FIFA – Using Networks Principle to Build the Ultimate Team
Source: http://www.fifauteam.com/chemistry-guide-fifa-14-ultimate-team/
FIFA is a series of annually released soccer simulation games under Electronic Arts currently reigning as the best-selling sports video game franchise of all time. The series has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and also generated hundreds of millions in revenue for EA. The most popular game mode in the FIFA series is FIFA Ultimate Team, in which gamers can buy, transfer, and manage coveted professional soccer players to build a unique dream team. Gamers can then use this team to compete against other gamers in dynamic online matches and tournaments. In order to build a successful team that can dominate in the game, the gamer must take chemistry into heavy consideration. Individual chemistry influences the performance of individual players and varies between the values of 0 and 10. Team chemistry represents how well the team will perform in a match as a whole and varies between the values 0 and 100. For example, low chemistry will hinder player performance in a match while high chemistry will result in better player performance. Chemistry is the culmination of precise calculations based on the familiarity of the each player with the club, with his field positioning, with other players, and with the manager. In other words, teams should be built around chemistry in order to be successful and basic Networks principle can be applied to achieve high chemistry.
Figure 1: A sample built squad with a chemistry of 100. Strong links are indicated with green, weak links with yellow, dead links with red.
To achieve high individual chemistry for any specific player, the player should be playing in his natural position, other players in his direct proximity should have the same nationality or play in the same league or club as him, his manger should be from the same league or nationality, and he has played for more than ten matches in the current team. The relationships between adjacent players are especially important for improving chemistry since the more similarities (club, league, or nationality) the two players share, the higher their individual chemistry will be and the better they will perform. When two players are positioned adjacent to each other, they form a colored link depending on the intensity of their relation. The intensity of the links can be classified into three categories: dead link for players who share no similarities, weak link for players who share only a single similarity, and strong links for players who share two or more similarities. Consequently, the dead links will penalize chemistry, while the strong links will reward chemistry. The overall team chemistry is calculated by accumulating all the individual chemistries on the field and therefore gamers must often adjust players’ positional relations to one another in order to maximize chemistry.
The idea behind adjusting players in order to maximize their chemistry relates closely to the idea of maximizing edges in a system of networks. The gamer can apply the concept of triadic closure property to adjust players in order to a high chemistry for the team. The triadic closure property assumes that if a node A has edges to nodes B and C, then the B-C edge is especially likely to form if A’s edges to B and C are both strong edges. Based on this property, if a player has strong links to two other players, then those two players are likely to form a strong link themselves. By adjusting the players based on this property, the gamer can maximize the team’s chemistry by eliminating dead links and forming mostly strong and a few weak links. In conclusion, a gamer can use the basic Networks principles such as the triadic closure property to maximize chemistry in FIFA Ultimate Team.