So - what older version are you playing?

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.
Click to expand...

This is a very interesting finding! Now, what did konami think? I mean, If our team is better in mentality, the CPU plays harder?
In fact, I always thought PES worked like that. If you notice, when you get close to a star defender, your player suddenly has less ball control, or the reponse time reduces. We can see it in older versions, but its more frequent in newer versions. So, when playing against a super team, its not harder. Its just your team that gets dumber.
Matt10, maybe that explains why its been always easier to beat top teams and harder to play against others?
 
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.
 
Last edited:
Following your findings I tried something. I have been tweaking tactics and testing them on Cup mode, 6 stars, with top teams. I´ve been able to have more possession all the time, though the CPU is giving a bit more of hardwork. But today, I test it using Portugal against Latvia, 4 stars. After the first 15 minutes I was like WTF? Latvia didn´t let me touch the ball. I finished the game, 0-0, with 56 % possession for Latvia! They played like crazy trying to get a goal! They did shoot but I could avoid goals. Need to test more but what a game!
 
Yeah, I just got beaten 0-1 by Napoli with Borussia Dortmund at home in the CL during ML at Regular. 47-53 possession and 4-11 shots on goal. I could not break through lol. I had much less possession initially but my counters were futile so I started keeping the ball more to try another approach. It didn't really work either.

I'm using PES2014 btw but as I said, these tweaks are universal.
 
Last edited:
I think konami did this to make a challenge even of you choose top teams, but it needs tweaking. If we choose teams at the same level game is too easy. Same if we play with lower teams against top teams.
 
Honestly, I don't have much input in regards to how teams play over the course of the ML season. My goal is strictly to get the game playing on the right fundamentals first. That is always my goal. Increasing tenacity did that - and consistently - throughout every single match on PES 13. It allowed defenders to be more aware and be right on top of attackers. It allowed them to go for slide tackles and standing tackles more aggressively.

I think the skew here is that we can approach it on an OVERALL set up or you can approach it on a FUNDAMENTAL set up. I choose to approach it on a fundamental set up because that is where the issues arise. Step #1 is the fundamentals - why jump to Step #2 before the previous step isn't accomplished yet?

PES (and FIFA) have issues with players not playing like Human beings - after all it's a video game - but the goal is to get them to play like human beings FIRST and REGARDLESS of actual life skill. I don't care if they are a weaker team and can get great games against you in every single setting or difficulty. I want them to react/respond like a human being, well taught, soccer player would FIRST.

I've been doing this since PES 4 and can say I founded the idea of global editing in soccer games - and ever since then I've just been approaching it on a fundamental, human approach - nothing more, and nothing less. The game isn't that complicated, and it's not geared for arcade either. It's when you make it too complicated and too many theories come into place that don't support the fundamentals first - that's how you lose sight of what is put in front of you.

http://www.soccergaming.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100276

PES 14 is a crap game because the defenders turn their backs on the player with the ball to chase an attacker into the box. That is #1 fundamental of a defender - and there has been noone to fix it - I don't care how the game plays otherwise - it's a game breaker from the very thought of that issue. It had its perks when you dropped "Shift to attack" value - but the defensive line issue could not be remedied.

YouTube - PES14 PC: Making Progress

PES 11 had the fundamental issue of defenders backing off the player with the ball - all the way on the sidelines and especially into goal. The fix, as I put in my original post, was increase the response value and other skill cards. That's it - again, nothing more, nothing less.

PES 12 and PES 13 had the same issues with the lack of defensive pressure throughout the field - where the defending team fundamentally should stay in front of the offensive players to block off lanes - but instead they would leave gaps wide open. Editing just two values of tenacity and attack awareness was part of the fix to get the game going on a fundamentally correct path:

YouTube - PES 13 PC - Global Edit - Only 2 Values
 
I haven't noticed that issue with PES2014 since the earlier patches.

EDIT: The weird free kicks are still there though but at least I get them too and penalties as well, which has been few and far between the last few PES iterations prior to 2014.
 
Last edited:
ZeroTheHero said:
I haven't noticed that issue with PES2014 since the earlier patches.

EDIT: The weird free kicks are still there though but at least I get them too and penalties as well, which has been few and far between the last few PES iterations prior to 2014.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I don't think defending has been the main problem for a while. At least since 1.13. To me the problem is shooting, and the CPU scoring automatic, inorganic goals from out of the blue.

Shooting lacks variety/strategy in general. I score endless goals with manual low shots, to the point that its unfair and unfun. Meanwhile the CPU hits the same top corner rocket within an context, without regard for angle, momentum, or where the defender is positioned.

It's one of the reasons I've been giving PES 2012 some playing time lately, and I've been looking for a copy of PES 11.
 
I don't have an issue with those shots either, which is quite weird since I totally believe what you say. I don't think it's just perspective but that PES is a very "moody" game. People always seem to have different issues, gripes and experiences with this franchise, lol.

My main issue was the near post crosses and completely unrealistic finishers on those but I fixed that by giving WF, SMF and R/L backs the Pinpoint Crossing card and reduced Lofted Pass by 5. I felt it gave the crosses a much more realistic wibe but the defenders are experts at nudging my attackers just as they're about to jump which results in no jump at all. The upside to that is that there is a lot of fun situations coming from the loose ball in the middle of the box right after. I enjoy it at least, it brings me fun. Defending against crosses with that mod can be a bit of a pain, but I focus on hindering the crosses in the first place since I favor quick defenders over big ones. Besides, I don't mind conceding somewhat realistic goals. I welcome them.
 
Last edited:
ZeroTheHero said:
I don't have an issue with those shots either, which is quite weird since I totally believe what you say. I don't think it's just perspective but that PES is a very "moody" game. People always seem to have different issues, gripes and experiences with this franchise, lol.
Click to expand...


That's a good way to put it. I've been way more up and down with PES than FIFA through the years. FIFA is just FIFA. It's static, sanitized and consistent. PES at least shows you promise of something more. (Except PES 2013. That game can die in a fire.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom