UFC Hardcore Career Mode Challenge

[UFCBlackbelt]

This is a hardcore ruleset for anyone who wants to play offline AI career mode while waiting for EA UFC 4. I feel that at a certain level of experience the AI becomes pretty easy to beat, so these guidelines help balance and create challenge.

OUTSIDE OF FIGHT

• Play legendary mode (which means no resets, naturally)
  
  Limited to three camps in career mode. It never made sense to keep switching between camps to learn the best punch and best submission. No fighter ever does this in real life and its just odd - it leads to OP characters. You are given three camps you can join, so pick wisely. You might want to stay in your initial cheap camp and wait till you have the funds for two expensive camps, or branch it out between cheap, medium and expensive. Maybe you stick strictly to striking camps or balance it between BJJ, wrestling and striking?
  
  No min-max training. Training should be balanced realistically and naturally. This means not spamming the cheapest training option to max out an OP stat like Stamina off the bat, or avoiding training a camp's non-specialty while you wait to max it out in another camp. Train what you expect to need for the fight. I also suggest learning all the camp's moves and spar occasionally to build gameplans, get discounts, try to avoid in-camp fights if possible and promote yourself.
  
  Pick the hardest challenge or highest marketed fight each time. Sometimes you're offered a top contender but can choose a low ranked opponent. Because of the way EA UFC 3 is designed, either will get you to the same place with only a small variation.
  
  

DURING THE FIGHT

There are some easy ways to beat the AI that would make any challenge a breeze...

• NO WHIFF BAITING: The AI has a huge tendency to whiff strikes if you walk in and out of striking range, leading to very easy fights where you have a huge stamina advantage. This is just an issue with the AI currently. Basically, if I step in and out of kicking range I can bait the AI to throw and gas out. You can do this in small extents, but excessive use of this is considered AI-exploiting and defeats the purpose. Circle out, pause in place. Pace yourself like a real fight and use feints. Don't fight the AI the way you would fight an online ranked opponent.
  
  SUBMISSIONS: The AI is broken when it comes to submission offense and defense. When using a submission, you must intentionally tick in the wrong direction at the beginning of the submission. This gives your opponent's defense a boost and makes submissions slightly more challenging. Also do not spam submissions as this is also an easy way to beat the AI. In regards to defending submissions, there aren't any adjustments here since defending against the AI is a nightmare. This is unfair but hey, its hardcore.
  
  STAY ACTIVE - NO LONG-TERM GRAPPLE DRAINING: The AI does use fakes now, but is still pretty easy to gas out on the ground because of their tendency to use high risk escapes. You can easily stay in half guard or side control and drain the opponent's stamina to death. In order to balance this out, stay active by attacking in various positions. Don't fight like you would an online ranked opponent. Posture up in guard. Throw some strikes in postured half and pass/go back to closed. Same applies for clinch.
  
  Basically, if it feels super easy and cheesy, don't do it.

It might sound like a lot, but I've actually been really enjoying it, and it might be refreshing for those who retired from online ranked and want to have more of a sim career experience.

[Blackman316]

You can also enable button-mash submission controls. The AI tends to excel on those if its sub skills are better.

Your points do highlight that the mode just isn't fun and flawed. Hopefully they will take their time with this year's version.

[ragreynolds]

Instead of outright limiting us to 3 camp changes, I'd suggest something that makes a little more sense.

I agree that it's dumb how we can just go around all the camps. That doesn't happen in real life, so we should try and discourage it somehow.

I'd suggest that the longer you stick with one camp, the better your training bonuses become. So when you just join a camp, you get 1x XP towards whatever stat you train. But the longer you stay with that same camp, that 1x XP bonus increases up to say a maximum of 5x. If you switch camps at any point, you lose ALL of the built up bonus. It goes back to 1x, even if you go back to the old camp, your bonus is lost.

A system like this would force you to choose between getting your stats to a high level with your long term camps, or building a more varied moveset at the cost of maybe not increasing your stats as much.

Additionally, I'd suggest that certain camps maybe only allow you to get certain stats to a certain level. So for example, if you're training at a wrestling focused gym, then obviously you should be able to train your wrestling stats to high levels, but when it comes to kickboxing stats, there should be a limit on how high that specific gym will be able to train you. You'd have to go to a kickboxing focused gym to get the striking stats above a certain point.

I certainly think that there needs to be some sort of penalty for leaving one gym and going to another. The stat boost idea doesn't really punish players for leaving a gym, but rather it rewards them for staying in one place. Perhaps an actual penalty for leaving would be a better idea.