PES 2012 MLO Overview

Key Concept
MLO now has a serious player management aspect thrown in. When searching for new players you will be made aware of two key parameters:
Transfer fee – enough said.
Contract – players now must be paid to play for you. You can purchase 10, 20 or 50 games for a fixed fee. Obviously the more expensive the player, the higher the prices.

You will keep track of the number of games each player has played for you. Once they run out of games, you must decide on whether to keep them and purchase more games, or to get rid of them. Little tip – it’s uneconomical to just get rid of players whilst they’ve still got games left. Wait till they’ve played their allocation if you can.

If a player runs out of games to play for you, they can remain in a dormant position in your squad. They’re greyed out, so they can’t be picked. But they remain in your squad. So if you are undecided on a player, or just don’t have the funds, then you can just ignore them for a while. Just bear in mind that you’ll have one less sub. If you’ve several dormant players it could complicate matters during matches, so management of them is key.

Since these players are already purchased by you, you only pay the contract fee for the player, unless you choose to release them. Bear in mind that when you are looking to purchase players, you will need to check not only their transfer fee, but also the price of a 10 game contract at the same time. This is all readily available information when viewing players’ statistics.

Advanced Player Search
There are now more filters which allow you to refine your searches for the types of players of interest.
Some of you will be aware of player databases being made available via websites which let you filter to your heart’s content. We now officially have a version which provides a more varied and deeper list of attributes to search by.
It makes life a whole lot easier.

What’s new in MLO?
Pay per play – gone.
MLO has been transformed. Last year most players tended to just have a strong first 11 and ignored the rest of their squad.
Not this year. There are a few key principles which have totally changed the landscape:

a) It’s a squad game
Player stamina plays a very big part in the game this year. So expect player fatigue to affect your first eleven.
Which leads nicely to needing a proper squad this time. A key attribute when searching for players will now be their stamina levels. Player stamina levels are carried over between matches. So if you only use 11 players, expect their stamina levels to suffer if they’re not good.

b) Pay to play is gone
The other main change to how the game is played is that you now don’t have to pay to play friendlies or competitions.
Your still earn money for playing games, but your time will be taken up with trying to juggle your bunch of mercenaries!
This is a change in philosophy from last year, and creates a very interesting dynamic for managing your squad.

c) Player form
When selecting players to purchase or play, always check their form. The usual form arrow dictates what sort of state they’re in. I’m not sure how regularly the form for players is changed yet, so expect the current form to last for at least a couple of days in real time.

General Play
Defensive frailties are quickly highlighted in MLO matches. It seems like long balls up to target men, particularly as through balls are very effective. I’ve conceded far too many goals where a lofted ball to an attacker easily evades defenders and gives a direct scoring opportunity almost every time. Expect to get punished a lot.
If your defenders are not very skilled, then you’ll be conceding lots of goals. Quick forwards will bully your defenders and leave them dead with some skilled dribbling.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – practice defending, and practice again and again.

Online stability so far has been very reliable. Having said that, it was very good for me last year too.
I do have a pretty decent broadband connection, so I have no complaints. I am aware that people out there do have issues with the online game, but I really can’t comment on just how widespread the issue is.
I will try to poll users a week into general release to get an idea of just how big the issue is. I’m hoping it’s going to only be a small issue relatively.

Having played a few games in MLO now, the pattern is quite clear. You’ll not only be forever searching for better players for your team, but you will also be constantly deciding on whether to renew contracts for players. Just when you play in a competition and earn a few million, you realise that a couple of renewals are due again. This challenge is at the heart of the squad management element.

I have to say that the MLO in-game is a very different game from the single player game. The pace is different online, and as people learn how to exploit team weaknesses – such as through old school long balls up to pacey forwards, expect a lot of frustrating games as your team doesn’t perform as you’d like them too. It’s going to be a very personal journey in finding yourself online and creating your online football identity.