Re: Dzone Coverage Issues

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@NeonSkyline21 wrote:
@Limp_KidzKitFirst off, let me thank you for doing this. As someone who strictly plays online versus, teammate AI is this game's number 1 glaring issue that needs to be remedied for the game to become more fun and satisfying IMO.

Now, as far as the faceoff alignment goes, the white team (which you say is CPU controlled?) seems to be using the "aggressive" faceoff alignment setting and therefore has three defenders all bunched up on the left side of the dot. I hate that alignment for defensive zone faceoffs and I don't see any benefit in using it. The standard alignment would have the RD directly behind the C as normal. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the white team's RW alignment. They are supposed to be there so they can attempt to rush to the point depending on where the puck goes.

It's crazy how incorrectly the defending team's AI played the 2 seconds after the puck drop. Why would the LW go to the guy in the slot when the puck has been won to the point? That is supposed to be the LD's responsibility. As you said, it must be that the AI players are "forced" to play zone coverage and the defensive settings determine those zones. In this case, the CPU team likely has their setting set to "collapsing" so the defending LW refused to go to the point but in such a case, I'd rather see the strong side winger go to the point because the puck is in one of the opposing d-men's possession. You see this in the NHL all the time: a team will be playing a collapsing style D when the puck is low in the zone which allows the offensive team to bank the puck up the boards to the point easily but THEN (and this is key) the defending strong side winger attacks the point quickly while the weak side winger stays a little bit higher than he previously was but not super high.

As far as programming goes, AI pathing in general is very difficult... especially in such a dynamic game like hockey. But as you said, a lot of the work is already done and right now it's more of a philosophy thing rather than a possibility thing. I'm sure they've tested out man-to-man coverage and I'd be curious to hear why they don't allow for us to have it as a coverage option. I think the main problem right now is that the AI gets too confused too easily and just chooses to hang out in "spots" rather than actively engage their mark more often than not. Take cross-crease defense, for example. If you don't take control of the weak side defender and actively do something about the guy on the backdoor, your AI defender will rarely disrupt the play and keep it from connecting. That shouldn't be the case, IMO.

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No problem at all, glad I finally got a response that made this worth it lol.

Faceoff alignment, I get it's a personal preference thing. I know that wing on boards is something seen depending on the coach, but I believe if you're playing man-to-man it's going to cause issues if the board-side offensive wing gets the puck. Who? tracks to the middle? If the wing is supposed to, it leaves the D wide open and poses a 2nd question of "now who goes out?" as the strong-side D has an lengthy gap between both the strong-side offensive D and the Strong-side wing who just cut the slot. 

I much prefer the alignment below to keep coverage swapping to a minimum and have more straightforward rules/responsibilities on the draw

The main issue being if your Center gets walked you're outnumbered low, but you also should hopefully trust your center's enough to not get beat super clean off of a faceoff haha but I understand the risk.

As to the in-zone strategy conversation:

I really appreciate your thoughts, glad it's not just me. I think after 30 years it's about time we retire collapsing, staggered, and tight point along with overload, crash the net, and behind the net haha. I mean seriously, I think these options have been available since NHL 95...maybe 98 at the latest. Hockey has evolved a million times over since the 90's and a thousand times over since even 2010 haha.

I especially liked your 2nd paragraph because it outlines a very "universal" approach to defense in modern hockey. All teams "collapse" and dare I say run "tight point" at the same time depending on the side of the ice they're on relative to the puck. I believe none of the options in game offer a truly "man-to-man" approach to defense and this is a conclusion I've come to after 100's of hours testing them out. We don't need these options in the game anymore, we need one universal approach to defensive strategy and then either a slider or option for gap integrity or whatever you want to call it that controls how close you want guys tracking their marks. I know IRL we see true M2M and sort of a "2-1-2" hybrid model where D play zone, center is your "help" and the two forwards high play that yin-yang of pressure strong/collapse weak, but I just don't think we'd see a much different result when implementing that in a game compared to what we currently have. I think M2M is the optimal way to go as it simplifies hockey for the casual audience EA loves and caters their competitive defaults too (lol), it quite literally is an IRL approach to defense, it will make playing the game offline more engaging, and will allow us to have AI pressuring their marks again which is going to make the game much more dynamic, engaging, and easier to tune as the game will flow much more like the real sport.

To this point, I'd say most teams run a fairly universal offense too with most teams running some variant of two guys low and a high forward + 2 defenseman trying to create an almost "umbrella" shape once established. I actually created a "common cycle" thread a long time ago on here that showed an example of what a common cycle could look like and how ti would lead to more in-zone off-puck movement as well as more consistent net-front coverage which would give users a much wider range of ways to attack the defense then we currently see with our 8 AI players standing still more often than not watching the two humans (or one 1 human and 1 on-puck AI D) play ISO basketball against one another. I believe this should be the future of this series. Get rid of these fictional approaches to both sides of the puck, take the time to program a fluid offensive concept, take the time to program M2M defense, and see how drastically improved the flow of in-zone play is compared to our current offerings. It would be night and day and would allow players of all backgrounds to have a path to success (again, WIN/WIN for ACCESSIBILITY WOOOHOO - cause you know, that's what we're about here!) while providing even more options for experienced users who have 1v1 skills and vision to truly create a skill gap in this game beyond twtich skills and mastering 1-2 moves.

I also liked how you pointed out that the "zones" the AI are asked to cover and actually what's messing their decisions up and causing both non-commits and over-commits/coverage. I 100% agree with this. The more they are asked to "think" the more the game breaks. Hockey is an impossibly complex sport to program coverage rules for. Same reason why Madden struggles with zone defense. It's because "zone" IRL applications are much more of a "calculated man" and it works because humans have the capacity to override their "zones" when necessary which the AI in all sports video games don't seem to possess.

Great response, Neon. Glad to have engagement on this. I won't speak for you, but I know that my advocacy for these AI updates is not coming from merely a "sim" perspective, but from a general gameplay enjoyment perspective. Regardless of whether or not a user truly understands hockey, having the ability to play/approach the game from a legitimate competitive standpoint in a variety of different ways will make this that much better of a video game in general, hockey sense aside. But an added plus would be that somsone who wants to learn more about the sport could actually see and feel something similiar to what they watch on tv right now. That's simply something they cant do with the current state of the game. It's a win-win from a video game stand point, its a win-win from a hockey standpoint, its a win-win from a casual standpoint, its a win-win from a competitive standpoint. Hockey is an extremely dynamic sport, its a beautiful art when flowing correctly, thats why many love it so much, its time the video game starts being a great asset for the sport and allowing people to experience the flow of the sport at their fingertips because once they do, they won't put it down. That the path we were on from 09-14, that's the path we need to get back to.