New FIFA 14 career mode video


So EA have just released a new video detailing some of the new features for career mode in FIFA 14, which we’ll have a look at in a minute. You can watch it here:

It gives a brief overview of how the new ‘global transfer network’ is going to work and, in short, looks very exciting. It is reminiscent of the way youth scouting currently works in FIFA 13 – you choose a scout, send them to a specific region to look for certain player types, and your scout comes back with a batch of players who you may be interested in. The initial scouting reports do not give exact ratings for each attribute, but rather a range of values in much the same way as you get when scouting in the current version of FIFA.

There are some differences, though, the main one of course being that you can scout real players. OVRs and exact stats will be hidden for all players except those already in your squad, and part of me will miss being able to look up any player in any league and see all of their attributes laid out in front of me (it certainly was convenient). Yet another part of me is very excited for this – not only will it be much more realistic to send scouts to assess players you’re interested in, but I think it will bring back some of the mystery of the game. I remember, when I first started playing career mode in earlier versions of FIFA, the rush of finding a hidden gem, playing for a team I’d never heard of, in a country I’d never have thought to explore, yet who was better than any young player already in my squad. That thrill could be something that is restored with the new way scouting works.

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Jamie Judge – I trust a name like that

Now, instead of searching for players with sprint speed and strength over 85 (OP players, you know who you are 😉 ), we tell our scout that we want, say, promising young Italian wingers who are pacey and excel at dribbling. We don’t get exact stats (because, let’s face it, even Fergie didn’t know that Cristiano Ronaldo has sprint speed 94), but we know that our scout has chosen these players because they match our criteria. It’s much more natural, much more organic, and brings the game much closer to reality.

I’m also glad to hear that you start with a few scouts already hired for your team. It always struck me as somewhat anachronous that a professional football club wouldn’t have any scouts already on its books, as every team needs to be on the look out for players who could improve the squad. It seemed wrong that you’d arrive as a new manager and that wouldn’t be in place, but in FIFA 14 three of the six places you have available for scouts will already be filled. It’s just another small touch that contributes to the overall positive feel of the game.

From what I’ve read, youth scouting will be much the same as in FIFA 13. We can hire scouts as usual, and they will have various ratings for judgment and experience, as before. We won’t be getting any scouted players already in the academy, which would have been cool, nor will we be getting a ‘youth league’ or anything like that, which is a real shame. At the moment, for all its merits, FIFA 13’s scouting system can feel a little bare when you only have, say, four players in your academy. A youth league and a ready-made academy already full of players would really take it a step up. It wouldn’t need to be too detailed, just having enough youth players to make up a team, with your assistant bringing you a report every month saying who has been performing well and who could deserve a promotion. It could just be something as simple as that, but you would feel as if you had stepped into a living, breathing youth set up, one that operates as a real one does, rather than just having a handful of strikers and no goalkeeper, sitting there apparently training all day and nothing else.

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Search by contract length

Getting back to the video, another thing that looks like a real improvement is the new menu layout. Sure, it’s not enough by itself to make you go out and get the game, but it looks like everything has become much more streamlined. For a few years now we’ve been used to navigating through endless menus in an epic quest to turn off that damn Bloc Party song, but with FIFA 14 EA look to have based the menu layout on the Ultimate Team system of sliding tabs. This should result in much fewer clicks and menu browsing, and whilst its not a massive selling point, it’s a little thing that should hopefully make the game experience much simpler and much more enjoyable.

And the final thing that I would say is a brilliant little addition – you can now search by contract length. Adding in the ability to get bargains because players’ contracts were running out was a fantastically useful feature in FIFA 13, but you had no idea whose contract was running out and whose wasn’t. Now that we will be able to add this as a search criterion, it should make bargain hunting so much easier. This could be a really neat trick, especially for teams with lower budgets who can’t afford to splash the cash. It’s certainly something that I will be taking advantage of.

So what are your thoughts on the new video? Any feature you’re particularly excited about? Anything you wish they’d included? Be sure to comment below.