PES Matters 18 December 2011

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for pesplayers.com

Published: December 23, 2011

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By now most of you will be at one with PES 2012. We’re in the comfort zone of the game, where we’ve adapted to the new gaming mechanics. In my case, I’ve defined my style of play, and have to say that I’m loving PES. I’ve applied a few of the great patches available for the PS3 version to spice up the kits and teams available which really does enrich the overall experience.

I have taken an extended break from the online game because I’ve wanted to get more comfortable with the game first. I’ve been hammering the offline Master League mode for a few months now on and off. But I’m getting closer to switching back to MLO very soon.
I guess one factor that is stopping me, which also seems to be a common issue many of us have, is the “Barca Boys”. The super duper teams, who just unleash the very best players available. I think it’s fair to say many of us are sick to the back teeth of having to play the same old team online over and over and over and over again.

Certainly the gaming mates I have generally just want to play a hard but fair game of football. My sessions with my best mate are normally matches where we pick unknown/lesser teams and pit them against each other. We don’t usually even bother to mess with the line ups – we just go straight into matches. What we get is players of mixed abilities, and we each hope that we have a super quick striker to punish each other with. Though in reality we actually just have to make the most of a bad bunch. This brings an element of surprise as we quickly try to establish what our players are capable of.

As we’ve all found out online, the likes of Messi, Ronaldo, Rooney, Pato etc will bang them in for fun. You almost take it for granted that they will finish moves every time. With lesser players you may miss sitters, and be sat there cursing them. Or they pull off a sublime move and finish, which leaves both you and your opponent gob smacked. Give me a choice, and I know which type of game I’d rather be playing each and every time.

OK so some of you are saying to yourself that it’s about competing and proving you’re the best player around. I’ll happily admit I’m not the strongest of players, nor do I possess much of a competitive streak in PES where I’ve got to prove I’m the better player all the time. For people who do take charging up the divisions seriously, it’s all about the competition and getting the best players to prove how good you are. All I can say is that I’d find it soul destroying to be having to play against the same players over and over again.

Many of you have been commenting generally about the issues of facing the types of despicable players who either want to win at any cost (and go to extreme lengths to do so) or are out to ruin the experience for others. I can’t say I understand the mentality of these people – who are around generally in life as well as most multiplayer game offerings. Some people want to achieve maximum rank/division places at all costs. Be it through exploits, cheating or whatever. More and more games are starting to incorporate measures to monitor for cheating and to try to combat it. It was great to hear that PES is also doing this. I’m not sure whether it’s actually working though, as I’m not going to start quitting games to find out! Have any of you guys faced any form of disciplinary action from Konami in-game in PES? If so, I think we’d all like to hear how it works.

Which brings me nicely to the community modes in PES. How many of you have joined a community?
I’m going to set up hopefully a couple of PESGaming.com community rooms (I’m hoping to recruit several hundred people as a bare minimum!) to help create an environment where like minded players can happily compete. I think most people would happily join a community where for example the top Champion’s League teams are excluded as teams to use. If there’s enough demand, we could create a Champion’s League community room too, for those who want serious matches with the best teams too.
But the key differentiator is moving away from generic online play. This would mean you would have to use stock teams, and forgo formal rankings for general MLO matches, but the question is – would you be happy to move away from random matches knowing you’re never too far away from some cheat?

I haven’t explored the capabilities of the Community mode yet. I’m not sure whether there are competition modes available within them, or whether it’s just a league table for the members of the community. I shall do some investigating and at least begin learning what community modes bring to the game, as well as to help build a list of further refinement requirements for future modes.
To do this, I will need some volunteers to join me in a test community, so I’m issuing a plea to you guys to join me and help develop a joint understanding of the community mode. I shall create a “PESGaming.com” community mode very shortly, and hope to get lots of you joining to see what we can get out of the game. I shall update this article if there are any issues or name changes I have to make to the one I’ve just quoted.

So to summarise, is forming splinter factions in the form of communities to nurture gaming spirit and fair play the way forward? Do we forgo general online play, where we pretty much know it’s the wild west with many people out to cheat? Or do we try to govern our own community with rules to help build competitive healthy environments? In a way, I’ve contradicted my gaming philosophy over the duration of this article. I’ve spoken about wanting to play with teams who carry the unknown elements of surprise, over playing the same old teams with known quantities. Yet I’m also advocating a fixed gaming environment to introduce a more predictable element to games. But I think I’ve got my philosophy the right way round in terms of the creating the right mix to succeed.

But in order to prove this, I’m going to need your help. Please join up and let’s create a better way to play.

Thanks for reading.

Dougiedonut
(dougiedonut@pesgaming.com)


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