Do AI teams get worse as time goes on?

[TurboJ]

I've played 9 seasons in the historical mode and I'm loving it. It really is a great feature to have all this history and being able to play that with real rosters (which are very well done I might add)

I'm wondering however, if the AI teams are weakening as the game progresses multiple seasons.

Reason I think this is that I've just won the Stanley Cup twice in a row, with last season ending in 130 total points and a sweep through the playoffs. This is while I'm rebuilding and have dealt away all but one of my star players. So, my team is weaker yet results are much better.

Do you see AI teams getting worse in time?

How do you see the general difficulty in longer games? Personally I found the first two seasons challenging but after that it seems winning is too easy. (I haven't touched any tactics at all and I've tried hard to refrain from any kind of cheese when trading.)

[belial1134]

I think they do get weaker because AI teams make a lot of errors that a human is unlikely to. For example:



1) They have cap space yet 4 and 5 star players may sit out a year or two before eventually being signed.


2) They still make poor trades such as trading a 1st or even 2nd round pick for a player on a expiring contract and don't resign them. Sure, a "win now" team might do that but it happens far too often. I've even gotten trades done like this in the offseason so they player never even played for the team he was traded to. Overall trading is better than what it was in FHM7 but hopefully more work is done for this in FHM9.


3) I think they get hamstrung by picking up players off waivers who now have a no movement clause and that results in some good players (usually goalies) going on to waivers. I know the no movement clause is a quick fix and hopefully something addressed in FHM9.


I'm also not sure how much effort AIs put into prospects for 2, 3, 4 years down the road.


My team has been in the playoffs for 12 consecutive years, winning the cup 3 times, and have gotten anywhere from 103 to 131 points in those 12 season.


I haven't signed a free agent, other than my own, in many years.



Any trades I make are for picks and/or prospects. My farm team in the AHL has made 7 consecutive playoffs and won their cup 4 times (which was in a span of 5 seasons). My ECHL team hasn't done much of anything though


The salary cap does cause me to trade and/or not some of my better players each year, but because I have a stocked team and farm team, I never really have a significant drop off.


Perhaps it's not so much if AI teams are getting weaker, maybe we are just able to make our teams stronger and they can't keep up

[AdequateRandomGaming]

Originally Posted by TurboJ

I've played 9 seasons in the historical mode and I'm loving it. It really is a great feature to have all this history and being able to play that with real rosters (which are very well done I might add)

I'm wondering however, if the AI teams are weakening as the game progresses multiple seasons.

Reason I think this is that I've just won the Stanley Cup twice in a row, with last season ending in 130 total points and a sweep through the playoffs. This is while I'm rebuilding and have dealt away all but one of my star players. So, my team is weaker yet results are much better.

Do you see AI teams getting worse in time?

How do you see the general difficulty in longer games? Personally I found the first two seasons challenging but after that it seems winning is too easy. (I haven't touched any tactics at all and I've tried hard to refrain from any kind of cheese when trading.)

You're not wrong. Keep in mind that part of it is if you know hockey history pretty well, you already will know which players should develop well and become good players. The AI doesn't, and can only work with the strings of numbers attached to a player ID. So at the time of the draft, for example, players like Daigle and Falloon might seem appealing on paper, but we all know what happened in the long run for those players.

[jumpSeat]

Originally Posted by AdequateRandomGaming

Keep in mind that part of it is if you know hockey history pretty well, you already will know which players should develop well and become good players. The AI doesn't, and can only work with the strings of numbers attached to a player ID.

Very good point. When it comes to historical, foreknowledge of the past does tend to give the player an advantage over the AI. Not sure what can be done to mitigate this, especially since the primary goal of historical is to stay as true to history as possible.

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by jumpSeat

Very good point. When it comes to historical, foreknowledge of the past does tend to give the player an advantage over the AI. Not sure what can be done to mitigate this, especially since the primary goal of historical is to stay as true to history as possible.

I think I've seen you mention before that you've not played OOTP but a key feature of their historical customisation is the ability to have players develop organically in their development engine as your save advances through the years. So the year you begin, for instance 1980, would take that snapshot of the players ability at that time and then you are able to rewrite history from there with players becoming stars and flops unlinked to their real life performance.

Guys do full re-sims of the whole of baseball history using this just to see who holds the records and turns out/flops etc on the OOTP subreddit.

[jumpSeat]

Originally Posted by tomkmb

I think I've seen you mention before that you've not played OOTP but a key feature of their historical customisation is the ability to have players develop organically in their development engine as your save advances through the years. So the year you begin, for instance 1980, would take that snapshot of the players ability at that time and then you are able to rewrite history from there with players becoming stars and flops unlinked to their real life performance.

Wow. That's a really interesting idea. I know from other simulation games that 'alt' history is very popular, especially the ability to rewrite as you go. A lot of people are really into it, and I have to say I love the concept. Is it something you can toggle though? Choose to have on-or-off to accommodate everyone?

And yes, you're quite right about my blissful ignorance of OOTP.

[TurboJ]

Originally Posted by jumpSeat

Very good point. When it comes to historical, foreknowledge of the past does tend to give the player an advantage over the AI. Not sure what can be done to mitigate this, especially since the primary goal of historical is to stay as true to history as possible.

There needs to be a way to increase the actual game difficulty, like directly reducing the goal scoring of the human player's team or something along those lines.

I know there are many ways a human player can exploit the game versus AI, but that's not what my issue with the game difficulty is. My issue is that the game gets too easy no matter how much I try to gimp myself as a human player.

Like I said in my first post, the problem is my results keep improving even though I am deliberately making my team weaker each year. This means the AI teams are deteriorating at such a speed that winning soon becomes unavoidable. I feel like I should have to optimize some tactics and such, in order to win - or have some of the best players at the very least. But in my experience that's not the case.

This game is really good - and that's why I'm making these comments in the first place. The potential is great. I also understand that AI is hard to get to do the 'right' things. But by adding some further difficulty options to stack the odds a little more against the player would be very welcome - there is a limit to how far a player has to limit oneself because on that path the challenge becomes 'how do I lose' instead of 'how do I win' and that eventually kills the fun in the game.

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by jumpSeat

Wow. That's a really interesting idea. I know from other simulation games that 'alt' history is very popular, especially the ability to rewrite as you go. A lot of people are really into it, and I have to say I love the concept. Is it something you can toggle though? Choose to have on-or-off to accommodate everyone?

And yes, you're quite right about my blissful ignorance of OOTP.

It's just one of a plethora of customization options when it comes to their historical game play.

See this page of the manual, if you scroll down to the last section it details the options available to choose when it comes to how the players are rated/will develop

http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...-settings-page

[jumpSeat]

Originally Posted by TurboJ

There needs to be a way to increase the actual game difficulty, like directly reducing the goal scoring of the human player's team or something along those lines.

Yeah, I think some sort of difficulty slider would be a good idea. Not so much for new players, but hardcore fans invest a lot of time and gain a lot of insight into building a successful franchise. For us, (and I include myself in this group), our learning curve is always ascending while the game difficulty remains fairly static. So naturally, as time goes by, it becomes progressively harder to enjoy the same degree of challenge.

Originally Posted by TurboJ

This game is really good - and that's why I'm making these comments in the first place. The potential is great. I also understand that AI is hard to get to do the 'right' things.

I honestly think 'getting the AI to do the right thing' is THE most difficult part of coding. I've seen so many communities divided over the question of adding new features or encouraging devs to invest that same time in improving AI.

It's a hard question to strike a balance. On the one hand, everyone wants an AI that works well and provides a suitable challenge, yet sales are usually driven by the inclusion of new bells and whistles. That is, people tend to buy for the shiny new thing, even if basic aspects of the game engine are sub-par, (which they often don't realize until after purchase).

So poor AI tends to have greater impact on repeat sales, but not as much on first-time purchases. And with the economy being what it is, many developers don't have the luxury of building loyal long-term customers, instead having to face the reality of immediate financial pressure to keep the franchise going.

So from this point of view, it begs the age old question: Is one in the hand really worth two in the bush?

[jumpSeat]

Originally Posted by tomkmb

It's just one of a plethora of customization options when it comes to their historical game play.

See this page of the manual, if you scroll down to the last section it details the options available to choose when it comes to how the players are rated/will develop

http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...-settings-page

Hey this is great! I especially like the option to use real historical transactions. It ties in nicely with an idea I've been kicking around for a while... Been thinking of starting a new historical game based (as much as possible) on actual trades only. That way I'm hoping to eliminate those 'questionable' deals the AI loves to indulge in. Shenanigans I say!

Thanks for the link!