PES 2014 Appreciation Thread

[NeoRetro]

if you don't think "pes 14 is arcade", you're just nostalgia lover. no pes game can ever be worse than pes 14. even if you think it's not arcade, you have to accept robotic animations, stupid passes and ai that has lack of iq.

i'm sure about that most of you did not play pes 14 more than 20 hours at the time.

i'm sure about that most of you will probably say "fc 25 was great" or "efootball has best simulation gameplay" in next 15 years.

you all are just nostalgia romantic. and probably most of you think "gerrard and lampard is better than modric or de bruyne".

something in the past is not better than newer ones because of nostalgia.

Gameplay wasn't arcade but keepers where awful. I remember playing the very last patch on the highest difficulty (PS3) and it was harder, balanced finally, the choice of totally slowing down players when they get the ball / resulting in a catch up makes the defense harder to overlap.
I remember having pretty hard to found an opening to shoot closer and scoring from long range. I don't remember if the FK line guide was as effective as it was in Pes 2015 through.

That's not nostalgia, especially i don't have that feeling as i always played older games practically in the same time as newer one when they offered different sensation. And PES 2014 is a demo tech with pretty bad keepers (3 years to managed how to makes them effective, but shoot in PES 2014 weren't that heavy and fast for keeper as on PES 2015 or 2016.

 

[millossobek]

As for me, I'm a huge fan of mods I suppose! There are so many of them (gameplay, patches, lighting, physics, crowd, everything), that it literally takes months to explore them. I am really enjoying PES 2021 modded right now (the breadth and size of modding is always expanding), as well as several FIFAs. As for efootball, it will always feel completely soulless and empty to me unless there's a drastic change in direction, which seems unlikelier by the day.

That being said, I find PES 2014 PC to be a title with TONS of modding promise. Taking the vanilla game, I find it more enjoyable than 15 and 16 in terms of gameplay only.. I think the modding possibilities would be huge (everything from adding weather variety-to me the most important point- menus, gameplay, UI, many many things).. Too bad that it is, in a way, "the forgotten PES", and I see very little chance of this title being picked up by the modding community.. If at least weather variety was added, I would start ML on it right now. (I played one season of the Premier League and it was a different but quite fun experience). The barebones of a good overall game are definitely there, IMO.

 

[Hels The Ronin]

Gameplay wasn't arcade but keepers where awful. I remember playing the very last patch on the highest difficulty (PS3) and it was harder, balanced finally, the choice of totally slowing down players when they get the ball / resulting in a catch up makes the defense harder to overlap.
I remember having pretty hard to found an opening to shoot closer and scoring from long range. I don't remember if the FK line guide was as effective as it was in Pes 2015 through.

That's not nostalgia, especially i don't have that feeling as i always played older games practically in the same time as newer one when they offered different sensation. And PES 2014 is a demo tech with pretty bad keepers (3 years to managed how to makes them effective, but shoot in PES 2014 weren't that heavy and fast for keeper as on PES 2015 or 2016.

Keepers are awful and besides, shooting is extremely precise. If any mod managed to correct that, it'd be a great game. I'd only wish that Konami gave the code of the game, so that people could hard mod it, with creation of new animations, modifying the lenght of the existing ones, modify the AI, etc. It's a game old enough as to do that, but sadly, it seems that will never happen with a football game.

 

[Deco_84]

Now excuse me I ha

Agree about Efootball as i said before, the issue is there's several version 2022-2023-2024-2025 + patches but they don't really changes the fundamentals.
We can't come back to check what's the most playable version, i own only the 2023 offline and 2025 and they're very different. 2023 is pretty good but limited. The other is faster and harder to defend but there's more on the pitch possibilities.

But about what what you think about mod, i don't think the same at all.
Except if you mention only of some especial cases like the thread mention like PES 2014 and FIFA 17 as both was, one more than the other, a demo tech or a first try on a new engine devs were forced to work on.

Right now in another view angle we need mods not especially to improve but to give a feeling of something different as a lot of people like us don't found alternatives, and are tired to play the same game again since X years.

PES 2014 got input lag, weird bugs animations influing on the gameplay, catch-up too obvious etc. and yes it's a bit too much on vanilla version, and the game wouldn't got all of it probably if it was worked and launched year one. Now they're not responsible if Kojima who created that derivated Fox version goes out, as he wanted more freedom. I believe than he could become the next company big boss if he stayed here.
Obviously simple gameplay patch at least on that time couldn't completely be changed.

Then all games are judged as their first launch, never when there's tons of corrective update and all.
Cyberpunk is right now a very good game, out too soon (... like 3 PES iterations) not my style since the trailer but i know gamers who got that game as, now, one of their most played game.

Well, I won't ditch eFootball so much. I mean, indeed it took tactics away and completely destroyed PES by not having master league, but the gameplay was NOT THAT BAD. If game featured extended tactics and proper modes, then we wouldn't be so annoyed. Problem with PES is that, to start with, has not master league, it also accelerated tempo a lot over patches, and in general feels like they haven't evolved their base so much, but it's not that the pitch experience itself is THAT BAD.

Anyway, I don't think any football game can be played without mods, and surprisingly, with mods, the best for me is FIFA 17. Well, except on counters, when your defensive lane doesn't want to run back and cover positions.

Well, I won't ditch eFootball so much. I mean, indeed it took tactics away and completely destroyed PES by not having master league, but the gameplay was NOT THAT BAD. If game featured extended tactics and proper modes, then we wouldn't be so annoyed. Problem with PES is that, to start with, has not master league, it also accelerated tempo a lot over patches, and in general feels like they haven't evolved their base so much, but it's not that the pitch experience itself is THAT BAD.

Anyway, I don't think any football game can be played without mods, and surprisingly, with mods, the best for me is FIFA 17. Well, except on counters, when your defensive lane doesn't want to run back and cover positions.

I have been getting into old FIFA's myself lately. Currently playing FIFA 11 and FIFA World Cup 2010. I realized that the old engine (IGNITE I believe), while it didn't have the amount of "realism" of today's EAFC25/eFootball (and I know realism is a subjective and complex topic that's difficult to define when it comes to games, especially football games) but what it did have is this satisfying true-to-football-arcade-realism, if that makes any sense. The way the players react and the animations overall, to me, feel more realistic than on a modern engine like Frostshite, excuse me, I mean Frostbite. It's a very strange thing because when you look at EAFC25 or eFootball, you move the player around and you see the movement and it looks like WOW this is amazing! It looks good on paper right... But then, you start actually playing the game and the players start having seizures, the football, that's where it doesn't look or feel right. Granted eFootball is more "realistic" than EAFC25 but it's not a good game for me that I could enjoy and get that football fix from, it just doesn't have it, and it doesn't feel right. What I want when playing a football game is that the game looks like actual football, I don't want the game to look like 22 little Avatar men kicking a football on a football pitch. There's a big difference between a clean looking 22 men kicking a football on a football pitch and 22 men actually playing football. Just venting...

 

[NeoRetro]

Ignite was only for PS4-ONE Fifa 14-15-16 and was also terrible : like frostbite it wasn't made for football or sports in general, but the previous one it seems was created for sports first from what they said here.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ea-unveils-the-future-of-football-with-fifa-07-on-xbox-360

Don't remember the name as it was rarely mentioned, but it started with Fifa 07 and ended with Fifa 14 PS3-PC-X360

 

[Deco_84]

Ignite was only for PS4-ONE Fifa 14-15-16 and was also terrible : like frostbite it wasn't made for football or sports in general, but the previous one it seems was created for sports first from what they said here.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ea-unveils-the-future-of-football-with-fifa-07-on-xbox-360

Don't remember the name as it was rarely mentioned, but it started with Fifa 07 and ended with Fifa 14 PS3-PC-X360

You're right. It was actually called Impact Engine- Ignite came after 2014 as you said. So, wow, yeah, looks like I enjoyed Impact and Ignite quite a bit more than anything on Frostbite.

https://easportsfc.fandom.com/wiki/Impact_Engine

 

[danek235]

It has exactly the same issues as PES 2015 apart from everything else. Goalkeepers have slow reaction and shooting is too accurate(maybe the ball is flying also a bit too fast) . I'm saying this for years that PES 2014 and 2015 have the most potential, scripting is not that bad yet. Whenever I try newer pes 2017-2021, scripts start to kick in and it's just annoying when you're playing against rival or win few matches in a row and then your players start to ignore the ball, pass horribly or always something unexpected and stupid happends so you lose and no matter what gameplay patch you use it's always the same. I swear to god I spent more time over the years trying out to fix those games than actually played. Man I'd pay if someone could just tweak PES 2014 or 2015 for me, there are people who can but they just focus pes 2021.

 

[Hels The Ronin]

I have been getting into old FIFA's myself lately. Currently playing FIFA 11 and FIFA World Cup 2010. I realized that the old engine (IGNITE I believe), while it didn't have the amount of "realism" of today's EAFC25/eFootball (and I know realism is a subjective and complex topic that's difficult to define when it comes to games, especially football games) but what it did have is this satisfying true-to-football-arcade-realism, if that makes any sense. The way the players react and the animations overall, to me, feel more realistic than on a modern engine like Frostshite, excuse me, I mean Frostbite. It's a very strange thing because when you look at EAFC25 or eFootball, you move the player around and you see the movement and it looks like WOW this is amazing! It looks good on paper right... But then, you start actually playing the game and the players start having seizures, the football, that's where it doesn't look or feel right. Granted eFootball is more "realistic" than EAFC25 but it's not a good game for me that I could enjoy and get that football fix from, it just doesn't have it, and it doesn't feel right. What I want when playing a football game is that the game looks like actual football, I don't want the game to look like 22 little Avatar men kicking a football on a football pitch. There's a big difference between a clean looking 22 men kicking a football on a football pitch and 22 men actually playing football. Just venting...

Frostbite is not shit. It is A GREAT engine. What it is shit is the path that EA has decided to run. They focused more on having more animations rather than working on animation blending (and still, animation blending is better than years back) and overall, they decided to focus on giving shitty gameplay feel with players running like they were fucking hypercars. Acceleration is out of the window. Also, while they kinda fixed CB jockey problem, defenders don't do shit and do not defend unless they are told to.

Essentially, modern FIFAS/FC have the potential to be much more realistic, but realism is out of the window due to the company decissions. So summing it up, there's many more possibilities now. The problem is AI and how they code the game to have more goals and play shorter matches. Is this simple.

 

[Madmac79]

@Hels The Ronin really appreciate your reflections about Pes 2014, and Pes status in general.

I think 15 had really interesting AI in terms of teams and players ID, unfortunately it really fell short in players movement (I'll say this one observation I'm keeping for me for a while in spoiler, as I know there is many people appreciating 15 and to me it's truly gamebreaking

Spoiler

close dribbling, as oppose to 14 and his inertia, is the most ridiculous and op thing in this game, like you have practically all the change of directions being too sharp, fast and neat whatever player you take or whatever stats edit you make, while at the opposite CPU standing tackling do almost always have slower reactions, with the result you can dribble your way from any position to the box and score, without defenders actually being able to do much if anything..

).. 16 was of course the same in this sense, but even worse as they also made the keeper even more inept, and defenses vulnerable to practically everything (to me 16 is indeed the worse of the whole saga by very far, so messy it doesn't even feel like a released game).

Without going too much in the other ones (for me 17 is very good and fixed all the problems of the two previous ones, 18 a bit too robotic and fast but with some redeeming qualities, and 19 very spot on in movement and player controls, although with a very monotonous AI on vanilla), I feel some good regret that we'll never see them elaborate further on what a great basis Pes 21 was/is.

And, as you, I would LOVE to death for somebody to be able to hard code Pes 14 for Pes 21 (which of course isn't possible at the actual state of thing). They could both easily turn into the ideal football game.

 

[Hels The Ronin]

@Hels The Ronin really appreciate your reflections about Pes 2014, and Pes status in general.

I think 15 had really interesting AI in terms of teams and players ID, unfortunately it really fell short in players movement (I'll say this one observation I'm keeping for me for a while in spoiler, as I know there is many people appreciating 15 and to me it's truly gamebreaking

Spoiler

close dribbling, as oppose to 14 and his inertia, is the most ridiculous and op thing in this game, like you have practically all the change of directions being too sharp, fast and neat whatever player you take or whatever stats edit you make, while at the opposite CPU standing tackling do almost always have slower reactions, with the result you can dribble your way from any position to the box and score, without defenders actually being able to do much if anything..

).. 16 was of course the same in this sense, but even worse as they also made the keeper even more inept, and defenses vulnerable to practically everything (to me 16 is indeed the worse of the whole saga by very far, so messy it doesn't even feel like a released game).

Without going too much in the other ones (for me 17 is very good and fixed all the problems of the two previous ones, 18 a bit too robotic and fast but with some redeeming qualities, and 19 very spot on in movement and player controls, although with a very monotonous AI on vanilla), I feel some good regret that we'll never see them elaborate further on what a great basis Pes 21 was/is.

And, as you, I would LOVE to death for somebody to be able to hard code Pes 14 for Pes 21 (which of course isn't possible at the actual state of thing). They could both easily turn into the ideal football game.

We do need to have code of this old games. If someone managed to do reverse engeneering it would be great. And yeah, you could consider reverse engeneering to getting the different tools we have but I mean complete reverse engeneering and getting the code, though I doubt that's actually possible. Other option would be Konami giving the code, something that I also think it is impossible.

It is a pitty because if you added to PES 2014 certain things from FIFA like short term fatigue and analogic sprint, and couple it with some good tweaks to shoots and AI in general, man you'd have a great game.

If I had to sum it up, for me the perfect game would be...

From PES 2014
Varycenter and the ammount of things you could configure in team tactics, aswell as team ID (something they were starting to work on).
From PES 2021
Animations, player roles and skills, control scheme, and on/off-ball formations.
From FIFA
Certain attributes like vision, composure, etc.
Control responsiveness
Player instructions (old FIFA's, now's been replaced by player roles that already exist in PES)
Analogic sprint.
Sliders and possibilities of making shoots less precise.

If you mix all that in a good game, you'd have the definitive football game for sure.

 

[NeoRetro]

Frostbite is not shit. It is A GREAT engine. What it is shit is the path that EA has decided to run. They focused more on having more animations rather than working on animation blending (and still, animation blending is better than years back) and overall, they decided to focus on giving shitty gameplay feel with players running like they were fucking hypercars. Acceleration is out of the window. Also, while they kinda fixed CB jockey problem, defenders don't do shit and do not defend unless they are told to.

Essentially, modern FIFAS/FC have the potential to be much more realistic, but realism is out of the window due to the company decissions. So summing it up, there's many more possibilities now. The problem is AI and how they code the game to have more goals and play shorter matches. Is this simple.

You're right, again. Ignite wasn't pretty good for sports games.
Frostbite isn't responsible from the current status of EA FC game.

That's because they literally erased and removed tons of algorithms from that engine instead of mastering it, and replaced them as "people want it super-extra reactive" and others precision stuffs, Fifa loudest community didn't saw his real possibilities in Fifa 17, in terms of realism. No, they didn't carried and as long to repeat "it's a game, not reality" EA took the path of what YTubers players wants.

Fifa don't really need a new engine, but coming back to the real Frostbite made for Fifa and rework it. What i can see now is a game is full of non-sense animations and actions and a Defense completely apathic.
Gameplay choice, and completely rebuilding their own engine in something indecent.

 

[NeoRetro]

If you mix all that in a good game, you'd have the definitive football game for sure.

I agree that it would be a great game no doubt, except for the "definite" adjective lol. It's too... Definitive 🤣
Mixing things is a hard task : but bringing back to like some old PES past features and adapt them could be good too.
I think that the most advanced football game "semi-sim" or "action-sim" may be something with a different approach too, new idea instead of old (i'm not for Team ID for example, but the come back of stat teamwork may resolve many problems...

But that stat in particular is a bit too hard to rate a 99 scale.
Also for the others Fifa stats, i would only took "Crosses", but i would prefers the come back of "Consistency" and some rythm stats like speed passes... Even if it's hard to get it playable with the power bar acting already as a passing power. And we will get lost while playing if the bar is going too fast from some player and slower from others we could lost gameplay uniformity. Analogic run with R2 but making it as a an obligation like Efootball (yes) more than a feature.

And on final not all people would like that game except... Us perhaps, but the feeling, controller in hands still the most important thing from a game.
A feeling is something pretty hard to reproduce : they did some miracle with PES PS2 or FIFA PS3 without mentionning X versions.

 

[Hels The Ronin]

You're right, again. Ignite wasn't pretty good for sports games.
Frostbite isn't responsible from the current status of EA FC game.

That's because they literally erased and removed tons of algorithms from that engine instead of mastering it, and replaced them as "people want it super-extra reactive" and others precision stuffs, Fifa loudest community didn't saw his real possibilities in Fifa 17, in terms of realism. No, they didn't carried and as long to repeat "it's a game, not reality" EA took the path of what YTubers players wants.

Fifa don't really need a new engine, but coming back to the real Frostbite made for Fifa and rework it. What i can see now is a game is full of non-sense animations and actions and a Defense completely apathic.
Gameplay choice, and completely rebuilding their own engine in something indecent.

Gameplay choice, you said it. Tbh, the thing I see mostly in almost every videogame is the lack of defensive actions without the ball (winning the position, etc.) and the lack of sharp, yet not speedy controls. Controls must be reactive as fuck, which means a lot of animation blending, but also must have some inertia, which should actually be reflected on the animation blending.

This is one of the problems that PES 2014 faced, and why the controls felt super-heavy. Simply because if they wanted to put inertia into an animation, they couldn't blend it into a new one mantaining that inertia of the player. I think this is one of the good things that old FIFA's have and that IMHO, got peaked with FIFA 20/21, that is the balance between inertia and certain movements and reactivity. IMHO, maybe FIFA20/21 had not enough inertia but there was a good idea behind those games and had good animation blending. I feel they were thrown away, though, because of the emphasis on direct football aswell as running with the ball, but out of that, probably those games are the closest we could be to realistic 1 on 1 situations, OR, if we could rework PES 2014 with new animation blending technologies (keep dreaming, it won't happen) or either, a new game comes with that varycenter core phylosophy applied not only to a single animation but blending between animations, thus offering the possibility to still control the player without loosing momentum feeling, so that you can try and do a sharp turn, but depending on your momentum (and other things as agility of your player, etc.), they will be able to do that new animation faster or not, etc., but having that animation starting (or at least blending with the previous one) as soon as you give the command on the pad.

That'd be quite revolutionary nowadays, if you ask me. We don't have this kind of things since PES 2014, and worst thing is that other games from other genres like RDR2, or other euphoria titles, do have good blending put into them. Btw, this is another unpopular opinion, but I do think Euphoria would be A GREAT engine for a football game with the correct coders, producers, etc., due to the focus on animations, movement, and inertia.

Anyways, and summing it up, the whole thing here is that a good football game needs to have 4 things.
Good, decent AI that actually defends and tries to occupy spaces.
A focus on momentum of the actions, caried onto animation, and animation blending, and analogic controls (jogging, sprinting, etc.).
A focus for reactivity on controls without loosing the focus on momentum talked in the previous point (and that's why the need of analogic controls since they would help a lot control momentum much better at the same time of being reactive)
Realistic errors on passes, shooting, dribbling, etc., based on player attributes and previous mentioned points.

And obviously, besides of that, a good player building scheme (in terms of attributes, skills etc.) and a good formation and tactics system.

And here we are now. Technology has gone further and games have been overly simplified, though.

I agree that it would be a great game no doubt, except for the "definite" adjective lol. It's too... Definitive 🤣
Mixing things is a hard task : but bringing back to like some old PES past features and adapt them could be good too.
I think that the most advanced football game "semi-sim" or "action-sim" may be something with a different approach too, new idea instead of old (i'm not for Team ID for example, but the come back of stat teamwork may resolve many problems...

But that stat in particular is a bit too hard to rate a 99 scale.
Also for the others Fifa stats, i would only took "Crosses", but i would prefers the come back of "Consistency" and some rythm stats like speed passes... Even if it's hard to get it playable with the power bar acting already as a passing power. And we will get lost while playing if the bar is going too fast from some player and slower from others we could lost gameplay uniformity. Analogic run with R2 but making it as a an obligation like Efootball (yes) more than a feature.

And on final not all people would like that game except... Us perhaps, but the feeling, controller in hands still the most important thing from a game.
A feeling is something pretty hard to reproduce : they did some miracle with PES PS2 or FIFA PS3 without mentionning X versions.

Nah, mental attributes are probably the most important thing for sure from FIFA. Crosses could be solved with long or aerial passes, but there's vision, composure on the ball, and a lot of things that are really important for a football player, that are separated from technical abilities.

I mean, obviously, your vision gets better when you have technicall consistency and confidence on your pass, yes, but there's more than that, is the part of being able to see certain play, being able to scan your companions position further, and being able to give a weighted pass much faster or almost without having to think it, even if it is more precise or not, but having an intention behind, etc. All that is vision. Vision is what, if playing manual passing, would separate the pass of being completely manual from having the intention to be played to a companion, and compensate the pass power or even direction for that companion.

So a player with high vision would make your through passes be more weighted, and specifically, more weighted towards anyone running into that position, and also, being able to see which companions might try to run into that position.

For me at least, this is how I see it. And you want to have this kind of things put into the game cause it is how they work in real world. Everyone can know where a pass should land, even do it, technically speaking. But having vision means knowing when and how a player will run into space. Also, vision should play a role into player's positioning, and even into team spirit. Players with higher vision would make other players to move into the correct space. When the COM plays with that player, he should select one pass or a different one, depending of his vision and playstyle, etc.

Also, composure is another great one. Being able to withstand pressure and such...

Dunno, I feel like there's a lot of things that FIFA could give to PES and viceversa, both in terms of stats, mechanics, and many other things, but undoubtly, PES needs to be reborn from ashes, and concepts like varycenter, being incorporated into new games, influencing animations and how players behave.

 

[NeoRetro]

That's one thing i got hard with it as it's your own mentality stats on a classic football game (except for long terms leagues etc.) that would matter first, but i'm not against mentality the simple PES stats which keep a good condition when the player got too much fatigue or increasing a bit certain stats when he loose.
So it should be re-converted in something tangible, like for example as i saw "vision" i don't know but it should be something like the quickness of long distance passes which should matter in a football game. I said something totally random as it's hard to found something sensitive and not random : the randomness sensation should came from the engine algorithm itself timing + stats + power + position etc. etc., a game with too much random in controls without understanding is pretty annoying.

Also if you don't know, there's 4 or 5 (after PES 19) hidden attributes that data editors can see but can't change as they're greyed.
I knows many of them and they send me, long time ago, some capture of their edition online tool.
And one interesting is "passing technique", the way you can pass or kick the ball in any position (if it's all related to kicking, then there's Vista, Covering from what i remember another def stats too). And it's not combination stats like PES 15. But they're on their online data, perhaps to help editors if it's greyed, it's hard to imagine that modders didn't found those stats in the core database. Same as the ML progression like "early/lasting" or "late peak"

If we could create it, with some kind of tool of pre-game editor tool like in FM.

Well in short what i wanted to say is that mental stats should be visible on tactics (like arrows consistency) or on the pitch but not random like in Fifa.
For example dribbling in Fifa is related to the direction while you change position. On PES, it's the number of ball touch when you dribble, and it's regular.
That's why many old PES feels logic, keeps outcomes and logic but all without uncomprehensible randomness that the CPU will choose aleatory, regarding stats giving certain % .

 

[Hels The Ronin]

That's one thing i got hard with it as it's your own mentality stats on a classic football game (except for long terms leagues etc.) that would matter first, but i'm not against mentality the simple PES stats which keep a good condition when the player got too much fatigue or increasing a bit certain stats when he loose.
So it should be re-converted in something tangible, like for example as i saw "vision" i don't know but it should be something like the quickness of long distance passes which should matter in a football game. I said something totally random as it's hard to found something sensitive and not random : the randomness sensation should came from the engine algorithm itself timing + stats + power + position etc. etc., a game with too much random in controls without understanding is pretty annoying.

Also if you don't know, there's 4 or 5 (after PES 19) hidden attributes that data editors can see but can't change as they're greyed.
I knows many of them and they send me, long time ago, some capture of their edition online tool.
And one interesting is "passing technique", the way you can pass or kick the ball in any position (if it's all related to kicking, then there's Vista, Covering from what i remember another def stats too). And it's not combination stats like PES 15. But they're on their online data, perhaps to help editors if it's greyed, it's hard to imagine that modders didn't found those stats in the core database. Same as the ML progression like "early/lasting" or "late peak"

If we could create it, with some kind of tool of pre-game editor tool like in FM.

Well in short what i wanted to say is that mental stats should be visible on tactics (like arrows consistency) or on the pitch but not random like in Fifa.
For example dribbling in Fifa is related to the direction while you change position. On PES, it's the number of ball touch when you dribble, and it's regular.
That's why many old PES feels logic, keeps outcomes and logic but all without uncomprehensible randomness that the CPU will choose aleatory, regarding stats giving certain % .

I agree with you that actions have to feel somewhat logic. For me, mental things like vision would be, for example, quickness of long OR DIFFICULT passes. Like passing through a lot players, or seing a space behind the defence, etc., and as I say, compensate for any other companion running into space. Like... someone with good short passing and low vision will be able to create that compensation if given too much time on the ball, and at certain distance, but people with a lot of vision will be able to do that with less time/space on the ball, or even while dribbling. Also, actions should be more difficult to do when sprinting. Like WAY MORE difficult.

There should be MANY attributes affecting the different actions, and IMHO, PES is very interesting in terms of dribbling but also lacks responsiveness of FIFA, and key is animation blending and cutting animations, and the key here is that you should be able to cut animations at any time (assuming you're close to the ball in case of dribbling), and the statistics of the player should affect on how fast the animation blending is done, and many other things, but always within certain physical logic.

And here my main point. If PES 2014 had more chance of cutting animations (essentially, giving inputs mid animation and start blending or doing a new action without player finishing the whole animation cycle) and a bit more of natural blending, aswell as more shooting dispersion (and possibly better passing, sometime's a bit weird) then we would have probably a perfect game.

Also, you need to have in count that PES in FOX engine had always a big problem, that is hitboxes and how they messed up when you tried to make the game faster, making the game feel too weightfull and less reactive. And here is the point. I like weightfullness, as long as it doesn't mess with reactivity. It's not the same. One thing is my player has momentum, and a different one is that he feels weightfull not because of the momentum but their incapacity to react to something passing by. In that sense even PES 2021 sucks. When you make players more reactive, game brakes and they will pass through the ball.

 

[NeoRetro]

There should be MANY attributes affecting the different actions, and IMHO, PES is very interesting in terms of dribbling but also lacks responsiveness of FIFA, and key is animation blending and cutting animations, and the key here is that you should be able to cut animations at any time (assuming you're close to the ball in case of dribbling), and the statistics of the player should affect on how fast the animation blending is done, and many other things, but always within certain physical logic.

This. Efootball is pretty average as a game but seems to manage it better. To me as long as the physics logic regarding what a top football can do is kept, it's okay. to me.
Now i don't complain that much about the animation time to finish, as it create some kind of gameplay i like. Like Fifa yes, but much more agility-weight-attributes logic. I didn't talked about reactivity but i replayed both games vs CPU and that's the biggest difference i felt... Of course it doesn't make the game better as there's others flaws. Dribbling to easy etc.

About Hitboxes sorry but i'm not that much in gaming vocabulary, do you mean collisions? For that it's not perfect but at least there's not too much counters like on UFL, recent and even old Fifa.

Now regarding that PES 2014 got more chance to evolve in the animations type you described, yes it's better to use the first engine as a basis but without Kojima behind them, he left the team with a pretty hard engine to master, as it's his baby he knows better than any dev how to enhance it to get the promised results.... While Konami struggled year after year to add some stuff but never changing a little bit the core animations system like you said (one input > one animation during X time)

Now to me PES 2017 is okay and got a bit more reactivity, but miss the physics logic a bit too much. Still got fun when i replay it but i don't feel the "semi-sim" part as there's in 19-20-21 Fox enhanced engine (or finally mastered, no idea).

Edit: i agree also about mental stats/vision etc., what your purpose isn't random and perhaps, if the hidden stats are effective in game, that could be a way to handle them without randomness but with combinated stats + physics + timing as it's the way PES balance stats since Iss Pro.