The PES 2014 Experiment Thread

ZeroTheHero said:
It's not really a new finding, I've noticed it a long time ago. I just recently went through a series of tests to the hypothesis and it turns out pretty consistently correct.

Test 1: The player test
I created a super player in edit mode and played WC challenge with him three times with 10 minute matches at Regular difficulty.

The first time I had 70 Tenacity and Regular difficulty. The game was quite easy. I scored 22 goals and had 13 assists. 10 of the goals and 6 assists were in the actual WC, the rest in the qualifying stages. Personal form arrow didn't really matter as it was fairly easy overall and I got enough space to do my stuff even at purple arrow. I probably could've scored more goals if I really wanted to but it was quite boring to play so I tried to score spectacular goals instead of being effective.

The second time I had 85 Tenacity. I barely qualified for the WC, barely got through the group stages and had three goals and two assists including the pre-WC qualification stages. The game was incredibly hard, yet at Regular difficulty. All the matches were narrow losses, narrow wins or draws and I struggled to have an impact with my 95 rated player. Personal form arrow didn't really matter as I couldn't outrun, out-muscle or wrong-foot anyone anyway.

The third time I had 75 Tenacity and I scored 14 goals and had 6 assists during the campaign. I controlled some matches and were more invisible in others. Personal form arrow had a lot of impact on my performances here.

Test 2: The team test
I used Sweden for WC challenge three times with 10 minute matches and Regular difficulty.

The first time I played with default database, I won the WC and scored a lot of goals and conceded only one goal. The game was incredibly easy.

The second time I boosted Sweden only with +5 Tenacity. I won the WC, scored nearly as many as the first time but conceded much more goals and it was more challenging to score. The game was also much more unpredictable.

The third time I boosted Sweden again with +5 Tenacity (+10 total) and I won the WC. I scored and conceded decent amount of goals. There were a lot of close matches, the AI was challenging and noticeably harder to break down and score against.

Test 3: The whole DB
I boosted whole clubs between 0 and 10 extra Tenacity. The weaker clubs got a lot more than the better clubs. I then played a series of ML with different teams. I used the same match and difficulty settings as previous tests and the result was that, contrary to vanilla PES, it was easier to play with good teams and harder to play with weaker teams. As it should be in my opinion. I struggled with Cardiff, had an easy time with Barcelona, struggled profoundly with Go Ahead Eagles and so on. I played 5 competitive matches in each ML season. The adverse effect is that weaker teams fight harder to come back when trailing than good teams does.

So, it's clear that a really stupid ability governs the difficulty of this game and it's nearly unavoidable to turn into an arcade-fest at some point. With the default database the game will get harder and harder the better team and players you get unless you pick good players with low Tenacity. Poor form stat often goes hand in hand with low Tenacity by the way.

Likewise in BAL, the game will get harder and harder the better your player gets. This is regardless of team and league you play in which actually should govern the difficulty in my opinion.

Konami should reverse the effect Tenacity has on the difficulty to be honest. The lower Tenacity for your team, the harder the AI should be playing. This would fix a lot of the issues with the game right off the bat. Let Tenacity be a form of competition level of the player. Many good players in real life struggle to make an impact in faster paced leagues, for example in PL. It's because they can't cope with the tempo and physical strain of the league, which could imply and be translated to "low Tenacity" in the PES series.

Using this information you can more or less tweak any version of PES you want to play pretty good. You can of course sprinkle it with global special abilities edits and such to make it play even better. My point of view is that the most recent version will always give the best result though. Because all PES AI's are built on the same principles. The values in the exe files are similar year after year, it's only the engine, graphics and animations that gets changed and that's for the better.

EDIT:
I actually tried to have the community do my tests themselves before I revealed anything but the interest was virtually none so I pretty much gave up on that.
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ZeroTheHero said:
In PES, if your team (or your player in the case of BAL) have high Tenacity, the opponent will be harder to play against than if your team (player) have low Tenacity.

This is why people have vastly different experiences with PES. So, if you edit the whole DB to have high Tenacity and play Regular difficulty you'll have a more difficult ML career than a person that uses regular DB at a harder difficulty setting.

If you want a long and prosperous (somewhat easy) BAL career, make sure that you start out with very low Tenacity. If you want an easy ML career, buy good players with low Tenacity.

Use this information to "tune" the database difficulty more to your liking. The ideal difficulty in my opinion is between 70-75 Tenacity in BAL. If you play ML the rough average for your team works as an estimate.

By using this as a "difficulty slider" rather than the actual deifficulty setting you'll get less "AI cheating". Regular difficulty has little of that by default and the higher the setting, the more the AI cheats and virtually makes the game worse. So, it's YOUR teams' or players' Tenacity stat that matters, not the opponents for some reason. Konami is a strange bunch for sure.

This information is relevant for all PES versions that uses Tenacity. The older versions probably work similarly with a similar ability which would be Mentality if I'm not mistaken.

PS. The adverse effect is that the higher the Tenacity, the faster the gameplay is as well. There is also a problem that at some point the AI becomes impossible to wrong-foot or get off balance so dribbling becomes more or less futile at some point which is around 85 average Tenacity for your team.
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These are quotes from another thread where I've actually revealed my findings. I urge you to test for yourselves rather than taking what I say at face value.

The actual database edits I ended up using is vastly different from the ones I used in the tests by the way. The final clue is that it's your own teams Tenacity average that decides how hard (difficult) the AI plays, not the AI teams Tenacity average, which would've been more logical. For BAL it's your players Tenacity that decides how hard the game is. This is on top of any difficulty setting which lead me to discover that Regular setting with the right edits creates a "less cheaty" and more challenging match engine than just increasing the difficulty levels which actually just increases AI aggression and makes them faster, stronger and basically just ignores player individuality. The difficulty settings are the laziest implementation ever in a game, and PES is among the worst in history on that part.

So, test for yourselves. Use global editing with "Pro Evo Editing Studio 2014" by Goldorakiller to apply the changes within seconds. Make sure you back up your edit.bin before you start.
http://www.evo-web.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=71924

According to the manual Tenacity governs how well the player copes with fatigue. Having high Tenacity makes the effects of fatigue less noticeable. This works during a match as well as between matches when fatigue is cumulative, for example in ML and BAL mode. What it doesn't say, but these tests show is that higher Tenacity gives a better chance for high morale. The higher morale your team has, the better your team moves. When your team has high morale, the AI opponent team automatically increases their work rate making the game harder and, to a certain point, better. If this game had been more of a simulation, the AI teams would use their own Tenacity stat to see how well prepared they were for each match but that doesn't seem to be the case. The game is built to give you a challenge first and foremost. It's the infamous "Dynamic Difficulty" gone bad, as usual. In other words, a class example of Arcade Gaming. Dynamic game difficulty balancing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What does this tell us? Well, having too high average Tenacity gives you an incredibly difficult game as the AI is on steroids - all the time. Having too low Tenacity makes the AI docile and easy to play against, which is often the case in BAL career mode the first few seasons regardless of team and league you're in. This is also why the game gets harder and harder the more you evolve your players and buy better ones in ML mode.

If you want the most realistic possible PES experience over time, you need to make sure that the whole DB has more or less the same level of Tenacity and not too low or high. This is mainly to make sure that player individuality gets more precedence than Tenacity. If all players have roughly the same Tenacity level you notice a bigger difference between the players than having a poor team with high Tenacity and vice versa. When all teams have a more equal Tenacity average, you notice that Barcelona has better players than Granada. It's sometimes easier to win against Barcelona, regardless, because they play less defensive and give you more room to attack in and let's you score goals more easily. This is a weakness with all these kinds of games in my experience, not just PES, sadly.

As time goes by and the career moves along, the players evolve and you'd most likely end up too high and "destroy" the game that way. Between ~70 and ~80 the game is playable, the AI is challenging and fun. when it's around ~85 the AI no longer notice your feints much, the gameplay becomes incredibly fast paced and you'll hardly ever see a wrong-footed defender and if they're slightly out of position the catch-up kicks in on steroids to make sure you'd hardly ever see a 1 on 1 with their keeper. This is regardless of difficulty setting, but worse the higher the difficulty is set. I've never tried the game with tweaks on a lower setting than Regular.

I'm not claiming that everything I say here is 100% accurate, but my tests indicate that I'm on the right track. We cannot be 100% certain until Konami says something about the subject or we reverse engineer the whole game. There are probably (and hopefully) other factors than Tenacity, which could be the combined ability Work Rate. I've had good experiences with decreasing Tenacity and increasing Stamina for a higher combined Work Rate ability but I haven't concluded tests to "prove" the results. Indicators are that high Tenacity have more adverse effects than high Stamina though, while the gameplay effects are similar.

On my personal DB that I play with at the moment I've increased stamina depending on positions. Side backs, defensive and regular central midfielders have gotten a big boost while the rest of the DB remains more or less the same. The Tenacity levels have been cropped between 65 and ~78-ish. I'm quite satisfied with this.

EDIT:
Also, forgot to mention that high Tenacity on AI opponents does make them more inclined to fight for a result when trailing. By "fight for a result" I mean by any means necessary and including unrealistic ability increases, otherwise known as "AI cheating". This is more noticeable at Professional difficulty and higher, which is why I'm using Regular as my tweaking base.

Goals does affect player morale as well, which is good in theory. In PES, however, the AI seem to get a morale boost for conceding on higher difficulty settings while your team always and without exceptions get a big morale hit from conceding. This is regardless of the actual result, so if you lead 5-0 and concede a goal you can often expect your players to get mentally broken down for the remainder of the match. This usually results in weird passing even if you do the same "as usual", the ball just chooses different paths than you're used to. You'll always lose 50/50 challenges and your defenders react slower. This would've been a great addition to the game if the results and changes weren't so static and predictable and if the AI suffered the negative effects once in a while as well.
 
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Zero, great thread, its about time these things got posted. In Fifa14 I was hell bent on the AI script code and Ai mods and database tweaks, I will have a look into this for my current mass modded DB and see what comes of it.
 
ZeroTheHero said:
Sure, please report any findings in this thread then.
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I have read many things here, about stamina, tenacity etc. etc. So I wanted to do a test with PES 14.
I state that I am not very good at the game, anyway ...

With Pro Evo editing studio I have done these two simple changes to a team (Arsenal, simply because it is the first one that is offered by the program) and I deliberately inserted extreme values ​​for these two stats.

I was pleasantly surprised by the result that then I had playing (at all levels of difficulty).
Maybe it's a placebo effect, so I ask confirmations to those who have a little patience and want try.

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Tenacity and Stamina makes the combined ability Work Rate. 99+40/2=~70 which is the exact number I generally had the best results with. I generally don't set all players exactly the same though, so I end up with numbers between ~65 and ~75 and a fair average of ~70 in Work Rate. Player individuality is very important to me to be honest, regardless of stat.

As I've mentioned earlier but probably not stated as loudly is that I've had better experience with upping the stamina instead since there are fewer adverse effects but gives the same result in terms of Work Rate. My tests were done with Tenacity though, but after the tests were done I just created my current DB based on the tests and tweaked Stamina instead and lowered Tenacity a bit globally and from what I can tell the positive gameplay changes are the same.

99 Tenacity actually means that the Stamina level is irrelevant since the effect of fatigue is minimal while upping the stamina means the players can play for longer before they feel the effects of fatigue. The positive gameplay effects comes from Work Rate though, so Stamina seems to be the smarter choice in my opinion.

As a side note I would like to mention that any tests should be done in competition modes such as ML, CL, World Challenge or BAL. Exhibition mode is generally AI in slumber mode compared to competitions. In competitions the AI also works pretty consistently in the form that the first few matches are always somewhat easier than the 3rd and beyond.
 
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To sum it up, do you suggest:

Set all player's Work Rate* ability between 65-75.

*Work Rate = (Stamina + Tenacity)/2

Or: Work Rate = [ (Stamina * 1.3) + (Tenacity * 0.7) ]/2 as from here?

Generally it's better to increase Stamina rather than increase Tenacity in order to have Work Rate between 65-75.

Play at Regular difficulty (less AI cheating, more player individuality).
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If that is correct, that means I would end up decreasing the overall Tenacity/Mentality of players for them to have at least 75 Stamina (= 65 Tenacity to have 70 Work Rate).

If I could just concentrate solely on Mentality (I play WE9LE) that would generally be increased (if i didn't have to look at the Stamina/Mentality ratio), that could perhaps help the gameplay more according to what you said in previous posts.
 
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The work rate formula might be as you suggest, I honestly didn't double check that one to be honest. I just used Goldorakiller's editor and tuned five points down on one and five up on the other and switched position back and forth to reset the combined skills and it stayed the same so I just figured it was equal.

Anyway, if Stamina counts more than Tenacity (Mentality) I'd consider boosting Stamina an even better idea. I don't know whether WE9LE has Work Rate as a hidden combined attribute or not but it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

The actual "gameplay formula" I'd use would be something like this;

- Set all player's Tenacity between 65 and 75 (Use Min and Max in Global)
- Increase Stamina for all by ~5
- Increase Stamina for DMC, CMF, RB, LB by another 3 (Tough positions that demand a lot from the players in real life)

If that doesn't work with WE9LE I'd just tinker with Mentality and make sure those demanding positions have enough of it.
 
ZeroTheHero said:
- Set all player's Tenacity between 65 and 75
- Increase Stamina for all by ~5
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I have set it up like you suggested and after a few matches, the gameplay seems overall more challenging. Hardly ever are there more than 1 goals scored. Even though I still have more shots than the CPU, I do not score that often.

CPU is also more conservative when substituting players. It reacts appropriately to the score (extra defender / extra attacker), but rarely do I see also 3 substitutions used.

Difficulty: 4 stars
Match length: 10 min

First, I tested the tweaks in my usual Exhibition settings:
Home – Away // Player // Shots on goal, Shots on target, Possession, Score: HT // FT // ET1 // ET2 // Penalties
Chelsea FC - Aston Villa // home // 9:1, 3:1, 61:39, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Chelsea FC - Aston Villa // home // 2:0, 1:0, 56:44, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Olympique Marseille - Hannover 96 // away // 1:6, 1:3, 49:51, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Olympique Marseille - Hannover 96 // away // 1:5, 0:2, 51:49, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Sparta Praha - Udinese Calcio // home // 1:3, 1:0, 42:58, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Sparta Praha - Udinese Calcio // home // 2:1, 0:0, 53:47, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Real Madrid - Atletico Mineiro // away // 0:11, 0:5, 43:57, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Real Madrid - Atletico Mineiro // away // 1:2, 0:1, 53:47, 0:1 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :

Then I went to play FIFA World Cup with Costa Rica:
Home – Away // Player // Shots on goal, Shots on target, Possession, Score: HT // FT // ET1 // ET2 // Penalties
Uruguay - Costa Rica // away // 2:3, 0:2, 53:47, 0:0 // 5:5, 1:3, 50:50, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Costa Rica - England // home // 6:1, 2:1, 52:48, 0:1 // 13:4, 5:1, 53:47, 0:1 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Costa Rica - Italy // home // 7:1, 3:1, 47:53, 0:1 // 15:3, 8:2, 47:53, 1:1 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :

I managed to lose and not even score twice in a row, which has not happened in a very long time.

So I decided to play FWC with a stronger team to see the difference.
Home – Away // Player // Shots on goal, Shots on target, Possession, Score: HT // FT // ET1 // ET2 // Penalties
Germany - Ghana // home // 9:0, 4:0, 55:45, 1:0 // 16:3, 9:1, 52:48, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Germany - Portugal // home // 3:1, 2:0, 52:48, 1:0 // 8:4, 4:1, 52:48, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
USA - Germany // away // 0:5, 0:1, 48:52, 0:0 // 3:10, 0:3, 48:52, 0:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Italy - Germany // away // 2:5, 0:3, 47:53, 0:1 // 4:12, 1:6, 42:58, 1:2 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Germany - Switzerland // home // 6:0, 2:0, 52:48, 1:0 // 11:1, 6:0, 51:49, 1:0 // :, :, :, : // :, :, :, : // :
Netherlands - Germany // away // 1:0, 0:0, 49:51, 0:0 // 2:3, 0:2, 48:52, 0:0 // 2:5, 0:3, 50:50, 0:1 // :, :, :, : // :
Belgium - Germany // away // 3:5, 2:3, 44:56, 1:1 // 4:12, 2:6, 46:54, 1:1 // 5:13, 3:6, 45:55, 1:1 // 8:14, 3:7, 46:54, 1:1 // 2:4

Both goals in the first two matches were scored from the penalty kick, as well as the goal in the final match.

Even though CPU is not much bigger threat in the offense, its defensive work improved (it still allows many shots but from less dangerous positions) and with the combination of reduced & equal Mentality and 4 stars difficulty, the game seems more enjoyable to me.

I hope it is not because the CPU just has different habits of playing on different difficulty levels and that I won't become accustomed to it after a while and destroy the CPU as previously. Nevertheless, at least for the moment, this tweak has been an improvement to my WE9LE experience, so I thank you for that, ZeroTheHero.
 
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Thanks for this ZeroTheHero :)

I play PES5 on ps2. I tried one game with all mentality set at 70 and it has made a difference with CPU cutting out balls. Only played one game though. I'm looking forward to testing with my other adjustments.

Thanks again. :)
 
I have to praise all of you guys that intensively test the game elements to make it better. ZerotheHero, Geeeee, viktoristus, xicnapad and all the others.

That being said, I'd like to know if any of you guys have tried things like assigning ATTACK/DEF values to 50? In PES 2012, that seemed to make the CPU play more human-like.
 
The main reason why the AI isn't scoring more is because we haven't made attackers better or defenders worse. In fact, we've made defenses better mainly, by making players work harder and that generally favors defensive aspects of the game.

What I actually intended to change when I started tampering with this is those cases where you feel that the players, particularly defenders, are docile and uninterested in the ball (and the player in possession). Nothing annoys me more than scoring a goal when one or more players never tried to stop me, or only tried half-arsedly. I wanted the AI to stop me to the best of his players abilities and I feel that the Work Rate tweak has done that.

In PES2014 the AI scores more if you give all attacking players Acrobatic Finishing, First Time Shot and other offensive cards. I don't remember if there are any cards or similar abilities in WE9LE / PES5 so if there isn't I'd guess that increasing Shooting and Shot Power would help or alternatively tamper with Attack and Defense values as Luisao82 suggests. I'm not a fan of setting all players at the exact same value though, but that's just me. I also don't like to mess too much with abilities that change overall rating a whole lot either.

Also, the main reason why global edits are generally universal in this franchise is because, as I've mentioned earlier (maybe not in this thread), that the PES series builds on the same principles. The AI settings in the exe files are very similar and recognizable from PES5 to PES2014. Essentially they're the same game with different engines. I'm not an expert programmer, but I studied the exe files by comparing original files and officially patched files as well as community tweaked files (yair, jenkey, nesa etc.) and noticed which values changed between the files and versions. Nesa has even quite successfully implemented the AI settings from older games into the new engines, which gave me the suspicion in the first place.
 
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