I’ve restarted Master League in PES2010. I believe that PES2010—with its spiffing, new-look Master League—was and still is the best that PES has been on the next-gen consoles. I know that it’s a minority opinion.
Contrary to what I said last time, I haven’t restarted with the Defaults. Instead, I applied a mind-bogglingly large Option File. I’m playing PES2010 ML career #2 with Coventry City in the Npower Championship, using all the real teams and kits. Barnsley, here I come.
Despite the comprehensive Option File, only a couple of Coventry’s players have their proper faces. Lee Carsley is the most notable lookalike. That’s one grim visage he’s got going up there.
I’ve never really enjoyed starting with the Defaults. I always relished the extra layer of difficulty, yes, but enjoyed? Not as such. It’s just an annual tradition that’s taken hold over the years. Having already put in my Default hours the first time around on this game, in 2009/10, I feel entitled to a change of routine for career #2.
It took me 40 minutes to transfer all the data from USB. Then I had to download a game update to resolve a compatibility issue. In all, it took 50 minutes. I used an OF called GTM Pro World that I found on PES Gaming. The unzipped size of the thing was about 100MB. Hundreds of player faces and kits had to be manually transferred, one by one. It’s the most thoroughly patched PES I’ve ever played—and I love it.
I’m playing on Top Player difficulty from the start. 10-minute matches. Classic players are on (I’ve yet to check whether the OF has unlocked all of them—I actually hope it has).
On the right is my First XI and formation—I’ve stuck with my traditional 4-3-3, for now.
Match 1 of the new career felt properly exciting and atmospheric.
It was against Leeds United. We lost 0-1, at home, not a good start to the campaign.
In action, my team feels a lot better than the Defaults usually do at this stage, so I’ve still got wild hopes of a first-season promotion to the Premier League. For now, it still gives me a thrill just to look at the table and see real teams in a real league structure.
Most of my players aren’t up to much. In this regard PES fulfils its traditional function of uncannily reproducing the individual feel of players and teams. I can’t see many of this CCFC squad still being with me in five seasons’ time.
When you start Master League with original squads, your Youth Squad is populated by Default players. My Youth Squad is no exception. One of the youngsters was a 17-year-old Castolo. As I discovered at the tail-end of my first career, The Myth as a teenager does eventually mature into a decent front player.
I snapped him up, even though there were others better than him (Minanda, Ceciu, etc.). The Myth is too strong.
Here in this new phase of PES Chronicles, I’ll be making a conscious effort to do two things that I often say I’m going to do, but almost never do:
- Keep the posts concise and to the point. I’ll be aiming for 350-500 words per post.
- Pay more attention to the nuts-and-bolts of Master League. I.e. player stats and formations and strategies.
We’ll see whether those two aims are compatible in the long run.
Looks good – hopefully it can keep you entertained until the Demo season begins in September. I’m glad that you finally gave in to the world of Mass Editing – it really does add to the feel of the game. I might be doing the Championship upload next season depending on how this season ends!
In PES 2011, I started a Master League career a few weeks back with the imaginary premise that West Ham had to sell all of their established players (to avoid bankruptcy), leaving mainly academy graduates. This left me with a team of:
GK: Stech
RB: Spector
CB: Palmieri
CB: Tomkins
CM: Noble
RM: Stanislas
LM: Collison
SS: Hines
CF: Sears
CF: Nouble
On the side, I signed a couple of the defaulters as teenagers. Castolo has actually been very good when he’s played. He has 4 goals and 7 assists in 14 games. He’s still only 17 (I think) so I have high hopes for him fulfilling the prophecy. Hopefully this career should give me a few months worth, although i’m 2 games away from the end of season one and have a 2 point lead at the top – so maybe not.
Liam—we’ll see how I get on with PES2010 going forward. I have to say a few niggles that I remember well from the game have started showing themselves (high speed, and what I can only call non-directional passing!), but hopefully I’ll overcome them.
I am loving the world of Editing now, yes. It really does add to the game, and I have maximum respect for all the hard-working Editors in the PES community who put these files together.
How many Master League careers do you start?! Do you ‘finish’ them all? If so, what’s your personal finishing point? A Treble, a title?
The Myth of Castolo developed into a perfectly decent 78-rated OVR player by the age of 21/22 in my long ML career on PES2010, so you should get good value out of him.
Hey Not-Greg im glad 2 c you’ve rediscovered your passion 4 master league even if u had 2 go bac 2 to the previous years’ game and that option file took quite a long time 2 finish but i think its going 2 be well worth it who knows sum of the local boys in your team might form the spine of your team in the seasons 2 come
Good times, as you know from applying the in depth option file to PES11 many months ago the hour spent setting it all up does greatly add to the immersion of ML.
Really Hope Konami add at least 1 extra division to next years ML mode, Ml needs a bit of a revamp i think and that would add a much greater challenge having to climb the divisions.
Dont blame you for shunning the horrid unresponsive world of the defaults this time round.
Bet it feels weird going back to PES10′s rigid passing mechanism now!?
Yeah, it probably seems like I have a few careers by my posts! I did one with real players that was too easy, then did the Pes United default challenge. Now on my 3rd career. Usually give them up after I’ve won everything or it gets too easy. Part of this one is to see if a created player (a 46 year old Ronaldo) will still be constantly purple after regeneration. As I’ve no doubt mentioned before, he’s my favourite ever player and with his recent retirement, I figured I’d build a master league around him and Castolo. Could be interesting!
Ryan—You might well be right. I like BAKER in my starting squad, but he’s 27. Out of all the others CARSLEY is a useful DMF, but just as with Baker, a bit old now.
Whatever happens, it’s good to be playing Master League again. It’s what I needed.
Paul—If I get time this afternoon (got the day off work, yippee) I might install an OF into PES2011 and bloody well play a few matches with it and see how it feels. I’ve got about 20 downloaded podcasts on my phone to start catching up on, so the time it takes to transfer the files would be well-spent.
PES2010′s passing felt fine when I road-tested the game with my old ML squad (all great players), but it feels less than fine with passes going all over the shop now. As I remarked last time, I’m open to the idea that all I need to do is restart ML in PES2011 and cross my fingers that the game doesn’t serve me up another duffer, and that everything will be as sunny as yourself and many others have said. If that’s what happens, this could be the biggest comeback since Lazarus. Stay tuned.
Liam—Go for it—that sounds pretty neat, a front two pairing of classic Ronaldo and The Myth. Keep us apprised of how it goes, particularly whether that constant purple thing stays the same or resolves itself. Like a battered wife, I’m slightly contemplating giving PES2011 just one more chance (see my last comment) and if I do, I plan to have classic players galore—unless the purple bug is a constant throughout.
Ooooh maybe a glimer of hope for PES11 yet then!!
it really does sound as if you got served up a duff master league last time round, not one injury in 10 seasons? deffo something up there!
This season alone ive had 1 player come off injured during a game and be out for 3 weeks and another player pick up a training injury and be out several weeks.
Ive had injuries in every season, several of them, luckily only one ever lasted more than 5 weeks.
Im the least patient person you will ever meet, and if I can play PES and ignore the annoyances then im pretty sure my game must differ from yours where you see them all the time like a slap in the face.
New ML, Base WENB OF, go from there, trial a few matches?
Liam, im pretty sure created players stay purple no matter what! I had a created regen, Eusebio, 94 OVR at age 18, he was purple still. I sold him after 6 months, hate not knowing what the true form of such players are!
Paul—just a glimmer, but it’s more than I would ever have thought possible this time last week. It’s the passing more than anything. If I could just get a ‘version’ of PES2011 going where the steparound only happens once per match if at all, and ditto for the stumble, I could live with PES2011, I really could.
Is this a good OF for PES2011? I was looking on PES gaming at the GTM one (their PES2010 OF is really good), but there’s a membership signup thing in the way. That one I found on WENB is their own OF plus a Championship add-on. I’ve already downloaded the latest version—it looks as if this is going to happen…
I just started my fifth season in ML 2011. I am still enjoying it immensely. I’m actually finding it quite a challenge, which for me is a breath of fresh air. Last season I finished in my highest position – 7th, and earned an automatic Europa League spot. It went down to the final game of the season where I managed a 2-0 win to sneak in on goal difference. I went out of the FA Cup for the 4th season in a row. I had a great campaign in the Europa League only to suffer devastating defeat in against Villareal in the semi-finals. In the first leg I was supremely dominant, but could only manage to score one goal, then in the final minute Giuseppe Rossi out of nowhere scored a screamer from an impossible angle. In the second leg I succumbed to another screamer from long-ranger and was unable to equalise. It felt a little scripted and I was a bit miffed about it, but that’s football.
My team is
Fatecha-Ruskin-Kadar-Palmieri-El Moubarki
Ince-Pelaez-Matsui-Shimizu
Schwarz-Bebe
Bench – Nikopolidis-Du Wei-Jong Yeol-Duffy-Oscar-Tulasne-Porokaev-Kerlon-Okaka
Palmieri, Shimizu and Schwarz are absolutely fantastic players. Schwarz not scoring enough but Shimizu chips in with enough goals to make up for it.
Grilled Seabass—it’s time for me to go the extra mile for PES, and put this controversy to bed once and for all. This afternoon I will retrieve my PES2011 disc from the grassy knoll where I flung it last week, apply a mammoth Option File whilst listening to Adam and Joe, set up a new ML career as CCFC in the Championship (just like the PES2010 one outlined in today’s post), and see what happens.
Schwarz I remember does have a ratings and performance dip once he hits his early 20s (especially if you have dynamic growth on), but it’s a testament to him that even a Schwarz operating at about 85% capacity is still a phenomenal PES player.
I’d love to restart ML and find out that, yes, it was a fluke of my initial setup all along, and there don’t have to be a dozen stumbles and steparounds every match. It would really be the best thing that’s happened to me in gaming for a long old time, if that were to happen.
@ Not-Greg – Only thing id be wary of in THAT OF that you linked to is that they are tinkering with stats alot, I had an NPower OF that changed stats and it really hampered my game play, to the point that it was FIFA like pressure and hurriedness. I ended up ditching it.
Also the ‘creating players over players’ thing … would that lead to Purple arrows galore?!
I have the latest WENB OF installed, no NPower addon, and im happy!
I think youd be extremely lucky to only see the step around, or, to use your phrase ‘half-moon-shuffle’ just ONCE a game, i think thats a firmly rooted animation in the PES engine, but doesnt really affect my game at all, at times can be quite useful, one thing id suggest though is just like R2, L2 (Close control) is your friend, i find it much more useful for bringing balls out of the air, tight turns and controlling a pass, and seems to nerf the step around quite a bit.
Hopefully you’ll see a fair few injuries too, how weird does that sound!!
Just remember to avoid the ‘advanced start bug’
Paul—thanks for the heads-up, I’ll have a look for an OF with the Championship that doesn’t mess around with stats etc.
At the moment Schwarz’ ratings are still steadily climbing but he does have a few blue arrows too many. The problem for me is mainly down to his lack of pace. I find it difficult to engineer space for good shooting opportunities.
Does anyone else have Shimizu? He really is the heartbeat of my team. The little man has great pace, passing, shooting and dribbling. I also bought the Speed Merchant card and he is able to wriggle past defenders and create opportunities.
I’d be astounded if this works not-greg; to me PES11 simply has a fundamentally awkward game engine, with its constant stumbling animations and poor shape (e.g. the dense, congested midfield/defence, and the way wide players automatically turn infield on receiving the ball). ML scripting might occasionally exacerbate this but can’t be the underlying problem.
Or can it? I’m still fascinated to hear what you discover…..
Grilled Seabass,
I have Shimizu as well, and, yes, he in the heart of my team. Last season he got 25 assists and 16 goals. Shimizu, Schwarz and Guttierez and are very good front trio for me. Schwarz scored 56 (!) goals last season (in 61 games, I think), but, you’re right, he can be very slow. Playing a good through-ball to him with Shimizu seems to work well as Schwarz can shoot much earlier than most of my other players and still trouble the keeper.
Grilled Seabass—do you have dynamic player growth on or off? If on, and if Schwarz’s stats are still climbing in the 5th/6th season, you must have some kind of enchanted copy of PES2011… Or your ML’s stars destinies are just plotted out differently (which would be better).
abbeyhill—for me PES2011′s numerous glitches and problems compounded the core game’s issues. I was never riled up about scripting per se. It was always the stumble, the step-around, the elephant touch, and a few other niggles. So many people have said those things aren’t issues at all in their games that I’ve become intrigued (again) to discover what the true situation is. Only a totally fresh install of PES2011, starting from the beginning, will do. I need to try this. It’ll all be covered in tomorrow’s post and likely Monday’s too (because I’m not so naive that I’d take a positive early session or two as signs of success).
Darshan—in my experience of PES2011′s Schwarz he could shoot from pretty much 35-50 yards out and stand a good chance of troubling the keeper. You should attempt your long-rangers with him.
Paul – are you still playing with 15 min matches? I started to find the scores in games going up to 4-3, 5-4 etc as my 4th season wore on
Chris – yeah still playing 15 min matches.
Ive had the odd 4-2, 4-3, 5-0 etc but all realistic, 10 min matches just seem too rushed now.
if it ever gets to the point that im winning by 4 or 5 goals every game then i will move to Top Player.