FIFA is still a game of skill, you'll still need to make the right passes, switch to the correct players and score goals. But much like how some teams play better than others in real life, some players will react faster or slower and increase the possibility of crucial moves like scoring a goal from a tight angle or pulling off a red card-free sliding tackle. In previous entries of the series, players with high pace statistic would literally run circles around others, effectively making other player ratings meaningless. FIFA 17 on the other hand, has full licenses for teams from virtually every league in the world and even the teams from the second and third divisions of the English league, are included.
So if you’re a fan of Hartlepool in NPower League Two, you can go nuts. This has been rectified this time around with player physics tweaked to ensure heavier, stronger defenders still have a chance against the faster players. On higher difficulty levels, you might not be even able to have a touch of the ball anymore thanks to these improvements and player awareness being as solid as ever, yet these changes add to the realism and notion that you’re participating in a game of football against players who know what they’re doing, as opposed to those who watch the ball float over their heads without a care in the world.
Aside from Manchester United, the teams from the Barclays Premier League do not appear in the game as themselves and instead are renamed. For example, Arsenal is called North London, and while the team’s players are in the game, with the same stats as their real-life counterparts, only their last names are used. Note that the numbers on the table are the number of arrows. It does not necessarily represent the number of in-game stat boost. There is no information about how many stat points are represented by one arrow.
Every game mode is affected by player ratings, albeit in varying degrees. In an attempt to simulate real life performance, squads and their stats are updated weekly. This impacts the online multiplayer mode, called Seasons, tremendously. The initial set of player ratings affects the single-player career mode (which then updates depending how you play). FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) and its shorter counterpart, FUT Draft are where the impact of player ratings are the most visible. However unlike Seasons that gets weekly updates. FUT gets a mid-season update on player ratings.
Even then, EA does not reduce the rating of any player, rather adds new player cards based on their performance mid-season which may be higher or lower than their initial rating at the launch of FIFA 17. The stats boost of this table can also give an idea of the in-game stats that are improved. For example, if the passing has been boosting, short pass and long pass will be also improved and in the same proportion. To change a player's chemistry style you need to spend a consumable, which expires after use. These consumables are chase items, which means you can obtain them via FUT packs or from the transfer market, and there will be rare and common types, based on their likelihood of appearing in a pack.
You never meet a team that feels the same if you meet it twice," he said. "Right now a common team is a Brazilian silver squad, which you meet a lot of times in FUT. This year you play the same team over and over and they play the same way. Next year, you will beat the same team with the same 11 players, but they might feel very different in the backend of the gameplay because of different gamers applying different chemistry styles to them. There is no endgame in FUT. You might be able to build the squad you really wanted. But in the meantime we always post new content based on the real world. There will be special versions of specific players, for example, if they are in Team of the Week.
