The AI makes this game basically unplayable offline (for me)
As usual, this time of year I stop playing HUT and give the other modes a shot. I figured I would start a Be a Pro career to see if that is fun. Despite how great the game looks and all the "features", the on-ice product is so poor I can't have any fun playing it at all.
I started a career in the NHL with a playmaking winger, on Superstar difficulty with Full-Sim sliders. My first few shifts I collected the following clips, all showing how insanely bad the AI is:
The forwards are doing god knows what, but definitely not cutting off passing or skating lanes, and the defense backs up and does not seem to care about allowing an easy zone entry.
The forechecking forwards take horrible angles, misjudge the speed and trajectory of the puck carrier, and do absolutely nothing, while again the defense backs up ridiculously and allows an easy zone entry.
This is probably the worst one, as it is on a 5 on 3, where my (lowly rated) player easily loses a forechecker behind the net and skates up the ice completely pressure-free. Again, this was on a 5 on 3, where you should barely be able to have enough time to ice the puck, nevermind skate it up ice unpressured.
There are two main problems with all of these clips - the angles the forecheckers take, and the gaps the defencemen leave.
Forecheckers seem to always be a second or two behind where they should be, taking nearly straight line paths to where the puck carrier was seconds ago rather than taking an angle to where they currently are/where they are going and angling the puck carrier towards the boards.
Here is how NHL 22 AI pursues the puck carrier:
Here is more how they should pursue the puck carrier:
The D-gaps have always been an issue in every hockey game, even the 2k games which were more realistic in many ways. They just allow forwards to coast into the zone easily, almost never forcing dump-ins or turnovers. And backchecking pressure from forwards is either nonexistent or suffers the same angling issues as the forechecking. Here is a really low quality (sorry) clip of a real game that shows the combination of D gap control and backchecking causing a chip-in rather than an easy zone entry:
Now these sorts of things may not bother people who are more casual hockey fans, I don't know. But how can such a huge part of hockey - the difficulty of moving the puck out of your zone and getting it into the opponent's zone - be basically nonexistent in this game? Its like if a football game didn't have running plays, or a baseball game only had homeruns. This game is more like basketball - getting the puck set up in the zone is a foregone conclusion, all the action takes place once you are already there. There is a total lack of action or suspense in the first 2/3rds of the ice surface when you have the puck. The game can have all the outfits, cutscenes, and storylines it wants, but the on-ice gameplay is so boring and predictable that it is not fun. Having an AI player be able to judge speed and trajectory and take a proper angle on a puck carrier doesn't seem like some crazy technological achievement either, I'm pretty sure we had the technology 30-40 years ago to do that.
If allowing players to waltz up the ice and into the zone unharassed is a conscious design choice due to EA's bean counters thinking that this will entice more casuals to buy/play the game, then let me know and I will stop pointing these things out. I don't think that is smart, however, since if people are buying a hockey game they probably want a hockey game, not 1/3rd of one.
