Not full of win
This is getting scary. This is season 2 of my Master League career in PES2010. 15 matches played, 0 wins, and just 3 goals scored. I’m playing on Professional difficulty. I’m struggling more badly than I’ve ever struggled before. Ever. (And I love it.)
Here’s the sorry sight at the bottom of the Division 2 table a few matches before the mid-season transfer window:
I still haven’t simmed any matches. I’m afraid of what might happen. At least I’m not conceding too many goals. I’ve not taken any real beatings, apart from once. Newly-relegated Burnley thumped me 0-3 at home. Otherwise, my scorelines have all been of the 0-1, 0-0, 1-1 variety.
I don’t fully understand what’s happened. In tournament play, pre-Master League, I could score freely. I found the game pretty easy—too easy, as so many PES forumites are reporting. So it’s got to be the Master League players, the celebrated Defaults, doing this to me. PES2010’s gameplay is already notorious for its slowed-down pace with relatively poor response times in comparison to previous titles. (Which is fine by me, by the way.) The Defaults were already pretty bad. Here on PES2010, they handle like aircraft carriers on an ice rink.
That’s not entirely fair. Some of them are noticeably better than their forebears. Gutierrez for one—he’s almost the new Castolo in my view (I refer to the last time Castolo really was good, of course, circa 2004 or so). Ximelez actually does things for me now too. Ruskin is as versatile as ever. It’s just as a whole that the Defaults seem to be poorer than before.
The new form arrow system doesn’t help. ‘Regulate Condition’ has been ditched in favour of a new model where you have to upgrade backroom staff. Until you get them up to a decent level, you’ll almost always have half the team playing with blue arrows. Sometimes you’re forced to field players with purple arrows. Purple. It’s a giant PES mental block to get around. I wouldn’t let even a blue-arrowed player anywhere near my teams for 10 years. And now I have to be… glad when the arrow is ‘only’ blue?!
Mid-season negotiations came along, and I’d already arranged most of my transfers. This is a very welcome new aspect to Master League. Negotiations can now take place between clubs and players all the time. The deals can be signed and money can change hands in every week of the season. Players won’t actually move between clubs until the transfer window opens.
I spent the first half of the season, once I saw how things were going, hunting for good, cheap players to help me out of the mess. Or at least start to get things turned around. I think I found them. I might have spent too much money, and it might cost me on the day of recknoning. All bills are paid at the end of August. Here in January, that seems a long way off.
I acquired Sarazavio (SB), M. Jensen (DMF), not-Greg Downs (AMF), Asier (SMF), Lanalkiss (SMF), and Verbeek (CMF). Only Saravazio and Asier came from other clubs; the others were free agents or similar. All of them except Saravazio can play in several positions. Asier and Verbeek can play as SS/CF. Lanalkiss is also a decent DMF. not-Greg Downs is my created player, of course, and can play every position in midfield because I made him that way. I had to negotiate with him twice before he’d agree to join up. Tosser.
Sarazavio is a much better SB that he looks. He’s only got an Overall of 59 in the picture, but when I found him and negotiated for him, back in November, he was rated at 68. He got injured just before the transfer window opened and so he’s realistically dropped to a 59.
Something similar happened to Minanda, who picked up a 12-month injury at the start of last season. When he came back he was a 44, and has only now got back up to 50. I don’t know how quickly he’ll get back to his old level, if ever. He’s retiring at the end of this season anyway. This new realistic modelling of player injury is a great addition. I’m turning into a proper anorak, anxiously monitoring my players’ ratings and tweaking things left, right, and centre.
Speaking of which, I’ve decided to go back to my traditional 4-3-3. It was far too attacking for the players I started out with. I’d have been massacred every game with it, I think. But now, with the new blood, I think I’ve got a chance. It’s 4-3-3 or bust for me in Maser League once more. The second half of the season is a fresh start. I’d like to at least win a match. Just one…
When I moved back to Kansas and started supporting the Wizards (Kansas...
How did you work out what ratings to give Not-Greg? Did you start a BaL career and just copy the ratings from that?
He sounds a bit tempremental to me. Could be another Craig Bellamy (I rested him due to injury for 2 games and he started showing unhappiness at not getting played!).
Back home to England to work for 2 weeks from Monday – all is not lost though, i’ve copied my Master League onto my phone memory and am borrowing my brother’s PS3.
Liam—I just left not-Greg’s default stats well alone. I created him using the Add Player option in Edit mode. I was allowed to stack him up with special abilities, and I thoroughly abused that. It showed in negotiations though, as his wages are high and it took two goes to get him (he only signed after I’d upgraded my Scout). Not had anybody showing unhappiness yet, probably because we’re still a basement club.
i’m experiencing the same difficulties (although not rock-bottom, i’m doing pretty dire at the moment), and love it.
not in a long time has scoring goals felt this satisfying.
Gutierrez seems to be the goods this time as you say (although i found him more than adequate in pes09 as well), i even recorded three long-rangers i scored with him (hard to create real chances so i often fall back on just plugging it from long range), i’ll post them later on for your ‘ enjoyment’. overall ML seems to be holding up very well and i’m glad it seems to be the same for you as well.
there seems to be a lot of talk about which formation is right…personally 4-4-2 has been the business for me about 75% of the time. might considered switching though.
How’s Veenstra by the way? I’ve got a deal lined up, all i’ve got to do is take it but i’m not sure (funds are low!)
Sounds liek your ML is going the way of my MM career in FIFA!! Maybe its just a token, to b expected football gaming trend and that im not actually as shit at the game as it would seem?
Liking the sounds of injured players dropping in rating etc, very realistic and looks like konami have really paid attention to detail in ML this year.
Think im gonna start a ML tonight and see how i fare, a change is as good as a rest as they say!
When I go to Edit > Players > Create Player I get a blank template with no registered position and every ability at 70. Is that what you saw as well?
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@Everyone: Check this Konami ridiculousness out — as a dedicated tinkerer always trying to get under the hood, I started several new ML careers with WE United just to see how they might be different. The most obvious difference was that they had different sponsors, one of which had me on a million pounds a year, with a 20k win bonus — double the win bonus of the others. So that ML career would have been a bit easier due to the extra loot. If I were starting an all-default career I’d hold out for that sponsor, for reals.
But here’s the crazy thing– the default players in the youth team didn’t always have the same abilities. They were close, but there was a random element as well, a bit like when you create a BAL player.
And this is where it gets all Seabass on us. In one of the ML careers — all my default youth players had 67 for every stat across the board, with the exception of Mentality, Teamwork and Aggression. WTF? Of course, that’s the career I’ll be having, thank you very much.
A) 67s are better than 52s, and
B) how weird is that?
I’m going to hammer on development for Minanda and Co. for a few seasons and see how they turn out. They might end up Premiership quality to be honest!
Any time you hear Konami say that they’ve improved the defense in a PES, here’s what it means:
“Player handling will be even clumsier and slower than last year.”
I’ve noticed two shocking problems that plagued PES 2009 that have not been addressed:
1. The inability of defenders to play the ball first-time inside their own box. They just won’t do it. If I’m mashing the clearance button, I don’t want my center back (or keeper for god’s sake) to trap the ball before attempting to punt it clear. Considering how clumsy player touch is in general, this is a recipe for disaster. It’s also the sort of play that gets defenders benched in real-life. The worse a team is, the more likely their back four will respond to any ball with a mighty hoof away from danger. In PES, it’s the opposite.
2. Keeper spills. I just played a game with 11 shots on goal, 5 of which were keeper spills, 2 of said spills providing the game’s goals. It’s over the top. Come on, Konami, sort it out!
#1—do you mean Verbeek? If so, he’s a really great find. He plays almost anywhere in midfield and up front. It took me some time to start getting the best out of him, as we’ll see in next week’s posts.
I love Gutierrez now after several years of regarding him as a fairly anonymous Defaulter. I have to say though that the constant post/bar-hitting thing in PES2010 (an unwisely ‘borrowed’ trait from FIFA) is keeping his goals in single-figures.
Paul—I think you’d enjoy the depth of the new Master League—it is PES2010 for me, and I suspect for many seasoned ML-ers. Just remember to stop and look at the team select screen (when the player list is displayed)—the option to choose the Defaults is at the bottom of the screen.
You’ve made me wish for my MM career on the excellent FIFA10 (the coming months will see me writing a lot about how the two games have diverged, I think). I’m loving ML so much though that I’m just going to go on and on until the end, if/when that comes. I’ve started loving ML so much again that I’ve got my PSP with me now at work, and I’m planning to play a few matches in my old PES2008(PSP) career. Just to be near ML, however briefly…
ck—yes to going with the across-the-board 70s. Here and now I’m not confident or experienced at all with stats and Editing (that could change if PES2010 needs a mass realism edit to extend its lifespan and I can’t get a neat PS3 file from anywhere). I thought it safer to just accept the 70s. I can always sell me/delete me if I threaten to unbalance the game.
Your findings re. the ML starts certainly are weird. Makes me kind of regret just going with my first-time setup, especially with the made-up teams etc. But I’ve started so I’ll finish.
Re. keeper spills, I’ve still not seen a groan-out-loud instance of it. I’ve been pretty impressed with them overall. Could it be another random seed thing? A 1-in-100 chance per match of a keeper doing that?
I think you’re having doubts about the game similar to my own week-1 doubts. I think we’ve all had them. Gameplay-wise it definitely isn’t all we’d hoped for (I still prefer the gameplay in the demo!).
It looks like I’ll have to get myself a PES 2010, after getting fed up with the last one.
I’m about to plunge for an XBOX 360 Arcade, and my first game purchase will definitely be PES. The new Master League features look very promising.
Adriano—hi there, good to hear from you and good to hear you’re taking the plunge on a 360. The new ability to fully install games to the HD means it’s not so unreliable these days. I hope you like PES2010, but beware—it can be an easy one. It’s not easy for me at the moment, but it can be very easy in other modes.
The new Master League is a brilliant development in PES, though, and like I’ve said already it is PES2010 for me.
You might want to look for a copy of the 360 version of PES6 as well. Should be very, very cheap. One of the best PESes I’ve ever played, and I never won a thing in its Master League over the space of 2 months’ play.
If you get the chance, check out FIFA08, or FIFA10’s demo at least. You’ll finally see what all the heretical fuss has been about over the past few years
One of the new additions that i like and IMO adds a little more depth are the sponsorship deals, the great thing about some of these are the fact that some of them come with clauses, some of the clauses include winning the Fa cup/europa league etc, however some of the more interesting ones include getting a certain player to be included in the team of the year or be the top scorer in the europa league I think this is what gives Pes the edge over Fifa. One bad Point though and i wish it hadnt been included……being able to sim the match, bad Konami, I just cant wait to sign the players ive being able to agree terms with. I am thinking of starting again as i feel i have cheated my way to where i am, maybe not cheated but definetly speeded things up too much
I’ve actually been playing a PES 2008 Master League with a bunch of mediocre players on my team, to make it more challenging, and I’ve been having fun mostly, except when there’s blatant scripting.
I did play PES 6 the other day, but I haven’t tried the Xbox version.
@ not-greg — I have had a much better set of games the last couple of days, no egregious keeper spills, and I’m getting my head around the game. But sadly, I’m just not convinced that this PES should get its crown back. ML is good, but it has a few massive flaws.
Why would you not make the teams in Div 2 editable? Really? Why not? It’s like Konami still doesn’t understand how and why we play their game.
That said, the depth as you’d mentioned is exhilarating, and I’m enjoying it so far. I felt like 08 and 09’s “fatal flaws” were evident somewhere between 50-100 games, and so far with 2010 I’m still in the feeling it out phase, learning its rhythyms, what it will give you.
i’m enjoying the ability to play carpet-ball up through the middle a la the Arsenal, something that I think is more present here than I remember it in the last edition (with its anemic passing).
But overall, it doesn’t make me not pine for PES 5/6 and the beautiful fluidity of play, which is what I’ll need my PES to do.
As we keep saying like a broken record, it’s on FIFA to give us the offline game mode to make PES a memory. Until then, we’re just caught between promises.
jamie—there’s so much in ML that I could be doing 2000-word posts every day since I started playing it and still not exhausted everything there is to talk about. I still haven’t talked about the focus point training, for just one thing. Or the sponsorship.
Come on, you can stop yourself simming matches easily enough! Just think of the ML tradition of playing every match yourself, and you’ll get over the urge. I did sim a meaningless match at the end of last season but immediately felt it was wrong somehow, that it was just not PES, that I ought to take my punishment and play my meaningless games no matter what. I haven’t done it again so far. I think I will, at some point, but only after my team is established. Until then I want to be there at every moment, personally supervising every kick of the ball.
Adriano—I remember you asking me what difficulty a replay showing a ‘wonder dribble’ goal was on in next-gen PES2008. You were amazed that it was on Top Player when it looked like a Beginner-level goal. I think if you stick to average players in your ML on the game you’ll have a decent time of it. Beware any of your players getting high speed and dribbling, though—they could kill your game.
ck—‘Master League is PES2010; PES2010 is Master League’: I’ve been trotting that line out in recent days and it’s true for me. Everything else in the game might as well not exist, for now anyway. It’s a good game, PES2010, and Master League is as exhilaratingly deep and wide and high as you point out. But I’ve pretty much come to accept that the more interesting spark of something different for PES in the next-gen that I saw in the PES2010 demo was either an illusion or, if real, was cynically expunged for the final release in order to hit the widest possible demographic. I’m still playing and enjoying it—it’s a worthy 7.5/10 game for me overall, and a 9/10 with Master League factored in (taking over, more like). All that can change. It takes me until I get a good team in Master League before I know the real value of a PES.
I love the passing game too! A lot of any frustration I feel with PES2010 comes when I try to play too direct, when I try to three-touch the ball up to get a scoring chance. The AI easily snuffs that kind of thing out. So I go back to PES basics, knock it around, enjoy the sensation of toying with the opponent, and just bide my time… it’s a beautiful game then all right.