I would like to have much more control over my players and what they do, micro-control if you so like. Currently a lot of what they do is very automated, but in real life football when I play on the pitch I have many more possibilities of what to do and when to do it.
Very much agree with everything you said.
Or before I receive the ball I can decide to let it pin off me again using either the inside or outside foot, I can let it pin off either low or making the ball fly up.
Not sure if I understand this, is this about first touch controls?
Or when trying to shoot I have lots of options of how to do it, I can either use my inside foot for a controlled but slower-lowerpowered shot when I see the goalkeeper wrongly positioned and there's enough space on one of the goal-sides so that a controlled shot is likely to be successful in scoring, or I can try to curve the ball around the goalkeeper with the inside foot, either low or high. Or I can use my outside foot for a less controlled but more powerful shot or I can use my backfoot for a surprise shot or the front pike for a very quick shot.
I don't feel like I have that control and options when playing the game.
This is to some degree possible on manual shooting (aside from the outside of foot option). R2 shooting is pretty much the instep controlled shooting, which also allows curving around the keeper. Outside of foot curve however is not implemented. The low shot or front pike sometimes works, pressing the triangle button quickly after letting go of the shoot button.
And making passes that connect should need some extra-work, currently even on zero-assist, full manual, it feels very much assisted as even under pressure and making passes into directions where the player couldn't possibly see where the other player is, the successrate of the passes is way too high, it just gets to that other player even if he is moving, like on a grid.
One of the bigger problems that produces the feeling of an assisted pass, even on manual, is when the ball receiver is somehow telepathically aware of the trajectory of the arriving ball, even when the arriving pass does not match his running stride/trajectory. What makes this worse is the distance of the pass does not seem to be a factor at play. If the ball is played too far away from the receiving player, or too far off the path of his running trajectory, IMO he should not be given any advantage over the defender, the receiving player should be given a 50/50 chance or less. One should be required to measure and gauge the power of the pass to match the stride of the receiving player. It is not the receiving player's job to hunt down a strayed pass, that rarely works in a real game. One example of this is the through balls played behind the defense, the receiving player always gets "informed" better than the defending player, regardless of the quality/accuracy of the pass. Another example is when you play a blind pass for a clearance from your box, your midfield player will always be telepathically aware to come collect the ball, without regard to his original running trajectory (less of a problem on manual). There is a magnetic awareness at work when receiving a pass. I believe this is necessary to the game to some degree, but it should not be implemented when the ball is played far away from the receiving player, or when it does not match the path of his stride/trajectory.
He should not be allowed a "heads up" awareness over the defending player. This also makes cutting off passing lanes while defending a very difficult and counter-intuitive task.
Another problem is that the passing quality does not seem to be affected when the player is under pressure. This is helped on by the fact mentioned above, that the receiving player is always telepathically aware of the trajectory of the arriving pass, even if the pass is off target or played behind his running trajectory. Passes that should have been stray passes attracts a player to the ball magnetically, so you can press pass when you are trapped under pressure, and there's a good chance some team mate of yours will leave his original stride/trajectory and come running to the pass to receive it. Moments like these destroy the point of game reading.
IMO pressure should maybe be reflected in 2 ways, 1) physical pressure, 2) containing pressure. It is insane that the game's most efficient way of defending is full court pressure, especially that the pressure in this game seems seamlessly continuous, in the way that the pressuring players never seems to have a center of gravity. Even if you try to wrong foot them, or quickly pass the ball away to the next player, the pressuring player never seems to need the time to recalibrate for his new pressuring trajectory. The physical aspect of pressuring is just way too automatic and immediately informed. That is what enables people to hold their pressure buttons, and I mean HOLD, without letting go, and the job of defending is done automatically, where the defenders are sticking to the ball holders like homing missiles. My guess is that they have introduced this to compensate for the overly accurate and automatic aspect of assisted passing in this game. It's a case of "because you're allowed to play a ping pong passing game on assisted passing, we'll also have to allow for an easy way to stop this".
But back to the pressure discussion. The quality of the pass should be reduced when 1 of the 2 above (physical or containing) is done well, with 1) penalized much more often if it's coming from a bad angle (shirt tugging non-stop or from behind etc.). On the other hand, the ball holder also needs to respect 2) more, in that they will have more difficulty playing a good quality pass when they're under containing pressure (unless you have a pinpoint pass card). It's a fact that in football, if you're the ball holder and have a defender containing you but not making physical challenges, you still have to "respect" him, in the way that you need to try to take him on (R2 controls), or you need to play your pass to a safe option, unless you're a quality playmaker equipped with the passing quality and vision to play a mid-to-long range pinpoint pass to unlock this situation.
To counter this, when 2) is being executed by the defender, maybe the ball holder's team mates should have some positional intelligence to make themselves available for short passing options to get out of trouble. And the longer he holds the ball, the more apparent these short passing options should become. For example, it would make sense that the team mates close by should get into positions available for a short pass much quicker when you use R2 dribble in small touches. Your team mates should be able to read that you are dealing with this containing defender 1-on-1, and may need short passing options just in case.
Another big issue with pass accuracy is the angle of pass made from the passing player's body orientation. This game continues to allow 180 degree full strength passes. The angle of pass and the distance of pass should greatly be reduce in accuracy. The amount of successful passes, when running out of options, to bend your body and fall over yourself sending a 180 degree pass to the next player (not a back heeled one!), is appalling, especially on assisted passing. Combine this with the telepathically informed receiving player, it feels completely unrealistic, and is laughing in the face of proper defending and containing, and also game reading. Passing mistakes under difficult circumstances should be much, much more pronounced.
All of these factors are closely related to make passing what it is in PES2013. They will have to tweak them in relationship to one another to get the proper behavior, not independently.