Not everybody who plays sports games loves to do so in competitive online modes, even if this is something developers sometimes seem to forget. For gamers who prefer a solo experience with their sports games and who enjoy long campaigns to build storylines and target trophies in then the announcement of Master League coming to eFootball has been great news.
While technically a misnomer to call the mode a “return,” given it was part of the prior Pro Evolution Soccer branding, with eFootball functionally serving as the extension of the series just as EA FC is still a part of the FIFA line, this marks a happy day for PES lovers.
What Is eFootball Master League?
Master League was one of the most beloved modes in the Pro Evolution Soccer series, and one that fans have been desperate to see brought back since it was rebranded as the live service game eFootball. Master League was the series’ version of a manager-style career mode.
Gamers took control of a team and took over control of not just winning games on the pitch but also assembling a team capable of challenging for the biggest prizes in the game off of it by buying, selling, and loaning them in and out of the club. Over time, you could take a club with minimal talent and build out the roster until your tiny minnow was more of a shark.
Unfortunately for fans of the mode, the offline franchise mode did not make the transition over to the new model of eFootball, which is why the announcement has footie gamers so excited about what might be coming in the near future.
What Do Fans Want From Master League For It To Be A Hit?
Bringing back Master League is all well and good in concept, but if Konami wants the positive vibes to continue, it needs to deliver when it actually hits gamers’ systems, and they get a chance to play it. With such a beloved mode, there are a lot of things fans will be hoping for when the mode debuts. Here are the top concerns that Konami has to get right to make Master League everything it can be:
Do Not Get Lost In Microtransactions
Free-to-play games are all about microtransactions, with the steady drip feed of income from players used as the primary revenue-generation model for the game. Although this is the kind of thing that tends to grind gamers’ gears in any type of mode, there is a certain amount of familiarity breeding contentment, along with contempt when it comes to online modes. Card-based ultimate team style online gaming has featured the small purchases and pay-to-win options since they first came into being, so it can be a bit less grating.
For offline modes, it is still much less common to have meaningful options to enhance your chances with microtransactions. It is certainly highly frowned upon for there to be microtransactions that prove essential to be competitive within an offline franchise mode.
The concern for Master League is the potential for Konami to decide that if the game mode is to be worthwhile, it needs to have significant opportunities to buy power-ups, gear, and other purchases that increase your chances in your season. Keeping things cosmetic-only would maintain the purity of the mode while still offering an avenue for the mode to achieve some level of self-sustainment.
Debut With Meaningful Licenses
No sport has seen licensing become a bigger issue in its video game sphere than world football. While other sports, which tend to have games based around single leagues, have largely ultimately moved into monopolies as all but one competitor in the field has fallen by the wayside, it still remains a case where any league with a non-exclusive license could reach a second partnership and reintroduce competition.
In world football games where the scope covers multiple nations, often with multiple leagues within each region and even clubs with individual negotiating rights, it becomes much more fractured, with popular licenses like the UEFA Champions League having bounced back-and-forth between PES and FIFA and bringing its considerable cache with it as it did so.
When Master League arrives, it must do so with significant options for gamers to see real-world clubs and competitions to compete for. Much of the fun of running a long franchise mode playthrough is taking a small club and guiding them to the top of the mountain or choosing your favorite club and winning all the biggest trophies with them. This can’t be done if the game is more generic substitutions than officially recognized parts of the football world.
Provide Depth To The Decision Making
Career modes in simulation games like EA FC and PES may not have the level of tiniest-detail recreation that the Football Manager series offers to gamers, but it’s still a massive part of what makes these modes so fun to play. Winning a championship is about more than just hitting the right buttons and flicking the right sticks during matches, but also making sure that you have the right players on the pitch to make things happen.
To have a successful Master League mode, it will be critical for developers to get all the off-the-pitch concerns right. From scouting players to signing them to training them up and using them correctly in your lineup, these decisions need to feel and be meaningful. If the club management elements of the mode feel like they are falling flat, then the entire mode will do so accordingly.
Provide Strong AI To Compete Against
All the bells and whistles of a franchise or career mode are undoubtedly important, but the challenge ultimately relies on the gameplay at the end of the day, and this is an area where eFootball needs to nail it. The first and most easiest concern is the in-game AI, where there is obviously already the underlying infrastructure for computer opposition which can be brought over to the offline mode.
Where it will be important for Master League to get it right is in the way the computer-controlled clubs are able to handle themselves off the pitch. It becomes incredibly important that the teams in the game operate as you would expect real teams to operate in the same situation. This allows the Master League experience to feel like you’re actually participating in a real league, which poses you real challenges to create an engrossing experience with the legs to keep players invested and playing for the long haul, which is particularly important when a new version isn’t coming around to restart next year.
A Functional User Interface
The user interface has never been a strong point of the franchise, and with the move from PES to eFootball, the complaints were loud about the end product gamers were left with, as it brought a mobile-game feel to console and PC play. If players are going to get the most out of their time with Master League, it’s important to have an interface that is intuitive and easy to navigate.
While eFootball players may be used to working with the suboptimal user interface experience, it becomes particularly important for a career gamemode. Because players will be doing a lot of work outside of the matchday, it can’t simply rely on keeping the experience in-game fun, as a frustrating menu system will add up to significant bother for players as they get further into their careers.
Keep It Supported
A concern that arises with a live service game as opposed to an annual sports game is the ability to maintain support for a mode for the long term. While a career mode in an annual game will always be there for you to go back to, even if it later gets removed from future editions, a live service game means you are beholden to the developer to keep the game active and exciting.
This goes beyond simply keeping the mode in the game, but also keeping it a mode of active development. Because there won’t be iteration after iteration of eFootball if the mode doesn’t stay in active development, it runs the risk of growing stale in the years ahead as it gets left behind by both other modes in eFootball and its competitors in other footie games.
With Master Leagues’ return so near, do you find yourself getting excited about what it will be like, or do you not have faith that Konami will get things right? Is there anything you think is essential for a successful Master League that we didn’t mention? Let us know about it in the comments!
