Triadic Closure in FIFA Ultimate Team
Electronic Arts releases FIFA, the best soccer (or football) simulation every year around this time in mid to late September. In FIFA, you usually would just be able to play against others online or against the computer using club or national teams that already exist. A new game mode was launched in FIFA 10 called Ultimate Team, which allows you to build a team with any player regardless of what club or country they are associated with. A starter team is given to you, and you must play matches to earn coins in order to buy better players and to build your own club. It is possible to increase the stats of your players by building teams with high chemistry, which can be achieved in a few different ways.
Each player has a chemistry rating that among other things can be most easily affected by the players immediately surrounding him in the formation. The strength of the link between two players depends on both players’ nationalities, club, and league the club plays in. There are four types of links between players: dead, weak, strong, and hyper, three of which we’ve discussed in class. A dead link is one between players of differing nationalities, clubs, and leagues, so they have nothing in common. An example of a dead link would be Cristiano Ronaldo, who is Portuguese, and plays for Real Madrid in La Liga BBVA, and Wayne Rooney, who is English, and plays for Manchester United in the Barclay’s Premier League. A weak link is a connection between two players with only the same nationality, or only the same league, like a link between Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey who are both Welsh, but play for different clubs and in different leagues. A strong link is one where both players share two similarities, and a hyperlink is where both players share all three similarities.
This is an example of a squad with all types of links, from dead to hyper.
Building a team with good links all around and high chemistry has been made easier with the knowledge of the Strong Triadic Closure principle. “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 ties.” This can allow you to more easily reach a team with perfect 100 chemistry, optimizing each player’s stats and giving you a better chance to win. Ideally a squad would not violate the Strong Triadic Closure principle, but the team in the figure above does and is still at full chemistry.
Source: http://segmentnext.com/2014/09/30/fifa-15-ultimate-team-chemistry-guide-tips-to-build-perfect-squad/