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.
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.)
