A get out of jail for bad AI? Hardly. At least on PES players run somewhere. You don't have to make a forward run to be counted as a run. A lot of football's off the ball movement is not forwards but into space, which is where PES, in my opinion, is a lot more active than FIFA.
Funny that some of you guys slate the AI for wanting to go forward all the time but then you imply that the AI on your own team should always be making runs?
Watch a football game and especially when your own team plays and tell me how many times you scream at a player to be moving into space or forward or whatever....yep - there's a lot of those moments. But on Pro Evo, unlike when watching your own real team, you can use a button to initiate a run. In real life, a player would do this by shouting at his teammate or gesturing to move somewhere. That's because players are not always running forward in real games.
I much prefer the AI now than last year when there were 20 offside calls per match because players kept running blindly forward...
This is where KONAMI have to be careful with Active AI. I love the 'life' PES has this year with player movements, but it becomes a fine line if there is also too much player movement especially ahead of the ball, as this then triggers the attack followed by counter attack mechanism.
The midfield HAS to be an issue once more! The CPU teams I kind of struggle with this year are the ones that sometimes have 3/4 in attack, leaving a barren midfield. And since the CPU look to not play a possessive game the game descends into anarchy. It's kind of like this online to where I feel where noobs pick 4 or 5 forwards for Real etc. There should be a massive counter balance or punishment to this.
Playing more of the console version this week I honestly don't think that KONAMI are that far away in terms of game structure. Where there have to be massive improvements are these -
1) Defensive lines - these need to blatantly shown as extreme in the game. A defensive line of 20 should literally have your defence not move from the halfway line and entire team quashed into the opponents half, and likewise 1 should see the team retreat camped inside their own area. Combined with this is pressing - a properly implemented stamina system for both human and CPU (no cheat boosts) will make this game a joy and moire tactical.
2) Hardness - by this I mean that Top Player and Superstar shouldn't just be cheat mode gone bad and have the CPU chase for 90 minutes pressuring here there and everywhere, but have the CPU play more tactically, press more intelligently with their strikers on my defenders (but know when to stop if I create a way out of defence), but this involves a somewhat live and accurate stamina system for both CPU and human. The tactical game of PES should be much much deeper. Someone highlighted yesterday on like ISS or something that you could assign zonal, pressing, man marking etc for each and every player. What if I want to press with my strikers and AMF, but have the rest of the team in banks defending deeper!?!? It seems a lot of early good tactical stuff has been taken out of PES.
3) Team/player style variety - must be more. They need to nail core teams. Barcelona/Swansea/Arsenal etc etc, these teams need to keep the ball forever. For teams like Barcelona there should be massive prolonged game time where the human doesn't touch the ball, with Swansea more football in their own half as they look to work you from your defensive units. Now I'm not saying look at every team - but a team which has possession as their team style or ultra possession as I would like to call it, will literally keep the ball for ages. Now the players have a part here too, because their stats need to reflect the technical ability to keep the ball, so team styles must fit hand in glove with player individuality.
Now I would love for PES to work on graphics and aesthetics this year, but really and truly, as long as these things are implemented above, then I don't really care about these things.
BUT - just to emphasise, safe players, in which every team has 4/5/6, must perform to their individuality and pass the ball around. It's amazing how the game will change and will test the players patience if they have to defend properly for a minute of Earth time. It may be a hardcore system, but it needs to be implemented.
Apparently Adam has promised and hinted us individuality in player styles and team styles this year. So, once again we will see.
