AI defenders not stick checking

honestly its been like this since the begining of time on EA games. CPU team  has always more aggressive and active than human ai teammates. especially when player locking on defense, your partner is more concerned with sprinting towards your side of the ice at any given moment than just playing their position. i think this has to do with the way the ai are programmed to play defense but obviously well never know..its just obvious that theyre somehwat designed to play passive zones and stand still rather man-to-man assignments like real life

People kept complaining about skill-zoning so this is an intentional change to force players into playing more manual defense.

I never needed thr AI to do everything for me but it'd be nice if they could put some minimal effort in

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@TTZ_Dipsy wrote:

People kept complaining about skill-zoning so this is an intentional change to force players into playing more manual defense.

I never needed thr AI to do everything for me but it'd be nice if they could put some minimal effort in

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what a shame that we sverely impacted offline AI because the online community....

especially a shame that we didnt try to make screens more effective or making skating maybe mach 2 instead of mach 6, or make passing mach 3 instead of mach 10, or make offensive actually cycle to useable/useful spots on the ice rather than spriting towards the side boards/away from lose pucks in the ozone, or make the offensive defenders acutally have a high cycle pattern, or make defensive AI man-to-man to promatoe puck movement and give-n-gos, or actually tune the avilable incidental contact in the game, or make low-speed hitting effective...

So many things to try and we just went ahead and made the game iso streetball rather than trying anything...

immersion-breaking for sure!!

I’ve found working it around the boards in the offensive zone and cycling behind the net works better than I expected, AI teammates doing pretty good with this. But zone entry is the main issue and taking the puck away from the opposing team usually only happens after they pepper my goalie with shots lol

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@DChart1011 wrote:

I’ve found working it around the boards in the offensive zone and cycling behind the net works better than I expected, AI teammates doing pretty good with this. But zone entry is the main issue and taking the puck away from the opposing team usually only happens after they pepper my goalie with shots lol

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oh yeah, the AI are great and standing on the boards to "cycle" but then they never actually break into any useable space. I mean you cycle to establish possession. Once possession is established face up with some time, you then start looking for open space to make some passing plays and shoot. right now we have ai on offense that love to stand on the wall and do nothing along with their offensive defensive pairs who stand still with heels touching the bluelline doing nothing, and then we have the defensive AI playing passive zones because they can because the AI on offense stand still and do nohting, and then it just turns into a the puck carrier sprinting around the zone full of cones trying to create an opening with their feet rather than some proper off-puck movement creating lanes and space.

and again, i know creating human-like AI is going to be nearly impoosble but thats why we need a proper cycle with multiple options and cuts programmed into the game. the 3 we have arent nearly useful enough

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@Limp_KidzKit wrote:

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@TTZ_Dipsy wrote:

People kept complaining about skill-zoning so this is an intentional change to force players into playing more manual defense.

I never needed thr AI to do everything for me but it'd be nice if they could put some minimal effort in

---

what a shame that we sverely impacted offline AI because the online community....

especially a shame that we didnt try to make screens more effective or making skating maybe mach 2 instead of mach 6, or make passing mach 3 instead of mach 10, or make offensive actually cycle to useable/useful spots on the ice rather than spriting towards the side boards/away from lose pucks in the ozone, or make the offensive defenders acutally have a high cycle pattern, or make defensive AI man-to-man to promatoe puck movement and give-n-gos, or actually tune the avilable incidental contact in the game, or make low-speed hitting effective...

So many things to try and we just went ahead and made the game iso streetball rather than trying anything...

immersion-breaking for sure!!

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The good news is you can use sliders to make the computer play 1 on 1's more aggressively at least. 

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@TTZ_Dipsy wrote:

People kept complaining about skill-zoning so this is an intentional change to force players into playing more manual defense.

I never needed thr AI to do everything for me but it'd be nice if they could put some minimal effort in

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I never understood the argument that skill-zoning meant "letting the A.I. do everything"

What buttons are people pushing to control all 5 players at once? Because unless you have this magic control scheme, there are constantly 4 other players on the ice doing something for you in some aspect at all times.