A.I., Robot
Sampdoria 2-4 Singers FC
I took myself by surprise with my performance in this one. For once all of my key players were fit at the same time. Also for once, the Regulate Condition feature turned lots of orange form arrows into red form arrows. I have been using Regulate Condition very sparingly. When overused, it can make your entire squad permanently tired.
Camacho got a goal in this game. A nice one-two, and a strong run. He’s certainly coming along, is Camacho. Ten games ago I think he’d have been muscled off the ball. The finish is through the goalkeeper’s legs:
I was wearing my away kit – predominantly black, with sky blue trimmings – in this game. I so rarely get to wear it. Perhaps seeing my players in the black kit gave me a little boost? Who knows. I might use it as my home strip next season.
D2 Cup: Singers FC 1-1 Parma (agg. 3-3 -I win on away goals)
Yessss… I had to struggle through this home leg tie against Parma. I really want to win the D2 Cup this season, so I played a wee bit over-cautiously in the first half.
Even at 0-0 I was already ahead on away goals (it was 2-2 at Parma’s place). Consequently the CPU was in supercharged mode for the entire game. I held them off with some skill and a lot of good fortune. Jackson was superb for me in this game – clearing everything with his head, tackling back, slide-tackling effectively. But the pressure was too much. Parma got their goal in the 70th minute. That, I thought, was that.
Ah, but my team is made of stronger stuff these days. Gutierrez came on as a substitute. Fresh and full of running, he received the ball just outside the box on the left. I took a hopeful snapshot – and the ball ricocheted into Parma’s net off a hapless defender…
3-3 on aggregate and I went through to the Quarter Finals on away goals. A bit lucky, but I earned my luck. I’ll take it.
Singers FC 0-0 Feyenoord
Feyenoord are one of the division’s top teams. They thumped me earlier in the season. Here I was coming off the back of a strenuous Cup match and most of my best players were out. This dour 0-0 draw was the best I could do. I put some pressure on their goal late on but there was always a defender around to stop me getting through.
Speaking generally about PES for a moment, I’m tired – so very tired – of seeing cleared corners at both ends of the pitch always falling neatly to a CPU player.
When it’s my corner, the cleared ball goes to the CPU and they launch a counter-attack (usually an almost unstoppable one). When it’s the CPU’s corner and I clear it, does the ball nearly always fall to my player? Does it hell. The ball always falls to a CPU player, and they continue to press. It’s not realistic and it’s not right.
Clearly, this kind of thing has been deliberately programmed into the game. It is one of the many advantages that an artificial intelligence needs in order to level the playing field against a human opponent.
But surely it’s possible in the 21st Century to design an AI that doesn’t need such a transparent helping hand? It’s very odd that we’ve seen amazing advances in gaming technology – in graphics, in sound, etc. – but almost no advances in the quality of computer AIs. This is an issue that affects strategy games in particular, but it’s starting to feel very old in sports franchises like PES.
“Speaking generally about PES for a moment, I’m tired – so very tired – of seeing cleared corners at both ends of the pitch always falling neatly to a CPU player.”
Clearances were weak in PES6 as well. Clearing the ball with a punt was always a poor idea, because it would fall to an opposition player 90% of the time, and be back in your box before you defense could re-organize anyway.
So my teams always play in a somewhat silly style with defenders holding the ball and dribbling to find passing opportunities in order to pass up through midfield. It’s weird, not very realistic and arcadey, but it was the only way to hold the ball.
PES 6 had pushed the AI as far as it was going to go on a last-gen platform. It simply couldn’t add more calculations.
Clearly, the Konami team does not have a grasp on the next-gen platforms yet. More calculations means more fine-tuning is required. Increased complexity in any system means more potential cock-ups.
My belief is that this kind of heavy-handed scripting is plaster over the cracks in PES’ AI. Aspects just the AI didn’t work very well, so they substituted a simpler algorythm or calculation that ends up with clearances falling to the computer most of the time.
The other possibility (and clearly the one you favor, (not) Greg), is that the AI is tuned to send clearances to the COM team as a way to ratchet up the difficulty.
For curiosity’s sake, play a few matches on Easy difficulty and see if you get the same issue.
When considering AI: The gaming phrase “Ball physics” is smoke and mirrors. It means they use real-world physics to help the scripted ball *look* like it’s moving correctly. The game system hasn’t been built yet that could actually run the real-world physics of a two man game of keepy-uppy, nonetheless an 11-on-11 football match.
^ I really need an editor.
p.s. Great title.
1. An AI may not injure a human-controlled player or, through inaction, allow a human-controlled player to come to harm.
2. An AI must obey orders given to it by Seabass’ notion of what is exciting in a football match, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. An AI must protect its own lead as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I got bored so played a cup on default difficulity and most of the time the balls cleared from corners ended up with one of my players.
Difficultity must play a major part in it.
I have a feeling that formations might play a role in where the cleared balls land.
For example when I play a holding DMF (with attack mindedness on yellow – not sure if that matters though) he tends to stand just outside the opponent’s box and manages to collect alot of loose balls. Often he’s unmarked and I can even send the corner ball to him for a volley outside the box.
All – Disaster has struck at my workplace. I can hardly bring myself to say it…. Until this week everybody in my team enjoyed unlimited internet access. A blind eye was turned as long as our work got done. This arrangement had worked well – until this week. Somebody took the piss, and now we have zero access. Not even a few sites are available. It’s completely blocked.
So, from now on, I’ll be ‘off the radar’ for 9 hours per day. After I leave for work, I generally won’t get a chance to look at the blog and respond to any comments until I get home, which is after 23:00 GMT, or first thing the next morning. Obviously on my two days off per week this won’t apply. Those two days change randomly.
Right now I have to grab something to eat. I’ll try to respond to everybody’s points above before I get to bed, but if not, rest assured I’ll post my thoughts about this so-called ‘AI’ in PES first thing tomorrow.
(Quick first responses)
ck – I’m convinced that scripted outcomes for certain stereotypical situations are just one aspect of the AI favouritism that so blatantly exists in PES that we almost don’t notice it. I have a replay clip that I’ll post in a day or two of something that happens so often on the PES pitch that it’s almost invisible. We almost forgive it, but we shouldn’t.
Paul – yes, difficulty plays a part. Top Player is the biggest culprit. I think Seabass & co. should come up with a new way to make the game difficult. Dare I say it, but they should simply steal ideas from FIFA08. If you tackle a player in FIFA08, he stays tackled, and you get the ball. He doesn’t have time to get up and get the ball back while your player stands there in apparent confusion.
woog – Seabass is on record as saying that every problem anyone ever has with PES is down to player settings like the one you describe. It’s certainly a possibility, I’ve played with 4-3-3 formations for so long that I don’t honestly know if the ball-to-CPU rule applies to a 3-5-2, say. I think that it would, as I think that this feature is an intrinsic part of the PES AI. Even if you come up with a formation that reduces the incidence of it from 90ish% to, say, 70ish%, it’s still weighted heavily in favour of the AI. But I do want to test it out. I’ll do that in the morning.
I’ll respond some more tomorrow now.
You may be right about formation settings, in my ML I play a 4-3-3. But for my cup run I played the default 4-4-2 thats used for england. I can’t remember off the top of my head but I believe they have at least one if not both non wingers playing in an cmf or dmf role (which would explain why i always was able to pick up the ball with Gerrard) I’ll have to try the same team and formation on a higher difficulty to see if that comes in to play.
ck – when it comes to three laws of PES Robotics, I think Team Seabass only has the one: whenever there is a loose ball, the ball will fall favourably for the AI on almost all occasions (dependent upon difficulty level and just how desperately the human player can exert himself).
I’m convinced it is real and that it is an element of game difficulty, as you and others have said too. But is it right? Shouldn’t they be looking for other ways to make the game difficult? How far is it possible to take a computer football game AI before the law of diminishing returns takes effect, and increasingly artificial methods of boosting the AI have to be employed?
I think we hit that wall a few versions ago. PES5 was the first version when I felt that the outcome of certain game situations was being manipulated in the AI’s favour, and transparently so. It’ll be very interesting, after the storm that has surrounded PES2008 for other reasons, to see what if anything they come up with for PES2009. My bet is that it’ll be more of the same.
paul – having midfielders positioned more centrally would seem to alter the % of loose balls in your favour, but it’s still way, way too high for comfort. A truly level playing field between human and AI is probably not possible, but I don;t think we should have our noses rubbed in it quite so much now. I’d rather see a CPU player go on a wonder dribble that I can at least imagine I might have been able to stop with better defending, than see loose balls automatically go to CPU players until they get the goal.
I’m off to work soon, and as I said above the buggers have taken internet access away from us in the office. Thus I’ll be off the radar until at least late tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning. When I get home from work I tend to just want to eat, watch some late-night poker, and then go to bed.