on the fly, mid match.
Sprint Speed
Modifies the maximum sprint speed a team can reach.
Acceleration
Modifies the time it takes for a teams player to reach their maximum speed.
Shot Error
Increases/Reduces the amount of error applied to a teams normal shots. This doesnt affect other types of shots (i.e finesse).
Pass Error
Increases/Reduces the amount of error applied to a teams ground passes. This does not affect other types of passes.
Shot Speed
Increases/reduces the amount of speed applied to a teams normal shots. This doesnt affect other types of shots (i.e finesse).
Pass Speed
Increases/reduces the amount of speed applied to a teams ground passes. This doesnt affect other types of passes.
Injury Frequency
Increases/reduces the frequency that injuries occur within a team.
Injury Severity
When a player from a team gets an injury, this will increase/reduce the severity.
Goalkeeper Ability
Increases/reduces the saving ability of the goalkeeper.
Positioning: Marking
Increases/decreases how tightly the defenders mark their opponents.
Positioning: Run frequency
Increases/decreases the number of runs teammates will make.
Positioning: Line height
Specifies how high/low the defensive line will positions themselves for a team.
Positioning: Line Length
Specifies how stretched or compact the team will try to keep their line for the pitch.
Positioning: Line width
Specifies how stretched or compact the team will try to keep for the width of the pitch.
Positioning: Fullback Positioning
Increases/decreases how far the teams fullbacks will push forward.
Power bar
Modifies how quickly/slowly the power bar fills up when you request any type of pass or shot.
It will take a while for people to find the sweet spots for settings, and everyones will probably be pretty different, but well gather a list of what people are using post launch.
http://fifasoccerblog.com/blog/fifa-12-gameplay-sliders
I would cancel my preoreder if I could.