In which I finally win a Trophy
Season 3 in my Master League career on PES2010 is going to be BIG. Whichever way it goes, it’ll be remarkable. Either I’ll get promoted or I won’t. If I do, great: at last I’ll get my chance to mix it with the big boys. This is my 3rd season in Division 2 in this career; counting the career I abandoned, it’s my 5th season. And I’m weary of it. If I don’t get promoted, it’ll be one of my worst-ever lower-league performances in Master League.
I sold a staggering amount of players to accumulate money to spend on staff upgrades. Schwarz picked up a five-month injury in training. I thought: noooooo. But then an offer came in to buy him for £900,000 in the next week. I didn’t think twice. Goodbye, Schwarz. I went crazy on the selling front. I sold El Moubarki, Dalmat, Vahrua, Rivas, and Kim Jong Yeol. All of those hurt in some way. But it had to be done.
After a while of trying to play Master League in the traditional way, it seems to me that purchasing staff upgrades is at least as important as bringing new players. In the old days you simply got a few new players in season 1. This enabled you to incrementally inch your way towards a slightly better team that could consistently get enough results to enable you to afford a few more good players, who were slightly better than the ones before, and who in turn enabled the team to rise another notch or two… and so on. Rinse and repeat.
In PES2010, that model still exists, to be sure. But it’s now complemented by the backroom staff, who must be upgraded if the team are to operate anywhere beyond the very, very basic level that they operate on to start off with.
I had loads of cash from all the sales. I went crazy on the staff upgrades. My main Coach went up to level 3, and all the others (including the Scout and the Youth Team, but not the fan club) went up to level 2. I had enough money left over to bring in DUFFY (from the Youth Team) and NOT-GREG (i.e. my created player from Edit mode). not-Greg is a fairly mediocre attacking midfielder right now, but I’ve got high hopes for the bald man.
And so the season kicked off. And I started very well. The staff upgrades really make the game feel smoother. The players felt slightly more responsive. The form arrows for once are mainly green, with only a few blues and purples. For some matches, I have most players on orange arrows, and ZERO blue/purple arrows, anywhere. If I ever start Master League again, I’ll know what to prioritise next time.
I scored a great goal with Pelaez in an early match. This was from a ridiculous distance out and I was amazed when the ball just kept going, and going, and going. At the end of the match I was awarded the Long-Ranger Trophy (I’m playing on PS3):
Link: 
I forgot to change my team’s strips for the new season. It’s one of my traditions to have a new kit every season in Master League. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule. It’s something I like to do, not something I need to do. I’m sure we all have our Master League rituals. I only realised I’d forgotten about the kits when watching the replay of the Pelaez goal. It was 50/50 whether I’d bother changing the strips at all now. In the end I did go ahead with the change. I came up with a Croatia-style home shirt (with a solid blue panel on the back, as pictured). I went for a mostly plain black away kit. I’ve ditched the chest logo for now.
It’s been a good start. Not many goals scored again, but enough… After 7 matches I’m top of the table for the first time. It feels, and I have to say looks, very good. Is this the season?
This is it, this is the season!
Good start, nice work on the long ranger award, I still haven’t got that, though this game has the potential for some ridiculously long range goals.
Played about 8 games in Division one last night, worked really hard for everything I got, only for the game to freeze when I tried to save it.
Gutted
That was a nice goal fella, the camera angle from behind the player really shows the flight of the ball well.
I see its all starting to click into place for you in the ML world. I shall be sure to upgrade my staff the first opportunity i get, gonna crack on with my halted ML career now my FIFA MM season has come to an end with the not-so-mighty Coventry City!
Liam—why not enable auto-save? There are few things worse in gaming than forging ahead and making progress only for a glitch or powercut or freeze to rob you of it all at a stroke. Auto-save solves it all and at the very worst you lose 1 match.
I back up my saves to USB after every session as an added precaution against my repaired PS3 breaking down again. (Update on that situation: now nearing 70 hours of PES2010, and the repaired console is still going strong. So glad now I spent £70 at Console Doctor instead of £250 or whatever on a new PS3.)
Paul—it’s only the start of the season, and it’s a long season in a large D2 this year…
dodgy keeping – the goalie seemed to be looking and shuffling in the wrong direction for a while after Pelaez hit it! Anyway, your absorbing ML posts and everyone’s comments over the last few weeks have persuaded me to buy PES10. Just £18 for the PC version, can’t go wrong! Will be interesting to get back into it, as I never bothered getting PES09 after the previous year’s atrocity
not-Greg,
Hang on to Duffy until he’s about 80 OVR. I just sold him for $6mi!
Is it just me or is the negoatiations bit the most exciting part of Master League. Yeah, playing the actual matches is fun too, but there’s something about getting absurd offers for your players, selling them, and then developing another superstar, and selling him for ridiculous money too, not to mention the whole balancing act it takes to keep your club’s finances in check.
abbeyhill—on most of these long-rangers the keepers look clueless. I suppose it’s all part of the wilful suspension of disbelief…
The difference between PES2010 and the PES-that-must-not-be-named of two years ago is pretty major. Looking back I had PES2008’s gameplay was transparent in the first few sessions. I’m still not used to PES2010’s little ways, and I’ve now been playing for 70+ hours. Admittedly I’m an unusual case (everybody in the whole world can get promotion from D2 in season 1, or at worst in season 2, except me).
Adriano—I’ve already seen enough of Duffy’s quality to know I’m never letting him go. I’ve just sold another young player for a ridiculous amount—20 times his value—so I see what you mean about the inflated transfer fees. Despite this I’m still struggling to keep my books balanced, but this is all to come in posts over the next week.
Not-Greg- Value actually refers to what their value as a salary is. In other words what you SHOULD be paying them. Salary refers to their actual salary. There is no transfer value displayed for some reason.
patrick222—really? I’ll have to have a close look at the top players in-game and see how that stacks up. If true (I don’t doubt you, but just need to see this for myself), out of all the mysterious Konami eccentricities that have been made manifest in PES through the years, it’d be one of the strangest.
I think value refers to how much you can expect to play for that player if your club is ranked about the same as the club he’s in. If your club is ranked lower, expect to pay much more than that. Or maybe it’s the least you can expect to pay for him, like if your club is ranked way above the player’s team.
Adriano—it’d be damn peculiar if there’s no overall value associated with a player. There certainly was even in the days of Points being the currency. My PES session today will be an evening one so I can’t check until later.
patrick222—I’ve had a good look at the players’ values in ML now and I’m pretty sure the Value is the Transfer Value. The value is referred to as Market Value in the Advanced Search. Granted the likes of Messi, Rooney etc are ‘only’ at £7m or so, which could be interpreted as their salary value, but it seems that’s just where bidding for their services (if I ever get that far) would begin. I.e. they’d both probably go for £30m+ eventually.
If you take a look at the market news tab during the transfer window, you’ll see that there are transactions exceeding $30m all the time going on. I don’t remember who it was, but someone fetched $70m+, and it wasn’t eevn any of the big stars. I do remember seeing Hulk going from Palermo to Arsenal for $40m+. Crazy stuff.
I’m signing above average players for less than $500k all the time, and so far I have never paid more than $1m for any player. The most expensive one was Valencia whom I picked up for about $900k (that’s his salary) off the free agent group (totally worth it).
I can honestly say that you don’t need the multimillion dollar/pound stars in your team to win the treble. Just like in real life, a good team with at least a couple of quality players in each position can get you very far.
If anyone cares for players suggestions, here’s some quality cheap players to look out for: Jonathan CF, Koita AMF/SS, Contout SMF/CF, Schwiebe DMF, Pollican CMF, Saban SB, Youshkin SB, Craigan CB, Braulio CF.
Adriano—I keep checking for Jonathan but he’s yet to appear. When he does I’ll swoop for him. Any sign of Kim Cyun Hi in your game yet? He’s still not in mine. At the moment I’m just snaffling up any decent 70-odd OVR players I can get and trying them out for a bit before moving them on. I’ve yet to really settle on a core squad—particularly in attack—for more than a season. Perhaps that could be my trouble. Not getting the right players, and not sticking with them.
I got Jonathan from the free agent group. He was 28 or 29 already. You can also try and get his twin brother Braulio, both excellent and cheap.
I agree that the lack of teamwork may be causing you a lot of trouble. Try to hang on to the same starting eleven for at least one season to see what happens, maybe?
Adriano—over the course of a whole season in the previous PES games an ML team would knit together and start playing well with high teamwork. In fact it would usually only take 5-10 matches. I wonder if that same formula has been carried over to the new ML? Or has it been changed like so much else? The more I play this new ML the more impressed I am at the loving attention it’s received for this mammoth update.
I’d love to believe that in the game, like IRL, sometimes a group of players just don’t develop that “chemistry” that make them all click together. Some teams just don’t happen, and you have to change your lineup. I don’t know if this is what’s happening to you. However, I did notice that sometimes it takes certain players more than a season to make a breakthrough for me, and gain a spot in the starting eleven, while others start out great, but then start putting in worse performances until I have to drop them.
Adriano—by now in years past I’d have had at least two or three players come in who would have secured a regular starting spot in the team and made themselves a ‘name’ in my PES history. I can think of Folan and Gambino from the past two years alone. I got both of them in the first season or two and they both became fixtures, and both were remarkable enough for me to remember them off the top of my head to this day. So far in PES2010’s ML I haven’t got a new player quite like that, although watch out next week for one newbie who could be more than just a squad-filler.