We didn't kick the FG?!?! (AI issue)
 

Granteed, this was during the pre-season but c'mon! We should have kicked a FG for the win!

I find this to be realistic... it is the detroit lions we're talking about.

Ha, true true true. I'm also wondering why I cannot find a game log/box score? Are these only available for regular season games?

Maybe they had Kyle Orton as the holder and didn't want to risk an interception.

go to the game schedule.
find the week.
click on the game.

i think is how i found the log/box in an html format, iirc.

I dont understand for the life of me how this community doesn't take these AI situations more seriously. This is and has been a serious flaw in the game for some time now. The AI logic in a ton of cases is batshit screwy.

Yeah, got it. I've always known where to find them but for some reason I do not have any box scores for week 1 of the preseason.

Oh well, they are working now.

I haven't monkeyed around with FOF2007 too much yet, but there were plenty of issues like this in 2004 that absolutely drove me crazy.

Mike Lowe - what are your FG settings? That would be a big factor here.

Wade,

I was just checking on this...

My settings, choosen by the coach (auto), have a 40% likelieness that we will go for it on 4th down from the 50 yard line to my opponents 21 yard line. I wish these yardage dividers were broken down a bit more. I have no issues with going for it on 4th and short around midfield late while trailing. But within FG range?!?

My actual FG range is set at: 52 and 58 for end of half.

Yeah, that's pretty conservative... Idano..

I definitely see this as an area that could use some improvement. Maybe there needs to be a setting for XX:XX left in the half or something... But I don't think it's a ridiculous AI decision.

How would the settings, which take effect for field goals within a 40-59 yard range, have any effect in this situation? And you don't think this is a ridiculous decision? That statement in itself is ridiculous. There isn't a coach (college level up) that doesn't kick in that situation.

Uhh, did you read what he wrote? I'll quote again for you.


I bolded the important part since you seem to have not read it.

That being said, I said it could use room for improvement. If this is the logic kicking it, it makes sense that he didn't go for it.

I said something else needs to kick in .. maybe a setting you can put in for the end of the game/half or something... I didn't say it's perfect..

And I bet I could dig hard enough and find a coach that didn't go in this situation, but I do agree that an overwhelming majority of coaches in real life would go here. I personally realize that it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to get this perfect and I feel that an overwhelming majority of the time that the AI decisions on the field are sound.

All this developer has to do is release a game and most people on this board go into "god worship" mode. That's not a knock on Jim at all...it is just a fact. You know this red/green issue has to be terrible for so many people on this board to make this big a stink about it. As far as the AI goes, I play out almost all of my text sim games (i do sim ootp sometimes just due to the longer baseball season) and FOF has the worst INGAME AI of them all. Other games come out and the typical responses are "I don't like that this button is blue instead of red...this is so hard on my eyes...I don't like this interface...it's too clunky"...why can't I have an all girl league...on Mondays with a blue moon this penalty isn't handled right, this game sucks"...I could go on and on but the FOF series has some severe problems that people just ignore. All games have problems at release but FOF gets a long term pass on some core AI issues that other developers would NEVER get away with (especially after this many releases in the series). I've never been able to understand the whole "protect FOF at all costs" mentality of many board members.

Read your own posts, nimrod.


Not a high percentage of people here have used PBP that much. MP has made it more important, but by and large, fast-simmers don't care as much about this sort of stuff. Just like the polls in BBCF haven't mattered all that much to me, this just isn't a big deal to me.

I thought you weren't ever coming back, by the way. Just can't resist dropping in to bitch every now and then, huh, you bitter, bitter man?

So you are saying you never owned OOTP5? :D

;)

I guess I haven't gone too in depth with gameplanning yet. But a 21-50 yard line range is just too broad. If coaches are just about flipping a coin in that situation, then that's bad. Worse is that's what his scout is recommended for him and that's what my scout is now recommending for me. I guess I could take solace in the fact that he didn't punt. And yes, I've seen guys punt from inside the 30 yard line in 2004 (haven't played 2007 enough to see if this'll still happen).

I have no desire to get into a fanboy/casual player this game/that game this developer/that developer argument or rant. I just find it amazing that so much time gets spent anazlyzing and going over players ratings, what they mean, how they perform etc. when the fact of the matter is that for all that, you will lose (or win) many games over the course of a career, based solely on shoddy in game AI.

After the game was released there was a post that listed very compelling evidence that there is an end of half kill switch in which teams will stop passing the ball. Let me reiterate. The AI will stop passing alltogether once it gets inside the 20 yard line, everytime. Nobody seemed to care.

Add on the field goal and the penalty logic, along with a bunch of other little stuff, and the actual in game play borders on maddening.

In all of the craziness, I missed this "kill switch" evidence.. any chance you could point me towards that post?

I just havent' seen evidence that the overall AI of the game has major issues. There are some spots that could use improvement, but like I said - a vast majority of the time I think the AI follows what you tell it to do quite well.

As maddening as some of these late game decision are, the way I justified it to myself was that since refs can't really blow calls in the game, these types of things were the equivalent of bad ref calls. Sometimes you get screwed, other times you are the beneficiary, but in the end, they usually all even out.

Like I was saying to Mr.-I'm-leaving-and-never-coming-back-but-I-read-the-board-nearly-every-week-and-make-a-bitter-post-every-now-and-then, I truly think it is because the long-timers here were attracted to FOF without any play-by-play presentation at all. The people that care a lot about the micro stuff probably stayed away from FOF in the past, and gravitated toward other games that had/have more of a focus on it. My thought, at least, is that yeah, I'll lose some because of in-game issues, but I'll win some too. Do I wish it was closer to perfect? Absolutely. However, when I'm more concerned about playing a 30-year career in a few weeks real-time, I know that the wins and losses will even out. What gets me MUCH more excited than in-game stuff is identifying a potential breakout in the draft, watching him develop, seeing him come into his own, seeing what kinds of stats he puts up, and looking back on his career at the end. Heck, I can rarely tell you what team I beat in the Front Office Bowl, let alone who my nickel cornerback is. I do think that's a big part of it. If stats are off a lot, or player development isn't working right, or ratings don't make sense as with 6.0a, you'll see an outcry from the long-timers.

(NOTE: We've seen more and more emphasis on this sort of thing now that MP has become a big deal, and it will probably continue to become more and more important to the community as time goes on. I'm just trying to give a little context for why some things get a lot of community attention, while others don't.)

As for the original post, I'd check to see if the kicker was injured at some point in the game.

Probably because it's a ridiculous claim. All I had to do was open one game log to find this:

dola -

Second box score I opened:

jb, this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen posted.

:rolleyes:

VPI, what version are you running. It makes me very happy to see that but I do know that the post made had 10 samples all from the same week which showed every instance of late half possesion and not 1 team attempted a pass past a certain point, so I dont think it was a ridiculous claim at all. If it's been tinkered with then that's awesome.

Let me take a glance here. I have a season that I just ran with 6.0a...

That's from the unpatched, original version. Whoever posted that claim to begin with must have a screw loose.

Well count me as glad to be proven wrong.

jbmagic?

Heh. The first one I looked at, if anything they should have just run out the clock, leading 10-7:

IIRC this series has always had end of season stats that are closer to real NFL stats than any other game. Some in game AI was questionable, sure, like when to kick etc., but at the end of the year, IIRC the stats were pretty damn good, no?

So end of half and end of game logic don't mean much to you?

Not all of us are fast simmers.

Of course it doesn't. You yourself said that we don't care about AI. Just flipping a coin over and over is enough for my sim needs.

Desmond, here's an example of what I'm talking about:

We didn't kick the FG?!?! (AI issue) Mike Lowe

Today 09:10 PM by Flasch186

33

425

versus...

FOF2K7 receiving yards issue Peregrine

Today 11:34 AM by SunDevil

23

717

I think it's just a fact of the demographic here. Post about a stats issue, and people come runnin' to investigate. Post about an in-game AI issue, and it just doesn't generate as much interest.

I completely understand. Doesnt bother me any less though. I guess I had hoped that after a few years of MP that alot of people would be looking closer at the in game stuff and commenting on it.

Not making a field goal attempt when you're down 17-16 and it's 4th and 8 on the opponent's 22 with 43 seconds to go in the game??? You've got to be kidding me.

It's a good thing when people point out things that go wrong in the game. It makes it more likely it will be fixed. Your fanboyishness in trying to rationalize the ridiculous doesn't do anyone any good.

It's a bad decision, yes. It's not RIDICULOUS depending on the circumstances surrounding it.

I don't know the kickers talent (FOFCers skimp on kickers a lot), I don't know the timeout situation, etc..

Again, I recognize this could use improvement and have said that over and over. I just think to get nutso because in one VERY specific situation a bad decision was made is just silly. If someone were to prove that in these type of situations a bad decision is made in a statistically significant # of instances, I'm listening. But pointing out one bad decisions and saying that FOF is screwed up because of it does not hold water with me.

Thank you, Jennifer Winter.

I don't think he was saying it wasn't a ridiculous real-world decision, he was saying it wasn't a ridiculous AI decision. When the settings were go for it on 4th down 40% of the time between the 20 and the 50, then decision to go for it was not unexpected. He did mention in his post that there probably needs to be an option except when there is less than XX:XX left in the half/game.

You explained what I was saying better than I did ;).

Here you go again. Nobody went nutso and nobody said FOF is screwed up. Somebody pointed out a problem and hopefully it will get looked at. You don't need to come to the resucue by defending the indefensible. It's GOOD when people point out problems. Your fanboyishness doesn't do anybody any good.

:confused:

And, again, I said that it needs improvement.

:confused:

And, again, I said that it needs improvement.

yeah, one person said the game has had AI problems for a long time, something everybody knows, and another three quotes that came after your pathetic apologetics. Give it up.

I'm a fast-simmer and rarely if ever watch or play out my games, so in-game logic is beyond anything I'd see. I agree that, based on some specific issues I've seen pointed out, I'd like to see some things tweaked. But at the end of the day, I'm more interested in roster composition than the specifics of whether I win or lose based on a faulty AI call. If I lose based on that and happen to notice, it would upset me, but what can you do? Jim's already acknowledged that the end-game AI stuff is very tricky, and given his expertise in the area, I'm going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt. It can't be perfect, so I'll deal with it as is. As long as the season stats are in-line with what I'd expect, I care more about that than the micro-management issues.

For those that watch the games and know there is a problem with certain things...why not just stop the simulation at the last 3 minutes or so and call the plays so you are assured that the GW FG gets kicked, or you go for it when down by 2 scores, etc.? You know there's a problem, and you can do something about it, so do it!

To play Devil's Advocate - that doesn't help your opponent in making the right decisions.

Sure, but who's going to complain about getting a cheap victory every once and awhile? I would only be really pissed if it cost me a victory, so to the extent you can control that, why not do it?