I post a lot of sliders from the community, but I usually don’t post about them every single time there’s a new iteration. However, I think coming back around to the FIFA 21 Operation Sports Community Sliders is important here with a new patch out and some very clear issues that Matt10 and crew are trying to iron out to help the career mode fans out there.
Some of the slider values do look a little strange here, but I would agree with Matt10 that this set is a worthwhile update. Yes, midfielders still don’t always track back and the AI still is scared of crossing the ball, but this is a notable upgrade even from V1B2. At this point, it seems like a patch is the only way we’ll get fixes to those two previously mentioned issues, but otherwise this set gets FIFA 21 into a better place.
FIFA 21 Operation Sports Community Sliders – Version 2, Beta 2
Goal: The focus of this set is to compress the field more, and keep the distance between the midfield and defensive line in a more realistic fashion. Since the midfielders do not track back, we wanted to get the lines super compressed and pushed further to action via the HLW + marking values. As a result, this is by far one of the most enjoyable sets we’ve been able to produce for FIFA 21. Enjoy!
If the value is the same for all difficulties, it will be listed once. Please refer to posted image of slider set as well.
Sprint – 20/20
► Lower Sprint in FIFA always brings momentum and some form of foot planting. Since we’re playing on Normal speed, it means even more of an emphasis needs to be made in getting that feel right. We dropped this back down from 25 to get a more solid feel. There is less room to operate due to the set changes overall, so it will make speed in open play count.
Acceleration – 50/50
► Lowered acceleration back down from 51 because we are playing normal, and the speed of play is already rapid compared to Slow, but also that the close-down rate is achieved elsewhere.
Shot Error – 68/68 | 72/72 | 68/70
► A good balance of poor shots and quality strikes. The threshold here is for when bad shots result in a variety, including high over the bar shots that don’t happen very often on default or under 65. Have to ensure that the lowest league player can also still strike a ball with decent quality.
Pass Error – 55/55 | 60/65 | 55/60
► The key with pass error is that we have to find the value that makes it where the CPU isn’t going to constantly try the same types of passes to break the defensive line. The most common method on default is to try to thread a through ball in, and let the forward be 1v1 with the keeper. With this value just slightly raised, we get that variety we are looking for, and paired with the lower pass speed, it gives defenders more of a chance to intercept/deflect. We lowered the pass error for World Class/Pro to keep the CPU a bit more of a threat compared to above 60 values.
Shot Speed – 49/49
► A favorite choice here to lower shot speed, but with the acceleration value at 48, the keeper will also be just slightly delayed, giving that late reaction for some brilliant saves or clutching at thin air look. Makes for some fantastic interactions with the ball.
Pass Speed – 42/42
► Raised pass speed just slightly to not only accommodate the increased pass error, but also to help pace of play. In addition, the feel for manual players is a bit better compared to 40.
Injury Frequency – 90/90
► The overall adjustments to the set should spark some more variety, but we will keep an eye on this with more sample size.
Injury Severity – 40/40
► The overall adjustments to the set should spark some more variety, but we will keep an eye on this with more sample size.
GK Ability – 42/42
► This is a significant change, but anything above 45 and the keeper seems to cover so much ground. In addition, the higher the GK value, the more “soft” deflections that set up more chances. With the lower value, there’s a bit more delay in reactions, which results in the coveted slight deflections that go out for corners.
Marking – 70/70
► With the massive amount of testing, we started to build the HLW as a priority, and from there it was a matter of finding the best marking to make up for space.
Run Frequency – 0/0
► We are not even going to mess with a chance of it disrupting the midfield. The secondary runs are lessened here because we do not want many of them. On other values, it is too easy to breach the defensive line with passing to a striker, holding it up, and waiting for a central midfielder to run past.
● The Height, Length, Width (often referred as “HLW”) are quite important to consider for each slider set.
Height – 50/50
► We’ve been a bit everywhere with height, but in the end, it’s about finding the “true height” to compliment the expected custom team-tactics (CTT). As a result, 50 is the play here. In addition, relative to the set at hand, we wanted the CPU’s passing variety to remain, whereas when we veered away from 50, the CPU went one-note (such as chipped passes to attackers, etc).
Length – 5/5
► By far this is the most important value of the entire set. As I mentioned above, a big thanks to OS testers, and in particular QB for his relentless efforts in ensuring we don’t settle. We found slightly higher values than 5 (max of 20) started to look really good shape-wise. The importance of playing at 5 length though really compresses the field of play, naturally, but it is not to the point there is no decompression. It’s surprising really because we have notoriously used higher values over the years. However, the midfielders not tracking back is such a big time issue – that we’re basically forcing them to get in a somewhat correct position – even if it’s not perfect or fundamentally sound. *Note, as the user you still need to manually control your midfielders and practice good technique. This is not a 100% automated process. The FUT/PRO crowd made sure their misguided “AI defending” theories were the norm.*
Width – 48/48
► The width was moved all over the place to be honest. We’ve tried to get into positions in which the players can be isolated to FIFA’s 1v1 logic, but that ended up hurting the midfield to become non-existent and easily bypassed. As a result, the width had to be lowered so there was more play in the wider parts of the pitch, versus just central passes (or chips) as a means of attack. In a two-man central midfield, they will look “stacked” initially, but will eventually spread out as the ball moves into deeper positions on the pitch. This will be the same with the fullbacks – and let me say do not get carried away with the FB positioning as that will always be narrow (whether 0 or 100 values of width) because they are set up to be very narrow from the start and in transition.
FB Pos – 1/1
► We want to reduce any other types of runs off the ball. Of course, in typical FIFA fashion, lower FB doesn’t remove overlapping fullbacks or even negate them from getting upfield.
FT Control – 90/90 | 70/90
► Gives just a bit more time and randomness to the matches. Exceptional players will be just that at both controlling the ball in the air and ground, but also how they dribble 1v1 – making it much less frustrating having to deal with high agile dribblers.
Feedback
To give feedback, please read the details in the thread for how to give your feedback, and then jump in to trying to help improve these community sliders for everyone else.
Related
