FIFA 22 GAMEPLAY DEEP DIVE
July 2021
The Pitch Notes
Hello FIFA community,
My name is Thomas Caleffi, gameplay producer on FIFA, and today we’re diving deep into some of the most significant gameplay improvements and changes we’ve been working on for FIFA 22.
You will see a ᴺᴳ or [NG] symbol/tag whenever a topic or feature discussed is exclusive to the new generation of consoles and Stadia (i.e. PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Stadia), so keep that in mind when reading this deep dive.
We’re looking forward to taking you through all of the new features, but first let’s start by letting you know what goals we take into consideration when developing FIFA 22.
Designing FIFA 22 Gameplay
We start our development process by setting key pillars that we want to see present for FIFA 22's Gameplay. Here are some of them:
- Refreshing as many gameplay areas as possible, based on feedback, in order to create a more authentic and polished FIFA experience for all players.
- Fairness - Improve situations that could have felt frustrating from a gameplay perspective. Our aim is to reward players for performing the right action at the right time. For example, this includes situations like being able to defend the Bridge or a dribble with clever positioning.
- Increase gameplay variety in order to enable a greater number of viable playstyles. We are looking to make the on pitch action more diverse than before, so that there is no single “best way” to play.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[NG] HyperMotion Gameplay Technology
HyperMotion is the foundation for FIFA 22 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Stadia that, for the first time in FIFA, combines two recent technologies in game development: full-team mocap data and machine learning. This allows us to increase authenticity and create new features for FIFA.
[NG] Advanced 11v11 Match Capture Technology
Xsens suits enable us to carry out a full-team motion capture with 22 professional footballers playing at a high-intensity level, while studying their exact movements. This means we can analyse real human motion in new levels of detail within a match situation, resulting in the biggest animation refresh in FIFA history with over 4000 new football-informed animations added to the game.
These new animations are used to power Full Team Authentic Motion, Kinetic Battles, Player Humanization, Composed Ball Control, and more.
[NG] Machine Learning and ML-Flow
Combining Advanced 11v11 Mocap with the power of the new consoles and machine learning has enabled us to improve how players approach the ball on the pitch. We’ve been able to use over 8.7 million new frames of data to train a neural network outside of the game with as much information and detail as available. In FIFA 22, this has led to the development of the ML-Flowᴺᴳ neural network.
ML-Flow’s neural network algorithm is able to generate ball approach animations in real time, including stride adjustments, running cadence, pose matching, and transitions. ML-Flow is designed to help increase the fluidity and authenticity of ball approaches.
New in FIFA 22
[NG] Full Team Authentic Motion
As mentioned earlier, we’ve been able to add over 4000 new animations to FIFA 22. These new animations help improve immersion by adding variety to the gameplay experience, including set pieces, shooting, skill moves, passes, player movement, player reactions, celebrations, controlling the ball, two-player headers, falls, getups, dribbling, animation idles, shoulder challenges, seal outs, and more.
Many animations were captured with the new Advanced 11v11 Match Capture, and thus are exclusive to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Stadia.
[NG] Tactical AI
We rewrote the intelligence and tactical approach of all 22 players on the pitch, emphasizing their roles, personality, and teamwork. Players better understand their teammates and how to work together, and also better understand opponents’ tactics and movements.
[NG] Attacking
Last year we improved several aspects of attacking players with Positioning Personality. This year with the new Tactical AI, attacking players can make up to 6 times more decisions per second, better showcasing their nuanced Player Personality. This allows them to be more aware of their surroundings, perform smarter runs in build up play, exploit spaces in the defense, and generally be in the right place at the right time more often.
As was the case last year, the Positioning Attribute continues to be the most important in determining the effectiveness of these behaviours.
[NG] Defending
Your defenders can operate more as a unit with the new Tactical AI, maintain the shape of the formation when moving across the pitch, cover vacant spaces, mark each defending zone accordingly, and bring more authenticity to their overall defensive shape.
As was the case last year, the Defensive Awareness Attribute continues to be the most important in determining the effectiveness of these behaviors.
With Tactical AI, players have more personality in FIFA 22 than FIFA 21:
- Defensive Work Rates and fatigue have a significant impact on the defensive positioning of players.
- Placing any player that is not a Centre Back in a Centre Back position will negatively impact their defensive positioning.
Our goal for Tactical AI is to ensure players have a balanced experience in terms of AI teammates, and we will keep monitoring FIFA 22 to make sure there are good ways to break defense down as well as good ways to counter.
The example below was captured during development and is for illustrative purposes only:
Competitive Settings / Master Switch
As we mentioned at the start of this Deep Dive, one of the big pillars of FIFA 22 is focused on aiming for gaming fairness, by eliminating potentially frustrating gameplay situations.
We continue to have feedback sessions with Pro Players, members of the community, and hardcore FIFA players, about how to increase fairness in certain situations. Some common topics always came up; players wanted to have more control, have a higher skill ceiling, and experience more consistency in certain actions.
As such, we are expanding the FIFA 22 Competitive Settings. While mandatory in some modes, the Competitive Settings are available for all players in every mode of FIFA if they wish to play with them.
The mandatory Competitive Settings changed by the Competitive Master Switch are:
- Contextual Agile Dribbling: Off
- Auto Clearances: Off
- Auto Flair Pass: Off
- Auto Shots: Off
- Assisted Headers: Off
- Jockey: Manual
- Through Pass Assistance: Semi
Modes where Competitive Settings are always active:
- FUT Rivals
- FUT Champions
- Online Seasons
- Co Op Seasons
- Pro Clubs
- Ultimate Draft (Online)
- FUT Friendlies
In Online Friendlies, the Competitor Master Switch is on by default, however it is not mandatory.
In the Controller Settings screen, players will notice a new Competitive Master Switch option, and once it is enabled, certain settings will be turned off/on and greyed out, preventing players from changing them individually.
Deeper Match Analysis
With a complete revamp of the Match Facts and Player Performance screens, you are now equipped with more match data to help you better understand how you and your players, as well as your opponents, are performing.
Starting with the Match Facts screen, new visuals help you compare performance between you and your opponent in the revamped Summary screen. You can also get a more detailed breakdown of key aspects of play including possession, shooting, passing, and defending.
The all-new Player Performance screen lets you know how each player has contributed to the team in the Summary screen, as well as providing a detailed breakdown of their own overall performance in the Possession, Shooting, Passing, Defending and Goalkeeping screens.
We hope these tools can help you evolve your gameplay by better understanding your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, and your own.
[NG] Kinetic Air Battles
For FIFA 22 we used Full Team Authentic Motion animations to enhance player interactions when battling for air balls.
All Kinetic Air Battle animations were captured together, with footballers performing those motions in real life. Our system mixes and synchronizes player animations that work together, providing cleaner outcomes, improving the sensation of physicality, and maintaining responsiveness for each situation.
Explosive Sprint
Explosive Sprint rewards timing and your intelligence on the ball, giving players a more noticeable acceleration when Sprint (R2/RT) is pressed during the correct context.
This mechanic changes the dynamic of 1 on 1 situations, allowing dribblers to explode forward and leave markers behind, or empowering defenders to catch up to a breakaway attacker. Explosive Sprint can be triggered while already in possession of the ball (dribbling) or when moving without the ball, it cannot be activated during the ball approach.
The timing here is important, with the Explosive Sprint only being fully effective when facing and moving forward. If either the player is not fully moving forward or fully facing forward, you only get a partial effect. Note that when we say moving forward or fully facing forward, we refer to a straight line direction that the player in question is facing, meaning that Explosive Sprints are not fully effective when using them while moving in anything but a straight line. Normal acceleration rates when pressing or holding Sprint (R2/RT) still apply in all other situations.
To balance the mechanic, the Explosive Sprint only happens for a short duration when activated, then tapers off, going into a cooldown period during which it cannot be activated again until it ends.
[NG] Player Humanization
Inspired by the Advanced 11v11 Match Capture, in FIFA 22, we included additional animations to enhance player humanization and help give more life to players on the pitch. For example, you can see players talk to each other on the pitch and watch teammates point to certain areas as they request passes that show a better understanding of match situations.
We’ve implemented new moments that increase immersion and humanization, like match mascots walking out with players during the entrance, a revamped intro sequence with more details, new facial expressions, refreshed player reactions, new ball retrieval scenes, and much more.
True Ball Physics
We used real world ball data from football matches as a foundation for FIFA 22’s ball physics, helping us to improve the authenticity of ball speed, swerve, air drag, air resistance, ground friction, and rolling friction.
Attacking
New Attacking Tactics
We are expanding tactic customization and instructions to enable more gameplay variety. For FIFA 22, one of the main differences is breaking down the Attacking Tactics into two sections; Build Up Play and Chance Creation. This separation can enable players to have more control over playstyles and team behaviors.
Build Up Play is all about how your team performs when they are in possession of the ball in your own half. For instance, you can choose to slowly build your attack or try to push up as fast as possible.
Build Up Play is composed of 4 tactics:
- Balanced: This tactic is used for a balanced team that maintains its formation while building up the attack. Players will support and make runs when they think it's the right time to do so.
- Slow Build Up: Players will support more in attacking build up play, rather than a direct approach with lots of forward runs. This tactic emphasizes a short passing game with a slower build up.
- Long Ball: The team will make runs for long balls played into space behind the opposing back line, or up to a target man for a direct attack that skips the midfield. Strikers who are fast with a good attacking positioning attribute are the best at this tactic.
- Fast Build Up: This tactic pushes players forward for a faster build up, but if you lose possession of the ball, you could find yourself open to a counter attack.
Chance Creation is how your team will attack the opponent in their half and how they will create goals. Chance Creation is broken down into 4 tactics:
- Balanced: This tactic is used for a balanced team that maintains its formation while building up the attack. Players will offer support and make runs when they think it's the right time to do so.
- Possession: Players will provide more close support to the dribbler in the attacking zone, rather than going on forward runs. This tactic strengthens a short passing game to patiently wait for the chance to attack, but will rarely provide runs penetrating the opposing defensive line.
- Direct Passing: Once the team enters the attacking zone while in possession, players will create chances by making runs for passes into space behind the opposing back line. Strikers who are fast with a good attacking positioning Attribute are usually well suited for this tactic.
- Forward Runs: This tactic pushes players forward deep into attacking areas, but if you lose possession of the ball you could find yourself open to a counter attack.
The new Attacking Tactics can be combined to create 16 distinct attacking tactics, each with their own benefits and styles of play.
There are more changes to tactics and instructions that can be found in the “Defending” section later on in this Deep Dive.
[NG] Composed Ball Control
The new Composed Ball Control animations are longer 2 touch animations that make controlling the ball more natural. This enables players to trap the ball in specific circumstances with more fluidity and precision both in responsiveness and visuals, allowing for the better setup of subsequent plays. Players can perform these highly technical traps to better control Air Balls, strengthen Shielding situations, and to be more agile when controlling ground balls.
Due to these animations cushioning the ball and resulting in a more precise and accurate control than any other type of ball control animation, specific chained traps are present within Composed Ball Control and can get increased chances of being performed when the following conditions are met:
- The player is not Sprinting (holding R2/RT)
- There are no opponents nearby
- Except for specific Shielding animations (holding L2/LT)
- The Left Stick has to remain still while performing Composed Ball Control to allow for the animation to complete.
- This condition makes the impacted traps more responsive, as any drastic changes in the Left Stick input allows the player to transition out of the animation.
- Specific Attributes dictate how consistently they can be performed:
- Air/Ground Composed Ball Control: At least 70 Ball Control and 60 Agility.
- Shielding Composed Ball Control: At least 60 Ball Control and 70 Strength.
- The consistency scales up with the needed Attributes, with the cap being an average of 92 between the aforementioned Attributes.
Controlling the Ball
We focused on improving the player's grasp over the ball, polishing many situations to more reliably obtain control of the ball, be it in the air or the ground.
- Reworked a lot of Shielding fundamentals, with a big emphasis on Player Personality, where Strength and Ball Control Attributes play a major part on the efficacy of Shielding.
- This also applies for Contextual Shielding, which happens in certain circumstances when obtaining possession of the ball.
- Improve control for Shielding Air Balls, allowing stronger players to more reliably win air duels with shielding (L2/LT).
- Contextual Air Ball Shielding: Allowing strong players to naturally shield the ball in contested situations when no other action is requested (besides left stick input).
- Players need 85 Strength to contextually shield or 75 Strength if the opponent is 5 Strength less.
- [NG] The Active Touch system can now evaluate more situations at once, drastically reducing cases of players not controlling the ball.
- Improvements to responsiveness of the Active Touch system, with more fidelity when trapping and controlling a ball.
Passing
In FIFA 22 we focused on Ground Passes, Lob Passes and Lobbed Through passing systems to better account for context of play, including opposition player positioning, teammate positioning, general spacing, and many types of situations.
Here are some of the most impactful changes made to passing in FIFA 22:
- Animation Refresh: New animations have been added and a major cleanup and polish of existing passing animations has been done, allowing for more consistency and animation selection.
- Ground Passes: A revamp of the ground passing targeting system, allowing for better target selection and spatial awareness.
- Semi-Assisted Ground Passes were also refreshed with the new system.
- Lob Passes and Lobbed Through Pass: these types of passes have more consistency in height, trajectories, leading and a better understanding of contexts.
- Semi-Assisted Through Passes: As part of the Competitive Settings, Semi-Assisted Through Passes were expanded from last year to have more assistance for close and simple passes, and less assistance for far and difficult passes. The more difficult and the further the pass, the more precise the player's aim and power input has to be.
- Vision assistance: Assistance increases based on the player’s Vision Attribute starting at 85 and up to 99.
Additional Passing Improvements
- Pass Transitions: This refers to a system that improves responsiveness and allows for transitions between different passes.
- You can request a different type of pass halfway through a pass request, and the system will then attempt to stop the current pass and perform the new request. This can be especially useful when reacting to sudden situational changes.
- [NG] The Through Pass receiver system is able to analyze more receivers, resulting in better overall pass targets and more consistent receiver selection.
- Receiver Awareness is increased in order for teammates to understand when they are being considered as a possible pass receiver, increasing pass rate completion.
- Increased personality in Passing:
- Through and Lobbed Through Pass quality is mostly determined by the Vision Attribute, and less by the Short/Long Passing Attributes.
- Ground and Lob Passes are mostly determined by the Short/Long Passing Attributes.
- The Crossing Attribute can increase the speed of Driven Crosses and Driven Ground Crosses.
- The player’s current speed when requesting a pass alters the difficulty of that pass. The higher the speed, the more negative impact to the pass.
Shooting
For shooting, we focused on a variety of fixes and improvements, but also made balancing changes to 3 key aspects:
- Improved shooting consistency in easy 1 on 1 situations.
- Shots from difficult situations with the defender being close to the ball carrier have reduced conversion rate to correspond with the difficulty of the situation.
- Shots from wide/tight angles have reduced on target and on goal percentage making them less consistent to score.
All these situations above are also dependent on the player’s Shooting Attributes, with a new tuning that consistently increases the goal percentage the higher the attributes are.
Besides numerous fixes and overall improvements, it’s also worth mentioning that we’ve changed the Green Shot Timing window, allowing you to hit green more consistently than before.We’ll keep monitoring this change to make sure that Timed Shots are kept balanced, and not overpowered.
Dribbling
For FIFA 22 we focused on dribbling fundamentals and added a few mechanics to spice up your plays:
- Super Knock On: double flick RS forward.
- The knock on ball distance is farther if you flick and hold the RS on the second flick than if you perform two consecutives quick flicks.
- Riding Tackle touches: Allows you to dribble past some tackles with your LS input depending on the timing of your dribbling inputs.
- Better dribbling control at high speeds, with closer touches and more gradual deceleration when releasing Sprint (R2/RT) while dribbling.
- Quicker turns and exits during dribbles. This mimics the touches and quickness of some of the world’s greatest dribblers.
- Added more Player Personality during dribbling, especially when Sprinting, performing Knock Ons, dribbling under pressure, and changing directions drastically.
- Manual Dink Dribble Touch: Press R3 during a dribble to perform a dink touch while dribbling, perfect for avoiding the defender’s leg.
- Contextual Dink Touch: Only enabled when the Contextual Agile Dribbling option is turned on, this performs the dink dribble touches automatically while dribbling in certain situations. This is turned off by default when using Competitive Settings.
Skill Moves
Skill Moves Balancing
The main goal is to balance Skill Moves and make them effective if timed and executed correctly. After listening to feedback from the community and pros, we made the following balancing changes:
- Removed Skill Move Cancel for La Croquetta, Elastico, Reverse Elastico, and Scoop Turn.
- Reduced animation speed for Bridge and Directional Nutmegs.
- Drag Back Spin, Four Touch Turn, and Stepovers can now be cancelled (LT + RT).
- Drag to Drag Skill Move can now be triggered by holding RS backwards.
- The Heel to Heel Skill Move is more difficult to successfully perform.
- New animations for Directional Nutmeg 90 degree turns.
First Time Skill Moves
One important change that we want to highlight are the First Time Skill Moves which are something we received lots of feedback on.
With this improvement, Skill Moves can now be executed in first time situations as the ball is coming towards the player. In the past this was only possible with Fake Shots, but now Skill Moves with the Right Stick are possible as well.
For balancing purposes, First Time Skill moves have the following changes:
- Certain moves cannot be performed first time such as Stepovers, Body Feints, and the Bridge/Directional Nutmeg.
- Skill Moves in first time situations will be harder to control than while dribbling, especially if the incoming ball velocity is high.
- First time Skill Moves will not work from Driven Passes.
New Skill Moves
- Four Touch Turn: Hold L2/LT + Flick RS Back + Flick RS Back
- Skilled Bridge: Hold L2/LT + Double Tap R1/RB
- First Time Spin: Hold L1/LB + R1/RB as the ball comes towards the player first time
- Scoop Turn Fake: Hold LS in the opposite direction after doing a forward Scoop Turn
Defending
Goalkeeper Rewrite
When designing the new FIFA 22 goalkeepers, we had 3 major areas in mind: reliable saves, visual variety of animations, and keeper personality.
The new system uses over 600 animations, focusing on how the keeper makes saves, tips the ball over the frame of the goal, shows agility on dives, punches the ball away on a corner, and overall keeper movement.
Last but not least, the new system allows us to replicate the different styles of world class goalkeepers, with some keepers having cat-like reflexes, some being masters of anticipating shots, while others are extremely adept at rushing out to punch any ball to safety.
Defensive Behaviour
Fair and Predictable Outcomes
This year’s improvements on the defending side were aimed to ensure fair, consistent and predictable outcomes when it comes to defending situations. For instance, we’ve seen that some players felt like tackling could be a point of frustration, so we’ve updated Tackleback behavior, as described later in this Deep Dive.
These are the balancing changes we made:
- Improved tackle animation selection, resulting in cleaner outcomes.
- Better ball speed and angle for successful tackles, increasing the likelihood of the ball going towards your teammates.
- New possession-style tackles, aimed to improve the tackler’s ball retrieval rate on good tackles when the situation is appropriate depending on Player Personality.
- Reduced launching distance for automatic tackles in general, especially during Sprinting.
- Reduced situations when automatic tackles would trigger unfairly from behind the opponent.
- Improved tackling for air balls (i.e. during an opponent’s flick up or chest trap).
- Added more variety on ball deflections following a block.
- Automatic blocks are now less effective when the player is not Jockeying.
- Automatic blocks are not as successfully performed and have higher chances of missing.
Controls and Personality
Besides trying to balance the outcomes in defending, we also made changes to controls and to improve Player Personality.
- Shoulder Challenges / Seal Outs: Tap O/B whilst side-by-side with your opponent when defending to contextually trigger a shoulder challenge or seal out.
- The efficacy of this behavior is related to the defender’s Attributes/Personality.
- Manual Block: Tap O/B close to the moment of the shot/pass while your player is within the passing lane or shooting course. If timed appropriately, this will launch a Manual Block, which has a higher possibility of succeeding and results in faster contact with the ball compared to Automatic Blocks.
- More Tackling Personality: Balance the win-ratio related to personality, in order for high rated tacklers to win the ball more often when compared to lower rated players.
- Based on Attributes, we increased the accuracy of the tackle, as well as improved the position of the player when starting the animation.
- Physical Player Personality: Players that are more physical and combative can also trigger more shoulder challenges and seal outs when requesting a tackle in appropriate situations.
- Jockey Max Speed: Added personality effect to Sprint Jockey max speed, basing it on the player’s Defensive Awareness Attribute.
- The speed scales from 60 to 99 Defensive Awareness, with any player below 60 having the minimum speed while performing a Sprint Jockey.
- Assisted Jockey vs Skill Moves: Improved assisted Jockey behavior against Skill Moves, allowing defensive players to better keep up with skills while Jockeying.
Interceptions and Disrupt Interceptions
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we received in the last year was about how even when you felt you were in the right place at the right time, you wouldn’t always be able to intercept certain passes. We improved many aspects of normal interceptions in FIFA 22 and created new Disrupt Interceptions.
Disrupt Interceptions are a mix between controlling the ball and blocking. The goal here is to disrupt the course of the pass, even if that means not retaining the ball. These Disrupt Interceptions can only be performed by user controlled players, and with the left stick input directed toward the pass path instead of the ball or the receiver.
Player Personality also plays a big part here, with Attributes determining how far players can reach to intercept, how quick they can react, and how successfully they can touch the ball.
Disrupt Interceptions are designed to reward players that have the ability to read the game and position themselves accordingly.
Teammate Contain
This year we’ve introduced several changes to Teammate Contain. As before, hold R1/RB while defending in order to have an AI controlled teammate contain the ball carrier.
For FIFA 22, we’re introducing Teammate Contain Stamina. Every player has their own Contain Stamina that allows them to keep containing as long as it is not depleted. Contain Stamina drains while the R1/RB button is being held, and once the containing teammate runs out of Contain Stamina, they will go back to their regular instructions and enter a cooldown period for a few seconds where they cannot contain anymore. The Contain Stamina is represented by a UI element above the teammate that is currently pressing.
Player Personality is what determines how close the teammate gets to the ball carrier while containing, their urgency to do so, the amount of Contain Stamina they have, and also the duration of the cooldown to recover the stamina. The Attributes that dictate these values are Defensive Awareness, Defensive Work Rates, and remaining in-match Stamina.
The goal for Teammate Contain is that someone like a world-class defensive midfielder is more effective and reliable at closing down opponents than attackers for example, who might be focused more on offensive duties.
Player Switching
In FIFA 22 we wanted to provide players with even more ways to switch, as players can have different priorities when switching. We’ve added 4 new options including Icon Switching and Player Rotation.
Icon Switching
This is a new form of switching that provides players with a surefire way to select their desired player. To activate Icon Switching, press R3 while defending and you will see UI elements above 4 of your players, each with a specific direction, like in the image below:
After pressing R3, you can flick the right stick in the direction shown on the icon above the player’s head, and the switch will happen.
There is also an option in Controller Settings to disable Icon Switching.
More Switching Options
- Player Rotation: A new option for Right Stick Switching allowing you to move the Next Player Switch indicator, essentially allowing you to pre-switch to a player before confirming. Once you are satisfied with your choice, press Manual Switch (L1/LB) to confirm.
- The movement of the indicator is based on its current position.
- Auto Switching: In addition to the Air Balls and Loose Balls switching option, we added two new options, one for only on Air Balls and one for only on Loose Balls.
- Auto Switching now has 5 different ways to function (including Manual and Automatics), allowing you to decide what is most impactful for your switching game.
Directional Clearances and Technical Clearances
This year we introduce new Directional Clearances, which require more skill to successfully execute but also offer more control to players when compared to Classic Clearances. We also added a new mechanic to improve the action of clearing the ball out of defense called Technical Clearances.
- Directional Clearances: This is a new default option for clearances, with ball trajectories now following the left stick input as much as they can, while still trying to perform the earliest contact with the ball. These clearances still have assistance in some specific cases like when aiming at your own goal, at other players, or when in a very urgent situation.
- For reference, Classic Clearances do not take into consideration your left stick inputs and power, and your players try to perform the first available contact in any direction.
- Technical Clearances: R1/RB + O/B - A new mechanic that always tries to kick the ball forward and as far as possible from the area. The kick direction is always to the upfield (no target), with some aim input taken into consideration.
- Technical Clearances can be useful when you are in possession of the ball close to your box and you want to get the ball away to have time for a breather.
- There is no concept of urgency to Technical Clearances, meaning they might result in a later contact with the ball, losing the ball to an opponent, or failing to attempt a last second goal line clearance.
More Tactics and Instruction Customization
Besides the new Attacking Tactics mentioned earlier, we made additional changes to Tactics and new Instructions to further customize your play style.
- Depth and Width Sliders now range from 1 to 100, allowing for more nuanced customization.
- Free Roam instructions for CDMs allow for a deep lying playmaker role coming closer to support the ball handler and also dropping deeper to receive a pass during possession or build up.
- Step Up instructions for Center Backs and Full Backs can have them step out of position and mark opposing attackers tighter when they are free to receive a ball. This is the inverse of the Stick to Position instruction.
- Overlap Instructions for Center Backs (only for 3 or 5 defender formations) allow the CB to overlap wide when in the correct position and provide attacking support to teammates.
Across the Pitch
[NG] Bigger Goal Moments
Building on the Big Goal Moments from last year, we increased the number of scenes, all with new player animations and cinematography. You can experience new crowd moments, camera angles, opponent’s captain reactions and unique player celebrations incorporated into scenes.
The improvements to Big Goal Moments allow you to celebrate big goals with select players as they would in real life, with subs, managers, and crowd, all involved in the spectacle.
Player Movement
We’ve made a number of changes to Player Movement and speed for FIFA 22.
- Increased the max top speed: This change more closely mirrors real life speed of professional football athletes, and it requires players to run for longer to reach their new max speed.
- This change also positively affects lower speed players, as they are slightly faster in smaller spaces than before. However they will still be slower when performing long distance runs against a very fast player.
- Controlled Deceleration: Some players with higher Attributes can decelerate faster when transitioning into a dribble or trapping the ball.
- Only players with the Agility, Ball Control, and Dribbling Attributes equal to or greater than 80 are eligible for Controlled Deceleration.
- New Star Player Movement: Added new visuals for a few players when moving in certain conditions, such as Phil Foden when sprinting and Son Heung-min when Dribbling.
- Assigned Avatar running styles to over 50 players resulting in their movement being closer to real life, including Christian Pulisic and many more.
Set Pieces
We’ve made several Set Piece improvements to FIFA 22, from visuals to mechanics and behaviors.
There are more dynamic actions, such as players being more active during goal kicks, more natural marking during free kicks and variety in positioning during attacking set pieces. We also enhanced the attacking player runs during Free Kicks and improved the amount of support provided by teammates to the kick taker.
Visual changes:
- [NG] Free Kick Wall Visuals have been refreshed with the intent of making players feel more lively, conscious of the game context, and to noticeably track the ball.
- Refresh of Free Kick and Penalty Kick animations.
- David Beckham Free Kicks: Added unique animations to replicate the iconic technique of David Beckham’s free kicks.
The other category of Set Piece improvements focuses on mechanics:
- Hang On Quick Free Kick: Hold R2/RT during a quick free kick to hang onto it for a few more seconds and give your teammates more time to get into position.
- Throw In Improvements: More intelligent throws now consider the position of opponents resulting in more accuracy and possession retention.
- Co Op change Set Piece user: The player in charge of taking the free kick can press R3+L3 to let the other Co Op player take the kick. This will help players better split roles with their teammates and can be done during Corner Kicks, Free Kicks, and Penalty Kicks - not available during Penalty Shootouts.
- Earlier Call Short/Push Up: R1/RB and L1/LB can now be pressed before the Goal Kick starts, having the players already start in the desired position.
- Free Kick Side accuracy: Increased shot accuracy in free kicks, especially when applying a lot of side spin during a free kick.
- This is affected by the amount of spin, your player’s Curve and Free Kick Attributes, and if you time your kick properly.
CPU AI
The CPU AI is a very important area for gameplay, with a lot of FIFA players focusing on Career Mode and FUT Squad Battles.
Competitor Mode Tweaks
For players who like a challenge, we re-wrote defending Competitor Mode CPU AI, with something we call Threat-Based Defending, with the CPU better understanding who the players they should mark are, which off-ball runs they should chase, and which dribblers they should close down. With Threat-Based Defending, Competitor Mode is more challenging than before. To not be left behind, we’re also tuning the attacking moves with Space-Based Attacking. This allows the Competitor Mode CPU AI to have a better understanding of spaces and when to perform dribbles and passes, including performing killer through balls or bending precise crosses in the box.
Player Based Difficulty
Player Based Difficulty is a new setting when playing against the CPU AI. The idea is that when you play against a team like PSG, Mbappé really stands out as being a more dangerous player, due to his Attributes. Similarly, if the opposition team is starting a low rated player among a team of high rated ones, they will be easier to tackle or dribble past.
Essentially, Player Based Difficulty individualizes the difficulty of each player. For example, when playing on Professional difficulty against an average team but with Mbappé in their squad, he will behave as if he was on a difficulty higher (World Class difficulty), while his teammates will still perform as being on Professional Difficulty or lower.
Besides this, we also balanced all difficulty levels to offer more differentiation and a better difficulty and gameplay progression between each level.
Physical Play
Another area of focus this year was to improve the physicality of players, mainly focusing on fairness of outcomes. To accomplish this, we made the following changes:
- Increased Strength Attribute impact and emphasized strength differentiation between players when involved in physical play.
- Added more intelligent stumbles and falls to avoid inauthentic outcomes and to produce fairer results after being tackled or when slipping.
- Pass, Shot, and Tackleback improvements:
- Tackleback refers to when the tackler performs a good tackle on an attacker, but the attacker quickly recovers and maintains possession of the ball, or gets it back.
- To prioritize fairness in the game, we have made changes to reduce the amount of Tacklebacks. However, while some of these changes can impact visual fidelity in specific instances, they create a more positive and satisfying experience for the defender.
- Pass and Shot Improvements: we have also prioritized the continuity of the shooting animations when the opponent is close behind the shot taker (not if already tackling). While this may also impact visual fidelity, it does create a more positive shooting experience for the attacker.
- Tackleback refers to when the tackler performs a good tackle on an attacker, but the attacker quickly recovers and maintains possession of the ball, or gets it back.
FIFA Attributes
We’ve increased the FIFA Attributes that were introduced last year for Kick Off, Online Seasons, and Online Friendlies game modes, to allow players to experience Player Personality at a higher level.
These Attributes are modified depending on each player’s positions:
- Attackers (Forwards and Wingers)
- Acceleration +8, Sprint Speed +8
- Positioning +10, Finishing +8, Shot Power +8, Long Shots +6
- Agility +8, Balance +4, Reactions +6, Ball Control +6, Dribbling +8
- Midfielders (Central, Attacking, Wide)
- Acceleration +8, Sprint Speed +8, Positioning +8
- Vision +8, Short Passing +8, Long Passing +8
- Agility +8, Balance +4, Reactions +6, Ball Control +6, Dribbling +8
- Defenders and Defensive Midfielders
- Acceleration +8, Sprint Speed +8, Aggression +6
- Vision +4, Short Passing +4, Long Passing +4, Reactions +6
- Interceptions +10, Defensive Awareness +10, Stand Tackle +10, Slide Tackle +10
- Goalkeepers
- Diving +8, Handling +6, GK Kicking +4, Reflexes +8, GK Positioning +6, Reactions +8
Additional Changes
Some other FIFA 22 changes we wanted to highlight include:
- [NG] Net Physics will have more visual elasticity, spring, and shake, which when combined with PlayStation 5 Haptic Feedback and audio cues, can make goals feel more impactful.
- Increased consistency and accuracy of Assisted Headers in modes that they can be used in.
- Multiple new celebrations, including “Time Check”, “Short Point” and “Tea for Two”.
- We continue to add star specific celebrations for some of the world's most famous players.
Additionally, there are also other areas of FIFA 22 with gameplay changes that will be introduced in future Deep Dives:
- Gameplay perks for Career Mode and Pro Clubs
- VOLTA FOOTBALL with the Skill Meter and Signature Abilities
Community, Title Updates, and Live Tuning Tool
To better respond to some feedback during the FIFA cycle, we worked hard on a feature that took a significant effort from multiple teams. We call it the Live Tuning Tool.
In FIFA 22 we can work on some aspects of the gameplay through the Live Tuning Tool and roll out changes to players without requiring a full Title Update. This can allow us to make tuning changes faster, with more frequency, and also keep working on the balance of the game.
Live Tuning Tool changes will be logged and tracked just like Release Notes and Title Updates. To stay up to date with Live Tuning Tool changes, be sure to bookmark the EA SPORTS FIFA Tracker.
For illustrative purposes, a small tuning change that could have previously taken up to 2 months to be released, for multiple reasons, can now be released on a faster timeline after testing, as long as the update makes sense for FIFA.
Note that the Live Tuning Tool does not allow us to perform changes that require any animation or code modifications, which are normally more complex than tuning and tweaking numbers. For changes that require either, including non-gameplay changes, a full Title Update will still be required.
We’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for all the feedback you’ve provided throughout FIFA 21. Your support, engagement, and suggestions, help influence how we build the game. As you can see above, a lot of changes and improvements were assisted by feedback we received, so please continue to give us feedback, including videos with examples whenever possible.
FIFA 22 Gameplay Deep Dive Video
Thank you so much for reading this massive gameplay deep dive. I hope you enjoyed learning about the upcoming changes to FIFA 22. Be sure to keep an eye out for more Deep Dives on FIFA 22.
Thomas Caleffi, Gabriel Zaro, Goran Popovic, and The FIFA Gameplay Dev Team
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For more deep dives on FIFA from members of the game team, check out the Pitch Notes Page.
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Please Note: This article is describing in general terms what the Dev Teams are working on. We are constantly looking to improve the FIFA experience for everyone, so this article may become outdated as we make adjustments to keep our game fun for everyone.
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