It's time for adaptive, intuitive, situational AI play calling

[Big FN Deal]

@roll2tide, let play devil's advocate to your last post and hopefully underline the issue with the current "games should be played" pov around Madden.

Even if the AI were just improved for situational and adaptive playcalling, then that would mean "ask Madden" and Gameflow would also have those abilities for a User. Of course people will say "make it an option", on for the CPU but off for Users, yet we know how unlikely that is given Tiburon's track record. So again it comes down to things in the game being at odds with the overall prospective that User control is paramount and the game shouldn't play itself.

To put it plainly, this odd focus on making and keeping Madden this User v User purist title, is putting it at odds with any amount of sensible adaptive AI, across the board.

[roll2tide]

Quote: Originally Posted by ggsimmonds

Sure, because we don't see enough people complaining that the AI knows their play. And lets not kid ourselves, half of OS members would equate adaptive AI with AI cheating.

There is a difference between a CB running the route 1/2 step ahead of the WR and that same DB cheating inside because I've run 4 slant routes on 3rd & 6 or less so far in the game or on 41% of all 3rd & 6s so far this season.

Coaching AI could both be tied to difficulty level and have a slider so the casual user can still score 147 points per game if so desired.

[Introvese]

This casual gamer crap pisses me off. I see 2k hoops and the effort of their devlopers. They cater to both crowds sim/casual gamers. Not sayin 2k hoops is perfect. But atleast they hav a Simulation slider making attempt of rea bball. For christ sakes 2k has a kick ball violation. Im so sick of players not adjusting. Hell if Ea just going to be lazy. Make my db warp thru a wr if the same play/hot route is called 100% of the time. Make my Wr teleport after three seconds of standing still. Do something Ea just to show u are trying. Im so frustrated by Madden. Even tho 2k hoops is miles ahead of Madden in terms of quality. Nothing is better than the chess match of football. Cam turn this around

[ggsimmonds]

Quote: Originally Posted by roll2tide

There is a difference between a CB running the route 1/2 step ahead of the WR and that same DB cheating inside because I've run 4 slant routes on 3rd & 6 or less so far in the game or on 41% of all 3rd & 6s so far this season. Coaching AI could both be tied to difficulty level and have a slider so the casual user can still score 147 points per game if so desired.

I agree. I do very much want to see adaptive AI implemented in the game, probably just as much as you do.

But I am very skeptical that we will get our wish. The majority of us are not the brilliant football minds that we think we are and even more of the consumer base are casual gamers. Now I hate to say this, but the truth is that it is not worth EA's time and resources to implement this level of AI. Programming that kind of AI is probably very challenging and the best AI developers tend not to work on sports titles. Hell the current team can't figure out how to stop the AI from calling screen passes every 3rd and long.

In the ideal world though difficulty level should only affect the intelligence of the AI, not attributes.

But if they did introduce adaptive AI, we both know that this board will see a lot of people complaining that the AI is too much of a genius and the result will be a neutering of the AI. If you don't know why I say this, search any thread or ask any poster about their "money plays."
Playing in an online franchise the most important thing is figuring out how to stop your rival's money plays. Take away our money plays and most of us suck (though most will never admit to this)

[LBzrule]

Even if they do not do adaptive A.I, they need to have defenders have better field awareness and know where their help is. Having a guy hit the HB on the 3 yard line then having a Dumb A$$ get behind the HB and help tackle him into the endzone is terrible field awareness for defensive players. It's inside the five, everyone should be getting low and pushing things back, not helping guys score.

Also NEXT gen they need to untether the OL and DL. They are still tethered very much so in Madden 25.

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by LBzrule

Even if they do not do adaptive A.I, they need to have defenders have better field awareness and know where their help is. Having a guy hit the HB on the 3 yard line then having a Dumb A$$ get behind the HB and help tackle him into the endzone is terrible field awareness for defensive players. It's inside the five, everyone should be getting low and pushing things back, not helping guys score. Also NEXT gen they need to untether the OL and DL. They are still tethered very much so in Madden 25.

Now maybe this is the type of situational AI they are touting for the new consoles because I highly doubt its' adaptive AI. Considering in the M25 for new consoles footage we have seen, AP was pointing out players for blockers to block and the OL allegedly reacting to pass rush threats on the fly, something like posted above seems in line with that. As long as it's something like this that they can implement across the board in a cookie cutter fashion, it makes sense that Tiburon could add it.

[supdog]

If you ever played the last madden and ncaa for ps2 you will see that the cpu will try to stop certain things with defensive and offensive hot routes. While the adjustments do not always stop the play the ai will try and use everything the human uses. In those versions when a hot route is called hum or cpu it flashes on the screen what hot route was called. I know programming is hard but come on if you hire the right people it can be done.

[rudyjuly2]

I agree with the op. I don't agree with anyone saying EA doesn't program it better because of the casual gamer. The honest truth is EA hasn't figured out how to do it. EA doesn't intentionally make the cpu dumb, they just don't know how to make it smart. Remember how horrible the cpu QB AI was this gen? They threw tons of picks early on and still throw quite a few picks. It's not because EA wants it that way. It's because EA doesn't know how to make it better. For all the love 2K got on the PS2/XBox they had some major flaws too. The cpu QBs before 2K5 NEVER threw it deep. When they tried to get them to throw it deep in 2K5 it was an INT fest.

I've seen a lot of people claim new hardware will fix this all but it's bunk. Algorithms and intelligence don't need that much horsepower, just intelligent programming. I'm not claiming it's easy as football is the hardest sport to work on imo but if EA knew how to fix this it would have been done by now. That's why I don't think next gen will be much smarter at all. It's the programmers, not the hardware that's the problem.