How about everytime the AI loses the puck in attacking zone (puck goes loose) they immediately start skating out of the zone like they're defending a lead (0-0 match for eg). Normally when the puck goes loose, you'd go after it.
Or when you press pass to another player, the very moment you release the pass trigger, the AI defending player immediately sticklifts the receiver before the puck leaves the passer's blade... The amount of sticklift/hooking attempts by AI is comical, saw one guy lift,lift,lift,hook,hook all in about 3 seconds.
Stick lifting the AI 3 times in a row and still not knocking the puck off his stick is pretty ridiculous as well. AI reaction time is nuts, if you poke the puck off a human he usually skates 3 or 4 feet before he knows he lost it, AI just stop immediately and pick up the puck again before you can even react.
They react to the inputs before your skater does, that's the problem. Should be the other way around.
Exactly, that's just easy (or lazy?) way to make AI play "better"... someone could even call it cheating?
The npc's in escape from tarkov used to be able to see perfectly in the dark without nvg and they could see through shrubbery that the player couldn't see through. These both made huge problems for how the game played. Kinda like how the ai causes problems in nhl because of strange programming. However one dev took the time to solve their npc issues and the other hasn't.
The game is rigged and has always been rigged. The ai isn’t bad, it programmed that way deliberately. Why? Same old reason. Time and money. Would take more money out of their pockets if they actually spent the time to create a comprehensive game where to team actually compete under fair play. Making the human player/team play like they have been lobotomiesed is their idea of difficulty. Doesn’t make for a very enjoyable game though. They will never change it cause they know their is no other game for is to buy. That’s what it will take. Someone else to make a game. NBA 2K has a game. No one buys NBA Live. 2K is just as bad as EA though. They all have the same approach.
They react to the inputs before your skater does, that's the problem. Should be the other way around.
Exactly, that's just easy (or lazy?) way to make AI play "better"... someone could even call it cheating?
Bingo, and I'm glad I finally got around to looking into this and that I'm not alone in feeling like my bumbum has been violated. I'm certainly not saying I'm the greatest player but my God ... what THE hell ... The AI on Superstar 'cheat'; they can quite honestly do little to no wrong with all of their plays, shots, passes, etc.
They are in fact (as someone else mentioned) Jedi. And what upsets me most is that it doesn't even friggin matter WHAT team you play against, they are all equally Jedi-like. So much fun playing a CHL game thinking "this should be a good challenge" and then you play any team from the CHL and they play perfectly, meanwhile my AI team is so GD stupid they may as well just lay on the ice and hope the puck eventually hits them.
It's completely unrealistic how the AI opponent plays, and yet your team feels and seems like they have never actually skated a game together in their entire virtual hockey careers. Like your team is slower, dumber and not even remotely ready for most of the plays that you want to setup with them, no matter how you adjust the Breakout/Forecheck/Faceoff - doesn't matter one bit.
I honestly feel like I'd be better off with pylons that are stationed at my blueline, center and the opponent's blueline, or some combination of that, just so I can use them as a decoy because they are clearly too stupid to function as anything else. The opponent AI is always substantially better overall and it's just total poop and not what a 'Superstar' mode should be.
By now everyone who has posted in here has played this game for months, and we're all probably reasonably very good ... turn on that Superstar mode though, and get ready to get smoked by a group of AI who make little to no mistakes, perfect passing, perfect shooting, setups, plays, positioning ... Everything that the we and our AI have none of. The player AI teammates are just stupid, plain and simple.
Superstar is our highest difficulty level and some players want/need an extreme challenge. When you play on All Star in a non-locked mode, both your team ai and your opponent are All Star, however, if you are on Superstar, your team's ai is still All Star, as we expect the human player to do even more manually if they want that challenge themselves as opposed to having their ai meet that challenge.
When you play in player locked modes, both yours and your opponent ai are the same so that there isn't a balance issue with so many ai players making a difference in the gameplay as opposed to when you are not locked and expected to switch more on defense and always control the puck on offense.
The ai doesn't read inputs but it may read a direction change or start of an animation way faster than a human player and therefore be perceived as cheating. They can be tuned to recognize loose pucks quicker than the average human at times so get that extra step to retrieve a puck but some human players are extremely quick with the twitch game as well. They may also notice a hole opening up on the goalie faster than some humans would or recognize a player being open for a pass quicker. These are things we have the ability to tune by skill level. I realize that many players want to play on Superstar since it is listed as the best but if you don't prefer that experience, drop it down and play on All Star or Pro instead.
I would like to look at our top difficulties and add more realistic delays at times as it shouldn't just be that they are slower all the time. There are times in a 2 on 0 where a human player will make bang bang passes back and forth so the ai needs to be able to do that too but they may not be able to read a part of the net opening up halfway through a deke unless they planned for it further in advance. Things like that.
How about the higher difficulty levels being about tactical difficulties instead? Like teams using real life gaps, and the AI not blatantly being taken out of position for no reason. My gosh, watching them NOT hold a box on PK is cringe worthy. 5 on 3, forget about it.
I mean, I guess things like chip and chase, and neutral zone regroups would need to be implemented and I would assume your data tells you most of the people playing this game just want to fly around aimlessly, but I'm sorry mate, this brand of hockey is getting stale.
Superstar is our highest difficulty level and some players want/need an extreme challenge. When you play on All Star in a non-locked mode, both your team ai and your opponent are All Star, however, if you are on Superstar, your team's ai is still All Star, as we expect the human player to do even more manually if they want that challenge themselves as opposed to having their ai meet that challenge.
Wanted to rewrite my reply.
What I appreciate most about this is that an NHL Dev actually replied to this thread and explained exactly how the mechanics work, that is appreciated.
I was unaware that on Superstar the player's team is still All-Star skill, that definitely explains the 'skill' gap when playing non-locked mode. I can't say I agree with that, but your explanation does make sense that on the hardest mode it should be very challenging - but it doesn't seem logical.
With that said, and with what you've stated, I still don't quite agree/see how having our AI teammates on All-Star vs Superstar gives anymore of an actual challenge other than just putting the AI teammates at Superstar - once the puck lands on an AI stick it becomes the player anyway, and your skill still has to come through to finish. If you're on Superstar mode, all the AI should be as well - it would STILL provide a substantial challenge based purely on the fact that the AI team will still be just as potent, it's just that now our AI teammates won't be so 'dumb/useless' compared to their AI counterparts.
Although I do understand that the focus on Superstar is the human player to be a 'superstar', it feels like the actual game of hockey (team play) is damaged due to the fact that your literally do need to be a one-man army.
How about the higher difficulty levels being about tactical difficulties instead? Like teams using real life gaps, and the AI not blatantly being taken out of position for no reason. My gosh, watching them NOT hold a box on PK is cringe worthy. 5 on 3, forget about it.
I mean, I guess things like chip and chase, and neutral zone regroups would need to be implemented and I would assume your data tells you most of the people playing this game just want to fly around aimlessly, but I'm sorry mate, this brand of hockey is getting stale.
Sure, there are always more strategies both in terms of player formations and ways of puck retrieval/containment that we can teach our players and the different difficulties are about how well the AI will execute inside their high level direction on multiple levels.
But that is the thing about AI... Unlike real world hockey players where you get the benefit of the doubt that they are human and can just teach them strategy, we need to build living and breathing humans at the same time that we are also giving strategies they can then employ. Once trying to perform the high level strategy, they then use the rest of their 'knowledge' to determine when it makes sense to commit, when the puck is moved or their teammate has been beat, etc. using multiple factors that we take for granted with our wealth of knowledge as humans and as people that have played and watched hockey for multiple years.
Real world NHL players, who have multiple years of both being human and playing high level hockey, also make mistakes due to reading the multiple factors changing in rapid succession incorrectly.
I am not saying in our game that we don't have tons of room to improve but your analysis of the ai getting out of positon on a PK has to do with multiple factors that aren't simply fixed by telling them to stay in a box. They understand that base intention so it is the other factors that can lead them to more success or failure within each strategy. We have done a lot of work over the last few years regarding ai players reads of risk and scoring potential of the offensive team. We want our players to understand the base intention of a strategy but to be successful they also need to know when they can and should commit and/or should play more passive. As in real life, doing either of those things incorrectly can lead to getting scored against.
So all in all, I completely get your sentiment and also hope that we can continue to employ more strategies for our virtual humans to employ and that they will continue to get smarter in their abilities to read and adapt to different contexts and understand how all the factors relate to each decision they make but just remember that real world NHL teams PKs have been called cringe worthy at times as well so we need to be careful where the ai becomes easy to blame when it is also very impressive at times what they are capable of once you know what it takes to make it all happen. When I take a step back, I am amazed at where things have come over the years in terms of sports videogame AI. But that will never stop us wanting to improve
How about the higher difficulty levels being about tactical difficulties instead? Like teams using real life gaps, and the AI not blatantly being taken out of position for no reason. My gosh, watching them NOT hold a box on PK is cringe worthy. 5 on 3, forget about it.
I mean, I guess things like chip and chase, and neutral zone regroups would need to be implemented and I would assume your data tells you most of the people playing this game just want to fly around aimlessly, but I'm sorry mate, this brand of hockey is getting stale.
You should watch the EA Sports event that is currently taking place from WorldGaming. CPU doesn't seem to be an issue because the best players simply skill zone and let the CPU do the work for them. If anything the CPU does too good of a job playing for the user defensively. They should be great in position but they shouldn't be flawless with pokes, stick lifts, and the 5ft away from the board tie-ups the game allows.
Tie-ups in general need a bunch of work as the CPU can literally boardplay when they please against you.
You should watch the EA Sports event that is currently taking place from WorldGaming. CPU doesn't seem to be an issue because the best players simply skill zone and let the CPU do the work for them. If anything the CPU does too good of a job playing for the user defensively. They should be great in position but they shouldn't be flawless with pokes, stick lifts, and the 5ft away from the board tie-ups the game allows.
Tie-ups in general need a bunch of work as the CPU can literally boardplay when they please against you.
There are definitely differences in what is ideal in the main three scenarios of:
- A pure ai opponent you are playing against
- ai teammates on an unlocked human players team.
- ai teammates when human players are in locked positions
We obviously hear players talk about skill zone and have made changes with that in mind and there are definitely still some main points there for sure but it isn't really as black and white as people make it. There is still a big gap between top players that use a combination of knowing when to commit to the puck themselves and/or defend another lane/option relying on their ai to take the other job and a player that just sits back and lets the ai play.
I would like to look at more ways to differentiate gameplay when a human is playing non locked so that we can have ai players play as good as they are now away from the puck but look at not having them play defensive actions against the puck carrier to the level they are now to encourage players to play the puck even more themselves. However, as a team game, there is strategy in using all your players, even when playing active. Committing to certain lanes and forcing decisions by the puck carrier can be an active defensive tactic just as much as actively pokechecking or bodychecking them,
As we make improvements to our ai year on year, the talk of skill zone goes up. It seems odd to throttle the improvements in human vs human modes but in some ways I do get where that makes sense.
We made improvements this year to the ai in regard to picking up the trailer and having backcheckers fall into roles more actively to take away the point or the high slot rather than collapsing and playing as passive. This is especially true when they know their in zone setup is something like Tight Point. We also made improvements to strong side and weakside defense and backcheckers when it comes to strong side contains in the Neutral Zone, again especially on more aggressive defensive strategies so that puck carriers had to make more decisions to navigate on the breakout. So with those examples, your ai teammates are doing a better job in those scenarios when playing as your teammates as well. That pressure alone will help force teams to have to dump the puck or force turnovers in the neutral zone that you a team can't do unless all players on your team are employing the strategy so that is where there is grey area. The best offensive human players can overcome all of that and have a higher percent chance of zone entry in both their twitch skill and ability to adapt to what they see from both the ai and human players on the opposite team.
So with all that said, we are actively listening to the community and looking at ways to continue to improve our ai, both in the strategies they employ and how human they behave and at the same time looking to ensure the experience stays balanced so that our players that employ the best twitch skill, hockey strategy and knowledge of the entire landscape of the current experience come out on top in each game that is played.
Things to be addressed that should be doable:
1.Blue line awareness, don't know how many times a player foolishly enters or exits an offensive zone for an offsides
2.Slot / Post positioning: This is the proper place to be to be dangerous on a two on one situation or looking for a pass not the boards or in the center too close to the defender or me. Don't peel off and head for the blue line when I'm on a break with you.
3. Recognizing pressure on the puck carrier: If I'm getting pressured in my zone it would be nice to have a viable passing option not a player who rockets out of the zone.
4. Positioning and Rotation: Don't just sit in one spot, but don't mindless roam for no reason if you are open.
really? We get ripped off by company year after year and what U think is important is my modified version of something profane which is simply the truth? Maybe that’s it. EA doesn’t want the truth spoken out loud.
By the way, I am not frustrated. U see frustration comes from not being able to figure out how to do something that can be done. I am fully aware that EA has programmed this game so that we are not allowed to make intelligent hockey decision. We are simply hostages to the AI because in their crooked world that some how makes the game hard. It doesn’t. It just makes it ridiculously stupid and unenjoyable. I can beat the computer team no problem but it’s not just about scoring goals. It’s about playing intelligent hockey. The game play is what is important. Not how much scoring goes on. Your company clearly doesn’t grasp this concept.
My response to the moderator who decided to edit a modified word in the 300 word post that I may. Lol. This what stood out as important to her and some how in her brain my post wasn’t on topic.
EA steals our money every year. Why not take away our speech while ur at it.
Lol whatever ir name is, I have never posted on the forum before now. I am sure I’ll live if you stop me from posting on it again. What u should really be concerned with is finding a respectable company to work for.
Superstar is our highest difficulty level and some players want/need an quote="NHLDev;c-1931935"]Superstar is our highest difficulty level and some players want/need an extreme challenge. When you play on All Star in a non-locked mode, both your team ai and your opponent are All Star, however, if you are on Superstar, your team's ai is still All Star, as we expect the human player to do even more manually if they want that challenge themselves as opposed to having their ai meet that challenge.
When you play in player locked modes, both yours and your opponent ai are the same so that there isn't a balance issue with so many ai players making a difference in the gameplay as opposed to when you are not locked and expected to switch more on defense and always control the puck on offense.
The ai doesn't read inputs but it may read a direction change or start of an animation way faster than a human player and therefore be perceived as cheating. They can be tuned to recognize loose pucks quicker than the average human at times so get that extra step to retrieve a puck but some human players are extremely quick with the twitch game as well. They may also notice a hole opening up on the goalie faster than some humans would or recognize a player being open for a pass quicker. These are things we have the ability to tune by skill level. I realize that many players want to play on Superstar since it is listed as the best but if you don't prefer that experience, drop it down and play on All Star or Pro instead.
I would like to look at our top difficulties and add more realistic delays at times as it shouldn't just be that they are slower all the time. There are times in a 2 on 0 where a human player will make bang bang passes back and forth so the ai needs to be able to do that too but they may not be able to read a part of the net opening up halfway through a deke unless they planned for it further in advance. Things like that.
There is nothing All Star about the human team in Superstar. It's not even peewee. At least peewee league players would try to play the game. The human team stand around and does nothing or when they do move it is to block the human player from making a play or stop him from skating to a spot.
The AI most certainly does read input. Since you don't seem to realize it, I will use another game as an example. MLB the show. Hit the steal button and the AI throws to first every time you take a base stealers lead even if you have throw to first turned off for cpu. Don't leave off and hit the steal button and the AI throws to first. WHY? because the AI knows what we told our guy to do instead of guessing like real players do. So in NHL when he/she hits the shot/pass button, the AI makes a move to stop the play before the animation even starts. The only thing that bothers me about this is that we are not allowed to control what our guy does. He is programmed to pass/shoot the puck right into their sticks or body instead open space.
If you guys were serious about community feedback you would be looking into all the issues the community has complained about last 3 years. But out of 100s I can only think of a few that have been addressed.
On this topic, you are basically saying that creating a smart balanced ai is very difficult but that you are close. Start small. Fix the obvious stuff that's been there forever. Like board play. In fact get rid of it until you develop a working system.
How about drawing a big bubble around your own net so ai can't ever pass there.
Have the ai understand that when chasing pucks on the boards, if he's being chased he has to move the puck one way or the other immediately rather than turn it over 100% of the time.
Get rid of the stupid mechanism that says the ai will decide if they are going to pass when called. It's broken. So many situations where you are wide open for good chances and you have to spam for it and still nothing. Had many 2-0 breakaways where I pass to ai and he doesn't pass back even if I spam button. Just shoots into goalie belly. Worst is when he finally does but your guy is now forced into 1 touch pass.
Get rid of ai super speed and insane checking that projects from 25 feet away.
I could go on for hours with basic simple ai fixes that have been needed for years. This is why I try to only play 6s. Of course all it takes is lag or whatever and someone drops or gets kicked and now you have ai.
Really sad thing is I think this is way down on priority list. This game is full of low hanging fruit that is more important that should be addressed.
If EA cared about this product and it's community they would put 100% of their efforts, for at least a year, fixing all the problems.
If you guys were serious about community feedback you would be looking into all the issues the community has complained about last 3 years. But out of 100s I can only think of a few that have been addressed.
On this topic, you are basically saying that creating a smart balanced ai is very difficult but that you are close. Start small. Fix the obvious stuff that's been there forever. Like board play. In fact get rid of it until you develop a working system.
How about drawing a big bubble around your own net so ai can't ever pass there.
Have the ai understand that when chasing pucks on the boards, if he's being chased he has to move the puck one way or the other immediately rather than turn it over 100% of the time.
Get rid of the stupid mechanism that says the ai will decide if they are going to pass when called. It's broken. So many situations where you are wide open for good chances and you have to spam for it and still nothing. Had many 2-0 breakaways where I pass to ai and he doesn't pass back even if I spam button. Just shoots into goalie belly. Worst is when he finally does but your guy is now forced into 1 touch pass.
Get rid of ai super speed and insane checking that projects from 25 feet away.
I could go on for hours with basic simple ai fixes that have been needed for years. This is why I try to only play 6s. Of course all it takes is lag or whatever and someone drops or gets kicked and now you have ai.
Really sad thing is I think this is way down on priority list. This game is full of low hanging fruit that is more important that should be addressed.
If EA cared about this product and it's community they would put 100% of their efforts, for at least a year, fixing all the problems.
If you guys were serious about community feedback you would be looking into all the issues the community has complained about last 3 years. But out of 100s I can only think of a few that have been addressed.
On this topic, you are basically saying that creating a smart balanced ai is very difficult but that you are close. Start small. Fix the obvious stuff that's been there forever. Like board play. In fact get rid of it until you develop a working system.
How about drawing a big bubble around your own net so ai can't ever pass there.
Have the ai understand that when chasing pucks on the boards, if he's being chased he has to move the puck one way or the other immediately rather than turn it over 100% of the time.
Get rid of the stupid mechanism that says the ai will decide if they are going to pass when called. It's broken. So many situations where you are wide open for good chances and you have to spam for it and still nothing. Had many 2-0 breakaways where I pass to ai and he doesn't pass back even if I spam button. Just shoots into goalie belly. Worst is when he finally does but your guy is now forced into 1 touch pass.
Get rid of ai super speed and insane checking that projects from 25 feet away.
I could go on for hours with basic simple ai fixes that have been needed for years. This is why I try to only play 6s. Of course all it takes is lag or whatever and someone drops or gets kicked and now you have ai.
Really sad thing is I think this is way down on priority list. This game is full of low hanging fruit that is more important that should be addressed.
If EA cared about this product and it's community they would put 100% of their efforts, for at least a year, fixing all the problems.
Well said my friend but, don't forget about the ridiculous idea of programming the computer players to pass the puck, their skates, and their sticks through solid objects over and over again. My stick certainly doesn't pass through anything when I have the puck.
See all the fake excuses in the world such as it is difficult to create and intelligent game won't pass because we can simply keep pointing back to the way you *Decided* to program your game. What is so difficult that it caused your programmers to program the computer team to ignore solid objects EA? On pins and needs waiting for the answer!!!
Replies
Stick lifting the AI 3 times in a row and still not knocking the puck off his stick is pretty ridiculous as well. AI reaction time is nuts, if you poke the puck off a human he usually skates 3 or 4 feet before he knows he lost it, AI just stop immediately and pick up the puck again before you can even react.
The npc's in escape from tarkov used to be able to see perfectly in the dark without nvg and they could see through shrubbery that the player couldn't see through. These both made huge problems for how the game played. Kinda like how the ai causes problems in nhl because of strange programming. However one dev took the time to solve their npc issues and the other hasn't.
[Profanity removed by EA_Leeloo]
Bingo, and I'm glad I finally got around to looking into this and that I'm not alone in feeling like my bumbum has been violated. I'm certainly not saying I'm the greatest player but my God ... what THE hell ... The AI on Superstar 'cheat'; they can quite honestly do little to no wrong with all of their plays, shots, passes, etc.
They are in fact (as someone else mentioned) Jedi. And what upsets me most is that it doesn't even friggin matter WHAT team you play against, they are all equally Jedi-like. So much fun playing a CHL game thinking "this should be a good challenge" and then you play any team from the CHL and they play perfectly, meanwhile my AI team is so GD stupid they may as well just lay on the ice and hope the puck eventually hits them.
It's completely unrealistic how the AI opponent plays, and yet your team feels and seems like they have never actually skated a game together in their entire virtual hockey careers. Like your team is slower, dumber and not even remotely ready for most of the plays that you want to setup with them, no matter how you adjust the Breakout/Forecheck/Faceoff - doesn't matter one bit.
I honestly feel like I'd be better off with pylons that are stationed at my blueline, center and the opponent's blueline, or some combination of that, just so I can use them as a decoy because they are clearly too stupid to function as anything else. The opponent AI is always substantially better overall and it's just total poop and not what a 'Superstar' mode should be.
By now everyone who has posted in here has played this game for months, and we're all probably reasonably very good ... turn on that Superstar mode though, and get ready to get smoked by a group of AI who make little to no mistakes, perfect passing, perfect shooting, setups, plays, positioning ... Everything that the we and our AI have none of. The player AI teammates are just stupid, plain and simple.
When you play in player locked modes, both yours and your opponent ai are the same so that there isn't a balance issue with so many ai players making a difference in the gameplay as opposed to when you are not locked and expected to switch more on defense and always control the puck on offense.
The ai doesn't read inputs but it may read a direction change or start of an animation way faster than a human player and therefore be perceived as cheating. They can be tuned to recognize loose pucks quicker than the average human at times so get that extra step to retrieve a puck but some human players are extremely quick with the twitch game as well. They may also notice a hole opening up on the goalie faster than some humans would or recognize a player being open for a pass quicker. These are things we have the ability to tune by skill level. I realize that many players want to play on Superstar since it is listed as the best but if you don't prefer that experience, drop it down and play on All Star or Pro instead.
I would like to look at our top difficulties and add more realistic delays at times as it shouldn't just be that they are slower all the time. There are times in a 2 on 0 where a human player will make bang bang passes back and forth so the ai needs to be able to do that too but they may not be able to read a part of the net opening up halfway through a deke unless they planned for it further in advance. Things like that.
I mean, I guess things like chip and chase, and neutral zone regroups would need to be implemented and I would assume your data tells you most of the people playing this game just want to fly around aimlessly, but I'm sorry mate, this brand of hockey is getting stale.
Wanted to rewrite my reply.
What I appreciate most about this is that an NHL Dev actually replied to this thread and explained exactly how the mechanics work, that is appreciated.
I was unaware that on Superstar the player's team is still All-Star skill, that definitely explains the 'skill' gap when playing non-locked mode. I can't say I agree with that, but your explanation does make sense that on the hardest mode it should be very challenging - but it doesn't seem logical.
With that said, and with what you've stated, I still don't quite agree/see how having our AI teammates on All-Star vs Superstar gives anymore of an actual challenge other than just putting the AI teammates at Superstar - once the puck lands on an AI stick it becomes the player anyway, and your skill still has to come through to finish. If you're on Superstar mode, all the AI should be as well - it would STILL provide a substantial challenge based purely on the fact that the AI team will still be just as potent, it's just that now our AI teammates won't be so 'dumb/useless' compared to their AI counterparts.
Although I do understand that the focus on Superstar is the human player to be a 'superstar', it feels like the actual game of hockey (team play) is damaged due to the fact that your literally do need to be a one-man army.
Sure, there are always more strategies both in terms of player formations and ways of puck retrieval/containment that we can teach our players and the different difficulties are about how well the AI will execute inside their high level direction on multiple levels.
But that is the thing about AI... Unlike real world hockey players where you get the benefit of the doubt that they are human and can just teach them strategy, we need to build living and breathing humans at the same time that we are also giving strategies they can then employ. Once trying to perform the high level strategy, they then use the rest of their 'knowledge' to determine when it makes sense to commit, when the puck is moved or their teammate has been beat, etc. using multiple factors that we take for granted with our wealth of knowledge as humans and as people that have played and watched hockey for multiple years.
Real world NHL players, who have multiple years of both being human and playing high level hockey, also make mistakes due to reading the multiple factors changing in rapid succession incorrectly.
I am not saying in our game that we don't have tons of room to improve but your analysis of the ai getting out of positon on a PK has to do with multiple factors that aren't simply fixed by telling them to stay in a box. They understand that base intention so it is the other factors that can lead them to more success or failure within each strategy. We have done a lot of work over the last few years regarding ai players reads of risk and scoring potential of the offensive team. We want our players to understand the base intention of a strategy but to be successful they also need to know when they can and should commit and/or should play more passive. As in real life, doing either of those things incorrectly can lead to getting scored against.
So all in all, I completely get your sentiment and also hope that we can continue to employ more strategies for our virtual humans to employ and that they will continue to get smarter in their abilities to read and adapt to different contexts and understand how all the factors relate to each decision they make but just remember that real world NHL teams PKs have been called cringe worthy at times as well so we need to be careful where the ai becomes easy to blame when it is also very impressive at times what they are capable of once you know what it takes to make it all happen. When I take a step back, I am amazed at where things have come over the years in terms of sports videogame AI. But that will never stop us wanting to improve
You should watch the EA Sports event that is currently taking place from WorldGaming. CPU doesn't seem to be an issue because the best players simply skill zone and let the CPU do the work for them. If anything the CPU does too good of a job playing for the user defensively. They should be great in position but they shouldn't be flawless with pokes, stick lifts, and the 5ft away from the board tie-ups the game allows.
Tie-ups in general need a bunch of work as the CPU can literally boardplay when they please against you.
There are definitely differences in what is ideal in the main three scenarios of:
- A pure ai opponent you are playing against
- ai teammates on an unlocked human players team.
- ai teammates when human players are in locked positions
We obviously hear players talk about skill zone and have made changes with that in mind and there are definitely still some main points there for sure but it isn't really as black and white as people make it. There is still a big gap between top players that use a combination of knowing when to commit to the puck themselves and/or defend another lane/option relying on their ai to take the other job and a player that just sits back and lets the ai play.
I would like to look at more ways to differentiate gameplay when a human is playing non locked so that we can have ai players play as good as they are now away from the puck but look at not having them play defensive actions against the puck carrier to the level they are now to encourage players to play the puck even more themselves. However, as a team game, there is strategy in using all your players, even when playing active. Committing to certain lanes and forcing decisions by the puck carrier can be an active defensive tactic just as much as actively pokechecking or bodychecking them,
As we make improvements to our ai year on year, the talk of skill zone goes up. It seems odd to throttle the improvements in human vs human modes but in some ways I do get where that makes sense.
We made improvements this year to the ai in regard to picking up the trailer and having backcheckers fall into roles more actively to take away the point or the high slot rather than collapsing and playing as passive. This is especially true when they know their in zone setup is something like Tight Point. We also made improvements to strong side and weakside defense and backcheckers when it comes to strong side contains in the Neutral Zone, again especially on more aggressive defensive strategies so that puck carriers had to make more decisions to navigate on the breakout. So with those examples, your ai teammates are doing a better job in those scenarios when playing as your teammates as well. That pressure alone will help force teams to have to dump the puck or force turnovers in the neutral zone that you a team can't do unless all players on your team are employing the strategy so that is where there is grey area. The best offensive human players can overcome all of that and have a higher percent chance of zone entry in both their twitch skill and ability to adapt to what they see from both the ai and human players on the opposite team.
So with all that said, we are actively listening to the community and looking at ways to continue to improve our ai, both in the strategies they employ and how human they behave and at the same time looking to ensure the experience stays balanced so that our players that employ the best twitch skill, hockey strategy and knowledge of the entire landscape of the current experience come out on top in each game that is played.
1.Blue line awareness, don't know how many times a player foolishly enters or exits an offensive zone for an offsides
2.Slot / Post positioning: This is the proper place to be to be dangerous on a two on one situation or looking for a pass not the boards or in the center too close to the defender or me. Don't peel off and head for the blue line when I'm on a break with you.
3. Recognizing pressure on the puck carrier: If I'm getting pressured in my zone it would be nice to have a viable passing option not a player who rockets out of the zone.
4. Positioning and Rotation: Don't just sit in one spot, but don't mindless roam for no reason if you are open.
By the way, I am not frustrated. U see frustration comes from not being able to figure out how to do something that can be done. I am fully aware that EA has programmed this game so that we are not allowed to make intelligent hockey decision. We are simply hostages to the AI because in their crooked world that some how makes the game hard. It doesn’t. It just makes it ridiculously stupid and unenjoyable. I can beat the computer team no problem but it’s not just about scoring goals. It’s about playing intelligent hockey. The game play is what is important. Not how much scoring goes on. Your company clearly doesn’t grasp this concept.
My response to the moderator who decided to edit a modified word in the 300 word post that I may. Lol. This what stood out as important to her and some how in her brain my post wasn’t on topic.
EA steals our money every year. Why not take away our speech while ur at it.
Lol whatever ir name is, I have never posted on the forum before now. I am sure I’ll live if you stop me from posting on it again. What u should really be concerned with is finding a respectable company to work for.
They all went bankrupt years ago. The swindling ones are still out there though.
There is nothing All Star about the human team in Superstar. It's not even peewee. At least peewee league players would try to play the game. The human team stand around and does nothing or when they do move it is to block the human player from making a play or stop him from skating to a spot.
The AI most certainly does read input. Since you don't seem to realize it, I will use another game as an example. MLB the show. Hit the steal button and the AI throws to first every time you take a base stealers lead even if you have throw to first turned off for cpu. Don't leave off and hit the steal button and the AI throws to first. WHY? because the AI knows what we told our guy to do instead of guessing like real players do. So in NHL when he/she hits the shot/pass button, the AI makes a move to stop the play before the animation even starts. The only thing that bothers me about this is that we are not allowed to control what our guy does. He is programmed to pass/shoot the puck right into their sticks or body instead open space.
Nice try though!
On this topic, you are basically saying that creating a smart balanced ai is very difficult but that you are close. Start small. Fix the obvious stuff that's been there forever. Like board play. In fact get rid of it until you develop a working system.
How about drawing a big bubble around your own net so ai can't ever pass there.
Have the ai understand that when chasing pucks on the boards, if he's being chased he has to move the puck one way or the other immediately rather than turn it over 100% of the time.
Get rid of the stupid mechanism that says the ai will decide if they are going to pass when called. It's broken. So many situations where you are wide open for good chances and you have to spam for it and still nothing. Had many 2-0 breakaways where I pass to ai and he doesn't pass back even if I spam button. Just shoots into goalie belly. Worst is when he finally does but your guy is now forced into 1 touch pass.
Get rid of ai super speed and insane checking that projects from 25 feet away.
I could go on for hours with basic simple ai fixes that have been needed for years. This is why I try to only play 6s. Of course all it takes is lag or whatever and someone drops or gets kicked and now you have ai.
Really sad thing is I think this is way down on priority list. This game is full of low hanging fruit that is more important that should be addressed.
If EA cared about this product and it's community they would put 100% of their efforts, for at least a year, fixing all the problems.
Well said my friend but, don't forget about the ridiculous idea of programming the computer players to pass the puck, their skates, and their sticks through solid objects over and over again. My stick certainly doesn't pass through anything when I have the puck.
See all the fake excuses in the world such as it is difficult to create and intelligent game won't pass because we can simply keep pointing back to the way you *Decided* to program your game. What is so difficult that it caused your programmers to program the computer team to ignore solid objects EA? On pins and needs waiting for the answer!!!