eFootball (All Platforms)

janguv said:
I agree with much of what you put here, but I would add also: these sorts of factors/conditions, that may compromise someone in this position, may influence them in a number of ways. The below is not something I'm targeting at any YouTuber or Twitch streamer in particular, just someone in that position.

So it doesn't have to be as considered and cut-throat as perhaps it seems in your post – a different way those factors could weigh on someone in that situation is this: they are invested personally and financially (to some degree, though maybe not a fulltime gig) in the PES game series, and the future of PES/eFootball, to such a degree that their online sense of self is quite bolstered and determined by their place in the PES "content creator" ecosystem. I think we see this all the time across all sorts of online arenas – blue tick Twitter users, football club fan accounts (case in point: how United content creators don't address plausible Ronaldo allegations or the Giggs situation), and so on.

I think if you have sort of formed your online identity over time by having that sort of recognition in that space, it will change the stakes of the thing you do (in this case, play/analyse/create PES content) being threatened in some way. Just being in that position can make it hard for a person to even see the negatives as they plainly are, or to see silver linings where maybe they aren't. I mean to say, all that can be quite unconscious, given with the status and recognition one has acquired in relation to the game in question.

I know that that probably comes across as really patronising; if I were a "content creator" and read that I would probably prefer to read accusations of being an out-and-out shill. But I just think it's a very human thing and difficult to escape. Of course, those being positive could end up being right – but I don't think for the right reasons. The writing is on the wall with eFootball at the moment, and it has been for some time. We should take that at face value.

I notice something very similar among those for whom modern PES games are an important part of their social world. Playing in the league I mentioned before, some of us have formed friendships from playing together, and we need PES to be decent and compatible for us to continue this particular thing that some of us do literally every day of our lives. Some league members have been extremely hostile to criticism, and have been blindly writing off evidence that things aren't right when they are staring them in the face. And it's the same sort of thing: a social identity so bound up with the game that it actually hurts to think of it as "over", or as so much worse than it's been before.

I think it can be hard to keep a clear head if you haven't already dissociated yourself in some way from the franchise and the company behind it.
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I agree with the points you raised. These things don't always need something material to gain for people to warp reality. In the grand scheme of things, football video games are a harmless one for people to have a view on that doesn't pair with the evidence.

Seen more than enough in the last 18 months, where people would attach their identity and political allegiance to views/actions contributing directly to spreading a deadly virus killing thousands of people. Against all evidence and with nothing to gain. Choosing to still support eFootball in the face of everything we have seen may seem illogical to me, but at least it's harmless (I suppose other than the potential financial/mental ruin of the gambling mechanics open to children).
 
Dscru said:
I might be in the minority, but I'm all for the removal of 2nd man press. Problem is though, They would have had to seriously improve on AI awareness, positioning & responsiveness.
They've never shown any competency to produce this though.

Also a thought, but maybe the dumbed down tactics might help with overall AI performance. (Same with player ID) If the AI individual players only has 2-3 different coded instructions to follow during a match, maybe they won't be pushed and pulled with counter-intuitive tactics vs individual play styles.
Maybe less information overload & less options might provide less braindead AI.

Anyway, the lack of 2nd man press might get rid of the super intense, homing missile, no risk all reward gegenpressing for 90mins. If so I might give online a chance.
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I don't think you're in the minority. I like the second-man press, but I don't use it to tackle, only to close down space while I'm switching and covering lanes. Of course, plenty of players don't do it like that – they hold it down along with X to crowd and suffocate the ballcarrier with no thought, and not much risk other than giving away a foul. But in principle, there was a tactical and useful function for it.

As others and myself have said: a perfect solution would have been a presser who gets close but doesn't just take the ball – someone you had to switch to in order to make the tackle.

It's true they need to improve on AI awareness and positioning. The beta and leaked footage do not show signs of that. The other thing necessary is a good RS switch. Some of the impressions today were positive on that score – I really hope they're right. Because at least we can then switch players accurately and quickly to cover lanes. It will still feel unlike real football if the players don't press more or less in unison and we have to do it all sequentially, switching between player to player. But it's something.

I had the same thought with the dumbed down tactics. Overall, I don't like it, but it's been a consistent complaint of mine that there are simply too many tactical systems in the game (tactical settings, advanced instructions, player styles, skill traits, attributes, position settings, inspire stats) – it often felt like an AI player would get caught between these systems and freeze up. So yeah, it could be good. So long as they now build out from this point and maintain a coherence between any layers they add.
 
Sorry if this was mentioned before. Did they remove the all out defense tactic? I hate that thing so much it make my players scare of the ball.
Also without the compactness and defensive line bars if the game is so spacey and end to end, there is no way to fix it like with mat10l's '30 seconds fix'.
One of the reviewer mentioned that juve play with compactness, bayern with high line, barca with tiki taka, etc. Are those embedded into the team by konami since the tactic system is simplified?
 
janguv said:
Some of the impressions today were positive on that score – I really hope they're right.
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Remember that for people like us, playing on manual, sometimes you pass the ball into space, which makes the auto switching system confused as fuck.
Right stick switching gave us a fighting chance in creating fluid attacks.
Without it, even with improved auto switching, I cant see this mechanism being able to handle more complex situations.
 
Sovereign Hope said:
Sorry if this was mentioned before. Did they remove the all out defense tactic? I hate that thing so much it make my players scare of the ball.
Also without the compactness and defensive line bars if the game is so spacey and end to end, there is no way to fix it like with mat10l's '30 seconds fix'.
One of the reviewer mentioned that juve play with compactness, bayern with high line, barca with tiki taka, etc. Are those embedded into the team by konami since the tactic system is simplified?
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Yeah this could be a good or a bad thing. In lots of ways, I'm glad to see the tactical elements simplified as they were a major reason for the gameplay being so rigid. There were also conflicting layers of tactics which caused chaos in player behaviour.

If we still have the ability to manually move players on the formation screen this could be enough - as on PES 2021 this has been the most effective way to make teams more compact.
 
Hitman34 said:
Also, when they say "honest" "fair" and "impartial" in their video description, it tends not to be.

True brits is ok but that spooky pizza fella is as dodgy as a £7 note.
Also, when I asked for clarification on why his review was polar opposite to what others who have seen the game, he deleted my comments.

Definitely not to be trusted one bit.
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He has found a new crowd :LMAO:
 
Any talk about positioning from those who have played the game? Is the defensive line sitting higher now? Is the space a little more condensed? Are teams still retreating when they lose the ball? These are the major questions for me.
 
Anth James said:
Any talk about positioning from those who have played the game? Is the defensive line sitting higher now? Is the space a little more condensed? Are teams still retreating when they lose the ball? These are the major questions for me.
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Leaked gameplay from 2 weeks ago

 
Hayes said:
Leaked gameplay from 2 weeks ago

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I think it looks alright from that video, just a shame the person playing it was pretty awful.

Am I happy that it's pretty barebones at release, no, but it'll clearly improve and evolve and it won't have to rely on an annual release to do that.

Again people have said for years that an annual release for basically a squad and kit update, along with an added mechanic, was pretty stale. So here we are.
 
Hayes said:
Leaked gameplay from 2 weeks ago

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I'm glad you posted this again. I previously hadn't really focused on the opposition ai in this video before. There are some glaring issues (for me anyway) which remind me of PES 16 (and possibly was in 15 too). I don't see the opposition ai passing the ball backwards at all! Every pass is going forwards!

Also, I want to see more opposition ai dribble with the ball, not just dribble when they've got plenty of open space ahead of them, but also attempt to go around my players. I see them attempting this on this video, BUT, it's happening way to often that a lot of the time they're just running into the human player's defending players. This relates to my comment above as they're just running forward brainless and not thinking to just hold the ball, knock it backwards , and then try and look to find space elsewhere.

This was one of the major issues for me in early last gen PES games, ai just running into my players with the ball aimlessly and not willing to knock the ball around in different directions.
 
Dscru said:
I might be in the minority, but I'm all for the removal of 2nd man press. Problem is though, They would have had to seriously improve on AI awareness, positioning & responsiveness.
They've never shown any competency to produce this though.
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Personally I don't agree with this, all the red flags are there for a simplified dumbed down system. It's just part of football, rebalance it, don't remove. I'm not buying all the BS thrown around this development to sell this dumbing down as a good thing. I've seen it all before, it's BS. Even FUT is bringing it back this year in some weird limited capacity.

Dscru said:
Also a thought, but maybe the dumbed down tactics might help with overall AI performance. (Same with player ID) If the AI individual players only has 2-3 different coded instructions to follow during a match, maybe they won't be pushed and pulled with counter-intuitive tactics vs individual play styles.
Maybe less information overload & less options might provide less braindead AI.
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Yeah, this I actually agree with. Or at least entertain the thought & logic behind it. Rigid PES tactics had become one of the reasons I thought I would never play the game ever again. So hitting a big red reset button and starting over could actually be for the better! But it also depends on what they're trying to do now, cause they're doing it with e-sports in mind. But a reset was badly needed.

However whenever I catch myself having some optimism about how this will turn out, I do a little routine exercise that only takes a few seconds:

I clear my mind of all thoughts and just think: "They've found a new crowd" (take a breath) "They've focused on 1v1s which is the only exciting thing in football" (take another breath).

This brings me back to my senses. 😅
 
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I was invited to do the playtest but I couldnt be there unfortunately due to circumstances, wouldve loved to have some clarity of where things stand.

Impression wise everything sounds like they threw away their (in my opinion) Best selling point, the inertia, the physics, the shooting accuracy on momentum and control, All out of the water for some more Arcade yes or no elements. Im really not waiting for specified controls for power shooting later on or a power pass and all that crap, feels to game-y to me

This is a product that probably started off being the next pushing the limits of next gen mega project, and looks like a few months ago they just wiped everything they wanted to do off the table and with Kimura at the helm they just started from scratch in a totally different direction.... From Next gen photorealistic visuals & a full unreal engine remake with the PS4 version gen forever on the fox engine because struggles. To Unreal Engine 4 wrapped around their Inhouse gameplay engine (fox) that is scalable to every gen and mobile?

I like their idea's of a unified product, even though I personally wanted to see them push the most out of the next gen capabilities, which we will never get now. Cross progression is down the line and all that jazz, Might not be for some folks here but that would be really smart in the bigger picture.

Releasing it on September 30th with 9 teams with the gameplay still halfly in shambles with missing elements and a possiblity of pretty big downgrades across the board tech wise feels like an incredibly bad start, even for a ''live service'' game where in theory they can keep updating and feeding their product updates on gameplay, modes and even graphics or a full engine upgrade. Which is nice in theory, But I can just see them end up having this shitty update service again with weeks in between something like a datapack in the last few years.

PES20/21 fan here actually, Not excited for efootball, Even less excited as I was for PES2008 and onwards on the PS3
Still gonna play the 30th september release with a very critical eye for what I want and expect out of a semi realistic footy game
 
103SpooKy said:
Impression wise everything sounds like they threw away their (in my opinion) Best selling point, the inertia, the physics, the shooting accuracy on momentum and control, All out of the water for some more Arcade yes or no elements.
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This would be a disaster if true. Inertia and momentum is IMO what makes this game tick compared to the competition. But where exactly did you read/hear this? I listen to Camaldinho, Spoony and half of TTB's interview with someone who played it, and didn't hear this HUGE complaint.
 
jonneymendoza said:
o dear.

It got destroyed by this bloke

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I've only just listened to this one. Thought it was going to be a lot worse. I think this one sums up what state I was expecting the game to be in on 30th September most closely based on having played the beta myself and seeing the limited gameplay leaks. As I've mentioned before, from past experiences for each generation, it's usually taken about 2 or 3 years/titles to get to the point where I think the game is pretty decent, when you look back at what came before it. I enjoyed PES 15 that year it was the only PS4 PES game for example (whilst also acknowledging it lacked a lot such as animations), but when PES 17 came out it was significantly better in every way. Aside from improvements, such as lowering game speed on following versions, the leap from 17 to 21 is in my opinion far less than that in the first two years of last gens life cycle. As annoying as it sounds, that's my kind of expectations for eFootball, a two year wait for an experience I will hopefully be truly happy with.
 
Chris Davies said:
Every now and then, when reading or listening to these impressions, there'll be a comment like "sometimes players don't know where the ball is" or "referees need work"...

...and I hear this bellowing, angry voice in my head shouting "BRAND NEW GAME YOU SAY??", "TWO YEARS OFF" and "HOW IS THIS STILL HAPPENING".

Think I need therapy.
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It’s not your head, it’s the Mrs. from the other room... :D

;)
 
Hayes said:
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so its "just" the gameplay part that suffers...?
we will see... but i just cant think of them suprising us positivly. be it so, let me be wrong with my gut feeeling here!!!

btw: if the R-stick player switching really is gone... man, how am i supposed to control my team playing FUMA?! how?
 
This game reminds me of a PES 14. Will be a sh*t show on release, but I’m just not that confident this time they will get it right gameplay wise down the line considering their primary focus is mobile downloads, and online play.
 
PRO_TOO said:
so its "just" the gameplay part that suffers...?
we will see... but i just cant think of them suprising us positivly. be it so, let me be wrong with my gut feeeling here!!!

btw: if the R-stick player switching really is gone... man, how am i supposed to control my team playing FUMA?! how?
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There must be gameplay downgrades for PS5/new gen players playing against mobile players. My understanding is continuous play for example is not available on mobile, so unless on mobile it goes to a cut scene while on new gen it shows the continuous animation, there must be sacrifices playing crossplay against weaker systems. Not that I'd want to play against mobile players that much anyway.

As for right stick switching, I hear it's back but rather than flicking through players you do a longer press of the right stick to switch to a player further away. Also, apparently the direction you flick the right stick is in relation to the ball rather than the player you currently have selected.
 
Isnt the continous play PS5 and Xbox only to begin with? Is that for PC too? I remember otherwise and if thats ture then PC is not on par with next gen as who knows what else is missing.
 
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