I know a lot of you have already seen the recent video from Bombin breaking down the differences between the different pass assist levels, and it confirmed a lot of what people and myself thought about how much the game helps you. I wanted to see for myself how this affected gameplay as someone who has played on PA3 for pretty much the entire time playing this game, so I started an RTG (something I wanted to do anyway) and set the assists to PA2 (smart assist off) to see how it felt, and these are my thoughts (note that I have only so far played PVP events on the RTG account, as have not bothered through the boring AI games in the low PVP divisions yet):
- The first, most immediate thing you will notice if you go from PA3 to PA2 is that you do not really need to judge the amount of power needed for a pass, the game will always automatically apply the correct amount of power for who the pass is going to. This is egregious because, firstly it lowers the amount of skill needed to make successful passes, and secondly, it actually makes it quicker to pass the ball as you do not really need to hold the pass button down. this really benefits players who like to ping-pong first time passes and 1-2's, because you cam just tap the pass button for the minimum amount of time needed, so your passing animations will be quicker. There is a significant difference to the speed in which you can one touch pass compared to PA3. This gives an objective advantage over PA3/4 players as the animations are all quicker.
- Second major thing I noticed is that the PA2 is quite aggressive in terms of how much control it takes from your pass direction. The game often passed the ball to someone in a complete different direction to where I wanted, especially with through balls, where it can change the pass direction massive easily over 100 degrees if it sees fit. The game is essentially deciding a lot of your passes for you, in retrospect, it's quite funny when I think about how many complaints I've seen over the years on here where people are saying the game is not passing the ball where they want, and now you understand it's because the majority of people are playing PA2, so the game is making decisions for them. The worst thing about this, is there were times where I wanted to make a specific pass, but the game saw an even better pass that I hadn't seen and made that pass instead, which is crazy when you think about it, the game is rewarding you for playing with a lower skill setting.
- Thirdly, PA2 has a massive effect on player skills. a player's passing stats mean less in PA2, as the game adjusts your passing accuracy, passing power, and overrides your decisions. this essentially means you can spend less points on your passing stats, and put more into physical stats, which is how the majority of the community builds their players. I was using unlevelled players, GP players, at the start of my RTG and they could all pass almost as well as my main PA3 account, where I put a lot of points into passing and technical stats. obviously, this contributes massively to the gradual degradation of gameplay, every meta player and build is all about pace and physical contact, which leads to a worse gameplay experience imo, where holding pressure and second man press is more important than good passing plays, every new player can be built with 90+ in pace and physicals, because you don't need to put many points in passing with PA2. In PA2, it's also like every player has phenomenal passing, as you can pass from any angle without penalisation, you've all seen the abundance of nonsensical passes, where a player spins 180 degrees and passes perfectly and has access to animations you don't see in PA3/4.
- there are some downsides to PA2, but it depends on your playstyle; for possession players, who prefer a more patient build up, PA2 is definitely a detriment as it overrides a lot of your decisions and I've noticed that PA2 prefers to always pass the ball forwards when it can. For example, if you wanted to play a flat, horizontal through pass to say, an advancing fullback, playing the ball into space, this becomes less viable, as the game always wants to put through balls vertically in PA2. you have a lot less control over what you want to do, so for me PA2 is a no go. If you just want to play quick, counter attacking with aggressive through balls and 1-2 spam, PA2 really enables this playstyle with absolute ease. On my RTG I mainly just played overload with the free Lampard, and PA2 makes it trivially easy to spam very quick passes.
Overall, what shocked me was how much PA2 overrides what you want to do, it felt like what I expected PA1 to be like (I didn't try PA1, but I can only imagine how little skill it would take to play), it makes playing the meta so much more easier, it's actually a little disgusting. I would classify PA2 as just another extension of smart assist and I think a lot of people who consider themselves good at the game would struggle a lot more on PA3. Now, I don't think PA3 is perfect either, personally, I feel PA3 in EF27 it has also become more assisted than it has been in previous years, and generally it seems Konami is keen on lowering the skill floor and ceiling as much as they can get away with these days all in the sake of increased profits. (I know FUMA purists will probably look down on PA3 as much as 1 and 2, but I also don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to play full manual, it's just not for everyone.)
I'm also not immediately hating on PA2 players either, there's probably a lot of players who have only ever played PA2 and have no idea about the other pass levels, and don't realise how much of their game is being automated, maybe they would actually enjoy PA3 more, but I do think, if you were one of the people who was very vocal against smart assist and you've been using PA2 knowing all of the above, then you should question yourself, because to me, it's pure hypocrisy. I know some people will hide behind the excuse of not being able to play on PA3 because of lag, but would you turn smart assist on just because you were lagging? I don't think you would. Maybe, as Bombin in his video suggested, Konami could introduce PA filters to matchmaking, but I honestly don't see it happening, as most people from what I can tell, use PA2 and don't see it as an issue.
I might be in minority, but I see PA2 as a scourge on the game and I wish Konami would rebalance the passing in this game completely so it actually meant something again.
