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[Datschge]

But worse, in my experiences except for maybe twice, it has always been very laggy to unplayably laggy. I don't really blame the game for that, it's (probably) the lack of a player base, but the lag is ruining the Wii version of PES for me.

Two things: Have you opened your router's ports for the Wii? In our community the players who experience the most pauses are those who didn't/can't do that. Most routers have some way to open all ports to a single computer (called "public server", "DMZ" and the likes) which I suggest doing with the Wii.

Do you stop playing during those pauses? The game goes on. Everything that is not real time (like stick dribbling, shake to shoot etc.) but can be planned ahead (like point dribbling, man marking, point passing etc.) can still be executed during those pauses.

Since there's no way to aim your shot (outside of free kicks and penalties), it's all just a matter of positioning your players well and hoping it goes in right?

Did you do the opening tutorial or at least watch the controls tutorial video I linked to in the OP? If not I suggest you to do just that.

In general: Timing is really important. Depending on his stats a player tries to execute a move right after the user puts in a command. If the players runs the timing decides which foot he uses to shoot, or how awkward his stance is going to get trying to realize what you told him to. Positioning is also of utmost importance while receiving and kicking the ball even for passes, here the stick is used to reposition the player. In general it is a good idea to turn the player like 15° into the direction of the foot that should control the ball. Also you can aim your shot, press B with a target behind the goal line and it will become a shot instead of a pass. Here the same rules apply like above. PES Wii has a training mode where you can rewind to a previous scene and try again. I'd suggest using that with a player just receiving a ball in front of the goal, and then check out what difference different timings and stances make to an attempt to shoot.

 

[seady]

Question:


I want to pick up one of these PES game for the Wii to try out the playmaker feature. I am not a huge fan of soccer so the most updated roster is not a must for me. Are the PES games in recent years pretty much the same on the Wii? I can get the older ones for cheaper price. The older the cheaper. If so, which one should I get? I am thinking 2009 as I can get that one for $5.

 

[Datschge]

I shortly mentioned the kind of gameplay updates done between the versions in the OP. Going back from newer versions to an old one is quite hard since the changes made are all sound and actually improvements so they will definitely be missed, but I guess that doesn't really matter when starting with an old version. The only case where the latest version is without an alternative yet are 360° controls (e.g. the finetuning control while passing/shooting mentioned in my previous post by far wasn't as pronounced in older versions) and online (any version older than 2011 is de facto unplayable online). Also the AI was rather easy even in the highest difficulty in 2010 so if you play alone and want to play the game longer without going online 2008 or 2009 may be better picks.

 

[jlevel13]

Question:

I want to pick up one of these PES game for the Wii to try out the playmaker feature. I am not a huge fan of soccer so the most updated roster is not a must for me. Are the PES games in recent years pretty much the same on the Wii? I can get the older ones for cheaper price. The older the cheaper. If so, which one should I get? I am thinking 2009 as I can get that one for $5.

I played a lot of 2009, and skipped 2010 before moving to 2011 and 2009 is fine - but the refinements to 2011 make it seem worth spending the extra money to me - it's not $5, but it is also very cheap, like $30 now. Overall 2011 is slicker, with a better presentation, cleaner graphics and a smoother feeling to the gameplay. I've also heard people say that the regular classic controller pro scheme in 2011 is really good (though I haven't tried it out myself), comparable to PES 6, so if you end up not clicking with the playmaker controls, at least you still have one of the most solid football games.

Also give those playmaker controls some time to click, like 5-6 hours(?), go through the tutorials that teach you how to play and try it out and go back to the tutorials. It seems overly complicated at first, but if you put in the time, it's so much better it's hard to go back to the old style controls, where you are dependent on the AI moving into the right places, instead of really in control of the flow of the game yourself.

 

[Dave Long]

Ha! Wii game more expensive than PS3/360 versions. Only time this has ever happened?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002I0IJ6M/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Did you do the opening tutorial or at least watch the controls tutorial video I linked to in the OP? If not I suggest you to do just that.

In general: Timing is really important. Depending on his stats a player tries to execute a move right after the user puts in a command. If the players runs the timing decides which foot he uses to shoot, or how awkward his stance is going to get trying to realize what you told him to. Positioning is also of utmost importance while receiving and kicking the ball even for passes, here the stick is used to reposition the player. In general it is a good idea to turn the player like 15° into the direction of the foot that should control the ball. Also you can aim your shot, press B with a target behind the goal line and it will become a shot instead of a pass. Here the same rules apply like above. PES Wii has a training mode where you can rewind to a previous scene and try again. I'd suggest using that with a player just receiving a ball in front of the goal, and then check out what difference different timings and stances make to an attempt to shoot.

Didn't notice the video in the OP but I'll watch that soon. I did the tutorials and I can't believe I didn't remember the aiming shot. I guess between shaking the nunchuk like a madman and being so used to passing with B, I forgot about pointing at the goal and pressing B. The different foot thing makes a ton of sense and explains why some of my lob shots are on target but others go way off the mark. Thanks for the tips!

 

[Datschge]

Prices for the Wii versions are oddly unstable this time, the German version costs significantly more than 30 Euro now...

 

[Little Green Yoda]

I think I'm finally getting a grasp on how to play offense now. Being more patient and making the extra pass to get a better shot makes a lot of difference.

Any tips on corners? Both taking and defending. Didn't see a tutorial/movie for that aspect of the game and I think I have trouble making headers as I do defending against them. Just a matter of bringing your tallest guy to the center and out-time the other guy with the Nunchuk shake? The mark + intercept move works when defending against aerial balls, right?

 

[Datschge]

Any tips on corners? Both taking and defending. Didn't see a tutorial/movie for that aspect of the game and I think I have trouble making headers as I do defending against them. Just a matter of bringing your tallest guy to the center and out-time the other guy with the Nunchuk shake? The mark + intercept move works when defending against aerial balls, right?

Headers on goal are the easiest way to score and respectively hard to defend against. Mark + intercept should work, but often enough the situations with all the players involved are too chaotic and fast for it to work.

When defending I try to mark all possible recipients of a cross while keeping drag-dribbling with a tall defender with high jump and header-accuracy values to intercept a cross in the air (since once it reaches the recipient it may well be too late already, the AI by itself tends to head into the wrong direction at the last moment too often).

When attacking I try to move all players around so the opponent gets dragged with them, so that free space is created. Then have a tall forward with high jump and header-accuracy values go into the free space and let a player with high swerve, longpassaccuracy and -speed values send him a cross.

I've put up a site with all those values which we use for assembling custom teams consisting of untweaked real players for a fixed budget (200 atm).

 

[Datschge]

According to this Konami page we will finally see updated team lineups in PES Wii on March 15th 10:00 (UTC).

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Haven't played this in months but I just started playing again. Time re-learn everything. :/

I think I'm relying way too much on the controlled/dash dribble instead of point/pull dribble. Are there any general guidelines for when each type of dribbling is best? Whenever there's a defender in the vicinity of my ball handler, I'm afraid to point/pull dribble in fear of losing the ball.

I'm also having a hard time splitting my attention between my ball handler and directing my teammates on free runs during an offensive. Is point/pull dribbling the key to pulling this off?

 

[Datschge]

I'm also having a hard time splitting my attention between my ball handler and directing my teammates on free runs during an offensive.

I think this is pretty much the core challenge offered by Playmaker. And the nice thing about it is that there is no one right way but many.

What I imagine being the best possible approach is the following:
- Keep the ball in your own possession as much as possible. If one player is more free than the one holding the ball pass to him. If the AI never seems to get into decent free space by itself try making the team more offensive through pressing the 1 button. Team formations are also crucially important. A Barca alike 2-3-2-1-2 formation (2xCBT-WB,DMF,WB-2xCMF or AMF-SS-2xCF) where every single position has at least two teammates nearby works wonders for having teammates available for passes all the time without much manual fine tuning.
- If the ball holder is being chased by only one opponent do a point dribble away from that opponent so you get time to position free runs of your teammates. If he is chased by several opponent maybe you are able to keep the ball by blocking it off from the opponent by using small stick dribble movements while doing free runs in the meantime (I can't do that as I never was good with classic controls unfortunately). Only if the player is fully surrounded I'd use pull dribble as this will allow to control the player in a sneaking speed by pulling only very lightly or or pressing Z while pulling. This will allow one to maneuver the player most accurately through tight space (works best with players with high agility and who have dribble style 4, e.g. Messi is an obvious one of them).

And a hint for more scoring when shooting: If the player is not being attacked and going straight at the goal, try doing a controlled shot (shake while pressing Z). Such shots seldomly go over the bar, but require the player to be in a good shooting stance already as the shot will be weak otherwise.

Have fun. =)

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Thanks again for your advice.

I actually haven't toyed with the formations settings too much yet. I'm still playing Champions Road and I just went with the 4-3-3 since I have a glut of quality forwards. Once I finish Champions Road, I'll look more into various playstyles and the formations that work well with each one. Right now, I'm just pushing the ball forward with passes while trying to avoid being offside. <_<

Possession football seems like a great way to play but the 5 minute match setting in Champions Road kinda forces me to be more aggressive to avoid the 0-0 tie.

Since my team is getting better players with every match in Champions Road, I've knocked the difficulty up a bit to "Professional". Seems to be the right difficulty setting for me at this point since I'm consistently around 50% possession now instead of ~60%. I just hope the better players on my team aren't letting me get away with too many bad habits.

Also, I was looking into the musical artists on the soundtrack. Can't believe that this video is even cooler than the song. :lol

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Oh my, Top Player difficulty is a significant step up from Professional. I've been doing pretty well lately on Professional so I decided to turn it up a notch to Top Player today. Ended up losing 4 out of 6 matches. Even with a slight advantage in possession, I was still on my heels for most of those 6 matches and the AI outshot me consistently. Even more depressing is that my Champions Road team is up to 5 stars already and I was facing only ~4 star teams in the Euro Club Cup.

I guess I really have to plan my tactics well and react quickly because the AI defenders tend to be aggressive and effective at tackling my ballhandler if I take things slowly. The speed of the game on Top Player is on a whole another level.

 

[Datschge]

Like in real life it's hard to achieve a good balance between defense and offense. Even more so if the resulting plan should work regardless of the opponent's formation and allow for both quick attacks as well as stopping that Top Player offense AI.

If your back line is getting beaten often you may be interpreting your 4-3-3 formation too offensively. Good opponents can easily exploit the advantage if there is too big a disconnect between the lines. So regardless of formation always try to keep (parts of) the back, middle and front line close to each other so that when you lose the ball additional players can help out respectively when you win the ball enough players are close by to link up for a quick attack.

Goal of any tactic should be to outnumber the opponent as often as possible. If you play 4-3-3 against an opponent using 4-3-3 both teams are equal and the game usually will be very slow and "boring looking" as no team is able to gain an advantage in any part of the field (unless through individual performance/mistakes, that is). If you play 4-3-3 against a 4-4-2 team the opponent is going to outnumber you all the time in the midfield and you will often get into situations where a defender is forced into the midfield and is instantly missing in the back. Two popular solutions to this issue are a deep lying 9 (SS dropping into the midfield, aka "false 9") in a "4-3-3" or a high lying 10 (AMF positioned pretty much in the front line, aka "false 10") in a "4-4-2" (formations in quotations as the end result is closer to the other formation, but with the added advantage of forcing opposing players to move out of position as a result).

I hope that helps getting you back into form at Top Player level. =)

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Two popular solutions to this issue are a deep lying 9 (SS dropping into the midfield, aka "false 9") in a "4-3-3" or a high lying 10 (AMF positioned pretty much in the front line, aka "false 10") in a "4-4-2" (formations in quotations as the end result is closer to the other formation, but with the added advantage of forcing opposing players to move out of position as a result).

That's basically done by dragging the players around on the formation screen to tweak the basic formations, right? I'll give that a try, thanks. I switched to the 4-2-3-1 for the time being and it works quite well. I've noticed most of my problems is attributed to the Top Player AI being able to win tackles like 95% of the time - it isn't too much of an issue against teams that are more conservative at tackling but the ones that hound my ballhandlers with double teams force me to pass off the ball quickly (which the 4-2-3-1 helps with immensely).

I just finished the Euro Club tournaments in Champions Road but rather awkwardly. Do the referees in the game blow calls on occasion or am I misunderstanding the offside rule? Twice during the final tournament, I scored goals on what I instantly thought were offsides violations on my part. I didn't save the replay on the first one but the second time it happened (which was the lone goal that decided the championship game) it was very blatant that there were no defenders between my FW and the opposing GK when I passed the ball. I ended up with 3 offsides violations in that same game so it wasn't like I turned off the settings for offsides. At first I thought it had to do with me passing the ball into open space for my FW to get but looking again at the replay suggests otherwise - the ball was passed pretty much directly to my FW. Am I overlooking something or is the game trying to be realistic with the blown calls? :lol

 

[Datschge]

That's basically done by dragging the players around on the formation screen to tweak the basic formations, right?

Mostly, yes. There are two additional subscreens where you can additionally tweak the exact role of each position, as well as the direction into which a player should do his primary movements (this is most effectively used for the mentioned false roles). Note that players seldomly keep the exact position designated to them in a formation, their attack, defense and aggression values also play a part in what position the ultimately end up in. And it seems when you apply pre-set formations the game automatically applies the abovementioned directions to account for that (which I found to be a little irritating as the directions are position specific, not player specific).

For being this influential on the actual game these parts are poorly documented, but this way real football formations like regularly discussed on e.g. zonal marking can be directly applied. I find that part really satisfyingly simulated in PES.

No idea about ref'ing, but it seems a couple animations have the offside line go through their middle instead their border or something like that. Maybe you had such a case.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Yeah, that Zonal Marking site has some pretty interesting analysis to someone mostly ignorant to the sport like myself lol. Been reading the post match commentary on some of the Copa America games.

Is it me or is the Semi-Auto #1 passing configuration useless? If I'm not mistaken, that setting allows you to double tap the pass button to turn a long aerial cross into a long pass on the ground. Is that ever useful?

I can see Semi-Auto #2 being useful since you might want to do a short chip pass instead of a ground pass.

 

[Datschge]

Is it me or is the Semi-Auto #1 passing configuration useless? If I'm not mistaken, that setting allows you to double tap the pass button to turn a long aerial cross into a long pass on the ground. Is that ever useful?

I can see Semi-Auto #2 being useful since you might want to do a short chip pass instead of a ground pass.

Yeah, for full control manual passing is obviously preferable as long as one can handle that. I personally wish there'd be a modifier button used to switch between ground and aerial passes as double clicking is kind of hard to do (especially in conjunction with dragging) and as you say the different (semi-)auto types are not all that useful either.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

I'm trying to fix all the fictional player names on the national teams and classic teams. I managed to find a list of the real names but is there a faster way of changing them instead of doing each one manually?

Also apparently there's an option to register players to the national team if the player exists in the game (and assigned to a club team already). When I pull up the ingame list of the correct names for these players, there are a bunch of extra names that don't correspond to players in the game.

For example, under the U.S. roster, there are 3 GKs listed. When I open the list that contains the real names of the U.S. players, there are 6 GKs. Do you know who the extra 3 names are and why they're on the list? Do they represent a player that was added to the national roster recently?

Note: I already downloaded the latest roster update from Konami.

 

[marc^o^]

I'm afraid Konami won't port this game on PS3. Hopefully they will release a Wii U version, keeping the playmaker controls.

Soccer is my favorite sport/genre in videogames, and this PES on wii is what pleased me the most this gen.

 

[Datschge]

@Yoda: The list you refer to lists all players of the same nationality that are not registered in the national team yet. So the 6 US GK you see there are all US players who happen to play at some club in the game. The list doesn't necessarily have real name players of all fake name players either, this is just the case if a real name counterpart happens to play at a club included in PES.

If your Wii is soft modded the save can be exported using a homebrew tool called SaveGame Manager GX and the custom changes (included in a file called edit_something) can be shared. But since it's hard to merge multiple changes made that way without overwriting other changes efforts usually die down pretty quickly. It would be great if someone reverse engineered the files format (like with tools for other PES platforms/versions) so changes can be directly written to it instead having to do everything manually within PES.

@marc^o^: The Playmaker controls are in generally criminally underused. It could be used for so many other team based sports. At this point I can only hope Wii U will finally combine it with HD graphics, especially since Playmaker player better with zoomed out view and that clearly profits from screen resolutions higher than SD.

 

[Dash Kappei]

I'd say that EVERY football game plays better with the most zoomed out view, regardless of platform/series.
You just can't beat the advantage of seeing more pitch to plan your tactics.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Alright, I guess I'll have to decide on who to swap out on each national team then. I haven't modded my Wii yet since I haven't had much incentive to do so but I'll look into that homebrew tool. Manually changing club names was okay but doing the same for each bogus player name is a bit much lol.

WRT to Playmaker controls making it over to the next generation, I just hope Konami keeps the overall sales of PES in perspective. FIFA has been killing it saleswise so much, the number of people who've tried Playmaker controls is a small minority among the football/soccer fanbase. It doesn't help that there's a learning curve to it that lazier players may not appreciate.

The only valid complaint I've heard about Playmaker controls is that the opposition AI can't keep up in a single player match. From my experience, if the AI players aren't hounding your ball carrier constantly, it isn't too hard to carve up the opposition defenders with a little misdirection and swift passing. Of course, this doesn't matter in games against human players, but human-vs-human is always more competitive in video games.

Does anyone know if the PC versions of PES have a similar control scheme with kb/mouse?

 

[Datschge]

It doesn't help that there's a learning curve to it that lazier players may not appreciate.

This is slowly but surely becoming a bs excuse though. Just look how Konami plans to extends the classical controls in 2012 in an effort to reach the flexibility of Playmaker, allowing two players to be controlled at the same time. In 2011 they already added free passing directions. How is that any less complicated and easier to learn than pointer control?

Does anyone know if the PC versions of PES have a similar control scheme with kb/mouse?

It doesn't. Playmaker controls are still only available on the Wii, and nobody knows why. But someone with a beefy PC could try out Dolphin.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

I was referring to existing versions of PES but I just saw the PES 2012 videos. The teammate control system definitely seems less intuitive than pointing a Wiimote at the screen.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

I've put up a site with all those values which we use for assembling custom teams consisting of untweaked real players for a fixed budget (200 atm).

Useful site. What are the "k" stats? They don't necessarily matchup with the general/detailed stats shown in the player summary screens.

Also, is there a trick to making the keeper dive during penalties? The tutorial tells me to press the D-pad and shake the Wiimote as the shooter kicks the ball while the instruction manual just says mash the D-pad. I'm not sure if it's TV lag throwing off my timing or if I'm doing it completely wrong. I've been able to get the keeper to dive maybe 10% of the time.

 

[Datschge]

Useful site. What are the "k" stats? They don't necessarily matchup with the general/detailed stats shown in the player summary screens.

Also, is there a trick to making the keeper dive during penalties? The tutorial tells me to press the D-pad and shake the Wiimote as the shooter kicks the ball while the instruction manual just says mash the D-pad. I'm not sure if it's TV lag throwing off my timing or if I'm doing it completely wrong. I've been able to get the keeper to dive maybe 10% of the time.

The k stats are calculated values based on the others someone from our forum came up to better find players with particular qualities. The 8 basic values the Wii version shows by default are very misleading as they only consider very few of the detail values (for example keepers with high responses and mentality are the best regardless of the keeper skills value, but only the latter is counted).

As for diving in PKs, I think it's right before the player hits the ball. But if you play online the varying input lag makes it way more difficult to get the timing right. And if you picked the wrong side the animation is the same regardless whether you got the timing right or not. Bad game design basically.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

I was actually having trouble with the PK saving offline lol. I tried doing the input a little bit earlier and it seemed to help, thanks.

Got any tips to playing online? I just gave it a whirl now that I'm more comfortable against the computer. Unfortunately, I've seem to picked up the habit of doing well in the first halves of all my matches only to get completely destroyed in the second halves. Destroyed as in leading 3-1, 4-1 at halftime only to lose by a couple of goals in the end.

I've also developed a nasty dislike of C. Ronaldo after only a few online matches. Bastard runs through the defense too easily. :< Guess everybody I face in random matches is going to be sporting Real Madrid, Man U, and Barcelona, huh? Even when I use the 4.5 star teams, I feel like I'm disadvantaged when it comes to maintaining/taking possession.

EDIT: Also, what does a question mark above a player's head supposed to symbolize? I saw that show up a few times in online play but never in offline play.

 

[Datschge]

I suggest you to prepare an offensive as well as a defensive formation, possibly also separate formations for playing from left to right and vice versa (depending on if that's part of your issue). The second half can be generally weaker if your players have low stamina values and you're aggressive with them, they'll recover in the half time, but not enough to get to the same level as at match start. If low stamina is indeed an issue you might have to concentrate on possession play or even on defending with a few counter attacks. But note that obsessive man marking is both counter productive and also drains stamina. Furthermore anything lower than a green arrow makes the player lose stamina even quicker. Automatic substitution is advantageous there unless you're good at taking tap of all the stamina levels and exchanging players at the right time.

Team choices are awfully uninspired by most gamers online, either top teams with some overly powerful players, or if you allow custom teams 100% maxed out teams where all players have unrealistic maxed out values. It does help when you have contacts instead only going for random matches. The star rating for teams doesn't really reflect a teams strength in any regard btw, just that all positions have several good players. E.g. if you have issues with players receiving balls without the ball bouncing off you need to use players with higher technique value.

The question marks are shown when the player inputs too many commands at once and the game doesn't know what to execute. It's usually an indication of him not knowing how to control the game, kinda like button mashing with standard controllers.

 

[Datschge]

PES 2012 Wii will apparently be available for cheap again. Amazon has it up for pre-order in different regions:
amazon.de EUR 27,99 October 31th
amazon.fr EUR 30,00 November 8th
amazon.co.uk Pounds 25.99 no date
Considering the HD games received the Wii's AI improvements I expect the improved results to be fed back to Wii version as well. Hoping for completely made over marking system (which is by far the worst aspect in PES 2011 Wii) as well as more variances in walking/running speeds instead the standard 2/3 fixed speeds, but not holding my breath for that.

 

[Datschge]

Major bummer: unlike last year there is no single demo station of Playmaker at the GamesCom this year, so no first impressions. Also according to Konami's press conference there Playmaker will released as the last version, on November 3rd/4th in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and Oceania.

 

[fabprems]

Does anybody have any news about new features in PES 2012 or will it be just a team update ??

 

[Datschge]

There's not the tiniest of information so far, that's why I didn't create a new OT yet.