WE:8..What is up with this comeback A.I.?

[sportdan30]

Now, I admit I'm fairly mediocre at this game although I play quite competitively when I'm playing against an equal or lesser team. More times than not, I hold my own quite well on 3 star. The games themselves have always felt fair.

For the past several weeks, I've been simply playing "Match" mode. No real complaints. So, last night I thought I'd give this game a go with Master League. I really had no idea where to begin, I so chose Aresnal as my team. My first match was against a fairly weak opponent.

For the first half, I controlled the tempo and really had very little offensive runs by the opposition. I scored on a beautiful goal my my midfielder. Second half starts and it's as if the A.I. either woke up or signed all of Manchester United's players during halftime. It was like me playing against my 3 year old son. They were literally playing keep away from me, had just an enormous amount of chances on goal against me, and I was doing anything and everything to stop them. I even adjusted my defense to where I was basically surrounding the goal. They still managed to break through the defense and get shot after shot after shot. They were quicker to the ball and every bounce seemed to go their way.

I got lucky one possession where I took control of the ball and managed to bring it up field with lightning quick passes, but the ball was knocked out of bounds by the A.I. in their territory. How I managed to score with three guys on me, I have no idea but I lucked out on a goal to go up 2-0. Still, I knew I wasn't sitting pretty. They immediately came back and scored on two quick headers within a 5-7 minute span. It was ridiculous and the comeback A.I. was so blatantly obvious. I was unable to finish the game as the wife came home with the kids. In-game saves are necessity!

I'm frusturated to the point where I don't know if I really want to play this game any longer. This is as bad as any game in recent memories in this regard.

Are there any suggestions from those who have experienced this same issue. I know I have read in the past people expressing their concern about the comeback A.I. What I found to be strange is that it occurs in the Master League and not in Match mode.

Frusturatingly Yours,

Dan

[dougb]

Ah comeback AI - just like Liverpool against AC Milan

Seriously, there are a couple of things I do when I'm up against the opposition. Firstly, slow the game down from the restart once they score. Push the ball back to your defense and then just play keep away (like the AI will do against you in the closing minutes). The old adage works here "They can't score if they don't have the ball".

Secondly, look at changing your tactics to all defend and get men behind the ball. A change in formation might be in order although I don't usually bother with that. You can make it extremely hard for the AI by packing the penalty area and take advantage of the tendency of the AI players to run too much with the ball by stripping them of possession.

Comeback AI, in a sense, mimicks well the tendency of teams to throw caution to the wind and play better football. The Champions League Final is but one example out of many of a team that has been dominated coming back and making the other team look like it couldn't buy a goal or possession of the ball.

Best wishes,

Doug

[spooky157]

I feel your pain Dan but I have to agree with Doug. The AI is just going with an all out attack, probably putting in an extra striker too. Just be patient and play the game at your pace. But you have to be quicker with your passes cause the AI gets really aggressive when trying to dispossess you. You can also try a few long balls to take advantage of all the attackers up front.

The bottom line for me is that I never feel cheated when I give up that tying goal in injury time. Don't give up on the Master League. I'm about to start season 5 trying to claw my way out of division 2 and I think I finally have the squad to do it. Best sports game ever, IMO.

[Atxj]

Dan, not to worry, I have the solution to your dilemma.

I started noticing the same thing you we're quite a while back, but I was able to cope with it and it didn't cause me too many problems. Nonetheless it still bugged me a bit. I decided to dig a little deeper into the game and take full advantage of the tactics and strategies that I had little previous knowledge of.

Ever notice the little bar underneath the player name plates on the bottom sides of the screen? Until about a week ago I had never bothered to look into what this actually was, but I am glad I did. Basically what this indicates is your teams Attack/Defend mindset. There are 6 notches, one in the middle and two to each side. All the way left is an extremely defensive mindset, while all the way right is an extremely attack related mindset. You use the White button and either Right/Left trigger to change this. White + Left trigger will move the slider left and vice versa.

This feature for one made the "Comeback AI" for me completely disapeer. You will notice a drastic change in your players thinking. In a defensive mindset you will see all of your players getting back to help the backs and you will probably even notice your forwards offering help. Of course the same applies to an offensive mindset you will see your backs push all the way to the mid-line and heavy pressure will be put on your opponent.

This feature in itself should help you out a ton, however you can take it even further. You also have the option to set 4 strategies to be used in conjunction with your White button. You can set a strategy for each of the four main buttons, A, X, B & Y. For instance, I have an alternate formation set as my Y button, a 5-4-1, so if I get a lead that I want to maintain I can simply press my White + Y button and the team will hop into that formation.

You can find all of the strategies to assign in the strategy menu, you simply pick the one you wish to assign and pick the button you want to assign it to. Viola!

I hope this offers a bit of help to your cause and you start to feel like you can sucessfully deter the AI's "Comeback AI."

[Zeppo]

But you have to be quicker with your passes cause the AI gets really aggressive when trying to dispossess you. You can also try a few long balls to take advantage of all the attackers up front.

That's the big key. If the AI is down late, or down by a bunch of goals, they will basically be holding down the X and A buttons full-time, probably combined with turbo. This is a tactic a friend of mine used to use back in the WE6 days and it was highly disruptive and frustrating. I mean it nearly threatened to ruin the head-to-head game altogether, until I broke through and learned how to draw a foul by utilising good timing. Essentially I turned the tables, and made what had been a huge advantage for him into a big advantage for me: he stopped doing it 100% of the time, and started to pick his spots more carefully.

Drawing that foul is much, much easier in WE8 than it ever has been, and with quick passing and switching the ball often you can keep them off your back and relieve the pressure. Also you'll notice the AI will put their attack level to max if they're behind at the end of a game, which is essentially pushing everyone forward and opening up huge spaces at their back. Usually there will be only two defenders on their side of the midfield stripe. A long diagonal ball from the back will almost always result in a one-on-one for one of your strikers, and a mix of opportunistic and disciplined play up front is the key to taking advantage of the AI's all-out-attack tactics.

I also agree with Spooky's and Doug's overall assessment, and I'm sure Rumble does too. I've seen enough soccer over the years and played enough WE to recognize that what some complain is comeback AI is actually a very good representation of the game. And don't give up on the ML! Just recently, I somehow destroyed the #1 team in all the leagues, Real Madrid, 4-0 on the road, and though they poured it on like crazy after I went up 2-0 in the 10th minute, they never broke through. Ronaldo, Owen, Beckham, they all had a 5.5 rating. This after barely surviving mid-table Liverpool at home with a 2-2 draw. The core of my team are guys I got free when they were 17 and suffered with until they developed into the monsters they are now. Of course, I started with the ML stiffs, and still have PES Untied as my name.

God, I wish we could match up ML teams online (that's your cue, Jamie. . .). I love how when you save your 'best eleven,' you can then use that team complete with player progression in free-match mode, but it's such a waste since there's no online play.

[RobVarak]

I've been playing non-stop ML for the last two weeks. My Liverpool squad just won the triple on 4-stars!! It is definitely intense when the AI starts pressing, but it's not cheating, like Zeppo said. You just can't hold the ball at all. Frustrating, but challenging.

[sportdan30]

Guys,

Thanks for the suggestions. There was some really useful hints and insight. I can't wait to try them out. I wanted to play last night but the wife had me lugging cr@p up from the basement for a garage sale we're having this Saturday. Still can't put up the original Nintendo and games for sale.

[vanburen]

in addition to the attack/defense meter, I use the counterattack option when I'm up late and the cpu is pressing by sending its attack/defense meter on full attack.

It basically keeps a couple guys of mine at midfield, so when I do get the ball finally, I can look at the radar and send it to the open man. Many games I'll be up 1-0, then the AI will press, and I will score late on counter b/c they're pressing too hard.

you set the attact options in the formation screen. I"m not sure what exactly what they're called, but you set them using L2 and the 4 right thumb buttons. it's in the instruction book.

I alternate between frustration and elation all the time with this game.

[mobiggins]

I've given up on the ML. There ARE computer shenanigans going on there, for sure. I'm fielding a pretty good side. My first test of the season comes agains Inter Milan, and ends in a 1-1 draw. Fair enough. Great game, not complaints. So I keep playing, I tie another game that I should have won. No biggie. I lose one that I should have won, but it's a 30+ game season, right? Well, I go on a tear after that, basically not losing or tying one single game for about 14 games straight. Inter is right there with me all the way. They stay number one. I even beat them in our second encounter 2-0, but for every one of my wins, they won. The only games they had dropped all year at the end of the season were our first tie and the game that I had beat them. On the last game of the season, I lose my encounter because at that point there was little I could do...and lo and behold, Inter TIES theirs. In a fit of frustration, I turn the game off without saving, go back a couple of days later and play again...this time I win...and don't you know it, Inter does as well.
Now, I know there have been undefeated runs in league football worldwide. But I got a distinct feeling that the computer simply would not let me win the master league at this point in time, and there was nothing I could do about it. As a matter of fact, the only way that I could have won was to go undefeated, because Inter only dropped one of our encounters and tied the other. When you play a league that has 30+ games, it's no fun to win them all. I don't know about you guys, but I don't find that entertaining, and that's what the game was requiring me to do, which is just goofy, IMO.

As for the catch-up logic in games, I do agree that it mimicks the real game well. I sorta have an issue as to how it does it, though. WE's programmers are very shrewd in that the difficulty of the game is not dictated necessarily by how good the other team gets, but rather by how bad your team starts to play. If you notice, when the computer decides that it's setting itself against you, you start to lose header contests, your passes start to come up short, the computer just starts having your players do dumbass things in the little moments when it gets a chance to control them. Which brings me to my last little issue with WE, and that's that after all these years, I still think that the CPU controls your players---the very ones that you yourself are controlling with the controller--a little too much. I know you can theoretically do the 'supercancel' but that hardly ever works, if at all.
WE is still by far the best soccer game out there, if not the best game period, but these are just some of my personal frustrations with the game.

[RobVarak]

To elaborate a bit on VanBuren's point. You can absolutely eviscerate the AI when it's in "all out" mode with long through balls...especially if you have accurate MF's. I score off of a lot of passes that would be silly and speculative in normal play, but they work when the AI is cheating its defenders up so far to help attack.

[sfz_T-car]

To elaborate a bit on VanBuren's point. You can absolutely eviscerate the AI when it's in "all out" mode with long through balls...especially if you have accurate MF's. I score off of a lot of passes that would be silly and speculative in normal play, but they work when the AI is cheating its defenders up so far to help attack.

I know WE's AI is realistic but is it possible to eviscerate something without viscera?

I agree it's fun to exploit the all out attacking AI, but it's not without risk. I'm also suspicious of some of the player AI subtleties than mobiggins speaks of. 50/50 balls sure seem to become 47/53 balls when the AI is on the go.

[dougb]

Mo,

I've noticed as well that the teams winning the league's (A,B,C,D) generally have outstanding records and rarely lose. But take a look at Chelsea's record this season, or Arsenal's last season, and it's clear that there are leagues in real life where three losses can effectively ruin any hope of ending up on top. Chelsea ended the season losing 1 game, and Arsenal ended undefeated last season! Looking over at Serie A and La Liga and we find that the two top teams lost 4 games each out of 38 games played. It's frustrating but not that unrealistic in my opinion - unless it happens every year.

On the subject of player control I pretty much agree with you - you shouldn't have to use 'super cancel' to control your own player. Reports are that this has been really improved in WE8 FE but I don't have the game and haven't been able to check this out for myself. The thing that pisses me off more than anything in WE8 right now are the f*cking keepers who stand while the ball heads toward the far post. At first people reported that it just happened when the ball went a few feet wide of the post, but I've seen the bloody ball go in the net (both off the post and directly) as well as seen the opposition score easy goals from rebounds because the keeper hadn't bothered to move over towards the ball. Very, very annoying and rather inexcusable since the problem was introduced in an attempt to improve the cosmetics of goalkeeping.

Best wishes,

Doug

[Jimmydeicide]

Press triangle and have your keeper charge the ball on those instances it helps save some uneccesary corners and such.

[RobVarak]

I know WE's AI is realistic but is it possible to eviscerate something without viscera?

Pardon me, Miss Marple.

That's a mild transgression. I could've pulled an athlete and said something like, "We literally had to rally around him." Just once I'd like to see a team carrying signs and chanting around their captain.

[10spro]

One thing about being "ahead" in scoring against the CPU is that the AI may seem to be upped in speed and skill ,but it's also fragile in the counterattck dep't. The CPU defense is usually back t only the last 3 man and if you look for some quick holes in their D and have quick forwards with quick passes, you can catch them by surprise scoring another one before they try to even up on you. Play the counterattack when you think the CPu s all over you....