Should PES move to a new Engine for PES 2021 in anticipation for NextGen Consoles?

[Chuny]

Should Konami/PES move away from the FOX ENGINE now? What do you think?
Do you think the FOX ENGINE has come to its end and they've squeezed it the very last drop out of it? Has PES reached its full potential with it?
Do you think there's more that can be done with it or at least maintaining the current quality would be enough for another year?

Rumours have been going on for the past two years about a possible switch to UE4 (Unreal Engine 4) which have never been confirmed.
Even though the mobile version is indeed developed under UE4, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would use that one for the other platforms.

Considering PS5 and XBOX will be coming out sometime during the first quarter of 2021... do you think PES should move ahead of times, preparing PES for what's coming next? Or maybe simply wait until those consoles are already out and only then make the big change, which would be for PES 2022?.

 

[Emroth]

Yes, as soon as possible.
Same goes to Fifa.

 

[PedroDelBoy]

some videos circulating of football stadiums in unreal engine 4 and really looks unreal so yes chuny they should use it from 2021

 

[Chuny]

some videos circulating of football stadiums in unreal engine 4 and really looks unreal so yes chuny they should use it from 2021

You haven't voted though!

 

[PedroDelBoy]

You haven't voted though!

voted, sorry

 

[*aLe]

Not yet, in my opinion.
They've kinda mastered Fox engine now and the gameplay is solid. Stupid things that happen with this game (like teams having the wrong tactics, player switching being borked, AI becoming superhuman at times, and fouls being called just once in a while) are things that don't depend on the engine.
With the new consoles providing more processing power, they could easily use PES 2020 as a base and build upon it, refining the gameplay and maybe polishing the assets further (kits can be better for example).

If they switched to a new engine... Well... We could only pray that they would master it well and, even more important, SOON.

 

[Chuny]

Personally, I think the advantages of moving to a new engine would be far more than the disadvantages.

Let's assume that Unreal Engine 4 is going to be PES next engine.
Given that the developers are already familiarised with it because they've been developing the mobile version under that engine for two years now, and also taking into account what happened in 2013 when they moved to FOX ENGINE, I think they already have the necessary experience not to make the same devastating mistakes. Specially in terms of responsiveness and fluidity.

We could finally have actual dynamic lighting and weather. Which would really add a lot to the immersion.
Live shadows not only in broad daylight but also at night with different shadows casting in player's faces, etc.

But the most important thing would be that this might bring key elements to gameplay. Perhaps a more refined, cleaner code. Better AI. More animations, because the new engine could handle them faster and calculate which one to choose better than the obsolete FOX ENGINE.

 

[Aribo n Ojo]

Hard to tell, With all the power in the world this is what it's capable of...

PES 2020 for me is the best football game in 13 years so it would be a massive gamble moving away from it especially if it's to a 3rd party engine they are not used to. Look at Fifa using the utterly brilliant Frostbite engine... it's gone backwards as the engine does not suit the game.

PES mobile uses Unreal Engine 4 how does that game play and look?

 

[Chuny]

Hard to tell, With all the power in the world this is what it's capable of...

PES 2020 for me is the best football game in 13 years so it would be a massive gamble moving away from it especially if it's to a 3rd party engine they are not used to. Look at Fifa using the utterly brilliant Frostbite engine... it's gone backwards as the engine does not suit the game.

I'd argue how brilliant Frostbite really is since pretty much every dev team across EA complain about it and has caused them nothing but stress.

On the other hand, I get your point. PES 2020 is the best football game ever made for me too. But that doesn't make they'd have to start over, from scratch. They can still take this base and build upon it.

Although I think an in-depth revision of the whole code should be mandatory at this point. They're still dragging many issues from older versions precisely because of the FOX ENGINE being an outdated engine and that was never created with sport games in mind.

PES mobile uses Unreal Engine 4 how does that game play and look?

You can't really compare the power of a mobile game to that which a high-end PC (or NextGen consoles) is capable of.


That being said. I don't think Konami will be making the switch this year though. Because, like you said PES 2020 has turned out so well for them. Finally, after all this years of trying and trying. It probably wouldn't even be wise from a business POV.

 

[rojofa]

If a new engine would bring about much more advanced/complex physics and AI, then I would be interested. If it's only to do with graphics then I don't really care.

I won't be buying another football game until either title actually tries to do something new and ambitious with their underlying gameplay. A few little tweaks and additions (sometimes for the worse) to an almost identical game each year has become tiresome.

Surely one of them has to try something new soon, they can't keep churning out iterations on the same thing forever can they?...

 

[majuh]

Stupid things that happen with this game (like teams having the wrong tactics, player switching being borked, AI becoming superhuman at times, and fouls being called just once in a while) are things that don't depend on the engine.

In this special case, that's not true. Most of the problems in Fox Engine PES stem from the underlying animation system. The Fox Engine had been built with Metal Gear Solid in mind, and PES Productions took so many shortcuts to make it work in a football game. Of course they could scrap the animation system and rebuild it from the ground up, but they can also do that in a new engine which is actively being developed.

 

[Thespeedster84]

Yes, because they don't seem to able to recreate more realistic gk jump save with current engine. . Probably for Konami it means new engine required.

tbh i do have no idea how fox engine works and what it serves. Is it ai programming too ? animation ? lighting ? graphic ? all in one done in fox engine ?

 

[its999maggle]

Hard to tell, With all the power in the world this is what it's capable of...

PES 2020 for me is the best football game in 13 years so it would be a massive gamble moving away from it especially if it's to a 3rd party engine they are not used to. Look at Fifa using the utterly brilliant Frostbite engine... it's gone backwards as the engine does not suit the game.

PES mobile uses Unreal Engine 4 how does that game play and look?

Right one is fox.

 

[Chuny]

I gotta say... I thought this would be an even fight, but the poll is pretty one sided at the moment.

 

[Alx1234]

voted no - you have to perfect what you have before you move forward IMO and if that happened we would already have had what we have in PES 2020 about 3-4 years ago.

likely they will move forward with engine - so be it - I understand the pes cycle now and konami's break-stuff-so-when-you-fix-it-it-looks
-good tatics so I'll see if I can try sit out the guinea pig phase for the next few years.

 

[Chuny]

voted no - you have to perfect what you have before you move forward IMO and if that happened we would already have had what we have in PES 2020 about 3-4 years ago.

likely they will move forward with engine - so be it - I understand the pes cycle now and konami's break-stuff-so-when-you-fix-it-it-looks
-good tatics so I'll see if I can try sit out the guinea pig phase for the next few years.

You don't think 6 years has been enough time?...

 

[Alx1234]

You don't think 6 years has been enough time?...

i'm saying perfect the game before you move on - don't introduce more variables at this moment. PES 2021 should be a refined PES 2020 with a perfect ML experience. if they've come this far now, finish the job. if not, then continue as you were and i'll get off and jump back on later.

fail to do this and the true konami colours show. i'm pleased with 2020.

2021 ought to be same engine, better game.

 

[Emroth]

Better AI

Thats the only thing you will not see, pal.
AI has nothing to do with engine. It has everything to do with the effort they put into offline modes.
AI was better on Pes17 than it is now, individuality was more visible and refined.
I would also argue that AI was better in older versions of the games.
AI is developers and only developers.

But it will be nice to see better animations, hopefully less clipping, better collisions and (maybe) better referee decisions, dynamic weather, more natural movements, more inertia, better and more varied ball physics and player response to it.

Both Pes and Fifa should treat the last current gen iterations of the game as training ground, so when people jump into next gen - it wont be an absolute mess.

 

[Aribo n Ojo]

Thats the only thing you will not see, pal.
AI has nothing to do with engine. It has everything to do with the effort they put into offline modes.
AI was better on Pes17 than it is now, individuality was more visible and refined.
I would also argue that AI was better in older versions of the games.
AI is developers and only developers.

But it will be nice to see better animations, hopefully less clipping, better collisions and (maybe) better referee decisions, dynamic weather, more natural movements, more inertia, better and more varied ball physics and player response to it.

Both Pes and Fifa should treat the last current gen iterations of the game as training ground, so when people jump into next gen - it wont be an absolute mess.

AI is a huge hog on the CPU and with the Jaguar in both consoles most devs this gen have really struggled with AI more than any other gen imo. It's a balancing act. With the CPU going to be getting the biggest boost nxt-gen we should see advances going forward be it on any engine (well maybe not Ubisoft games lol) Saying that i think the AI is more than decent currently with PES i love the way the CPU dont just fling it forward and will actually build up play from the back.

 

[Emroth]

AI is a huge hog on the CPU and with the Jaguar in both consoles most devs this gen have really struggled with AI more than any other gen imo. It's a balancing act. With the CPU going to be getting the biggest boost nxt-gen we should see advances going forward be it on any engine (well maybe not Ubisoft games lol) Saying that i think the AI is more than decent currently with PES i love the way the CPU dont just fling it forward and will actually build up play from the back.

My point still stands. You will only see as much improvements to AI as the efforts they are ready to put into it.

Best example is Pes19, which had the worst AI in Pes history.

Pes20 improved a lot, but only because of the hammering they received from Master League players last year.
And even tho its improved - AI individuality is still lacking. Yes, its great to control good players and you can feel the difference between them, but when AI controls them - they all play very similar.
Even Pes18 was better at this. Hamsik, for example, used to terrorise me when I was playing Napoli. I really had to watch him.
This year - I played many seasons so far and not one player stayed in my memory.
AI Attack variety and patterns are decent. There is build up and there is some creativity, but individual players dont stand out from the rest.

 

[Negatrev]

I see the biggest thing holding back PES development is not the engine it's built in per-say (well only indirectly). It's the consoles themselves. They use an engine that will work on the consoles and then develop the game to push the consoles to their limits (usually by the end of a console cycle). I don't know enough about the insides of the Fox Engine to know if it can't easily be expanded to allow 'more' once development isn't bottle-necked by the current gen consoles.

We can already see the advancements that can be done simply by it being run on a PC. This doesn't mean the Fox Engine is perfect or that a different engine couldn't do better. But really an 'engine' is just an API suite for development and one they build in house. So I'd rather they improved their own engine than take in a third party one. Unreal 4 is very versatile but it still limits a dev to that engine. Whereas if they just improve their own (Even just Fox Engine 1.5) they have full freedom.

 

[Chuny]

Of course the PES Graphics with FOX ENGINE can be made to look even more beautiful if they had the right artists and devs.
But I still think they've pushed it to the limit.
Good/Bad taste is one thing.
Resources and power is another.

I think PES 2020's problem with graphics, in many cases, is the poor taste and poor choices they've made in the color palette, turf textures, stadiums night lighting, etc. But that doesn't mean the engine hasn't been pushed beyond what was imaginable when they started working on it back in 2013.

I think a new engine would only come with benefits. Specially since they're trying to rebrand PES with the whole eFootball thing.

I'm not even being selfish because there's no doubt that a new engine would hurt the PC Modding Community. All the work we've done for PES 2019 and 2020 would probably be useless with a new engine. But still, I want to see PES grow and take advantage of new technologies and gear.

 

[Chuny]

37 vs 13... woah!
Didn't see that coming...

 

[gabe.paul.logan]

No not yet. Better to avoid the alpha built era of PES2014-PES2018.
Also i hope its Fox Engine 2.0 next so they can use all the assets and they dont have to start from scratch everything.
One or two more years with Fox and develop the game also on the new engine in the background or something.
I just dont want to rush to something untested again.

 

[predator002]

Hard to vote on this one. Providing the game content was (minimum) exactly what we already have then yes I'd be up for a new engine with new possibilities. But if the game content had to start afresh from the beginning then I'd say no. I wouldn't be happy to have no weather, 13 stadiums, no kit options, bare ML and limited other features for the sake of (possibly) better graphics. We've had that situation before and wouldn't want it again.

 

[Emroth]

I wouldn't be happy to have no weather, 13 stadiums, no kit options, bare ML and limited other features

Quite amazing how, after so many years with Fox engine, everything is still very similar to what you described there.

 

[Negatrev]

Quite amazing how, after so many years with Fox engine, everything is still very similar to what you described there.

The biggest issue they have with stadiums is that they keep having different licences every year and so rather than just needing to make minor changes to existing stadiums they continuously end up having to build new ones . I'd love the old stadium builder back (and to allow your stadium to grow with your team in ML) rather than just a few licensed ones and then some generic ones every year.

But then as a PC user I guess 'real stadiums' hold less interest to me as others can always add them back later with mods.

 

[Emroth]

The biggest issue they have with stadiums is that they keep having different licences every year and so rather than just needing to make minor changes to existing stadiums they continuously end up having to build new ones . I'd love the old stadium builder back (and to allow your stadium to grow with your team in ML) rather than just a few licensed ones and then some generic ones every year.

But then as a PC user I guess 'real stadiums' hold less interest to me as others can always add them back later with mods.

Had a big discussion about stadiums in the past and I sort of understand why stadium creator isnt there (even tho I completely disagree with it)
Apparently - importing Option Files is Ok coz you are importing IMAGEs. And this is not created within the game. Stadium Creator is a No-No, coz you could build a stadium using in game tools.
Have to say - it sounds like a lot of bollox to me.
You cant license city names, so they changed all the teams to names of the cities (finally).
But you also cant license Letters, colours, shapes. I dont get how come there is no option to draw a shape on the shirts for Xbox users, or writing something on the shirts (as a sponsor).
If this whole license thing is so strict - Lego blocks should be banned. Minecraft should be banned.
It doesnt make sense to me whatsoever..

But its not only stadiums. Its a whole lot.
Its everything else.
Predator there said it like the game had reached some football heaven there - feature and gameplay wise.

Truth is - clipping is awful, collisions are awful, referees are diabolical, shots have little variety, game modes are dull and empty, Master League is predictable and boring, menus are horrendous, immersion is none existent, AI lacks individuality, there is no atmosphere...
I could go like this all day..

I dont agree with people saying that they brought the game to some insane level with Fox and it will be a shame to start from scratch.
The only thing they have is savage ball physics and very good animations.
(And they always had that - regardless of engine)
They merely optimised Fox now and they have a solid and playable game. But its not anything extraordinary.

Hence I dont really see why people would be against new engine. Id rather now, then later, when PS5 is at its full potential and Konami will be there trying to crack how to program a referee.

Mobile is running on Unreal for a while, so its not like it would be completely alien engine to work on.

 

[OnlyVolvic]

Think it boils down to how much revenue they still make from shipping virtually the same product every year, if people stop paying they change it up if not it's status quo.

 

[predator002]

Predator there said it like the game had reached some football heaven there - feature and gameplay wise.

No I never said we are at footballing heaven, definitely not.

My post was advising that a new engine is fine providing we keep the features that we already have right now without taking anything away. I don't want a brand new engine if the resulting game is missing all the features the prior game had. This happened years ago during the PS3 era if I remember right. The new PES with the new engine looked good but Konami took out so many features that we used to have hence my example of missing weather, very limited stadium count, missing kit options, etc. It happened once, I personally don't want it to happen again.