Quote:
Originally Posted by PSUColonel
We have no idea what it will look like as of yet. The only thing known, is: no animations this year, but there will be ball flight.
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I'm excited to see ball flight. I imagine it could be very helpful to see who is hitting the ball hard and who isn't. In time, the animations will be an awesome addition...something I'd gladly pay extra for.
For those of you making comparisons to FM and who are skeptical of the new graphics, I'll try to put your minds to ease a bit. As someone who is extremely well-versed in the subtleties of ice hockey, I will extrapolate that to soccer. The algorithm for the AI in a team sport like soccer has to be extremely difficult to accurately model. That sport requires 22 players at every given moment (~24 frames per second X 22 players) to be moving, thinking, and reacting as we would expect players to do IRL, both with the ball and without it.
Baseball should not be nearly as difficult to create believable actions for players that will feel smart and human-like. I base this on the mere fact that all players in baseball are moving to a set spot on the field depending SOLELY on where the ball is hit with the only variables being runners on base. It's how they get there and what happens once they get there that changes. But even then, the results are somewhat limited.
In contrast, subtle things like dumping the puck when the defense stands you up at the blue line or going cross-corner with your dump in when you have a speedy winger going wide while trying to keep the puck away from a goalie who's good with the puck. It's these infinite little things that knowledgable hockey fans expect to see and are disappointed when if the play is not lifelike. That's gotta be tougher to code than having a baseball player hit the cut-off man with the throw or deciding to throw home to get the lead runner when playing with the infield in. Baseball movements are, by nature, more "canned".
Surely I'm not the one to code this AI, but I have much lower expectations of the movement and decision-making of artificial baseball players than I do for the continuous actions and positioning of players away from the puck necessary by teams of hockey players, which is very similar to soccer. I think OOTP fans will be very happily surprised when this becomes a success.