I agree with everything you said regarding PES 2021
@paokkerkir . I believe the heaviness in the game is caused because an action (even with no button lag) just takes about a second or more to actually happen now due to the realism of the game. Passing, shooting, just turning the player - the players now have to turn their body and position their limbs and the player might even do a little flamboyant hand gesture to show where he plans to go
before he actually does what you told him to do. They also have to wait for the ball to be in exactly the right position before they can strike it. All of this looks great but it's painful to play. We are directing players in PES 2021 instead of directly controlling them in the old gen engine.
In PES6 because you had bare metal control every millisecond available and every centimeter on the pitch mattered during your decision making.
PES 2021 forces us into a more laid back even a lazy, sloppy manner of playing because you have less immediate control of the player or the ball so its more hands off. The problem with this - the major problem - is that its harder to get into a deep flow state when playing the game. That takes intense concentration.
In the old-gen engine we were always (with great intensity) watching nearby players on the pitch, asking ourselves where do we move next, which combination of moves and actions to do next -> forming our decisions fast -> pressing the buttons FAST.
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The 8-direction movement allowed us to move around in the 3D space with precision and this gave us a tighter control. The PES 2021 movement is sloppy. The free ball movement in PES 2021 should theoretically give us more freedom and more control since its off rails but notice how the balls movement is so random now and what the simulation will do with it is also so random. Now you are constantly reacting to randomness and a randomMESS.
Like here in this video at 6:54:
A user in pes6 can plan what he will do, identify and counter his opponents decisions and the opponent can counter his. It's like 3D Tekken. Your opponent might have a few options available and you know how each will go if he attempts them so you can decide to do all manners of things. There might even be a few levels to the countering with dummy moves or psychological tricks/battle. Time, intelligence and motivation mattered a lot in the old gen engine - it was an intense battle between two minds (or man against machine).
This psychological battle with moves and counter moves etc does not exist in PES 2021. PES 2021 is a sloppy mess.
In PES 2021 every pass goes a slightly different length when its made, slightly different angle too. As you can see in the above video at 6:54.
The ball bounces a lot in the game, it is very chaotic. Players hit off each other and its really random what happens then , which one falls over, who slips, who wins the ball etc. and at the same time everything seems so samey and muddled because theres no clarity in anything .... so you dont get the clean structure in shots, passes , gameplay etc because its a constant mess
There used to be (based on each persons intelligence) a limit on how fast they could accurately assess the match state (where all the players are) to make their decisions, form strategies and calculate what is possible t do - it was clean data you were working with- so in the old gen engine a user could often be seen to have moments of genius where they would make such a good move or creative decisions so quickly that it seemed impossible to observers or to their opponents that they did what they did. It was just like real soccer

So PES6 captured the magic of playing real soccer
With the old gen engine people feel much more excitement after scoring goals or performing excellent passes in the match because they caused those goals and outcomes to happen either through perfectly timing their strikes of the ball or creative decision making under extreme pressure. In online matches when players get 1 on 1 with the gk its not uncommon for people to bottle simple situations just from the pressure because they would mistime or misdirect shots/passes because even though the ball is often on rails in the engine - every pass, shot, rebound, header is different due to the physics engine, the timing of when things were executed and what part of the foot/leg was used, if someone chose to shoot high,low, to the left, the angle the passes came to the player if it was a first time shot or pass, or the distance the ball was at when the buttons were pressed , how far ahead of the player the ball was while running at, the users knowledge of the players stats and how it affects the situation they are in etc etc loads of things that must be assessed in a moments notice by the user and skillfully handled for differentiation in outcome/gameplay.
While its very satisfying to watch high level pes6 matches because you can see how intelligent the two guys are, you can see their individual styles clearly and you would for sure pat them on the back if either of them did something amazing (as everything was achieved on merit and there was very little chaos/ luck).
The ball moves like crazy in pes 2021 so its a lot of the time impossible to tell how lucky everything was when achieved.
Now with PES 2021 there is luck involved in everything at all moments.
A lot of what is happening during the match has nothing to do with the users skill or intelligence.
In PES 2021 your freedom is theoretically higher with the free ball movement but your actual agency ends up lower.
The old-gen engine things are more deterministic. It used to be that you'd be laughing during a pes match if some shite happened , in the newer engine its just annoying. If the opponent can put the ball anywhere (or the game can) and you can only move one player at a time or switch between nearby players so now you're relying a lot on off-ball AI movement of your own team which can be annoying because bad things happen that aren't your fault and good things happen that were made possible because of the AI.
I think PES 2021 has very interesting ball movement. It's a nice simulation that I can’t help but admire as a computer science guy.
But there's a noticeable lack of clarity and sharpness in the gameplay and its a bit of a mess.