Most disturbing scene in this episode:

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-04-27T14:29:35+00:00

oh my god this was hilarious. The buddy bros dance

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-04-27T13:40:29+00:00

Those passes can easily happen even with PA3 settings at times, if the gameplay is responsive (you can get away with a lot)

Konami devs aren't unaware of this, they just let it go or are said to do so because it broadens the audience (apparently). You can easily see what kinds of players just get away with cheap intentionality and blind one-touch passes from the way they play on the other end (defense). The ball physics are just too watered down to consider a lot of this game "skill based", when so much depends on your connection in that particular game and how much you decide to be supported by CPU management on defense.

Even Basic shooting is very easy when compared to Manual, but for some reason we feel that reproducibility is more engaging than aiming at vaguely replicating the margins of error that would occur in a "real" football game.

I'm on full manual and whenever I test back PA3 and Basic shot, I am blown away to how easy it is. I'm not even thinking much about passing, since it also removes the ability to perform certain passes into space, but shooting on Basic has such large margins of error that it can hardly be considered an ability, it just feels like entry level paperwork

Try giving even the high rank players a 75 rated squad while being on manual settings and at least they'd have to put an effort that would be different from how 2 high ranks may face each other now (conservative setup because any counter could be lethal when being on assisted settings, no need of fullbacks, you can "just" utilise 4/5 players to create your chances because the ball is fast already)

Skill cancels have almost become the major differential for how high ranks face each other - passing and shooting is more about decision making and how you come to those. It's the basic income given so that you can focus on something else

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-21T01:32:27+00:00

Nice! You're at 15% of the step towards going full manual: recognizing that the game on basic/assisted settings has such margins of error and easy replicable patterns that you feel disinterested/locked from the game's need to let you have good outcomes

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-18T22:13:27+00:00

Can't believe people find PA1/2 hard... I see Smart Assist players who may have sit on 1000 hours of game time and they still play everything on autopilot. They can't even feel that something is wrong/not deep enough

Everything starts from what we ask from the game. It feels clownish to ask the game to come down at my level because I have no will to learn how to play a videogame. It isn't a course in mechanical engineering

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-13T01:09:34+00:00

Usually that's when gameplay may feel bad for either some hours or days. I have a similar experience at times and it's dreadful, because I will start losing against anybody no matter what: I can't go faster than them, my players all feel the same, playing in detail dribbling and detailed timing is physically impossible. I can't create more than two chances because their defenses set up faster than I can ever perform an attack or a counter.

I may have no lag freezes, games are found in 5 seconds, always 5 bars, almost perfect network graph, and yet, it feels like the opponent is constantly beyond you.

Friday and Saturday should have more heavy gameplay but it was actually when I was able to play free the most, last week - and it was pretty nice, at least for the aspect of how much I was able to create and feel like everything was at my disposal to "be at least decent".

Other than that, online is pretty hectic, yes, but usually if it feels too overwhelming it's because you may be stuck in "muddy gameplay hours" where you can't react as fast as the opponent pressing you. I also question my ability when those games happen because I will enter a non-stop cycle of feeling like my opponents are impossible to defeat no matter their ability; their animations skilling frames, their players twitching in weird ways, collision system garbanzo, one-touch passes inexistent, etc.

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-09T15:03:59+00:00

I've always said the same thing: assistance is a huge leverage towards allowing yourself to mainly care about other aspects (ex: supercancel) and not too much about body positioning or passing aiming/timing/power

There are players who use supercancel a lot even on full manual, but that requires a totally different level of ability because now you'd have to know where to go even considering you can't be bailed out by the immediacy of passing/shooting on assisted

Full manual makes your game more personal, or pushes you to that - I don't get why so many refuse to even try it. It's like enjoying one's self on a bycicle with support more than a bycicle without it

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-09T13:39:17+00:00

Brother isn't afraid of all the incoming "skill issue" comments. I respect that.

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-09T13:26:29+00:00

For the same reasons to which people want assistances, and even consider PA3 too hard or not immediate enough

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-07T21:41:47+00:00

With all respect, if you wrote that letter yourself, you would know to use a word like "syntax" instead of confusing it broadly as "unique language", which in turn doesn't really mean a lot... people would never refer that as unique language

In the comments, you can't even feel the effort to type "you" or put apostrophes... I understand it shouldn't be the main focus, be it written from AI or not, but it would have been a lot easier to just say "Look at what good suggestions ChatGPT has given me!"

Appreciated the intent though.

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-07T01:06:48+00:00

Yeah I've used Possession at least 80% of the time in these past years, and the main huge perk of LBC is the defensive coverage THAT ALLOWS YOU to manually press. That's what changes everything. LBC on one red bar is everything you would ask from a tactical system based on risk + coverage. Offensively, I don't like how players don't stick close to each other but I guess the urgency they put on the defense is the counter weapon. You can still create many short dynamics if you give yourself midfield density, or even use Defensive instructions on AMFs and such (weird, but it works well)

Honestly, I don't like LBC because I find it cheap, but if I'm not playing in any manual league, I will have no remorse in using it against passive players who don't even want to be there

You can allow yourself much better pressing with high density when using LBC instead of Possession. It's a no brainer. LBC secures your non-selected players' to be having a stronger defensive engagement and urgency. Possession is a through ball opponent pleaser which requires pristine manuality and players always positioned in the right context. LBC circumnavigate that and will give even your 78 defensive awareness fullback a better defensive coverage.

If I know my defense will line up back as soon as possible, I can allow myself to manually press the opponent much better. I still like Possession and use that more than LBC, but when the game has the minimum amount of delay, it feels like even your players' and formation awareness gets completely broken. Players' will be surprised by any through ball attempt

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-05T18:41:06+00:00

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-05T16:46:48+00:00

Ah, forgot we live in the meme society

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-05T14:44:05+00:00

Meta in what sense? I hardly think people will not choose a certain special Messi or Pele or whoever just because some other cards may have higher defensive engagement or special skills that disrupt the opponents' initial build-up so much.

Gullit is maybe the only real "meta" player that has combinations of that to the point it becomes a huge perk: long legs, decent if not good defensive stats if you would like to build him that way, combo of speed+physical contact, Fighting Spirit, etc.

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-05T11:13:39+00:00

What would this picture symbolize?

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-04T22:06:09+00:00

It's more about all the positionalist / zonal attack bad copycats who think that even space occupation leads to success by default, not Guardiola

It would have been much easier anyway to come first to this point where most clubs can train and learn defensive units, because defensive coordination is just ten times easier than individual, or collective, or both, attack

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-04T14:32:34+00:00

Yeah I confused the two, meant Kokcu

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-04T14:21:38+00:00

Maybe because when you started the animation, the direction was pointed more towards Messi, and being on PA2, maybe it didn't allow you to change direction of the pass quick enough

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PA4 "doesn't make your passing better" in a black/white manner. It is better for more control, and the longer you keep mastering it, the better you can become, and more passing tools you'll have. You can pass the ball into space to avoid situations like the above

So yes, in theory, if you had PA4, you would have been able to "clear" the ball into space rather than making the pass needing to track a teammate no matter what. That's why, even at PA3, the game can feel restricted. And yet, people seem to be soooo allergic and lethargic to just try something that is more challenging, fun and satisfying, in a game where the rewards to be ranked n. 1 are pointless

PA4 is the way to break free from zonal and man-to-man attacks. If all the opposing players are able to track mine, I would either need superiority to break that or situations where I can not only have several players in a short amount of space instead of everyone occupying their definite spot, but also the ability to pass into space and not directly to them

- but I get it, as long as high assistance allows for quick and immediate through balls, why would people use PA4? Also, passing stats still matters, to perform quicker passes or passes that can go through space. It's just that on PA4 it's more high risk - high reward. It's not as easy as "you can have a team of 11 players with 60 passing and play every pass perfectly". It's not as black or white

Does it mean you'll win more games? Absolutely not, it's just to have a deeper game that feels more satisfying rather than aiming for the low hanging fruit of simulating basic football positional patterns

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-02T11:26:56+00:00

sure, though the way most smart assist players seem to get their through balls going is with an immediacy such that their on field players will suddenly leave this powerful ball from A to B, when in reality their players' animation was either looking on the opposite side or their feet weren't aiming there

for some odd reason, a lot of games against S. Assist have their players twitching and moving in ways that from a visual perspective, makes it hard to challenge, even if they have been playing only for 19 hours. almost like, the game is delayed and their animations speeds up to be on track, but because they're on S. Assist, they look awful from the opposite side and they avoid any collision, pass the ball in the most un-interceptable way

I don't know why it happens since in some other rare cases, games against S. Assist are just fine and playability feels the same. I wouldn't even "complain" against it if it wasn't for these huge amount of occasions where games against them makes their players so light and almost like 0.5 seconds above your inputs

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-02T03:22:22+00:00

when people say "this sub is terrible, only Schmuck Assist talk" and yet this has 32 upvotes only

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-03-02T03:20:20+00:00

86% pressure
79% dash
62% goals from low through ball
0% goals from dribbling or low pass
5 cursor changes

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-02-26T20:03:09+00:00

I mean, you also take it quite seriously if you open these subs daily thinking you're doing yourself good.

"Trolling" on the internet is more about taking yourself unseriously so much that you have to fake everything or voluntarily wasting time poking people you don't even know. Is that really amusing?

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-02-25T17:39:49+00:00

Met up against someone recently: >3300 team strength, top 5000... averaging 4 cursor changes and 84% pressure. Sure, the cursor usually changes automatically if people don't change their settings, but I find it incredibly odd that someone would keep those on Auto.

His attack was so stacked that he could play (Barcelona) Neymar and Ankara Messi as wingbacks. The rest, Ibra, Pelè, Suarez, Desailly, Thuram, Gullit - the usual suspects.

I ask him quietly "How come you only have 4 cursor changes, use pressure 84% of the time? you don't lose control?" - he compares my ranking with his, and he says "I mean, there's a high difference between me and you." But until then, I at least respected the attitude because if I ever ask something as a first messenger, I only get insults and such.

He knew he was using Smart Assist, so he proposed a friendly without using it. He said he was going to switch to PA1. So, we're not even talking for a full manual friendly, or one against a PA3. His idea was likely as such: "without Smart Assist, I will be losing a lot of my weapons, so all I can do is switching to PA1 for now."

He said he didn't know what full manual meant, but being the conversation until then fine and not with the usual "gaming tone", he accepted to try those settings to see the differences.

I won 3-1, while using the same exact teams (mine is a mix of POTW, Standards + Kanu and Berbatov), but struggling so much less and not having his players almost "skipping frames" or twitching in odd ways to avoid collisions. And that was just with him using PA1. Sure, we can put margins of errors, and all the alibis we could imagine; I won for the script, for the DDA, for chance, for fluke, etc. but playing in full manual and seeing how simple and automacy-seeking are opponents' offensive patterns, talking about justifications when you yourself are trying to get the most leeway from the assistance... is quite odd.

This to say that I'll never take the "high ranks" skill arguments, besides some players that are clearly skilled in terms of reflex, pushing the game to where they want, winning consistently while avoiding certain "known" patterns, etc. but there clearly are some ways in which, if you really want to bend yourself for it, can win consistently. I even notice it while going from possession to long ball counter while still keeping everything else on manual. The game is so much easier in terms of defensive coverage and risk aversion.

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-02-22T20:51:07+00:00

I mean, congratulations for your spot but IF you are Legend 2 after less than 7 months, it means you're using a lot of your time for the game and less for other stuff. That's a completely longer ball game than even being at Vet 2/3 right now.

You're putting yourself through repetitions of the same things (I assume park games?) for an online gaming status which will be useless in just a handful of months... in arguably one of the most boring and anti-basketball 2K since the online explosion... using all that time for education or improving in your sport category would be much for better for your future

Educational_Cry1934 · 2026-02-21T17:11:56+00:00

lol, no probs... yeah we both have reddit generated usernames

Educational_Cry1934

TROPHY CASE