Category Archives: negotiations

12 Monkeys

  By not-Greg | April 19, 2013 - 12:00 | , ,
60 Comments

PES5 got Camacho

I’ve played pre-season in my extremely casual dalliance with PES5(PC). Remember this…

PES5 calendar

Choosing how many pre-season games to play. I always choose based on how much money I think I’ll need to make up my Expected Earnings.

Speaking of which:

PES5 expected earnings

I had a nice cushion, but I wanted to buy some players.

I made an audacious-seeming bid for Camacho, who’s a pretty well-developed 20-year-old in this ML world right now. I made a Trade offer of Stein+6000, and was surprised when the bid was successful.

PES5 season X - team

Having Mathieu and Camacho at the same time probably violates some kind of Law of PES. So far, though, nothing spooky has happened. They’ve played together in the two pre-season matches without ill effect.

I picked random teams to play, and then deleted all but two—against Real Madrid and Auxerre.

By the way: how nice to hear Brookley and Bracking again on the commentary. (Sic, also by the way.)

I lost the Madrid game 0-1, and still needed to make up my Expected Earnings. Still getting the warning.

I romped to a 2-0 win againt Auxerre in the next friendly. Should have been 3-0. I got a penalty late on that I just knew, in the way that I always knew, would be missed—and indeed it hit the bar. Back in the day it was a notorious feature of the old-school PES games that they rarely used to ‘allow’ penalties to be scored if the scoreline and/or match momentum was generally going in your favour. Momentum, thy name is scripting.

2% proof

  By not-Greg | November 28, 2012 - 12:00 | , , ,
116 Comments

Season 6 is underway—almost. I’ve hit another busy portion of so-called ‘real life’, and only managed to play 4 Training Matches since Monday’s post. My first match of the season will be the Champions League playoff, first leg.

I’ve done all the preparation. I’ve changed my kits (that’s the new home kit above—check out Captain Coynborough’s alpha male power walk). I’ve looked at the pitiful few players that I’m allowed to sign. And I’ve wondered a lot about what difficulty to play the coming season on.

First things first: I cannot bloody sign anyone!

After a pretty successful season where I was in title contention until the last few matches of the season, scored more goals than any other team, and qualified for the Champions League, my club ranking went up from the mid-160s to… 126th in the world.

Which means that I still cannot sign any established players of note. This seems to be simply how Master League is this year.

Some people seem to think this is a cock-up by Konami, but I see it as a shrewd calculation on their part. Consider: they introduced a whole new training and customisation system. Let’s be charitable and imagine that they gave that system some extended and careful thought. To whit, precisely how the boots, items, and skill cards would work within Master League as the seasons rolled by.

They must have thought something like this: “Hang on, if players are arriving and leaving every five minutes, there won’t really be a proper incentive to leverage the new system and get the best out of it. Come on, guys, how do we make the ML player focus on the new system…”

The solution? Nerfing the transfer market. At least for the first 5-10 seasons or so. When you look at your ML world’s 2% likelihood transfers, you’re being directed to the shop, and you’re being told to work with the players that you have using what you find there.

It’s a game-balancing act that isn’t finding favour with many. I’m not too sure about it myself yet. (Whaaat? You mean I’ve got to work mostly with the players I have now? Awwww….) But I do think it’s supposed to be like this. No bugs or glitches here, I am convinced.

I did buy one player—BEBE, a decent 75 OVR, 26 years old. The best I could get. I’m going to need cover for the coming season.

I had 4 pre-season (or post-season, or whatever they are) Training Matches to get through. All played on Superstar difficulty, as a test.

I drew 1-1 with Besiktas. I beat PAOK 2-0. I beat Andlerlect 3-1. I lost the final one, against Galatasaray, 1-2.

There was cheating and scripting—of course. Straight-from-kickoff CPU powerplay scripts were much in evidence. But no more so than on Professional, it seemed.

Overall, the games were played at a sedate pace. I’m on 0-bar passing still, and have conceived a new respect for it. The last-third nerf hardly bothers me now, because I rarely try the kinds of passes that I know are risky. A Castolis or a Zerkovic can play a 20-yarder through to a striker for a turn-and-shoot. Coynborough can’t do the same very often.

Last year I felt instinctively at home on PES2012′s Superstar, as my rather amazed first post indicated.

PES2013 feels just as wonderful on Superstar. Slow and steady for periods, and then fast in quick bursts, as football really is. I’m a big fan all over again. I know they’re not necessarily any guide, but the Training Matches went well enough to convince me that I need to start the season proper on Superstar. The time has come.

I intend to play the first 5 matches of the season on Superstar as a trial. If I’m not destroyed by the AI, I will persist. But I will go back to Professional for another whole season if there’s any sign that once again my reach has exceeded my grasp.

My very first match of the season on Superstar, of course, would be the first leg of the Champions League playoff.

The fixture list popped up, and I looked eagerly to see who those opponents would be…

Bayern fucking Munich. Holy sh–

Back in the Premier League

  By not-Greg | November 12, 2012 - 12:02 | , , ,
104 Comments

So I’m back in the Premier League, and after a couple of seasons of non-traditional kits, I’m back in orthodox Sky Blue. Complete with an authentic (yes, that word again) 2012-2013 real-life PNG overlay. Credit for that to regular commenter Paul, who takes any reasonable requests over at PES Ultra.

Another commenter, Werd Llitrah, recently mentioned the old yellow Coventry City strip featuring the justly infamous late-70s/early 80s tramlines. That set me thinking. I still had Paul’s other PNG overlay sitting around from last year, and it’s not time yet to revisit the brown kit, so…

And thus kitted out, I set forth into the wilds of season 5.

The last time I paid a visit to the Premier League I was relegated immediately. I mistakenly went up to Top Player, enjoyed a single good opening session, but duly suffered the ignominy of near-total obliteration in session after session thereafter.

I went back to Professional after relegation, and on Professional I will now stay for another season at least, and probably longer.

I sold a few players pre-season. My new-look First XI and full squad is on the right.

Rafael went. Mehmedi went. Gellazca followed. I got a nice price for Berengeur. All in all, I built up a nice little nest-egg of around £7,000,000. I went shopping.

But there were no goods to be found anywhere. The only players I could have signed were like ones I already had. The bigger, better players were all way out of my reach. 1% and 2% likelihood of success.

Back to my own resources. The Youth list.

Iyaghsek (or whatever his name is) retired. I picked up a replacement GK from the Youth list. While I was there I helped myself to Hugo Leal at DMF as a straight replacement for Berengeur. I also signed Lurling. The main thing here was to bulk out my sparse squad.

I had some cash left over, but decided to sit on that for emergencies. At the end of this season, if my ranking goes up, I’ll spend the money then—and get players for season 6. I do find that I’m looking two seasons ahead in this Master League. As and when my ranking rises enough for me to be able to sign some better players, I want to have a nice little nest-egg ready to go.

The season kicked off and… it has been tough. Professional remains a highly competitive difficulty level for me, make no mistake. Here is the table—which looks rather alarming on the face of it:

That is indeed the bottom half of the table, and that is not a good start from yours truly.

But I’m not downcast. I’ve been consciously playing very loose-aggressive (in poker terms) from the start of these matches, trying to force things, and it’s not working. My approach will change—has already changed, with good results.

I had success in PES2012 when I started playing that game tight-passive, i.e., setting out to nullify the CPU with defensive tactics designed to get a 0-0, and then taking any scraps that fell my way (and they often did). In that way I imposed some discipline on the essentially chaotic, utterly unfair world of PES.

I am and remain at peace with the gameplay. Not for me the Dark Nights of the PES Soul that seem to be coming along all too frequently for so many. I think PES2013 plays a wonderful game of football.

It probably helps that PES is just one of three games I’m playing right now in roughly equal measure. The other two help to modify my attitude and perceptions.

Those other two games are Football Manager 2010 and Dwarf Fortress. Compared to the different demands of that pair, PES2013 is relaxing and soothing—even at its cheatiest worst.

And there is no doubt that PES2013 often plays most foully.

I went behind to Newcastle early on, but I dominated play thereafter, and then agonisingly squeezed myself back into the match midway through the second half.

Plenty of time left for me to get a much-needed winner, I thought.

But no—immediately after kickoff, and until the end of the match, the CPU flipped into some kind of powerplay mode. Now that it was 1-1, I couldn’t pass or dribble, suddenly. I went the whole of the rest of match without making a single chance, having made chances galore whilst 0-1 down. It was a stage-managed 1-1 draw. I really felt that.

Brought to heel

  By not-Greg | October 15, 2012 - 12:00 | , , ,
137 Comments

Hmmm, a stylish backheeled goal:

I enjoyed seeing that go in, but such goals are merely occasional sugary treats. No intent of mine caused that backheel flick. Anxiously stabbing the shoot button prompted a contextually-fired special event, nothing more.

I’m happy that we can score goals like that in a football game, but I don’t revel in them. They’re not what PES is about. I’m pretty glad they’re not more common than they are.

That goal from Rafael helped position him near the top of the top scorers’ chart, just behind a certain celebrated player with a most unfortunate name. Please, no Jimmy Savile jokes:

I have forged ahead and passed through the mid-season transfer window in season 2. All is going well, and I remain up near the top of the table, within striking distance of the promotions spots.

I’ve had enough of the made-up Konami teams now, and I want out of Division 2. I’m pulling out all the stops to get promotion. I remain on Professional difficulty, zero-bar passing.

The games are fascinating  and my passing game has come up to speed. God knows what the big teams of the Premier League would do to me, and I cannot even think about Top Player or Superstar difficulties right now.

For large swathes of the PES-playin’ nation, the honeymoon may be over (the phrase itself seems to be spreading like some kind of contagion), but not for me it’s not.

Each PES2013 play-session is composed of goodness, and each session is too short. I could happily play on and on for a lot longer, every time.

Zero-bar passing is no longer something I am struggling to cope with. Instead, it is now something that I feel a growing sense of accomplishment with. This has been a huge part of my early enjoyment of PES2013.

There’s my entire squad and First XI on the right.

Mehmeti and Rafael are my solid first-choice partnership up front. Minandinho is very much second-choice.

In midfield, Castolis, Zerkovic, Niellendner and Gellazca between then take care of my attacking threat.

Further back, I’ve moved my trusty dual-DMFs slightly forward to offer more of an attacking threat. I believe I have got the CPU in my pocket whenever it tries its notorious central through-ball. Can’t even remember the last time I got caught out by that one.

Coynborough is a solid DMF, but I sold his mate (begins with V? Vollekauwioc?). His replacement, Berenguer, is a decent French DMF with the Long Ranger shooting ability.

I also picked up a right-back, Mano, and sold Fizzlebender or whatever his name was.

Once again, I deliberately avoided getting as many players as I could have got. I want to leave myself as generous a financial cushion as possible for the post-season.

This team is slowly, but surely, taxiing along the runway. I’ve got some ‘Stage 2′ strikers, and I’m starting to fill out the rest of the team.

I’m thinking hard about promotion this season, How can I not think about it? I’m really tired of Konami’s stupid made-up Division 2 teams and players. They don’t inspire me.

I’d need two or three really good players to help keep me in the Premier League. That’s a long way off though. I’ve actually got to play better and pick up more positive results down here first. Too many late-conceded goals are costing me valuable points.