There was an abundance of news yesterday, from screenshots to playtest reports, from PES Star news to the weekly podcast. With that in mind we delayed two posts until today. The first of which is ‘Team Play’.
PESFan and PESGaming have already extensively gone through this in their playtest reports, so forgive us if we’re late to the party. The reason why we held back was down to our preference to give this the headline time it deserves. Like Seabass said in the most recent developer interview, PES 2010 is about the pursuit of player representation and team play. Read on to learn more about this integral game mechanic.
In the playtest report we spoke about the differences in playing style between Barca and Liverpool, and how you could affect this by changing around the slider bars. Below is the full, official, document explaining team play:
Team Style
Team Style is about settings of “team strategies”. PES used to attach less importance to “organizational defence” however your team will have team discipline for organized defence by adjusting Team Style sliders between 0 and 100. Harder defence naturally requires more strategic, organised moves among attackers to beat such defence. Therefore Team Style sliders cover not just defence but also attacks.
Attack strategies
?Player Support
When set to 100, your teammates around the ball holder move upfield (more forward) to receive a pass. In other words, your teammates will place themselves in more attacking positions. Contrary, when set to 0, your teammates tend to stay behind of the ball holder, place themselves in more defensive positions.
?Support Range
When set to 0, your teammates spread wide on the pitch. Naturally this is good for long passing but not for short passes. When set to 100, your teammates get closer to the ball holder, making short passes easy.
?Position Switch
When set to 0, players try to get back to their positions they supposed to be rather than trying to switch positions. When set to 100, once position switched, the player keep moving on a switched position until it goes out of play.
?Attacking style
When set to 0, the team play wide, attack from the sides. When set to 100, the team attack through centre
Defence strategies
?Pressing
When set to 100, your team as a whole apply pressure aggressively. When set to 0, move back instead and try to delay opposition attack.
?Defensive Line
When set to 100, your defence line will be kept high. When set to 0, your defence line will drop back. It would be an idea to set this slider first, adjust other defensive sliders later accordingly.
?Compactness
When set to 0, your teammates will move away from the opposition ball holder drift to the side to cover wider. When set to 100, your teammates will get closer to opposition ball holder.
?Defensive Strategy
You make a choice from 2 options here.
One is Line defence and the other is Covering defence with one defender left for covering other defenders.
As you can see from that explanation, you can custom your team to play any way you like. Want to play like Barca? No problem, bump up the support range to 100 and players offer themselves for short quick passes. Want to play down the centre consistently like AC Milan? Good choice (honest), just bump your attacking strategy to 100. There’s even the option to make your wingers continuously switch wings to keep the defenders guessing, a common theme in real life football.
Defensively you can be just as tactile. Want to press the team all over pitch like Suff’s beloved Liverpool? Done. How about play as an inferior team against a squad of super quick/skillful players? (USA in Confederation Cup?) Do what they would do and drop that defensive line to 0 and defend deep to throttle their attacks.
And why does all this work? Simple, no one can match PES’s player representation. Everyone feels different, and thats why the strategies in PES 2010 word like a charm.
Later, we’ll get out teeth into the Card System, and explain why that is the future of true player behaviour in a game.
