[FEEDBACK THREAD] In search of the ultimate difficulty level - AI Tweaks, Dynamic Difficulty, Fouls and general Master League feedback.
Hi guys, again (and again, and again...).
I'll talk about some things that I was testing these past weeks regarding the general gameplay. This 99% will get out with the 3.1 version of MegaPatch scheduled for February.
I think most of you already mastered the F4L 4.4 Gameplay, so you are having a great time playing but also maybe reached the Legend difficulty, and even surpassed it. That's because a lot of the changes and tweaks inside the mod were related to make that difficulty fairer, as you may know that Legend is just an unfair level of difficulty (fun fact: in spanish is called "Imbatible" which means "Unbeatable"). So we can't complain, that was a level of difficulty designed to put you in sweat and tears. And to come here crying and making dozens of threads (which I will laugh at all of them).
Let's get to the point. F4L always wanted a smooth, not arcady but no ultra realistic gameplay with a heavy ball, slow passes and fouls every second. That's why 4.4 is so good. But... can we even go further? I would say yes, but not specifically like that. It's not about getting into a better gameplay, but a new level... Not only that, but your desired level.
What I was testing is what I could call a combo of things. And those are related with the AI_Tweaks and Dynamic Difficulty by the amazing Twiggy, who put the first stone in a lot of gameplay related things like two years ago. I was always skeptical about them, as I was more into the placebo opinion, but its just because I wasn't adapting them well.
Basically, AI_Tweaks is just a bunch of values directly related to gameplay, but more specifically CPU, as we can adapt how much "strong" are when protecting the ball (that means if it is easy to steal the ball from behind or not), how good are GKs (which leads to more out of the box screamers or not), how much "direct" CPU plays (if they get into your area with 3 or 10 passes) and some other things. There are some shady and unknown things about this game related to gameplay (and probably always will) but what I could achieve is playing Legend level with a strong CPU, but not so good goalkeepers so they couldn't reach a lot of strong shots and they almost always repelled some balls that they would catch easily before.
Dynamic Difficulty is the interesting one. Every match, specially in ML, is determined by 5 random numeric values for you and the CPU that can go from 0 to 5, like some sort of handicap. But its not really a handicap, its just the way the game will play. It doesn't mean that if you put 3 points and 0 to the CPU, you will crush it. The general believing is that putting 0/0 means that you will have a fairer match, but that is not fully true. You can put 1/1 and CPU will go instantly red in attack, so the pressure and the whole match will be hard but they will have like a free highway for you to counterattack. Putting 0/3 just sped up the match out of nowhere, no matter the gameplay used. But 2/1... well, 2/1 was interesting. Why? CPU starts always 1 point below standard (blue) when they are the away team, and if they score they will go ultradefensive (2 points below standard). If they don't, at second half they will go standard BUT it doesn't mean they don't attack during the whole match. They do! But they do in a realistic way, not putting 6 or 7 players into your pitch side. That means that the match is tighter, with not so many spaces so you have to think how to play and how to get a breach into their defence. Second half, as real football does, will get those spaces more opened.
And then, fouls. Let's be real, F4L 4.4 has no fouls, yup. You have to kill or get killed basically. That's why I switched into the DT18 from Holland (another one of the greats in the gameplay aspect) that he doesn't touch anymore, as his way of modding is just now tweaking things outside the game to get a smarter CPU (and it seems he is kinda achieving it, but its early to tell). Holland has a pretty balanced DT18, with a slower pace in standard speed (0), fluid dribbling but also fouls. It's an enjoyable gameplay, but it really shines with the previous two things that I've talked already.
What I did is:
- AI_Tweaks with the Professional CPU values,
- Difficulty Legend (ingame). 11 minutes match duration
- Dynamic Difficulty 2/1
- Holland DT18 (the one you can find in REAL PES 2025, as the last version was from 1 May 2024)
- Same teams to test behaviour: Chelsea vs Man Utd (Chelsea for me). They're almost same rated after MP3.
What I got its just a true game of football. As it was less "ping-pong", I got sort of auto-fixed these three things:
Fouls: I got even 12 fouls ingame, like 5 for me and 7 for the CPU. Of course the playstyle matters as I'm always trying to force some fouls as I get closer with my player and try to do the sprint dribbling.
Stamina: another of the little issues of F4L is that the game is a little bit fast and with Klashman tactics a lot of teams have their fullbacks constantly going into attack, which means you will have your wingers and fullbacks dead by minute 65. As the experience is slower and not that crazy in movements around the pitch, fullbacks last a lot more now. If you want them to go into attack, just put yourself into offensive or ultra-offensive by pressing the up D-PAD twice. As it should be.
Easier to steal balls and score: and that's why Professional AI_Tweaks aren't perfect and what I did is put then Top Player values and tweak them. You feel the game is harder than Superstar, but not so hard as Legend. Buuuut you could easily steal some balls from CBs and as goalkeepers had their values as if they were Professional level, it was easy to score.
After all this block of text, I'm thinking to make a stream in the next days to show the behaviour of this in real time, changing values between matches so you can really see how differently it behaves. There are a lot of values that we don't really know what they do, and of course they don't have an "optimal" value. Trust me that I've put a lot of mixed combinations but they didn't always got the outcome I thought I was going to have.
This also should affect BAL. You know that the behaviour in BAL is very different than the standard gamemodes. Why? Well, nobody specifically knows but some have the idea that basically in BAL the general AI is two levels down from the level that you're playing. That's why your teammates and CPU is dumb. There are some values that should override that behaviour and maybe improve the gameplay on it. Can't affirm it, as not even Twiggy could know what are some of the values (he's retired from PES now, but AI_Tweaks contains some values that don't refer to what they say. For example, ObSpaceRun is about GK level)
I would like you to do a little survey about your current feedback in the game, of course with MegaPatch 3:
- Is Legend difficulty too easy for you with F4L 4.4?
- Do you want to see more fouls in matches?
- Do you think goalkeepers are too strong or too weak in general?
- Are you struggling in Master League with gameplay and the new market values?
- Would you like to have a slower pace or faster pace after trying F4L 4.4?
So confirmed: MegaPatch 3.1 will have a new gameplay which for now I call it a combo. Maybe will get a name later on but as it requires tweaks from 3 different sides (AI Tweaks + Dynamic Difficulty + DT18) the outcome can be very different. Don't worry, F4L 4.4 will still be included, along with PES 2017-2018-2019 gameplays and all of this can be disabled easily via Sider.
And last: "but we can apply those things with F4L 4.4 gameplay?" I tried but I wasn't happy about that in some things. Think this as if it is a recipe to make your favourite dish: if you put X amount of X ingredient, X amount of Y ingredient, then you should put X of the Z ingredient. If you put a lot of salt, you literally destroy your food, right? This is the same.
You can answer directly in this thread. I'll be reading them all. Remember: this is not about getting the best gameplay. The best gameplay is the one that you like the most, and if you can adapt the gameplay to your liking (having a good hard CPU but weak GKs, so its not a chore to score) then the whole point of this is fully right.
Thank you!