Offline is unplayable

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@Cote12 wrote:

I don’t know why I keep buying this game every year when every year it’s the same problems over and over.

Why am I able to just politely pass AI defenseman on Superstar? They don’t DO ANYTHING. And on the rare chance that they actually stay with me? I simply guide them into the corner and spin back toward the slot. Every. Single. Time.

Just change the sliders, you say? Yeah those things are a joke. They’re more temperamental than my ex. Change the Poke Check Accuracy? GAME SPEED +3000!!! Cool. That’s fun.

So fine. I’ll get extreme myself. I’ll just put the User skating speed, acceleration, and agility all the way down. Finallyyy the CPU can stop me from walking down the red carpet to the slot, as they go on to put up 100 themselves.

Do the people who make this game watch hockey? I wish I could’ve spent the 70 bucks to instead sit down with them for one afternoon and just have them watch me play their game on what is supposed to be the hardest difficulty, and have them answer questions when I inevitably pause the game every 30 seconds.

If you’re an offline player who hasn’t bought the game yet, DONT. And don’t plan on it ever changing.

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You are so right.  I actually got suckered into buying the game because towards the end of my 10 hour trial I thought I had sliders that made the AI less passive and horrible (including giving them big skating boosts like you said), so I bought the game to keep tinkering to get things right to start a Franchise mode.  That didn't last, and the AI is back to allowing super easy zone entries and allowing me to do whatever I want in their zone, which makes playing Franchise mode pointless.  I know the big issues right now are all the bugs, missing features that were promised, etc., but to me the biggest issue (and has been for a while) is how bad and passive the AI is.  Why bother caring about drafting or trading in Franchise mode or making career decisions in Be A Pro if it is so easy to just skate around the AI at will? 

It is obvious they want all the online modes to be Arcade oriented, with Harlem Globetrotters on ice gameplay in HUT, VS, and World of Chel.  We are supposed to be able to enjoy something that somewhat resembles hockey in offline modes with slider adjustments, but even that is impossible with the passive AI.

Here are some clips using AlTito's sliders from Operation Sports, on superstar difficulty, difficulty adjustment all the way up:

Easy zone entry off the opening faceoff:

Zac Jones going end to end easily, including a horrible angle by F1, F2 and F3 who have no interest in stopping him, and a defenceman who  has horrible gap control while also getting burned to the outside, which is just absurd:

Here is Kreider skating around with the puck in the zone and right into the low slot basically uncontested:

Here is Mika avoiding a hit by skating in a straight line and then watching the other defensive players back into their goalie for a goal:

These were all clips from one game (and I'm pretty sure one period of that game).  Who cares about Zegras passes, presentation, game modes, etc., when the gameplay is this bad?

Here is a bonus clip from another game showing how the AI still doesn't know how to take a proper angle at the puck carrier:

We have AI that can drive cars, deepfake videos, and pilot rockets to outer space, but EA can't make it so that the player detects where the puck carrier is going and takes an angle that prevents him from going there?  I'm pretty sure Atari games had AI that could do this.

If the developers have any slider suggestions to fix this please let me know.