https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7gGEedNElg
What I am hoping and expecting to see on this year’s PES
With PES closing the gap between the two by creating much more convincing gameplay making a stale sluggish FIFA seem even less authentic, this gives PES a real opportunity to get back into the game.
So we have seen the unveiling of PES, so far they have revealed the gameplay, the already steller gameplay is getting more improvements, such as much needed improved goalkeepers, even more animations and improved graphics and more, upping the authenticity of the players on an already great looking, great feeling and authentic PES.
They have also confirmed that there will be a day one roster update with regular roster updates this time round and said they will not make the same mistake as last year. Thank god, because honestly, it was a huge mess up to release a brand new sports game without the latest squads, quite baffling actually.
So far there is already a lot to be excited about for this year’s upcoming PES. I have full confidence that the gameplay is going to awesome this year, as PES 2016 had fantastic gameplay, not perfect but the flaws now have been improved supposedly.
However there are things that they have not spoke about yet, things that must be improved and something I expect to see.
Master League improvements – This mode has potential, there already is some very innovative ideas here and there’s things here that make it better than FIFA’s Career Mode in some ways. The perk like player roles is a great feature and certain presentation features such as player of the year award, and the news stories that come up where it captures an actual moment that happens in the game is really cool. The certain prompts you get back from your head coach are also interesting and actually have potential to have even more depth. However it had many shortcomings by missing so many basics and getting a lot of the basics wrong.
For example, it seems like the mode still has it’s Japanese roots that feel untrue to football. Why does it not show how many played games there are on the league table? Why are the points on the left? Something so simple yet still not resolved. Why does it not tell you what day it is? It tells you the date but doesn’t tell you what day it is. It also doesn’t tell you what the kick off time is. Something so small that actually makes a difference when not there. It is also frequently night time during league games on the weekend (from sometimes looking up what day it is from the date, yes sad I know) which I find irritating. It breaks the immersion. Also players are paid yearly, I understand the game design idea behind this as it makes it easier for you to manage finances as the idea is that you control the finances of the club and earn money from playing home games in different competitions, which is cool and makes the incentive of playing in the champions league greater because you earn more money through ticket sales. However can you at least put a filter to be able to look at how much a player would earn a month? That way I can judge if I believe that player’s contract is overpriced or not.
Another strange idea they have is why do you not have any freedom on how much you offer for a player anymore? I also would like to see the AI offer more tempting sums from a more believable club too. Seeing Nice from the French league offer money for Rooney for example is not realistic.
Also one HUGE thing missing from the game. Injuries, I never received an injury. No training injuries and no injuries in game. I would like to see training injuries happen, it would make squad depth actually truly important. The condition and fatigue isn’t enough reason to have a big squad. Having injuries is actually a game changer, you have to rethink about what your team plans are. I would love there to be a frequency/difficulty option on injuries. IE on the options menu, I wish there was an option to change injuries to be frequent or average or infrequent. This for me is one of the biggest missing features in Master League. Something I really hope to see in PES 2017.
My Club Overhaul – I want to be constructive here and not too harsh, but this mode was dreadful in recent PES games. It was a complete rip off of FIFA Ultimate Team but lacked many important features or abilities from Ultimate Team. One of the biggest flaws that completely ruins the mode is the lack of transfer market, you cannot trade players and cannot buy players from a market place. This means you have absoulute zero control on what your team is. This means that the whole team you have, is a team randomly made rather than a team truly of your choice. Yes you can choose who to take from packs and who not to but that is more out of compromise because you don’t have anyone better rather than actually truly wanting the player in most cases. The transfer market in FIFA UT is actually the save and grace of the mode to be honest, it is the only thing that allows you to avoid the stingy and unfair packs where the odds are completely against you in UT. It is practically gambling.
Fortunately the packs in PES my club are nowhere near as unfair but it is still random. Forcing the whole mode around packs makes the whole mode random and uninteresting because of it. This is a real shame because the PES player ID aka the player likeness is far superior to FIFA and would make this mode and the idea of a fantasy team pretty interesting if you had the freedom to make a team you want.
Competitions are incredibly stale too, something FIFA UT isn’t great for either and something PES my club could have capitalised on. The user interface also needs a huge revamp, it looks very generic. The whole my club marketing interface and just everything about my club looks generic and is generic. The mode has potential if some real attention was given to it.
Ability to import user made data files/save games – It was a huge step forward having the ability to import user made image files on PS4. It is almost a game breaker without it as no licences hurts the authenticity of the game, allowing us to finally be able to download real licenced kits of all the unlicensed teams made by the community was a big win. They are done so well they look exactly to the level of detail of the licenced teams on PES or FIFA. The downside to this however was that you needed a lot of time on your hands as the process was time consuming. Thankfully it was easy to do but it still took time and you had to apply them to teams one by one. Having the ability to download user made data files like the PS2 days would mean, it would be all done for you and the team names would be renamed to the correct name without you having to manually do it.
Xbox One having the ability too – Xbox one users were left in the dark on last years PES by not having the ability to port custom user made images from the Internet to the console. Microsoft have a policy not allowing users to port files to the console, just like Sony do too, however Sony worked with Konami to work around that issue to make an exception with PES, however the same could not be said with Microsoft and Konami. Hopefully this year Xbox One PES players will be able to do what PS4 users could do, otherwise this will really hurt sales for anyone that only owns an Xbox One.
More stadiums and possibly a stadium creator – There is no denying that PES 2016 has a severe lack of stadiums, which really kills the immersion for me. I understand that a lot of stadiums being in the game comes down to licencing, however there is no restrictions on being able to build generic stadiums mimicking real life stadiums. I understand it takes time to develop this and the priority is rebuilding the game, and gameplay is the number one importance, but more stadiums would be nice and is needed. Failing that, an in-depth stadium creator would be awesome but that is something I highly doubt we will be seeing this year.
Giving PC the same version as the Console versions – I know it can’t be easy for developers to get console games running on PC or vice versa, however it is hugely important for the success of PES in my eyes. With PC gaming growing massively, it’s now become a huge market missed out on if you do not give the platform the attention it deserves. One huge benefit a PC PES would have if it had the latest PS4/Xbox One version of PES is mods. The lack of stadiums and content crisis could be mostly solved if the PC version of PES had the same slick awesome gameplay of the current gen console versions of PES. Imagine playing the PS4 version of PES on a PC with community created stadiums having every single premier league stadium in PES? That would be awesome but unfortunately it’s just a pipe dream unless Konami manage to do it. I strongly suggest getting another development team to work alongside the main developers of PES to do it.
Huge Online improvements
Again I don’t want to be too harsh but the online on PES is dreadful. The online menu’s are confusing and to play a simple 1v1 is a chore. The gameplay experience is also appalling because there seems to be lag or delay in every game. This really hurts the gameplay of PES because the responsiveness and style of gameplay is tailored to be instant. Having delay really screws up a move and makes PES really difficult to play. FIFA is far more forgiving when there is lag but on PES is breaks the game and ironically the connection quality is far worse on PES. I personally enjoy playing football games more offline anyway but in the day and age we live in, online is important. We don’t live in a day and age where you invite your mate over for a game anymore, we play online and that’s just not possible on PES in my opinion. This needs to change.
At least two of these headers should be corrected and I expect some of them to be checked off. It may be asking a lot for all of this to happen in just one year, but I do hope they have acknowledged that these are the key areas that need improvement and are the areas that set back PES from being a truly remarkable game, despite how good the gameplay is.
What I am hoping and expecting to see on this year’s PES
With PES closing the gap between the two by creating much more convincing gameplay making a stale sluggish FIFA seem even less authentic, this gives PES a real opportunity to get back into the game.
So we have seen the unveiling of PES, so far they have revealed the gameplay, the already steller gameplay is getting more improvements, such as much needed improved goalkeepers, even more animations and improved graphics and more, upping the authenticity of the players on an already great looking, great feeling and authentic PES.
They have also confirmed that there will be a day one roster update with regular roster updates this time round and said they will not make the same mistake as last year. Thank god, because honestly, it was a huge mess up to release a brand new sports game without the latest squads, quite baffling actually.
So far there is already a lot to be excited about for this year’s upcoming PES. I have full confidence that the gameplay is going to awesome this year, as PES 2016 had fantastic gameplay, not perfect but the flaws now have been improved supposedly.
However there are things that they have not spoke about yet, things that must be improved and something I expect to see.
Master League improvements – This mode has potential, there already is some very innovative ideas here and there’s things here that make it better than FIFA’s Career Mode in some ways. The perk like player roles is a great feature and certain presentation features such as player of the year award, and the news stories that come up where it captures an actual moment that happens in the game is really cool. The certain prompts you get back from your head coach are also interesting and actually have potential to have even more depth. However it had many shortcomings by missing so many basics and getting a lot of the basics wrong.
For example, it seems like the mode still has it’s Japanese roots that feel untrue to football. Why does it not show how many played games there are on the league table? Why are the points on the left? Something so simple yet still not resolved. Why does it not tell you what day it is? It tells you the date but doesn’t tell you what day it is. It also doesn’t tell you what the kick off time is. Something so small that actually makes a difference when not there. It is also frequently night time during league games on the weekend (from sometimes looking up what day it is from the date, yes sad I know) which I find irritating. It breaks the immersion. Also players are paid yearly, I understand the game design idea behind this as it makes it easier for you to manage finances as the idea is that you control the finances of the club and earn money from playing home games in different competitions, which is cool and makes the incentive of playing in the champions league greater because you earn more money through ticket sales. However can you at least put a filter to be able to look at how much a player would earn a month? That way I can judge if I believe that player’s contract is overpriced or not.
Another strange idea they have is why do you not have any freedom on how much you offer for a player anymore? I also would like to see the AI offer more tempting sums from a more believable club too. Seeing Nice from the French league offer money for Rooney for example is not realistic.
Also one HUGE thing missing from the game. Injuries, I never received an injury. No training injuries and no injuries in game. I would like to see training injuries happen, it would make squad depth actually truly important. The condition and fatigue isn’t enough reason to have a big squad. Having injuries is actually a game changer, you have to rethink about what your team plans are. I would love there to be a frequency/difficulty option on injuries. IE on the options menu, I wish there was an option to change injuries to be frequent or average or infrequent. This for me is one of the biggest missing features in Master League. Something I really hope to see in PES 2017.
My Club Overhaul – I want to be constructive here and not too harsh, but this mode was dreadful in recent PES games. It was a complete rip off of FIFA Ultimate Team but lacked many important features or abilities from Ultimate Team. One of the biggest flaws that completely ruins the mode is the lack of transfer market, you cannot trade players and cannot buy players from a market place. This means you have absoulute zero control on what your team is. This means that the whole team you have, is a team randomly made rather than a team truly of your choice. Yes you can choose who to take from packs and who not to but that is more out of compromise because you don’t have anyone better rather than actually truly wanting the player in most cases. The transfer market in FIFA UT is actually the save and grace of the mode to be honest, it is the only thing that allows you to avoid the stingy and unfair packs where the odds are completely against you in UT. It is practically gambling.
Fortunately the packs in PES my club are nowhere near as unfair but it is still random. Forcing the whole mode around packs makes the whole mode random and uninteresting because of it. This is a real shame because the PES player ID aka the player likeness is far superior to FIFA and would make this mode and the idea of a fantasy team pretty interesting if you had the freedom to make a team you want.
Competitions are incredibly stale too, something FIFA UT isn’t great for either and something PES my club could have capitalised on. The user interface also needs a huge revamp, it looks very generic. The whole my club marketing interface and just everything about my club looks generic and is generic. The mode has potential if some real attention was given to it.
Ability to import user made data files/save games – It was a huge step forward having the ability to import user made image files on PS4. It is almost a game breaker without it as no licences hurts the authenticity of the game, allowing us to finally be able to download real licenced kits of all the unlicensed teams made by the community was a big win. They are done so well they look exactly to the level of detail of the licenced teams on PES or FIFA. The downside to this however was that you needed a lot of time on your hands as the process was time consuming. Thankfully it was easy to do but it still took time and you had to apply them to teams one by one. Having the ability to download user made data files like the PS2 days would mean, it would be all done for you and the team names would be renamed to the correct name without you having to manually do it.
Xbox One having the ability too – Xbox one users were left in the dark on last years PES by not having the ability to port custom user made images from the Internet to the console. Microsoft have a policy not allowing users to port files to the console, just like Sony do too, however Sony worked with Konami to work around that issue to make an exception with PES, however the same could not be said with Microsoft and Konami. Hopefully this year Xbox One PES players will be able to do what PS4 users could do, otherwise this will really hurt sales for anyone that only owns an Xbox One.
More stadiums and possibly a stadium creator – There is no denying that PES 2016 has a severe lack of stadiums, which really kills the immersion for me. I understand that a lot of stadiums being in the game comes down to licencing, however there is no restrictions on being able to build generic stadiums mimicking real life stadiums. I understand it takes time to develop this and the priority is rebuilding the game, and gameplay is the number one importance, but more stadiums would be nice and is needed. Failing that, an in-depth stadium creator would be awesome but that is something I highly doubt we will be seeing this year.
Giving PC the same version as the Console versions – I know it can’t be easy for developers to get console games running on PC or vice versa, however it is hugely important for the success of PES in my eyes. With PC gaming growing massively, it’s now become a huge market missed out on if you do not give the platform the attention it deserves. One huge benefit a PC PES would have if it had the latest PS4/Xbox One version of PES is mods. The lack of stadiums and content crisis could be mostly solved if the PC version of PES had the same slick awesome gameplay of the current gen console versions of PES. Imagine playing the PS4 version of PES on a PC with community created stadiums having every single premier league stadium in PES? That would be awesome but unfortunately it’s just a pipe dream unless Konami manage to do it. I strongly suggest getting another development team to work alongside the main developers of PES to do it.
Huge Online improvements
Again I don’t want to be too harsh but the online on PES is dreadful. The online menu’s are confusing and to play a simple 1v1 is a chore. The gameplay experience is also appalling because there seems to be lag or delay in every game. This really hurts the gameplay of PES because the responsiveness and style of gameplay is tailored to be instant. Having delay really screws up a move and makes PES really difficult to play. FIFA is far more forgiving when there is lag but on PES is breaks the game and ironically the connection quality is far worse on PES. I personally enjoy playing football games more offline anyway but in the day and age we live in, online is important. We don’t live in a day and age where you invite your mate over for a game anymore, we play online and that’s just not possible on PES in my opinion. This needs to change.
At least two of these headers should be corrected and I expect some of them to be checked off. It may be asking a lot for all of this to happen in just one year, but I do hope they have acknowledged that these are the key areas that need improvement and are the areas that set back PES from being a truly remarkable game, despite how good the gameplay is.
