The FIFA 17 gameplay is much better than the gameplay of FIFA 16 in my opinion, but nothing has really changed in terms of career mode.
For FIFA 16, EA added player training and pre-season tournaments, but for FIFA 17 career mode there are no such killer new features and career mode has therefore massively stagnated.
Here are 10 things I hate about FIFA 17 career mode:
Faceless Players
When a player has no photo, I’m probably not going to want to sign them; no matter how good they are or how much potential they have, their creepy faceless form just isn’t wanted in my club.
Obviously I do understand that for whatever reason it’s not going to be easy to have everyone’s photo in the game, but when youth players come through the academy with that weird silhouetted alien face? That just doesn’t make any sense.
Youth Players That Look Nothing Like Their Photo
Now, real life players can obviously be known to change their appearance quite frequently and it’s therefore to be expected that their in game photo and appearance may not reflect their current look in reality. When you get a youth player that looks nothing like their photo though? Now that’s just baffling. How can the game that created them not have any idea what they’re supposed to look like?!
Messi will join Real Madrid, yet CR7 refuses to sign for Barca
Messi is supposed to be a ‘One Club Player’, yet if you offer him enough money he will happily sign for Real Madrid, whilst Cristiano Ronaldo refuses to switch allegiances and join you at Barcelona no matter how much money you try and offer him.
Now, I’ve taken full advantage of this fact… Twice. But I still don’t really think it’s right that the supposed ‘one club player’ is shown to be supremely greedy, whilst Ronaldo is painted to possess the pinnacle of morality. Either make it so that they’ll both refuse their rivals, or just have it so that they can both be persuaded by piles and piles of cold, hard cash.
Player Deterioration
When players hit the age of 29 or 30 in career mode this year, their physical stats suddenly fall away massively. There’s not much point in signing older players anymore as they don’t hold their value at all well, they very quickly get worse and once they hit their mid 30s, a number of them will have some physical stats in the single figures.
At the other end of the spectrum… Player Growth is also an issue this year.
Goalkeepers very quickly develop 99 kicking, defenders frequently end up with 99 strength, and attacking players can quite often end up with 99 pace and dribbling ability.
With so many younger players developing 99 rated physical stats; once you get a few seasons into career mode, playing the game becomes a very different beast. Defenders are suddenly supremely fast to react and track you down, slamming your players to the ground with their overpowered physicality, whilst attacking players zoom around like Usain Bolt and there’s often absolutely nothing that you can do about it.
It certainly adds a greater degree of difficulty to the gameplay, but it’s also something that needs tweaking by EA in the future as loads of younger players shouldn’t be developing 99 rated physical stats so easily, just as older players shouldn’t be losing every bit of mobility that they previously possessed.
Legendary Difficulty is way too Easy
Legendary difficulty was pretty straightforward in FIFA 16, but in FIFA 17 it’s generally even more simple. Teams do actually attack you, something that was quite the rarity in FIFA 16, but there seems to be very little defensive intelligence written into the game, to the point where CPU controlled defenders frequently seem to run in the opposition direction when they see you coming.
I’m top of the table after 12 games playing as Crystal Palace, 4 points clear of second and already 10 points ahead of the team in fifth. It shouldn’t be this easy to dominate on legendary difficulty, especially not with a team that’s actually struggling in reality.
The top difficulty is far too easy and this has therefore led to numerous people utilising sliders in order to make the game less straightforward. Definitely check out Cutzy’s video on his ‘Extreme Difficulty’ setting for the game if you’re finding things too easy and would like more of a challenge in FIFA 17 Career Mode.
Every Team Plays in the Exact Same Play Style
This really goes hand in hand with the last point about the game being too easy, but every team plays in the exact same style and that can therefore be incredibly frustrating. In PES, teams are programmed to have more of an identity and throughout games you’ll notice that they actually change the way that they’re operating in order to deal with the way that you’re playing.
In FIFA 17 career mode, however, every team has the exact same style and there’s therefore no real need for tactical adjustment; you find a play style that works and you stick with it as if it works against one team, it’s pretty much going to work against anyone. There needs to be more work put in to providing teams with individual identities as right now every team utilises the exact same methods and once you’ve learned how to play against the CPU, the game just becomes supremely straightforward.
Transfers
In FIFA 16, David Alaba was pretty much guaranteed to be signed by Juventus, a scripted transfer that I’ve again noticed multiple times whilst playing FIFA 17 career mode for myself and from watching videos about the game from others.
It’s not just scripted transfers that are frustrating in FIFA 17 though; it’s teams going about their business in a completely ridiculous manner. Why would any team ever buy three top strikers in the same transfer window, spending close to £200 million in the process? The transfer system in FIFA 17 definitely needs some work as right now teams make some very curious decisions.
Homesickness
In FIFA 16 I had to deal with Oxford born Callum O’Dowda informing me of his homesickness several times over. Apparently Oxford United just isn’t close enough to home for his liking and so he ended up moving away to restore his happiness… To the distant land of Birmingham.
In FIFA 17 homesickness seems to be even more prevalent and players frequently seem to become unhappy, leading to the board putting them up for sale and accepting any transfer offer that’s received. Whilst simulating forward in the game, testing out various factors such as player growth and decline, I’ve noticed that at least one player usually becomes unhappy each season and asks to be sold.
Unlike in previous games where you could offer a player more money and they’d suddenly change their mind and realise that they’re actually perfectly happy, that is no longer something that can be done in FIFA 17; you can of course put them up for loan and no matter where they go, as soon as they’re loaned out their homesickness will magically disappear, but it definitely happens a bit too frequently in this game and if you’re not paying attention to your inbox then you can easily lose one of your star players.
One Final Point… And this is a pretty big one! Nothing Has Really Changed.
With FIFA 16 career mode we had some pretty decent additions to the game in the form of pre-season tournaments and player training. This year though, all they’ve really done is changed the way that board expectations are presented. The board expectations now have their own menu and there is also now a manager rating that appears in the top left hand corner of the screen based around these expectations and informing you of how you’re doing as a manager.
It’s a nice touch, I guess, it doesn’t really massively add anything to the career mode experience though and sometimes when you load your save back up; the number in the top left hand corner just completely changes from what it was at when you last played the game. So whilst this one and only (and frankly very minimal) change to the game may be welcomed by some, it doesn’t even actually work very well. Awesome, right?
What annoys you about FIFA 17 career mode? Leave me a comment down below and let me know your thoughts!
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
