Whilst we carry on the struggle to break into the top four in the league, our Europa league form has been exemplary, as the table above shows, we maintained a perfect record in the group stages of six wins from six games, to finish as group winners and secure a place in the knock out stages, where we await our opponents in the KO round draw.
Premier league results have been decent, picking up wins with more regularity after a shaky start to the season, Kramaric continues to impress with his deadly finishing, whilst new signing Toko-Ekambi is also getting his share of goals with 9 from 13 matches.
Approaching the January transfer window, I desperately need a backup LB, having only one in the squad, I have £18 mil in the transfer kitty, but one of my board objectives is to finish the season with at least £17mil of unused allocated funds, quite a strange objective, the FIFER 2.0 mod I’m now running with does away with a lot of the quirky financial based objectives, so hopefully when the season ticks over I’ll be presented with more realistic objectives.
I have scouted a few players within the last year of their contract, and added them to my transfer shortlist, come January they will be within the last 6 months of their contracts so will be free to be negotiated with without needing to pay a feee, hoping to pick up 1 or 2 cheaper options here.
As mentioned, the latest FIFER Career Mode Realism Mod v2.0 was released a few days ago, and really does make a huge difference to an already very good game, not just graphical and cosmetic enhancements but aligned squad files with more realistic ratings and growth curves, but also game play mods which tweaks everything from player and ball weight, to team shapes, AI dribbling, shooting, passing, everything you could think of, matches now have such a unique feel to them, with key players really standing out and utilising their key skills, Willian at Chelsea for example driving at me and dribbling past players, shooting from range, he was a nightmare to handle.
Game play is about as good as it gets, and with all the ultra realistic features, and in-depth career mode to back it up, PC modded FIFA 20 would get a solid 9.6/10 from me right now, the only thing I can think of that could be improved is some of the press conference questions being a little off and not in line with whats happening now and then, hardly a massive worry though.
One of the joys of video game footy is identifying and developing youth players and moulding them into team-changing superstars, one such player I have unearthed is Jason Lokilo, a RW signed into our youth academy at age 17 and rated 52 OVR, he’s now 19 and rated 64, and showing signs of being something special, great pace, agility, and dribbling technique, he has always performed superbly when filling in for first choice Andros Townsend at RMF, here he is coming on late in the game and grabbing a 91st min winner at Old Trafford.
I previously mentioned the modding capabilities of FIFA on PC, it all adds up to make a truly realistic and immersive world of living breathing football in which to play your career mode, and along with new custom kits I have now found a way to edit the games in built animated electronic adboards surrounding the pitch, here you can see the FIFAFX logo emblazoned across selhurst park, sweet!
This will be great when changing kit manufacturers and sponsors to then have them represented around the ground.
It’s also nice to play a game where shot variety and long shots are still perfectly possible, Cheikou Kouyaté banging one in here from 25+ yards.
Earlier in the post I mentioned shot variation being superb within FIFA 20, to finish off heres a short video of a few goals showing the variation that you can get match to match, from screamers to team goals, to deflections, bobbles, and everything in-between.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul — I think that’s a bona fide long-ranger, and somehow the ones that are more graceful shots (instead of blasting cannonballs) are more satisfying because of the time they spend in the air and the arc they follow as the keeper dives, or doesn’t.
I think FIFER 2.0 has made Professional a touch harder. I have indeed switched back to Legacy but am still getting tanked! Got a long vid of a defeat tomorrow at the London Stadium.
FIFA20 currently rocking along on a 9.5 for me. I agree that the press conferences are weak in the context of CM as a whole. Their only gameplay function is a 1-in-3 game to click the right answer that boosts player or team morale, and the answer is always pretty straightforward. I am using it though to stave off a collapse in morale with my poor form.
Four seasons into Football Manager 2019 and I rarely have any press interest in my team of part-timers in the Danish 2nd tier, very realistic!
I’ve had almost no gaming time this week but it’s all been spent on FIFA20. When the summer comes I am going to roll my own mods somehow, some way, so looking forward to it. There’s something to be done with fouls I am absolutely sure, and that pesky always-on name above player heads (for the active players on both sides, not just a quick flash for the in-possession side, as now) is in there somewhere, I know it.
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NG – I have my game in offline mode too, no desire or wish to update to have all the new CONMEBOL stuff, as those teams are not playable in career mode anyway.
Definitely still feeling challenged on professional, Europa league matches were easier than expected but I guess against mid-tier teams from lesser leagues they would seem easier, the bigger teams and the odd lesser team in the premier league still challenge me week in week out.
My main desire was to be able to create mods myself which affect the immersion experience, game play and footballing ‘world’ of career mode, im pretty happy now that I am able to create mods for custom kits, tv logo overlays, adboards, and locale.ini and RDBM stuff for other graphical and CM tweaks.
My next experiment will be with the scoreboard and balls, hoping to be able to get a FIFAFX branded ball into the game!
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Forgot to mention, I’ve had a discussion with Paulv2k4, who does all his own mods and asked him about the player name fade thing and he said he’s never ever seen any value for it. Seems a veryy strange choice to give the player an opton to nhave a name label above the head but then disable it after 2 seconds, that ‘2secs fade’ value must exist somewhere, and there is an indicators file path in frosty, I have looked around but not found anything that looks like it would be it.
other than the XML file I posted on the forums on here that has an ‘initial opacity value, but nowhere to set it!?!?
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Paul – the name fade value will be there somewhere of course, it simply has to be, and I will set out on a quest in search of it this summer, as long as we have electricity and a world left of course.
The only thing stopping me doing it right now is the amount of time spent not only finding and altering relative values, but the time then spent testing and revising and re-testing etc. Right now I only want to play, leisure to do other things is a ways off for me.
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NG – Thats fair enough, the fiddling and modding is time zapping, and the actual game and playing it has to be main priority.
I have a couple of long weekends, friday and monday either side of the weekend coming up so plan on doing some more tinkering then, will keep an eye out for anything remotely Player Name ID Fade orientated.
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Paul – agree with you that press conferences and interviews need a bit of work but it is a starting point to build on.
Currently approaching the end of season 3 now with 13 games left. I have just moved into the promotion spots having spent most of the season wondering if I could ever catch Fulham and Cardiff, who occupied the top spots for most of the season. I am not getting through the seasons at the rate of last year as am approaching this one a bit different as I see this as more of a long term project and don’t want to burn up all the fuel too soon.
NG – We are doomed. Best thing that can happen to this planet in my opinion as we are systematically destroying it with our burdening population.
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Darryl – No need to rush through things, still 6 months of the footy gaming year left, and well beyond of course, no reason to need to jump to the new games right away if FIFA 20 is still an enjoyable experience for you.
Our CM paths seem to once again be mirroring eachother in terms of pace and positioning, Im approaching January in season 3, so probably 15 games or so left of the season and hovering around 5th/6th only a few points from breaking into the topfour and UCL qualification places, and also in the last 32 of the Europa League, all to play for.
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First attempt at creating a ball in FIFA ……
created the displacement map, color file and the coeff files….
Here is the result:
Not bad, need to do some refinement work on the coeff file to reflect light better and the displacement map needs toning down about and softening but happy with the process and that it worked first time.
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Paul – bloody awesome! I’ve snapped a pic and posted it in comments on PES Chron as well. This whole thing is really made for your tinkering instincts isn’t it!
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Cheers NG – Not 100% happy with it, the ball shade neerds to be whiter and less dark, and i need to amend the 3d map file to give a more pronounced emboss effetc to the ball panels but for a first attempt, without following any tutorial, just fiddling my way through Frosty, its quite decent.
Saw the pic, cheers!!! commented there too!
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Nice goal variations. I particularly like the bobbling float over the keeper. Also after the last goal I like the way the keeper bollocked his defenders; very Peter Schmeichel.
That ball looks really nice, although I see what you mean about the softening. Currently the panel joins are appear a bit angular.
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Chris99 – the bobble over the keeper is something I havent seen in over 1000 matches spanning the last 3 or 4 years of PES. Even generic shots in FIFA have so much variation no one ever feels the same.
Yeah I need to adjust the normal map for the ball. Add in some bump to the panel shapes then it will look better. Was just a test to see if I had the process correct really.
The FIFER CM mod bumps up the player emotion levels. Each player has a numerical value which determines their emotion and reactions to certain events, so you see more of this than you would in vanilla.
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