eFootball (All Platforms)

Jay-Jay 10 said:
You see this on a lot of Free2Play games and usually users from certain countries, where Free2Play mechanics are more accepted or often the only way they can play some games.
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Its so sad tho. I feel like a grumpy old guy reminiscing the past, but I feel truly sorry for these kids (I assume they are kids).
The grind is one of the best things about the old football games. The feeling of reward when you were eventually able to afford a player, who had only 5 points higher overall than the rest of your team and yet he was making huge difference. The decisions that you had to make - whether to make your attack stronger, or midfield, or defense. Whether you go for a bloke that can shoot, or fast one that cant aim to save his life. The feeling of reward when you started scoring goals and winning matches..
They dont know any of it. Its basically collecting stickers now, where the actual matches are only in the background.
And it brings them more fury than joy.
Its sad.
 
Emroth said:
Its so sad tho. I feel like a grumpy old guy reminiscing the past, but I feel truly sorry for these kids (I assume they are kids).
The grind is one of the best things about the old football games. The feeling of reward when you were eventually able to afford a player, who had only 5 points higher overall than the rest of your team and yet he was making huge difference. The decisions that you had to make - whether to make your attack stronger, or midfield, or defense. Whether you go for a bloke that can shoot, or fast one that cant aim to save his life. The feeling of reward when you started scoring goals and winning matches..
They dont know any of it. Its basically collecting stickers now, where the actual matches are only in the background.
And it brings them more fury than joy.
Its sad.
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I so wholeheartedly agree with this, and it's not just nostalgia - it's the act of building something from scratch and battling against adversity, which just isn't a part of mainstream sports games any more (because of the risk of "I'm bored this is hard").

Anyone who played and loved PES will tell you a key part of the experience was having a terrible default ML team and having to work your arse off to even get a point in most first-season games, desperately hanging on to every transfer window to then (with as much savvy and as little money as possible) bolster the weakest areas of the team.

As a result, you felt connected to the way your team evolved - remembering key players fondly, and even key goals. It's a key part of the reason that PES outsold FIFA, in my opinion; a real connection to your team/save.

Now, developers are aware of the risk that people (I'm tempted to say "kids") will just get bored before any of that happens, get beat twice in a row and switch the game off... even though that's what the difficulty level is supposed to be for.

They're also aware that most will start with their favourite top-flight team and want to play with superstar names they know, than e.g. start unemployed with entirely unknown players (something I do in Football Manager, and something I'd absolutely love love love to do in FIFA/PES).

If the audience can't win and feel joy, fast - and be given free stuff - there's a risk they'll switch off, so I can never see this changing. Not in a mainstream football game anyway. It totally sucks but there it is.

(It's not even just PES, by the way... Even FUT started out with everyone having "bronze" players and having to really grind/work their way up. Even I played, and enjoyed, FUT at the start - because everyone had to start at the bottom, and the best thing for me was seeing really scrappy games where the winner was the guy who managed to hit the fewest terrible passes, whereas in the modern games there is no such thing as a terrible pass.)
 
Chris Davies said:
Anyone who played and loved PES will tell you a key part of the experience was having a terrible default ML team and having to work your arse off to even get a point in most first-season games, desperately hanging on to every transfer window to then (with as much savvy and as little money as possible) bolster the weakest areas of the team.
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THIS...I always do this, along with a fire-sale of the crappier defaults and then a re-build from the youth team and non-contract players. As and when the latest evo-web patch gets released, I'll be doing it all again.
 
Spursfan07 said:
I remember Bhatti on its Twitter: “paying for what you want” that was like 2 years ago
When will we finally see something for the offline people like leagues and cups to play??
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Chris Davies said:
It's not even just PES, by the way... Even FUT started out with everyone having "bronze" players and having to really grind/work their way up. Even I played, and enjoyed, FUT at the start - because everyone had to start at the bottom, and the best thing for me was seeing really scrappy games where the winner was the guy who managed to hit the fewest terrible passes, whereas in the modern games there is no such thing as a terrible pass
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This is it. I wasnt really thinking about offline when I wrote my post.
I understand that online is where the companies are putting all the resources these days. Where the money is. Especially in F2P games.
But look at any successful multiplayer games - its the grind that keeps people playing. Grind that they hate and love at the same time.
I really wouldnt mind if we had a decent online only football game that would start you at the very bottom and let you have fun with unknown players.
Where all people would have different teams and matches were interesting and scrappy. Where I could just sit in some bronze league, having a blast from time to time.
There's still money to be made if you keep people interested and engaged without encouraging them to gamble for superstars. They could sell cosmetics. Kits/stadiums/tattoos, whatever.
Otherwise you are ending up with empty, shallow game were all teams are the same, matches are boring and no one really wants to stick around.
 
Emroth said:
Its so sad tho. I feel like a grumpy old guy reminiscing the past, but I feel truly sorry for these kids (I assume they are kids).
The grind is one of the best things about the old football games. The feeling of reward when you were eventually able to afford a player, who had only 5 points higher overall than the rest of your team and yet he was making huge difference. The decisions that you had to make - whether to make your attack stronger, or midfield, or defense. Whether you go for a bloke that can shoot, or fast one that cant aim to save his life. The feeling of reward when you started scoring goals and winning matches..
They dont know any of it. Its basically collecting stickers now, where the actual matches are only in the background.
And it brings them more fury than joy.
Its sad.
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The PES saga died economically speaking since 2009.

It sounds ugly, but in current generations you no longer prefer good gameplay, but quick ways to have fun no matter how bad they are.
Fortnite does it, Warzone does it too and I can go on and on.

It's not good, it's not bad either, it's a way of knowing how the industry has evolved over time.

Before most companies looked at it because there was no way to generate income after the initial purchase, Now there are millions of ways to earn income in a Fast, Sustainable and Easy way

Efootball had to happen, because the PES saga was no longer enough, FIFA ate most of the soccer players without mentioning the licenses while the saga remained in the memory of adult players who prefer Gameplay to fun

Complaining and complaining about evolution is a waste of time and Konami is not going to stop either, having 7 times more income than the pes saga every year

It's sad and ugly, yeah
But there is an opportunity for the community to keep the past games we love so much alive.
 
Reading all this makes me sad because they truly ripped the heart and soul out of the game. PES really did die with its name.
 
TheMax212 said:
It sounds ugly, but in current generations you no longer prefer good gameplay, but quick ways to have fun no matter how bad they are.
Fortnite does it, Warzone does it too and I can go on and on.
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My point is - with their current system - very few seem to be having fun, or sticking around for longer.
Their simple pay-to-gamble-to-win strategy will not work longterm
Yes - they might be making some money now, but how long can they go on before someone pull the plug, or move the game exclusively onto mobile phones, where its gonna be cheaper to upkeep?

Average player count on eFootball
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Average player count on Fortnite
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Average player count on Warzone
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The difference between these games is that Fortnite and Warzone monetize cosmetics, while gameplay, altho simplified - keeps it engaging and fair.

Free To Play is not an evil in itself - lack of ideas how to execute this in an interesting and fair way is.
And grind, which is totally missing in eFootball, is the thing that makes it shallow, boring and unsustainable.
 
Read yesterday the new God of War sold 11m copies and GTA V sold however many even before GTA online and I could mention many other 1 player games.

My point is this proves there is still a big audience that want single player stories and experiences. Master League is all about the story, the adventure, getting attached to players, building up from nothing to hopefully become the best in the world. This same start from nothing story is the same basic idea in GTA V, God of War and old PES.

Maybe a new developer will realise it's worth creating a new single player football game....we can dream.
 
Emroth said:
Average player count on eFootball
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No way are those numbers accurate, these are the up to date numbers for steam alone -

efoot.png

I'm not even sure if Microsoft or Sony release the game player numbers but you'd assume there is a lot more people playing this on console than PC and then you have the largest market - mobile which has user numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

So this talk of the game dying is unfortunately not correct. The game is doing great and still growing.

I agree that a single player in depth ML style game could do very very well though, I just can't see Konami ever bothering to make one while this model is proving so successful for them.
 
The problem in general is the term: Average Player Count since it is not a very well defined term. It would be more accurate to have Daily Active Players, so the total numbers of players per day. This way you can better estimate how many players the game has.
 
meant0ne said:
No way are those numbers accurate
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It was a quick google search and copying of the first result on top. The gap was so huge that even if numbers arent accurate (assuming that they arent accurate for all three of them) - its still gap wide enough that there is no comparison between these three games, the way fella above did.

meant0ne said:
So this talk of the game dying is unfortunately not correct. The game is doing great and still growing
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We shall see for how long. Coz knowing Konamis lack of content, imagination and ideas - even the most persistent fans will struggle to stick with it longterm.
Content was the main complaint online for last few years, even tho they had annual fresh release that could distract them for a while.
 
Guys help. When I press LB+RS in the game to switch to the goalkeeper, the game freezes for a couple of seconds. Maybe you know how to fix it
 
Emroth said:
Free To Play is not an evil in itself - lack of ideas how to execute this in an interesting and fair way is.
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But it is a bit for sports games : you want to play X season from the past... You can't. Never goes back to play one game from season 21-22.

Not devilish but just doesn't fit with the theme which is sports, with seasons/mid season with new players, new teams every year, making history.
It's linked to reality and present, but no more past... Which is leaving a certain whole in the game even if there were tons of new modes, offline etc.

OK for a fighting game or Fortnite and others games you all mentioned (FPS etc). But it's dumb as fuck for sports games.
 
Emroth said:
It was a quick google search and copying of the first result on top. The gap was so huge that even if numbers arent accurate (assuming that they arent accurate for all three of them) - its still gap wide enough that there is no comparison between these three games, the way fella above did.
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Comparing efootball to the 2 giants of f2p isn't really a fair comparison though tbh, these are the products of two monster studios with a budget far far far in excess of what Konami is providing to their developers. The team working on fortnite is huge, it's like comparing NASA to your mate with a telescope and a notepad.

The numbers for the first efootball open were released a while back and iirc correctly there was about 800,000 mobile users who entered the tournament and console/PC numbers were a bit under 100,000. That's almost a million users entering an incredibly crappy low budget tournament that was in the end dominated by cheaters.

Emroth said:
We shall see for how long. Coz knowing Konamis lack of content, imagination and ideas - even the most persistent fans will struggle to stick with it longterm.
Content was the main complaint online for last few years, even tho they had annual fresh release that could distract them for a while.
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You're making the assumption that they want users to stick around for a long time here, ever heard the phrase 'there's one born every minute' ? I'd say that's far more the audience they are looking at - the lowest common denominator.

Efootball is more like those fairground games were you shoot a target using a rifle with a wonky barrel to win a goldfish. Mindless fun, you play for a bit and then move on to the next crappy game.

There is clearly a huge audience who want (or have been convinced by marketing that they want) this type of game and the quicker the 'legacy' users like me and you f off the better as far as they're concerned. The casuals spending £5 - £10 a week are what will keep this game alive, not the hardcore players or the whales, they are the minority.

It's mad to see people thinking they will change direction at this point, if they were going to do it it would have been after the disastrous launch, their commitment to this model is clearly unshakeable.

I see people hoping trigger runs and manual passes will make their way back in to the game, why would they add more complexity to a game that is trying to be a slot machine with a ultra simplified footie sim tacked on to it?

The hope now is that a AAA single player games developer sees the gap in the market and caters to us, it's definitely not beyond the realms of possibility. In the short term we need indie game titles like active soccer who are at least trying to make an in depth sim because I think we'll be waiting at least 5-10 years for a proper successor to the PES series.
 
meant0ne said:
The hope now is that a AAA single player games developer sees the gap in the market and caters to us, it's definitely not beyond the realms of possibility. In the short term we need indie game titles like active soccer who are at least trying to make an in depth sim because I think we'll be waiting at least 5-10 years for a proper successor to the PES series.
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While I do expect a developer to step in at some point, the point of entry is very high. First of all developing a Football Engine isn't easy at all, even if you have experience with for example basketball games, setting up a Football Game engine is a different beast.

But even if you manage to develop a great engine there is the question of cost and licenses. Remember PES was way outperformed by Fifa regarding sales numbers in recent years and especially Triple A publishers in the current market expect certain numbers. Take 2k and the company behind it: they for sure wouldn't be happy if they reach similar sales numbers as PES, that would probably be considered a failure for the investment it would cost them (developing the engine and so on).

Which brings me to licenses, yes Edit mode is great and all but still the Casual Audience doesn't want to download Option files from a homepage onto a USB stick and then figuring out how to install it. While the NBA might be fine with you having an Option to download Rosters, the different football leagues wouldn't be. Especially Bundesliga has made it really hard in the past regarding even Option and Edit Files for example for Football Managment Games, which is why offering a download option would be out of the question. Which then again means Option Files and that is just a step most Casual Players wouldn't take (and you need them for your Football Game to really be a major success in the size that a Triple A studio would expect.)

Most Major Leagues have long licenses with EA and if you look at whats happening, the EA Logo is now even often shown during broadcasts of Premier League, Serie A, La Liga and more and I expect this to become even more.

So this makes it already very hard to compete because even if you can get the FifPro license, having the real experience and teams will not be completely possible.

And as PES has shown, while Gameplay can be a good factor for you as a Football Game, the situation has changed compared to the earlier 2000s where this was a bigger selling factor. Nowadays Licenses have become way more important than they were in the Nineties and 2000s.

So it is not out of the question that someone new might want to show up and compete, but there is a lot of obstacles in the way of success, so I am not sure if someone like 2K really would take the plunge, knowing they couldn't have the Major Licenses, that they would need.

It might be that when some licenses are ending, that they then would step in and get in a bidding war, but for now if new companies show up, I see them mostly going the same way Efootball does, since this way you mostly just need Fifpro and have a way safer bet.
 
Jay-Jay 10 said:
While I do expect a developer to step in at some point, the point of entry is very high. First of all developing a Football Engine isn't easy at all, even if you have experience with for example basketball games, setting up a Football Game engine is a different beast.
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Totally agree which is why I said 5-10 years *at least* before we see a game on the level of old PES/FIFA.
 
... Promising but you can looks at FIFA 10, a 13 years old games and there's more in every gameplay stuffs.

(Re-wrote/Edited)

Now, if it's just fun to play, time to time... But for that there will be the other "one man army" football game with a big career mode and tons of leagues.
Active Football. He didn't want to, but he's already on the competition with everything he purpose. Semi-Arcade balanced and without hidding it vs the same but talking about realisim an all (and not graphically)... Yes, i talk about Fifa and a bit of UFL (Goalzz clearly said it will be ultra reactive, end to end and a lot of... Goals)

And that "Active Football" guy coming from nowhere, no publicity, nothing, didn't needed 5 (now 7 since they said "5 years") to accomplish something at least accurate graphically, perhaps less advanced but in a good state, gameplay a bit too aerial based but there's room for evolution (+ he's here with US and listen to what we ask! Don't forget it!), just what we're actually asking to every devs. Once the game will be launched we will make some notes a thread.

If he need and i'm a bit paid, i can work on the database, will ask him another day.

Finally a fair game made by an honest person. Hope people will join him and help because i see much more potential on Active than on UFL, just by what he will purpose + gameplay seems perhaps more arcade but more fun. No pretention. Just launch the game and play, that's perhaps what we really needs when i see tons of mods, sliders, engine modifier...
Even if it's a mix of PS3 graphisms in HD, i'll be on it. The only one game which retained my interest even if Arcade (don't like the word same as sim for Football but...) is not my thing, i mean movement not realisable IRL or once every 5 matchs, you can see that there's variety, so i may be fun.
 
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Forgot that "promising", part.
The game seems worst than on previous videos which was 15% level of promising.
 
of course, right now UFL does not look like a game-changer but it will be the first Sports Game in Unreal Engine 5 and they have Time to Focus on Gameplay and cosmetics. The release will be in Q4 2023.

Fifa looks promising in the last decades in trailers and it plays like shit, "PES 2023" looks promising in the first trailer and it was a disaster with Efootball 2022...

so maybe UFL make something different or at least they will take the criticism of the fans seriously after the release, anyway, this could be more than what we get right now...

Year Change but Fifa never and Koami with eFo is absolutely incompetent to they game competitive... so what choices we have ?
 
Konami just slashed its 2022 profit forecast by half. They didn't explain exactly why but they talked about profit plan for digital entertainment games business not meeting their expectations.

Do you know what this means? Efootball is dying too, mostly because of lack of content. People are not spending enough money on it because it's simply a shell of a game, they have added absolutely no new modes to their f2p game and it's not worth to buy coins to make a better team and continue playing with the same mode over and over again. They thought they could profit while doing close to nothing, they didn't understand that even f2p games can fail for lack of content and meaningful updates.

I suggest Konami to reboot Pes and if they don't have enough people to work on a full fledged football game then they should outsource its development to competent developers. In any case, with the falling of Pachinko business and Efootball failing too, i think that's their only choice. Easy money are over, Konami. Oh, I'm so glad the f2p plan failed.


Hello friends, nice to see you again.
 
Ameppe said:
Konami just slashed its 2022 profit forecast by half. They didn't explain exactly why but they talked about profit plan for digital entertainment games business not meeting their expectations.

Do you know what this means? Efootball is dying too
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Source?

You hope efootball is dying (we all do) but the numbers I'm seeing suggest that's not the case. Can you provide any data to back up this assertion?
 
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