Matches are coming thick and fast in this PC Modded Palace Career Mode, I’m already approaching December in season two, and the games just seem to get better and better.
Rotating players where possible is key, keeping the same lineup week in, week out will inevitably lead to injuries, playing with the FIFER realism mod and the OS sliders also tweak injury frequency and severity, I’ve had several 2 month injuries to key players, and a slew of mini injuries for a few days or a couple of weeks both through matches and training, Palace don’t have a huge squad, and with my fringe-trimming during pre-season, my reserves are a handful of youths and weaker players rated around the 52-62 OVR mark, so have to be careful when I play them so as not to drop points in the league.
I did field a weaker side against Middlesborough in the Carabao Cup 4th round and subsequently went out 2-1, so that ship has sailed.
My board objectives this season are to achieve a Europa League place and a last 16 FA Cup place so the focus has to firmly be on those to avoid the sack.
As the league table shows above, we are on track for a healthy finish, Professional level still continues to give me tough games, the bigger teams really show their abilities, and are a nightmare to play against, but I’m picking up more good results against these sides than I did last season so progress is being made.
My new signings of Thiago Mendes (CM), Arnold (CDM) and Almeida (RB) have settled in well, with Mendes in particular showing his class, his dribbling ability is instantly noticeable.
The dribbling in FIFA 20 is absolutely superb, such a stark contrast to PES 20, the system uses inertia, foot planting, balance, agility, technique stats all in a highly contextual and seamless way, using someone like Zaha to dribble at pace against defenders, slow it down, then burst past them feels great, using the slow controlled dribble with Keyouté to hold the ball up and look for time and spce to pass and bring other players into play feels just as good, as does when you try to skip past a defender only for him to fall back and stretch a desperate leg out at the last minute and toe poke the ball away from you, it just works and has a massive impact on play, as it should being one of the core skills of the sport, something so dumbed down and useless within PES.
The investment in youth continues, with a fully stacked youth academy, I released a few players who didnt show signs of a high potential, and there are a few young lads in there who show signs of developing into something special, I have multiple saved Training regimes setup and train all the youth players on alternate weeks throughout the season to grow their OVR, plan is to promote the most promising at the end of the season with a view to loan out to gain experience
Using a nifty tool called RDBM allows you to edit values within the FIFA game engine on the fly, from player contract lengths, to editing players appearance and so forth, you can also enable graphical elements such as higher LOD, pyrotechnics, Pitch side confetti, but you can also amend referee strictness for fouls and cards.
There are actually over 120 referees within FIFA, most generic made up names, but the Premier League ref roster is all there, Mike Dean, Lee probert, Jonathan Moss, Andre Mariner et al, I amended these and gave them all the max value for referee foul strictness, and it has made a difference, games aren’t littered with fouls but each match finishes with a few per side, the below clip shows just how important fouls are to a footy game, it adds a core tactical element to the games, which is shown below whereby theres a nothing attack down the left win by the AI, a repeated tug foul leads to them very nearly scoring, we need more of this.
To finish off, a few goals from the most recent session, nothing spectacular or long range but every goal felt good, and had so much variation on the types of shot that even samey goals feel different in FIFA 20.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – looking great, you must be loving the ability to customise your own kits, I always remember you missing that side of PES in your FIFA excursions.
While we wait for the mods to be updated, last night I had another few matches on my vanilla side-save and the difference is now very noticeable. Still a good experience, but ‘only’ an 8/10 sort of good, rather than the rock-hard 9/10+ of the modded version. Now more than ever I appreciate the mods and the platform!
While FIFA20 is still in its live release cycle this will be an inevitable hazard of course, but by late spring I think it’ll be locked in place without any more updates, and from then of course the game is eternal. Modded FIFA20 PC is one of the top 5 football games I have ever played, I would say right now, and there is a loooong way to go.
I’ve still not even tried Sliders yet, because I don’t feel the need.
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NG – The ability to change kits and sponsors etc was the upside of playing PES, always said if you could take FIFA’s presentation and combine it with PES game play and kit customisation then it would be the perfect hybrid, but that’s no longer the case, as FIFA 20’s modded game play is even better than PES, and you have a fully customisable environment, alongside EAs superb presentation, so it really is, as a package, as good as it gets.
Even though the kits take a while to make, it is great being able to mix it up and change them every season, or every other season.
I had a few games last night, Origin auto updated, then when loading FIFA it told me there was a title update and the game wasn’t playable unless i updated, which of course would break the mods, so I just put Origin into offline mode and it bypassed all that, was able to play without updating and with all the mods still working, so happily continued with my career.
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Paul – wish I’d done the same now, but I wasn’t quick enough. Origin was running in the background when I woke my PC on Tuesday night and did the deed.
I’ve thought of a way around it all. A parallel ‘naughty’ installation of FIFA20 elsewhere on the hard drive that is kept mothballed at the previous version, ready to spring into action during these few days.
Or I could just stop Origin updating in future!
Forgot to mention I really like the padded stanchions behind the goal too. Is that yours or the game’s own flourish?
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NG – That ‘naughty’ copy of FIFA wouldnt work with the mods, that Encryption key you have to paste into frosty is a kind of SDK link between the exe and origin, so it would have to be a vanilla copy, so kinda pointless, much easier to turn auto game updates off, can leave origin on, thats just the framework, but turn game updates off for sure.
Those padded stanchions I enabled via RDBM, they are those pyro stanchions i showed in a previous video, when you score, a flame jet spurts out of each one, really nice touch, and more pleasing that they dont activate when the opposition scores.
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Paul – Indeed dribbling is the major difference between the two titles. In Fifa it just feels natural. If someone asked me to describe how to dribble in Fifa I couldn’t actually tell them in the same way a tightrope artist couldn’t tell you how he does it. In PES it all feels so much different as everything is forced and has to be thought about.
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Very well put Darryl, you’re right, it just flows, and feels natural in your hand, PES has completely biased the defending side making dribbling almost null and void.
Whats the thing that’s done most in every game of football ever, worldwide? dribbling, to have that missing really kills the sense of control over the game, in FIFA its recreated beautifully, and more skilled dribblers really stand out.
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Paul – there is a definite reference somewhere in the modding webpages about how to run the mods with cracked copies. As a legitimate purchaser of the title I would feel justified in exploring that option – not that I recommend piracy of course, for so many reasons it’s so much better to go legit, but I think it is an option.
Just trying to sign up for Fifer’s Patreon as a one-off (hoping to play over the weekend) and seem to be running into difficulty, it’s not going through on any browser. Seems to be Patreon issue as PayPal is working fine.
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nG – Out of interest, given your forays into FIFA this year, even vanilla, woud you still give PES the same rating?
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Chris99 – I haven’t given PES2020 a proper rating yet, but my thinking on it has already been influenced by the FIFA experience. I.e. I’d have said a reasonable 8/10 for PES2020 before this past month, but playing FIFA20 has altered the scope of my informal ratings system. We’ll see in August which is when I traditionally reckon it all up.
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Is Fifer 2.0 out on patreon now then ?
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Just finished a marathon three and a half hour session which saw me win my first trophy in the silly.com cup or whatever it is. In an amazing finish I came back from 1-0 going into injury time to win it with two goals in two minutes. I missed recording it but have saved the highlights. I also secured promotion to the Championship with two games left. Amazing atmosphere in my last match with the Portsmouth fans singing through the entire match. So immersive as the crowd noise was cranked up for this game. Anyway on to World Class now and the real challenge begins. Can’t wait.
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Darryl – finished my Season 1 last night and can’t wait for Season 2 either. I’m playing with vanilla settings right now (Broadcast mod only) and still loving it.
Paul – I signed up for Discord as recommended by the Patreon page and have spent a very interesting weekend watching the chatter on Fifer’s channel. The delay in 2.0 prompted me to take another look at ‘Other Paul’s rival mod, and a very interesting traces of a dispute between the two camps, typical of course for the Internet. I might give Other Paul’s mod a shot if Fifer’s takes much longer. I loved Fifer’s 1.3 but am quite glad that I never got too attached to it as I had a great last coupel of sessions on Vanilla in my Career Mode. Not even a slider change. I finished Season 1 and unlike last year there will be a Season 2 and I suspect I’ll hit double figures easy.
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With being off work for half term it has meant I have got quite a few games in on season 2. Am involved in a right old relegation dog fight and 1 point behind Blackburn, who are 21st at the halfway stage of the season and it has been a right old tough season on World Class (no sliders). Last season I was worrying at times about the lack of long range goals. This season I don’t care where goals come from…
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Darryl/all concerned – have no fear, they’re still possible, I was a getting a tad worried, but persistence pays off (currently playing unmodded and unSlidered):
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And it wasn’t Hernandez! It was Klich.
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Still playing with the FIFER realism mod 1.3 with origin in offline mode.
Just finished season 2. Will save details for Thursdays post but still nowhere near having it easy on Professional.
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