Master League is shocking.

T

tyler16

Non-League
2 January 2013
Seriously, I don't understand how this game can have such amazing gameplay and be SO behind on the Master League mode. They've removed even more features this year such as calendar dates (seriously, you can't see what day it is), sponsors, progression charts, cut scenes, etc.

The menus literally feel like you're playing a PS1 game. I'm not even exaggerating on this. They're clunky and take forever to scroll and load anything, (such as player faces on the game planning screen.) When displaying kit numbers, the players no longer appear. The transfer market is an absolute joke with nearly every single player selling for $5M to $10M, no matter who you are. Nearly every player on each team is rated 77-82 so there's no diversity at all. It's just terrible. You hit "advance" and play your game, that's literally all there is to Master League.

I'm just trying to see if I'm alone on this. Last year I switched to PES because of the superior gameplay, which is still the case... but oh my god, this is unacceptable. I dunno what to say.

What do you guys think?
 
Of course. They listened to the criticisms about ML being PITA, too much superfluous elements since 2011 but i think they oversimplified it. What's the point of changing club if you don't feel connected with your employer and squad at all?

This is why i missed those objective goals, cutscenes and personalized training in previous 3 games. And yes, that include inventory and the 'magic' boots.
 
I don't mind too much it being basic, you get straight into the action. My beef is Injuries don't seem to work whatsoever. It's impossible for anyone to receive any sort of injury on this game.

Transfers seem better with the CPU buying quality players without clubs and utilising the market better though.

Sadly it's league mode but you buy players and change teams, that is it :(

The best Master League for me was 2012 with the moaning players and all. Loved it, only issue was there could of been a few more injuries and transfers, not enough happened, 2011 was good after the patch.

Next year they need to go back to the 2012 model without all the unnecessary cutscenes, add proper cup competitions, bring back headlines and add a 'advance to next game' option for people who just want to play and buy.

Also please konami with regenerated players. for god's sake do what EA do, give them a generic name and disable their starhead. create a name bank and assign them with a name at random when they retire. Also for youth teams please generate youngsters depending on the nationality of the league your in, so if you play in France, your youngsters will be predominantly French, or Seneglese etc.. :LOL:
 
My player injured two times so far. Once in ML, he has to come off but he seems okay after the match. No layoff period, no return date, like nothing happened. Maybe the injury wasn't serious or maybe you simply can't carry injury over in ML. Not sure about cup mode though.

I agree with improved transfer window. They're buying player sensibly, mostly went for free agent. Haven't see a marquee signing so far in my first season.

Back to OP, sure they values are unrealistic but that is when compared to real world. You always start with low funds, like 7 - 10 million pounds if you're using lower tier club. A decent 70++ rated player on his peak should cost from 2 - 5 million depend on his club status. So that's about 20% - 50% of your overall budget. In my opinion, pay no attention to those number. Just treat is as a mere currency.
 
I find Master League and BAL in PES 2014 to be dull, lifeless and devoid of any charm. I suppose I'm one of the few who actually enjoyed sponsors, player demands, press conferences, etc. They weren't perfect, but they should have improved and built upon those aspects instead of completely removing them.

BAL is really underwhelming. You get three days for transfer negotiations during the January transfer window. Three days. I've also yet to play a full 90 minutes despite constantly being a threat up top. My CPU teammates have only scored one goal (which I assisted) in the matches I've featured in, and the season is 3/4th complete. That's absurd. You know what else is absurd? Konami removed what little character BAL had from the game in order to streamline the experience, yet I'm forced to watch a tedious, CPU vs CPU match every time I'm subbed off. The fast forward function is even slower than last year. I have to ALT + Enter (window mode) in order to keep the game running so I don't pull my hair out in frustration.
 
I've played about half a season and it doesn't look like any of my players have improved at all even though my results have been decent.

Anyone else noticed a lack of development? As mentioned, the charts being took out doesn't help.
 
Chief Inspector Grobelaar said:
I've played about half a season and it doesn't look like any of my players have improved at all even though my results have been decent.

Anyone else noticed a lack of development? As mentioned, the charts being took out doesn't help.
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Player development is intentionally slow down, i remember reading that from officialpes or Mr. Bhatti. No more squad full of 90+ rated youngster after 2 seasons.
 
losslesscompression said:
Player development is intentionally slow down, i remember reading that from officialpes or Mr. Bhatti. No more squad full of 90+ rated youngster after 2 seasons.
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That's alright then, cheers mate. It was unrealistic last year so slow development sounds good to me.

I noticed there's no development 'type' for players in edit mode so I'm wondering if they all have standard curves or whether a curve is randomly selected every time a ML is started.
 
Konami are such a bipolar developer. How can they go from all that bloat and fluff last year, to the complete minimal interface in this one.

For what it's worth I prefer this layout to recent years. I like depth but not repetition, which is exactly what all those cutscenes and player interaction were. Interesting the first time then just tiring beyond that.

I liked the player development better in the older games. PES3 would have contextual improvement based on the XP a youth player would get each game, derived from minutes + performance. Then you could attempt training challenges in pre-season to develop dribbling or passing, where again improvements were based on how well you do.
 
I like that they removed the day-to-day progression and jump straight to the next match outside transfer season. I love that they removed all those stupid cinematics. The dates could be there or not, whatever I don't care. I also love that they removed magic boots and the 'steroid' shop.

Good calls by Konami.

There are plenty of things that could be better though, a division 2 for each league for example...
 
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dannyfc2 said:
Konami are such a bipolar developer. How can they go from all that bloat and fluff last year, to the complete minimal interface in this one.

For what it's worth I prefer this layout to recent years. I like depth but not repetition, which is exactly what all those cutscenes and player interaction were. Interesting the first time then just tiring beyond that.

I liked the player development better in the older games. PES3 would have contextual improvement based on the XP a youth player would get each game, derived from minutes + performance. Then you could attempt training challenges in pre-season to develop dribbling or passing, where again improvements were based on how well you do.
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I was thinking exactly of PES 3 and 4 when I read your post, it was great. Pre-season felt like a proper preparation of your squad.

I really don't understand what Konami are playing at with this, it must be some kind of technical thing going on, but then i look at other games like FIFA and see that they can add so much despite having a demanding graphics engine. Is it a design choice by Konami?

Main issue I still have with this mode is that I STILL can't even make a bid for a player and decide how much my starting bid is, and also that I can't transfer list my own player and set how much I think he's worth. Why did they ever do this?
 
I guess that you simply don't realize that most of the players in real life are similar by their overall ability too - stop looking at overall values (still don't understand why KONAMI don't remove it) and look at players individual attributes and you will see how different they are and how different teams you can built out of them!!
 
tyler16 said:
Seriously, I don't understand how this game can have such amazing gameplay and be SO behind on the Master League mode. They've removed even more features this year such as calendar dates (seriously, you can't see what day it is), sponsors, progression charts, cut scenes, etc.

The menus literally feel like you're playing a PS1 game. I'm not even exaggerating on this. They're clunky and take forever to scroll and load anything, (such as player faces on the game planning screen.) When displaying kit numbers, the players no longer appear. The transfer market is an absolute joke with nearly every single player selling for $5M to $10M, no matter who you are. Nearly every player on each team is rated 77-82 so there's no diversity at all. It's just terrible. You hit "advance" and play your game, that's literally all there is to Master League.

I'm just trying to see if I'm alone on this. Last year I switched to PES because of the superior gameplay, which is still the case... but oh my god, this is unacceptable. I dunno what to say.

What do you guys think?
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My post from another thread:

Konami can never compete with EA for licences; that's a given. So what can they do to close the gap to Fifa? Put more content in the game - unlicenced, licenced, who gives a fuck? The modders always take care of the unlicenced stuff in any case. Provide some empty league slots for people to fill - that sort of thing. Seems to me Konami don't want to try and close the gap for some reason. Do you think it's a good thing that instead of fleshing out ML, they've gone completely barebones on it? Don't you think a more realistic mode would help close the gap to Fifa? As I said, Konami are never going to do it via licences, as they can't compete with EA financially.

I mean, this whole D1, D2 thing. What's wrong with expanding the ML to be three or four divisions which can then be populated with real life lower league teams? PES seems to strive for reality on the pitch, so why does it resemble a coin-op arcade game off it?
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It's pretty basic but I like that aspect. I think I've been spoilt by Football Manager; everything else feels half-assed in comparison to it. Perhaps that's just me though. I mean I found the deadline day business on Fifa as stupid as deadline day in real life is (or at least how it's presented by Sky Sports anyway). One thing I'd like to see return is player training regulation. Given how unbearably random the conditions are it'd be nice to be able to have some say in it.

The transfer system is pretty poor because of the few number of weeks you get to negotiate. However, I do like the negotiation limit thing; it makes you go for realistic players.
 
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The return of individual training and team training like in the old PES would make ML 100% better than it currently is. Don't know why they ditch it.
 
I haven't tried it yet, but I am sure I will be happier about what has been removed than upset at anything I miss.

I always played the master league season after season, but the last two years I never went beyond 1 season due what it had become and the difference in game play between that and exhibition mode.

I hope since they have slowed down the player development they have left the game play the same as the exhibition mode instead of cutting back on response to offset rapid player development.
 
I don't own PES 14 but from the sounds of it these changes are for the best...

PES is all about the gameplay, it's never had depth or intricacy in the structure or execution of its game modes. Sure it would be nice to have FM style off-pitch stuff as an option, but only if done comprehensively and balanced properly.

Having a load of crappy sub-menus and half-assed features in ML doesn't add anything to the experience for me - a more simplistic approach that just lets you almost solely play matches and sign players is preferable to having tacked-on badly executed nonsense in there too just for the sake of it.

PES5/6 MLs were basic, but the fun came from building a team to play a brand of football that suited you and the players you'd integrated and seeing it become a reality on the pitch...

Depth of club management is a department well and truly bossed by Sports Interactive with FM... There probably won't be a football game with off-pitch stuff anywhere near it for a very long time.
 
However, I wonder if the system is well implemented. I hope It´s not too easy to move to biger clubs, hope it´s balanced and realistic.
 
Thats a fair point mate. If you have a shocking season at a mid-sized club for example you'd definitely only want to be contacted by clubs worse than you.

In SWOS I recall taking Rochdale up and then jumping ship to a club in India! but also having a poor season at Wolves and only getting offered a job in the same league with another also-ran
 
Suuuuupertalk said:
I was thinking exactly of PES 3 and 4 when I read your post, it was great. Pre-season felt like a proper preparation of your squad.

I really don't understand what Konami are playing at with this, it must be some kind of technical thing going on, but then i look at other games like FIFA and see that they can add so much despite having a demanding graphics engine. Is it a design choice by Konami?

Main issue I still have with this mode is that I STILL can't even make a bid for a player and decide how much my starting bid is, and also that I can't transfer list my own player and set how much I think he's worth. Why did they ever do this?
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When you transfer list a player I presume it's at the market rate for the player. The bids at least on professional generally come over or just under the players market price , and you can negotiate if you're not happy. Same when you bid for a player. I'd like it to be a bit more indepth with transfers, training, development but the game on the field is to me at lest the most important part. For a management sim I will play FM
 
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