Defensive AI Overpowered. Offensive AI Underpowered
October 9, 2018 5:06AM
edited October 2018
I couldn't hate how this game plays any more right now. The games are 100% CPU AI based, not skill based.
The defensive AI is overpowered! They block/stop/hit/poke/intercept everything !!! Its evident when you play somebody who just puts their controller down and you cant even get a shot on net because you're getting rushed on all sides by the CPU. Yes this has been a factor every year but now its worse than ever! How does nobody see this!! Does ea even play this game?!
Most of the time, the HUMAN player, is totally unaware of the play you're trying to make and an AI defender just steps up and shuts the play down perfectly. Why is this acceptable?! If I'm playing an online game against a HUMAN opponent, and I lose, I want to know that I was bested by the player, not the CPU.
I'm all for the AI being challenging, and I'm NOT suggesting that the CPU should give you an easy win. The PROBLEM is, the offensive AI is EXTREMELY UNDERPOWERED!
I utilize every kind of strategy and I manage the pressure and forechecks every game, and the offensive AI just refuses to find open scoring lanes in the offensive zone. I mean it's to a point where I'm juking the inhuman defenders, left and right, working perimeters, deep in the corners, behind net, far slot, back to the point, and all the my useless offense can do is get tied up in front of net or jammed into a corner by the overpowered defense. Its ridiculous ! Nobody gets open! Nobody can find the obvious scoring lane! They just stand there!
It shouldnt take SO much work, just to find a scoring opportunity, ESPECIALLY if you're playing someone with a weaker skillset. Because of how overwhelming the defense is, you have to go above and beyond to try to create offensive opportunities and you get NO HELP from your offensive AI. Again, It should NOT be so difficult to get decent shots on net, when all your opponent is doing is hanging back or playing skill zone and just letting the CPU do all the work. It should be the other way around!
You're team should play with you, not for you, and especially not against you!
Right now , the game plays out like a bad CPU simulation and its beyond awful!
Edited to tone down the number of all caps sentences. Let's please be mindful of our caps lock use.
- EA_Cian
The defensive AI is overpowered! They block/stop/hit/poke/intercept everything !!! Its evident when you play somebody who just puts their controller down and you cant even get a shot on net because you're getting rushed on all sides by the CPU. Yes this has been a factor every year but now its worse than ever! How does nobody see this!! Does ea even play this game?!
Most of the time, the HUMAN player, is totally unaware of the play you're trying to make and an AI defender just steps up and shuts the play down perfectly. Why is this acceptable?! If I'm playing an online game against a HUMAN opponent, and I lose, I want to know that I was bested by the player, not the CPU.
I'm all for the AI being challenging, and I'm NOT suggesting that the CPU should give you an easy win. The PROBLEM is, the offensive AI is EXTREMELY UNDERPOWERED!
I utilize every kind of strategy and I manage the pressure and forechecks every game, and the offensive AI just refuses to find open scoring lanes in the offensive zone. I mean it's to a point where I'm juking the inhuman defenders, left and right, working perimeters, deep in the corners, behind net, far slot, back to the point, and all the my useless offense can do is get tied up in front of net or jammed into a corner by the overpowered defense. Its ridiculous ! Nobody gets open! Nobody can find the obvious scoring lane! They just stand there!
It shouldnt take SO much work, just to find a scoring opportunity, ESPECIALLY if you're playing someone with a weaker skillset. Because of how overwhelming the defense is, you have to go above and beyond to try to create offensive opportunities and you get NO HELP from your offensive AI. Again, It should NOT be so difficult to get decent shots on net, when all your opponent is doing is hanging back or playing skill zone and just letting the CPU do all the work. It should be the other way around!
You're team should play with you, not for you, and especially not against you!
Right now , the game plays out like a bad CPU simulation and its beyond awful!
Edited to tone down the number of all caps sentences. Let's please be mindful of our caps lock use.
- EA_Cian Post edited by Above1988 on
0
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Replies
If you want a human vs human experience, check out EASHL/World of Chel.
No matter what mode you play, AI can be "Kurtz" or "Saros".
Well then play ONES...
As far as I know, hockey is meant to be played 5 v 5 (plus the goalies). When the OP figures out how to have that while only controlling ONE player on the ice at a time, let EA know.
If you play hockey in real life or in clubs (6s) in the game, you can't control your teammates. You can't be everyone and can't be everywhere at the push of a button. So teammate AI needs to be good, which goes both for you and your opponent. Tell me, if you played in a team, would you want your teammates to be bad? No?? Then why would you want the AI to be bad??
If you're having trouble vs the AI, play against it in offline challenges or franchise mode. Put the difficulty up to Pro (which is the setting the AI is online) or All-star (more challenging) and find out how to beat it. Then you'll see that the AI in HUT is terrible and you'll be exploiting it all day.
The bigger problem is the the offensive AI is just not much help at all. They dont cycle effectively. They just stand around and get tied up in the offensive zone. The fact is my "92 OVR Offense" team is NOT good.
If the defensive AI is going to be as strong as it is, fine, I'm all for that, but then the offense needs to do more to put the pressure on your opponent in order to balance things out. I shouldnt have to be grinding, and circling, and rounding the net, looking for an open man, while everyone on my team is just standing around getting clogged up by the defenders. I'm not even talking about ideal cross creases, I mean just MOVE , do something! GET OPEN!
I can't say all modes anymore because the goalie difficulty changes in Ones as you go up through the tiers and Threes is on Semi Pro.
The rest of what Venom said is quite accurate though. It is still a team sport after all and it is a skill to be able to play with your full team knowing their strengths and weaknesses when playing as one player at a time. As much as some don't want to believe, the ai on both sides, is the same difficulty.
The other big change we made for defensive ai for Online VS and HUT play, since you are playing non-locked and want to encourage players to play the puck more often is that the ai won't perform defensive actions against the active puck carrier. They will break up puck receptions and incidental contact with those players as their positioning is the main thing they lend to the experience. So by them actively playing off puck, guarding players and intercepting passes, players should be able to play more active on the puck carrier.
For players losing the puck to ai players that aren't actively defending and it is only incidental contact, there is room to improve in moving the puck and finding open space more often. Technically, you can keep the puck the entire game with one player if the human player you are playing against doesn't actively defend.
The comparisons to last year with some saying the defensive ai is even better and promoting skill zone defense simply isn't true. Remember these requests?
"They at least shouldn't boardplay"
"They shouldn't be able to stick check you better than any human"
"They shouldn't be able to jump up and hit better than anyone"
These are all tuned out and not part of defensive ai against the puck carrier this year.
And remember these?
"I need to play off puck, my defensive ai can't cover a pass lane and doesn't ever intercept the puck"
"The ai always leaves players open"
Well those aren't perfect but they are greatly improved to the point that people are obviously complaining that they intercept too many passes. And great players will know when they should stop chasing the puck carrier and defend a passing lane instead. Those that master the manual switch will probably have a lot of success switching to active and passive defense as the threat to pass exceeds the thread to score with the current puck carrier.
We are listening and making improvements. There may be more to go but it has been a great step in the right direction for skill gap and if you aren't feeling it, you may not be at the top of the ladder yet.
That, I can agree with. Many times my teammate AI are just lethargic on the attack or just plain lost going one way when I need them to go another for a scoring chance. Or sometimes they just run away from a lose puck while I'm applying pressure in the zone. It's ridiculous.
As for it taking a lot of effort... Well, that's part and parcel of what should be making winning in this game satisfying. Figuring out your opponent and working hard to win should be what everyone strives for. Or do you just want wins served on a silver platter just because you put 1000$ on HUT packs and have the best cards? Having good players on your team doesn't guarantee you will win if you come across good players that know how to play this game. Remember: even a master with a stone can defeat a novice with a sword.
@NHLDev
I was sure it was on PRO for online? Maybe because the behaviour of the AI in 6s is much like it is when I go into Goalie practice mode and set it to PRO: the AI never really tries to deke around you, they just b-line it towards the goalie and shoot from 10 feet out. If that's All-Star... Wow.
In EASHL we use All Star ai but a the same time, the players themselves have average attributes in certain categories as we don't want them to be stars on their own out there. We also don't assign them abilities we would to some licensed NHL players to even think to attempt fancier dekes on breakaways, etc. and the rate at which they will look to try and beat players one on one is lower for those reasons as well.
Their passing and shooting otherwise is the same but we want them to finish one timers you set them up for as opposed to them walking in and deking the pants off the goalie on their own.
AI shooting isnt gimped? They seem to miss the net a lot on would-be goals.
I believe they have similar shooting attributes to a two way forward. Would have to see the scenarios to really know why their accuracy would have been off. Could just be that they are shooting a one timer against the grain or didn't settle before shooting, etc. just like how certain elements impact human players ability to be powerful and accurate with a shot.
Literally nothing the AI does makes any sense. I understand it must be hard to program, but I expect better than this. They are still making the same dumb mistakes they used to make 6 years ago, that is inexcusable.
What would really clear things up is if you could set your AI-strategies in the main menus instead of in-game, and have descriptions and images (like they used to) of what each setting change meant. Some player's would even want the AI-dynamically changing the strategies for them while others wont. Countless people complain about the AI dumping the puck while shorthanded and down a goal, because they don't know that if your Offensiveness (? Conservative vs All out attack) is anything less than Aggressive, they will dump from their own end.
In this way the AI could be directed to do small tasks like Crash the Net for a rebound or Set up for a Screen, or on Defense you could double team the puck handler or call for help behind the net if you get pinned.
Behind the net is the worst. The wingers will just keep circling back behind the net even when there is a completely open far post one timer opportunity. For being "all star" NHL players they act really stupidly on attack , and of course the defense is just stepping all over your effort to make something out of nothing, all while the human opponent is just standing in front of the net, skillzoning, almost mockingly.
I get that the reasoning behind this is because everyone was complaining that the defense wasnt doing enough but it's a catch-22 because now the offense is lacking. In my opinion I would rather the game focus more toward the players actions and not have the comfort of relying on defensive CPU do the work for you.
Dont even get me started on the amount of games there are this year where the goalie literally wins the game for the human player....but I know I'm not the only one talking about that!
This also goes for our team sometimes. AI should never be the best player on the team. They should be serviceable, positional, but not be an unstoppable force.
You guys say the AI is the same for both teams, but it rarely feels that way, and it's clear as day one side will have superior AI. Is this just simply strategy differences? If so, what's the magic setting to get an AI that will level any one crossing the line, or shadow someone leaving them unable to do anything, or stick lift perfectly on every cross crease attempt.
If I'm being mugged and harassed by the opposing AI, guaranteed that the other team will be able just walk by our AI without even trying. Heck, our AI will actually move out of the way for them to make it easier. Same is true when the opposite happens and we can just walk by their AI.
Not gonna say this is ice tilt or some kind of competitive rating thing. Just that it's not the same AI on both sides every time. There is clearly a difference, and it's absolutely not confirmation bias, it's pattern recognition.
Continuously pushed by D AI? Check.
Can't move because stuck in flop animation? Check.
No interference call on AI? Check.
60% depletion of stamina that I can't control? Check!
This. When this happens, the puck always go to the Ai and it’s quite hard to get it back from the Ai. Nothing grinds my gears more than getting shoved off the puck by humans or Ai.
Also the loss of stamina after a tap is ridiculous.
a lot of time i am turning in offensive zone waiting a player to go in front of net to make a one timer..
i wish computer understand this and position better to get a one timer chance to score..
this being said , i find nhl 19 awesome.. tbh i love pretty much all nhl lol.