EA Sports UFC was released about a year ago which means we are probably 6-12 months away from the next iteration. Although the sales were underwhelming, you would have to expect at least one more run at it for EA. Assuming this is so, I was wondering what everyone thought EA could do to make their UFC title better, and possibly reverse the disastrous release of their initial offering.
Here are a few thoughts that I had:
Career Mode
While some can create their own career mode with online leagues and such, most users generally tend to migrate towards a franchise's career mode. EA Sports UFC fell way short in this department. Here are some thing they can do to improve the mode going forward:
As we've seen with games like MLB 15 The Show, a breadth of different games option give users a ton of different ways to enjoy the game. Here are a few that I think would go over really well with UFC fans:
Success or failure of a video game ultimately rests on gameplay. Last year, EA failed miserably with their initial gameplay settings. It was much to easy for users to spam takedowns and control users on the ground. It was also ridiculously easy to spam punches with little worry to your health and stamina. Patch #2 seemed to take things too far in the opposite direction while patch #3 balanced things out somewhat but was too little, too late. The next version must bring its A game in regards to gameplay. Add all of the modes you want, but if the initial reaction of those who play is that the gameplay sucks, the game will tank.
EA Sports UFC 2 needs to refine striking and get away from the boxing parry format. MMA fights aren't strategic parry and counter fests. They are single shots and combos and movement. More of an emphasis has to be made on setting up takedowns with strikes and vice versa. Find a way to work in feints and level changes. Make the head movement CPU controlled and based on the fighter's ratings. Don't over-complicate it and leave everything to the user. There needs to be some balance between realism and being an elite stick jockey to compete. We ran over 20 UFC events last year and very few of the users who competed could figure out all the nuances of the striking game.
The same goes for the ground game. While the ground game went form incredibly easy to hold fighters down to practically impossible, the controls were very complex (and didn't always work as expected). Many users were overwhelmed by the complexity of pulling off or defending certain positions (both in the clinch and on the ground). There needs to be a better balance between grapplers being able to take users down and ground-and-pounding and using mediocre grapples to hold good defensive grapplers down for an entire round. The game got better at this but it became too easy to get off you back and all but eliminated the grappling game for all but very skilled users.
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So that's my take. Why do you guys think? What can EA Sports UFC 2 do to establish itself as a premier sports game and the undisputed king of the combat sports game landscape?
Here are a few thoughts that I had:
Career Mode
While some can create their own career mode with online leagues and such, most users generally tend to migrate towards a franchise's career mode. EA Sports UFC fell way short in this department. Here are some thing they can do to improve the mode going forward:
- Simpler Restart - One of the most frustrating things for me in career mode was wanting to start over because I got off to an awful start with my original fighter. However, I had to go back through all of the cut scenes and the Ultimate Fighter all over again. Give the user the option to go through it all or skip certain stuff. The easier you make it to enjoy, the more the user will use it again and again.
- More Storyline - Once you got through the Ultimate Fighter, it was pretty boring. You picked a fight, did the same repetitive training scenarios and then fought (mostly) generic fighters. There was no traveling to different camps as we saw in previous UFC games. There wasn't a crib or car to bling out. There weren't any rivalries that developed. No weigh in brawls. It was just really boring. Add some substance to career mode. Give us a reason to turn the game on every day.
- Less Generic Fights - This was another problem that bugged me. I can't remember the last Fight Night that EA made, but the career progression felt more like that of a boxer than an MMA fighter. Guys like Chris Weidman and Can Velasquez got title fights after just 9 or 10 career fights. In EA Sports UFC, you had to win like 20 fights just to get a Top 10 opponent. There needs to be a more realistic career progression. Going 10-0 should, at least, get you a Top 5 opponent if not, occasionally, a title shot.
- Multiple Career Paths - Obviously, most people want to fight, win a title and then become a legend defending that title. However, if that is the only path you can go, a lot of guys wind up wasting hour upon hour trying to build a fighter only to realize they didn't choose his early attributes right and can't win with him. So they start over from the beginning. But what if being a guy on the fringe of the Top 10 was okay? What if there were rewards for getting into the Top 10. More than just a a spot on the main PPV card. Maybe it gives you more money that you can use to buy cars or a house. Or maybe enough Top 10 fights and saving money allows you to open a gym and train new fighters and watch them progress. Maybe you can choose to call guys out and create rivalries and make the fans love or hate you? So much more could be done to add value to the mode besides just climbing the rankings ladder.
- Strikeforce and Pride - Add these promotions in with more real life fighters. Heck, even restrict fighters to fighting in the UFC or the other promotion they fought in giving them some nostalgia. Nobody probably wants to see Brock Lesnar in Strikeforce, but it would be cool to see Robbie Lawler and Nick Diaz there. Maybe even offer them as separate career modes. You can either play Pride only (with Pride rules), Strikeforce only, UFC only, Pride and UFC or Strikeforce and UFC. This would give users TONS of different ways to play the game and create an enormous amount of replay value, especially for a game on a two-year dev cycle.
As we've seen with games like MLB 15 The Show, a breadth of different games option give users a ton of different ways to enjoy the game. Here are a few that I think would go over really well with UFC fans:
- Past Fights - Add more legends to the roster and then set up great scenarios from the past. Chuck-Tito II, Liddell-Couture III, Edgar-Maynard II, Silva vs Sonnen I, Hendo-Rua I. Add some all-time greats like Don Frye and Ken Shamrock and Dan Sevryn and put some early classics in as well. There are so many different scenarios that could be done. You could even take some commentary from the real fights and splice it in if certain events happen. That would be a huge win for the series.
- Kickboxing or Grappling Only Matches - These could be set up as separate career modes or side modes where you compete in 16-man tournaments. But you either just strike or just grapple. This could be the Road To The Show of EA Sports UFC. There are tons of different options users could take and an unlimited amount of fun to be had. Imagine Brock Lesnar in a grappling tournament or Nick Diaz in a kickboxing only setup? That would be a ton of fun!
- Pride Gran Prix Tournaments - Allow users to compete in the old Pride Grand Prix tournaments. There might only be enough former fighters to do the open weight Grand Prix's but they would still be a ton of fun to live over as one of the participants. You could even have a fantasy UFC Grand Prix where users can use the entire roster and any weight class to make their own, fantasy tournaments. The possibilities are endless!
- Online Leagues - Admittedly, this would be a pretty big undertaking. However, if you can pull it of, it could be HUGE! There were lots of leagues out there that created fight cards and pieced together online fight leagues. But what if the game did it for you? What if each member of the league was their own fight camp and you either drafted or assigned fighters? Then the league president created events and fight cards and the game tracked the results? What if you could even do an entire fight card in one night! Now we're talking. Every other sports game on the planet has some sort of online co-op mode. There has to be more to EA UFC than just random fights against spammers online.
Success or failure of a video game ultimately rests on gameplay. Last year, EA failed miserably with their initial gameplay settings. It was much to easy for users to spam takedowns and control users on the ground. It was also ridiculously easy to spam punches with little worry to your health and stamina. Patch #2 seemed to take things too far in the opposite direction while patch #3 balanced things out somewhat but was too little, too late. The next version must bring its A game in regards to gameplay. Add all of the modes you want, but if the initial reaction of those who play is that the gameplay sucks, the game will tank.
EA Sports UFC 2 needs to refine striking and get away from the boxing parry format. MMA fights aren't strategic parry and counter fests. They are single shots and combos and movement. More of an emphasis has to be made on setting up takedowns with strikes and vice versa. Find a way to work in feints and level changes. Make the head movement CPU controlled and based on the fighter's ratings. Don't over-complicate it and leave everything to the user. There needs to be some balance between realism and being an elite stick jockey to compete. We ran over 20 UFC events last year and very few of the users who competed could figure out all the nuances of the striking game.
The same goes for the ground game. While the ground game went form incredibly easy to hold fighters down to practically impossible, the controls were very complex (and didn't always work as expected). Many users were overwhelmed by the complexity of pulling off or defending certain positions (both in the clinch and on the ground). There needs to be a better balance between grapplers being able to take users down and ground-and-pounding and using mediocre grapples to hold good defensive grapplers down for an entire round. The game got better at this but it became too easy to get off you back and all but eliminated the grappling game for all but very skilled users.
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So that's my take. Why do you guys think? What can EA Sports UFC 2 do to establish itself as a premier sports game and the undisputed king of the combat sports game landscape?
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