Introduction
After years of disappointments, Konami has finally delivered a product again which deserves to be called Pro Evolution Soccer. While there are still many flaws, in part on the pitch, in part in the feature department (e.g. editing), we finally see them moving in the right direction. This couldn’t be said for the past iterations. So this article comes from a very positive perspective on the game as a whole. However, playing the myClub mode for almost a week now, it is time to have a critical look on it.
myClub vs. MLO
The MLO became a very popular mode when it was introduced – even with the above mentioned flaws in gameplay. The idea to start with a bad team and improve it while battling with other users for the crown was very addictive. However, after a certain period, the majority of opponents you’d face would have the same core of players. They had accumulated all the star and (or) all the fast players. This flood of highly gifted players within a team was seen as way too high by most people.
Instead of making changes to the MLO that would resolve this issue, Konami came around the corner with another concept. Now, in myClub, all transfers are random. You can only increase odds by selecting up to 3 regular agents or getting a top agent. The transfer system has been completely removed. They also introduce microtransactions with the ability of buying myClub Coins starting today. Talking about jumping on the EA bandwagon, eh? Sure, Konami as a company has all the right to improve their business and microtransactions are a superb profit generator in the gaming industry nowadays. But as a long time loyal customer, the implementation is very unfavorable.
Odds for getting your player
Let’s assume you would like to have Messi (or any other 80+ player – let’s say Gignac). What are the odds for getting this player? Since there is no chance to buy him somewhere as there is no transfer market, you would have to go hire a top agent. The top agent gives you 100% chance to land a 75+ player. However, the chance of getting an 80+ player are – as far as I can tell from the graphic – 16.67%. The (in-?)famous black ball is what you want to get out of the top agent draw.
When you are lucky enough to draw a black ball…. What are the odds to get your favorite player? There are 106 attackers rated 80+ in PES 2015 right now. So the chance of getting Messi is 0.94% - that is if you’ve drawn a black ball already, of course. The combined odd of drawing that player is less than 0.16%. To put this into perspective: You draw Messi (or any other player) in every 636 top agent draws. That’s 6,360,000 GP or 159,000 myClub Coins.
Odds for getting one player out of a defined pool
Now we are not going to focus on a single player. I might be happy enough to draw one of the super strikers: L. Messi, C. Ronaldo, Z. Ibrahimovic, A. Robben, R. van Persie, L. Suárez, G. Bale, E. Cavani, S. Agüero, R. Falcao, J. Mata, Neymar, W. Rooney, R. Lewandowski, C. Tévez, J. M. Callejón, D. Drogba, K. Benzema, D. Costa, G. Higuaín, T. Müller, M. Mandžukic, Niang, M. Balotelli, F. Quagliarella, Hulk, A. Griezmann.
Those are all 85+ rated forwards currently in the game. A pool of 27 players. Would be great for your team to have any of them, right?
So let’s hire our top agent again. Castolo, our good old friend, takes your 10,000 GP and goes to search for a player.
The odds for getting any one of the above players (27/106 times 0.1667) is roughly 4.25% - or every 23 draws (That’s 230,000 GP or 5,750 myClub Coins).
Talk about understanding the value of that digital pre-order bonus. While I “just” received Götze, Alaba and Neuer, the small odds for getting a player of this caliber make me happy with what I got. Surely, others were more lucky and got Ronaldo and Ibra. But this might just take me 1,200 Top Agent draws to land.
myClub Coins
The ingame curreny myClub Coins is planned to go live today. The prices are already known (EURO prices):
• 100 myClub Coins (€0.99)
• 250 myClub Coins (€2.49)
• 1050 myClub Coins (€9.99)
• 2150 myClub Coins (€19.99)
• 3300 myClub Coins (€29.99)
• 5800 myClub Coins (€49.99)
• 12000 myClub Coins (€99.99)
Ouch! Those are proud numbers. Coming back to the example above – if it takes exactly 23 draws to land one of the 27 strikers that are 85+ - that’s 5,750 myClub Coins equaling 50 Euros. Even worse, when you don’t hit one of those players, you are left with another player you might sell for 300 to maybe 800 GP in return.
If we take the other example of getting exactly one player out of those 80+ players – whether it’s Messi, Ronaldo or even Gignac if you’re an OM supporter – this player will come to your club every 636 draws on average (could be less, could be more, of course). 636 draws equal 6,360,000 GP and 159,000 myClub Coins. If you plan on opening your wallet – that’s 1,325 EUR.
A change of mindset is necessary – but is it sufficient?
While I also disliked the way the former MLO allowed to pile up top players, Konami took a different direction. Oh boy, have they taken an other direction! Driven by the economic axiom of maximizing profit, they went into a very user unfriendly direction. The loyal customer base that has lived through all these bad years gameplay wise are now there to be milked. Or is our mindset wrong? Shouldn’t we aim to get “our” dream team anymore and instead work with what we got? Sure, that makes it a totally new experience where I like the basic idea of. But is this what the majority really wants? Being happy to draw a player you even know? While I’m not too sure about this right now – not even for myself – I can’t oversee the fact that this design is unfavorable.
Even with a new mindset – let’s say I just work with what I get and that satisfies me. Now I have Neuer – his contract costs 3,800 GP or more than 100 myClub Coins. That’s more than 1 EUR for 10 games of having the best Goalkeeper in my team. Well, that’s expensive.
Maybe there will be special packages in the future, maybe you are able to spend 30,000 GP on an agent that will land you an 80+ player for sure. Maybe there will be agents that at least give you a certain position in return if your team badly needs an RMF. This would at least give you higher odds. But who knows what Konami has in store for us.
Conclusion
The combination of odds for drawing top players and the prices for the myClub Coins make it clear for me: Don’t buy it. I would hope that Konami have made it a prohibitive high price to keep people from stockpiling star players. But man, if someone is stupid enough to spend real money on this system (and people will, unfortunately), they are going to be ripped off badly. There isn’t even a market for players that can give you more in return than you spent. Even in the competitors Ultimate Team that’s more fair. You might hit that one TOTY Ronaldo that would get you Coins enough to draw gold packs until your thumbs are numb.
Whatever the odds are.
After years of disappointments, Konami has finally delivered a product again which deserves to be called Pro Evolution Soccer. While there are still many flaws, in part on the pitch, in part in the feature department (e.g. editing), we finally see them moving in the right direction. This couldn’t be said for the past iterations. So this article comes from a very positive perspective on the game as a whole. However, playing the myClub mode for almost a week now, it is time to have a critical look on it.
myClub vs. MLO
The MLO became a very popular mode when it was introduced – even with the above mentioned flaws in gameplay. The idea to start with a bad team and improve it while battling with other users for the crown was very addictive. However, after a certain period, the majority of opponents you’d face would have the same core of players. They had accumulated all the star and (or) all the fast players. This flood of highly gifted players within a team was seen as way too high by most people.
Instead of making changes to the MLO that would resolve this issue, Konami came around the corner with another concept. Now, in myClub, all transfers are random. You can only increase odds by selecting up to 3 regular agents or getting a top agent. The transfer system has been completely removed. They also introduce microtransactions with the ability of buying myClub Coins starting today. Talking about jumping on the EA bandwagon, eh? Sure, Konami as a company has all the right to improve their business and microtransactions are a superb profit generator in the gaming industry nowadays. But as a long time loyal customer, the implementation is very unfavorable.
Odds for getting your player
Let’s assume you would like to have Messi (or any other 80+ player – let’s say Gignac). What are the odds for getting this player? Since there is no chance to buy him somewhere as there is no transfer market, you would have to go hire a top agent. The top agent gives you 100% chance to land a 75+ player. However, the chance of getting an 80+ player are – as far as I can tell from the graphic – 16.67%. The (in-?)famous black ball is what you want to get out of the top agent draw.
When you are lucky enough to draw a black ball…. What are the odds to get your favorite player? There are 106 attackers rated 80+ in PES 2015 right now. So the chance of getting Messi is 0.94% - that is if you’ve drawn a black ball already, of course. The combined odd of drawing that player is less than 0.16%. To put this into perspective: You draw Messi (or any other player) in every 636 top agent draws. That’s 6,360,000 GP or 159,000 myClub Coins.
Odds for getting one player out of a defined pool
Now we are not going to focus on a single player. I might be happy enough to draw one of the super strikers: L. Messi, C. Ronaldo, Z. Ibrahimovic, A. Robben, R. van Persie, L. Suárez, G. Bale, E. Cavani, S. Agüero, R. Falcao, J. Mata, Neymar, W. Rooney, R. Lewandowski, C. Tévez, J. M. Callejón, D. Drogba, K. Benzema, D. Costa, G. Higuaín, T. Müller, M. Mandžukic, Niang, M. Balotelli, F. Quagliarella, Hulk, A. Griezmann.
Those are all 85+ rated forwards currently in the game. A pool of 27 players. Would be great for your team to have any of them, right?
So let’s hire our top agent again. Castolo, our good old friend, takes your 10,000 GP and goes to search for a player.
The odds for getting any one of the above players (27/106 times 0.1667) is roughly 4.25% - or every 23 draws (That’s 230,000 GP or 5,750 myClub Coins).
Talk about understanding the value of that digital pre-order bonus. While I “just” received Götze, Alaba and Neuer, the small odds for getting a player of this caliber make me happy with what I got. Surely, others were more lucky and got Ronaldo and Ibra. But this might just take me 1,200 Top Agent draws to land.
myClub Coins
The ingame curreny myClub Coins is planned to go live today. The prices are already known (EURO prices):
• 100 myClub Coins (€0.99)
• 250 myClub Coins (€2.49)
• 1050 myClub Coins (€9.99)
• 2150 myClub Coins (€19.99)
• 3300 myClub Coins (€29.99)
• 5800 myClub Coins (€49.99)
• 12000 myClub Coins (€99.99)
Ouch! Those are proud numbers. Coming back to the example above – if it takes exactly 23 draws to land one of the 27 strikers that are 85+ - that’s 5,750 myClub Coins equaling 50 Euros. Even worse, when you don’t hit one of those players, you are left with another player you might sell for 300 to maybe 800 GP in return.
If we take the other example of getting exactly one player out of those 80+ players – whether it’s Messi, Ronaldo or even Gignac if you’re an OM supporter – this player will come to your club every 636 draws on average (could be less, could be more, of course). 636 draws equal 6,360,000 GP and 159,000 myClub Coins. If you plan on opening your wallet – that’s 1,325 EUR.
A change of mindset is necessary – but is it sufficient?
While I also disliked the way the former MLO allowed to pile up top players, Konami took a different direction. Oh boy, have they taken an other direction! Driven by the economic axiom of maximizing profit, they went into a very user unfriendly direction. The loyal customer base that has lived through all these bad years gameplay wise are now there to be milked. Or is our mindset wrong? Shouldn’t we aim to get “our” dream team anymore and instead work with what we got? Sure, that makes it a totally new experience where I like the basic idea of. But is this what the majority really wants? Being happy to draw a player you even know? While I’m not too sure about this right now – not even for myself – I can’t oversee the fact that this design is unfavorable.
Even with a new mindset – let’s say I just work with what I get and that satisfies me. Now I have Neuer – his contract costs 3,800 GP or more than 100 myClub Coins. That’s more than 1 EUR for 10 games of having the best Goalkeeper in my team. Well, that’s expensive.
Maybe there will be special packages in the future, maybe you are able to spend 30,000 GP on an agent that will land you an 80+ player for sure. Maybe there will be agents that at least give you a certain position in return if your team badly needs an RMF. This would at least give you higher odds. But who knows what Konami has in store for us.
Conclusion
The combination of odds for drawing top players and the prices for the myClub Coins make it clear for me: Don’t buy it. I would hope that Konami have made it a prohibitive high price to keep people from stockpiling star players. But man, if someone is stupid enough to spend real money on this system (and people will, unfortunately), they are going to be ripped off badly. There isn’t even a market for players that can give you more in return than you spent. Even in the competitors Ultimate Team that’s more fair. You might hit that one TOTY Ronaldo that would get you Coins enough to draw gold packs until your thumbs are numb.
Whatever the odds are.
