A few impressions:
- This year's ML is total bare-bones, there's probably less to it than to the ML in PES3. That's good because you can play a season (with skipping games) in 15-20 minutes, but bad because there is less to do. AFAIR the ML from a couple of years ago was really good, it was like FM-lite. The only thing I hated were the silly little cutscenes with the players chatting with you in your office.
- Club finances have been stripped to total basics. As long as you do not overspend on transfers, you are fine.
- You gain money from ticket sales, from a bonus based on your club ranking, and from bonuses based on competitions won. You lose money to salaries and transfers.
- You can fire players whom you don't need but can't sell with impunity to save on salaries.
- The transfer system has also been simplified. Basically, your chances of signing depend largely on your club's status. So with a garbage club you can only sign garbage players, and with a big club I suspect you can sign just about anybody.
- Player morale has been simplified. I get the impression that you will never lose a first-team player - he'll keep signing with you over and over even if you are at the bottom of 2nd Division.
- Youth development is a bit weird... In 4-5 seasons I still haven't received a godly youth player. But I've had a few recycle-jobs with ~70 skill plus a few special abilities at age 16. Since one can't specify player development curves in the edit mode, and one can't hire coaches in ML mode, I'm not entirely sure how player development works. I guess the more you play them the better they become and that's about it.
- In my first season I played every game until about mid-spring. I didn't lose a single game (I did do a few loads though), and the game played the same no matter whom I was facing. Me vs Milan played the same as Me vs PES United. After a certain point I dominated every game, but the enemy defenders would enter god-mode whenever I neared their box, my guys would miss countless sitters, and the enemy goalie would save tons of 100% goals. Most of my goals fell into three categories: a breakthrough with my quick SS buy Gelpi followed by a finish from 5-6 meters out; a through ball followed by a finish from 4-5 meters out; or a tap-in following rebounds from shots.
- I played like that for a while, but got bored, and started skipping games. I was knocked out of the cup but had a great enough advantage to win 2nd Division. Then I went to 1st Division and was relegated after winning only one game.
- You can never get fired. The option to manage other teams or national teams I find silly and unnecessary, but I guess its being there doesn't hurt.
- If you like to just buy players and watch them develop, which is what I like, here's a tip: whenever the "news" window pops up at the beginning of the week, click on the week's game and select your team. Otherwise the same guys would play all the time. I thought that choosing "select players without preference" in the "my team" menu would ensure automatic selection for all games - but no.
- The best selection choice - in terms of results from "skip game" - seems to be "by form."
- The ML is still pretty addicting... Since going from Nobody to CL Winner in 3 years seems easy if you do play the games, try to win the CL without ever manually playing a game, haha... Play PES-ML like FM. At least that's what I'll do. Though once I qualify for the CL, I might play from the quarter-finals on. Gotta try my team once in a while, after all.
