Something I said on reddit about a year ago and want to share with you guys:
What I think can be improved (outside of gameplay)
Most of the points I am going to discuss about are not about actual gameplay, but more about the presentation of the game.
First of all, the licensed leagues.
We now have tons of licensed leagues and even some exclusive licensed leagues. Why isn't any work put out in the presentation/realism of those leagues?
Let's start with the 2 leagues that have been in the game for years now; Ligue 1 and the Eredivise. When you start a league campaign, the game kicks off with the official tv intro, but the intro is only like 5 seconds (both are actually a slightly altered intro from last year if you pay attention, instead of this year's intro). Why not just put the full intro as we only see the intro once (at the start of the season) and as we can also skip the intro if we want? It makes it more immersive. It also does not make sense that some other leagues (like the Belgian one) do have a full intro...
Then once we are past the intro, the menu loads up. We get the same grey menu and overlays like in the main menu, why not make a league specific menu (with official images/overlay, music and fonts), like PES used to do with the UEFA and CONMEBOL licenses? I'm pretty sure that when you are able to put the official league intro, adboards and also official replay wipe/fade, you can also add the official league images/fonts/overlays, etc. Or like I said, at the very least change the colors or something, it's not like they can't because even the fake CL/EL in PES 2019 has different colors in the menus (fake CL = Blue, fake EL = Orange). Why can they do this for fake/unlicensed leagues but not for the licensed ones? The "exclusive" licensed leagues don't even have an intro or real adboards...
The next point are the adboards.
PES 2014 was the first football game that featured dynamic/animated adboards. We are now 5 years further and still the only animated adboards are the default PES League/MyClub adboards. All the official licensed leagues and partner teams have adboards, but they are not animated or dynamic (most even static). FC Barcelona doesn't even have official adboards...
5 YEARS later and they still haven't found a way to implement animated adboards for licensed leagues and teams while modders on PC have multiple animated adboards for every single team and league (not to mention the UI, real overlays, etc.). I think it's ridiculous.
Playing the International Champions Cup (also no intro and UI/overlays) and the only thing you see is "International Champions Cup" x 1000 as the adboard, like we are still on the PS1. And that for every licensed league and team.
I don't know why they don't add overlays/pop ups of those licensed leagues. It could be that the license doesn't include this (which I think is weird as the replay wipes and intros are usually part of the broadcast package, so if you can use that you surely can also use the rest of the broadcast package), but I don't think that's case. But what is it then? Laziness? Refusing to do something? I can't figure it out.
I for one remember that with the CL license the overlays were used well. When you played the CL, all in game overlays used official CL popups, until PES 2014. After PES 2015, suddenly the player names bar, the set piece information bars (change set piece taker etc.) weren't like that anymore. But when you got to the match stats and individual player stats, the official CL overlays were still used for that. Since PES 2017, that also vanished.
PES 2014:
https://imgur.com/a/gAstVqz
So, maybe it's really laziness? Are they doing this on purpose? What is it?
Anyway, even if it's the case that they can't use the official popups for the licensed leagues, why not give us multiple variations of their own overlays/popups, instead of just one? Why can't they keep the pop ups of PES 2018, 2017 and 2016 in the game? I mean, last year they made a good one (clearly inspired by the PL) and the following year they decide to make a new one so just throw the old one in the bin. Why not keep that one as well and assign it to the English League (for example)? Why can't they have more than 1 variation? In PES 2017 they kept the PES 2016 one in the game, why can't they keep everything in the game?
https://imgur.com/a/dnaEwnz
That brings us to the fake UEFA competitions.
Why oh why are ALL the UEFA assets removed? Why is there no pitch entry gate anymore? Why are there no other on the pitch assets anymore (like the starball, the team logos, the banners, etc.)? Is it that hard to keep them in the game and just change the textures to something else? I mean, EA had the "Champions Cup" but had multiple, realistic, assets to make it look like it was the CL. Now when you play the CL/EL it literally looks like you are just playing a friendly. Ridiculous once again.
PES 2019 "Fake" CL:
PES 2018 CL:
FIFA 18 "Fake" CL:
It feels like everytime something is added, another thing goes (this year we got more leagues and more "fake" leagues, but we lost the 2 2nd divisions from Spain and Italy which fell under the FIFPro license, so we lost a lot of real players). It's not even ADDING stuff anymore, it's literally REPLACING stuff. That's how it feels like (probably also is).
Last year, for example, a new (beautifully recreated) celebration was added. The kiss celebration based on a Messi celebration in 2015 (walking to the adboard kissing towards the camera and the camera than showing the scoreboard). It was new, it looked neat and it was a good addition. So why isn't it in the game anymore? Stuff only being made for 1 year and removed the following edition? Doesn't make sense (there are even more celebrations and cutscenes that get removed, instead of keeping them and adding more to not make it repetitive...).
In PES 2015 and 2016, whenever you were in the formation screen or Master League/BAL menu, the bar that has your team name/logo used to showcase the primary and secondary colour of your team. So it looked a bit different for every team. Since PES 2017 it isn't in the game anymore. Why? Only they know.
https://imgur.com/a/OFkzMxE
I think that's it for now. It's hard to believe that with the UEFA licenses it was shown to us that the game CAN have a good looking UI, CAN have a realistic match presentation, but that with ALL other licenses (even exclusive ones) NOTHING is done to add to the immersiveness. Immersive stuff even gets removed, instead of being built upon. Like I said, seeing stuff like animated adboards which PES was the first in not being used at all is worrying. I know the gameplay comes first, but a nice UI can go along with it, especially the things I say here which are literally things that already were in the game once, but are being neglected or even removed in the new additions and not that hard to design/add. I am not even saying that the whole UI layout needs to be changed right now (which actually should happen soon), I am only asking for (background) images, fonts and small details to be added to make each league/mode feel unique and more pleasing to the eye than the default grey background for everything (things people/modders can do on PC easily).
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Some quick concepts I made (showing what I mean with specific league menus) and the old PES specific menus for UEFA competitions:
https://imgur.com/a/a4h3qlQ
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It seems like PES 2020 will be the same.
Like I said, everything I mentioned here are about the presentation (which is one of the bad points in PES), with a lot of the points I name actually having been in PES but somehow removed.
All of them are frustrating, but I still don't understand why they had to make the CL/EL/Copa Libertadores look like a friendly after losing the license, instead of keeping the cutscenes/props the same and simply changing the music and textures to something else. Why remove all those stuff and make the fake CL just like it's a friendly game?
It's a win-win, right ?
