The FIFA series is surely one of the best football simulation games on the market. Despite being very popular, EA Sports often lacks the encouragement to work on its flaws and improve the game.
FIFA 18 is only a few months away from launch but there's more than enough time for EA to tweak the game a bit and make sure that the final product is fully polished and without much glitches. Here are a few changes that EA needs to implement if they want to hold out against PES 18's increasing popularity.
#1 Focus on women’s football
Fans were more than excited when women’s football made its first appearance in FIFA 16. While it featured only a selection of few national teams, it was considered to be a move in the right direction.
However, it was quite disappointing that EA did not add much to women’s football with the launch of FIFA 17. Despite increasing the number of women’s international squad, EA missed on the opportunity to introduce club teams.
It would be quite interesting if EA Sports were to include leagues such as English Women’s Super League or Allianz Frauen-Bundesliga in FIFA 18 and help boost the visibility of women’s football.
#2 Not another Alex Hunter
The Journey, FIFA’s idea of a story mode, was first introduced in FIFA 17 and is considered to be an important addition to the franchise. In The Journey mode, you get to step into the shoes of Alex Hunter, a fictional 17-year-old player, and take decisions that could help him become the next big sensation.
But despite having an interesting story mode, it feels like the game mode would have been more engaging if it allowed us to play as ourselves. All it would require is the addition character customization and given that The Journey is essentially just a dignified version of Be a Pro, it should be easy for EA to add this feature in FIFA 18.
#3 Improved physics
FIFA 17 had way too many glitches and we can only hope that it was the result of EA experimenting with a new engine. FIFA had used DICE’s infamous Frostbite engine for FIFA 17 and this meant that the game was capable of having an incredible graphical feat.
That, however, was not the case. Despite having good graphics, the game saw way too many glitches and it felt like the physics had to be tweaked a little bit. Sliding tackles were slightly laggy, referees could pull cards out of thin air, players often looked strange, and the crowd looked like a group photo with low resolution.
We hope that EA will work together with Frostbite to pay more attention to details and tweak the physics just a bit.
#4 New game modes
With the introduction of The Journey in FIFA 17, EA has made it very clear that they are willing to take some risk and experiment with game modes to bring out something new and different. But why stop at a story mode?
EA could just as easily try adding in five-a-side matches or include a mode that allowed us to create an entire team and lead them all the way to top. Fans would definitely be more than excited if EA was to throw in street football or indoor football as a game mode in FIFA 18.
#5 Improved manager mode
Despite Manager Mode being fun, it seems like EA failed to capture its full potential. Manager mode would be more interesting if they had a crossover between The Journey and Career Mode which allowed us to play as existing managers as well and have them patrol the sidelines with key prompts.
To be able to voice few lines of motivation as Alex Ferguson or hold witty press conferences as Klopp would definitely make the game more captivating.
#6 New leagues
Despite having 35 leagues from all around the world, asking for new leagues may seem a little greedy. However, with Chinese and Indian clubs spending a lot of money on former superstars, the addition of these leagues would improve both career mode and FIFA Ultimate Team.
Tim Cahill missed on the chance to be on FUT despite being on the cover of FIFA 16 in Australia because he was moving to the Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua. It is only fair that FIFA acknowledge these players and leagues, and having them in FIFA 18 seems like the right way to go about it.
