I've not played the game in a week or two, but from memory I think the issue is created because they want you to be really judicious with your positioning, pace, and when you press L2. So the ideal would be that you sprint near position, come off sprint, have slowed down, have faced the play, and then pressed L2. That's when it seems to intercept properly.
There is no way devs were this detailed and meticulous when designing the mechanics, if they were, this game would clearly be on the next level on ever other aspect, which it clearly is not.
Its simply a poor/age old coding choice, its the same with fifa as well, constant rebounds to opp when its time to score or attack, regardless of the positioning, interception or deflections. It really is that simple. Stop looking too much into it.
Have to agree with
@Chilleverest here. I strongly feel that the game is by-numbers in areas like this and your input isn't a key factor. A calculation is made and the opponent's number is higher, so that's it - and do you know what, I'd love that in areas like "their player is stronger so I just get knocked off the ball" and "their defensive awareness is better so my overly ambitious passes don't make it".
But instead of that, what should be "your first-touch attribute is low and you're under pressure so you'll miscontrol the ball and it will run loose", is actually (for example) "the opponent's defensive awareness is high, so without even being under pressure, your player will become Mr. Bean, having no awareness of where the ball is and comically deflect the ball to the opponent so that the user is 'rewarded' for having the superior player".
Ask a FUT player and they'll tell you that's exactly how it should be, because otherwise they aren't getting enough benefits from their expenditure (in-game currency or actual currency). Look at whenever they have a "classic" striker (e.g. Pele) and miss the target. It's practically a crime. "It's a scam."
They've paid their money, they demand no misses.
Yeah why go with a reasoned and logical explanation when there is an age old sinister conspiracy theory to do the job
Play vs the AI on Superstar/Legend in the training mode and when you switch your AI opponent from "same level as you" to "much better than you", you'll notice your own players becoming less responsive and much more stupid in their decision-making.
It has been that way in PES forever, from the days when consoles didn't have the CPU power to force a win against you by simply "playing better" than you - and it's never gone away. Do you seriously think
*now* is the moment that they fix this? The moment they go free-to-play and when the only way they can make money is if you buy players with real money?
This is when they need that mechanic more than ever. Because If we don't all buy players, the product dies - and it's already got a tiny dev team that exists purely to drive the most revenue possible from the smallest expenditure possible.
They didn't kill PES to make the world's best football sim. They killed PES because PES Mobile has been making them a fortune from the smallest amount of human resource. Why wouldn't you advance that model and cut costs and make a cross-platform, simple-code, pay-to-win money-maker? You get the PES fanbase downloading it, plus angry FIFA players and everyone else who'll download it because it's free.
Suddenly, you've got a much bigger market than you had when selling PES, and if you give them enough free credits to buy their favourite player, they might pay $5 to build a team of their favourite players. If you can get close to achieving that for every player (PES mobile games were downloaded
one billion times)... It makes total business sense.
And if this above is the thing, shows how easy it is to get misinformed just by hearsay
