How good or not to make the AI play is a hard decision for EA to make. Good players know how to exploit them as teammates and when opposing them. I’ve been on both sides and have seen a lot of other players do the same. If EA makes them too good then that puts let’s emphasis on using human teammates. You make them too bad and that punishes the human players teammates when those AI are replacing human quitters.
In general the better one plays the better their AI teammate(s) play and vice versa. Setting certain strategies can help too. Regardless I won’t play a game with as a teammate(s) an AI Dman or Dpair because they’re simply too easy to beat with speed on the outside. Same with a C because a decent human should be able to win the majority of face offs against them. AI wingers are ok though if you set them to high pressure forcheck and breakout aggressive and wide.
I’d like to see EA implement/give more incentive to use humans instead. Like for 6’s a team must have a minimum of 4 humans instead of the 3 now. In 3’s two humans should never have an AI skater teammate. That’s on them though because finding a 3rd is easy.
As for goalies. That’s very difficult. General rule of a human goalie is to back out of games against an AI goalie. That way they both are taking a chance on which goalie they get and how they’re going to play. They do play better when you play better in front of them but sometimes it’s not in our control. Too many times though we’ve seen games where we massively outplay and take a wide variety of great chances/shots only to be robbed by the one AI G only to have our AI G let up the weakest goals on very few shots. It happens and I’m not going to explain it nor do I want an answer because I already know.
I disagree about the “individualism” nature of the game in EASHL. It has been getting better over the years for example as forwards pass back to the point a lot more now compared to when I started playing EASHL. EA has made it more viable to score in more ways than the past which has helped. I’ll give them that. You still get some puck hogs but I find a lot less than years pass. The changing of RP based on team play over individual play makes a difference too. Although it should be evenly balanced. For example if I have a great game I shouldn’t lose any RP because my teammate(s) were the reason we lost.
It’s not hard to get full games of humans (more so without goalies). The game plays a lot better with full 6’s. The more AI the worst the experience and that’s why I really only play full 6’ unless I’m playing D and both teams have AI goalies.
