EA Sports UFC Patch Version 1.02 Available Now, Patch Notes Included

[aholbert32]

Quote: Originally Posted by ThinkingOfRobots

Thanks for the detailed posts so far - the more you describe the issues using examples the easier it is for us to assess the problem. I'll try to speak to as many of the individual posts as I can. Aggression in the system boils down to a single value which then influences how much space the fighter wants between himself and his opponent, as well as whether to choose more defensive or more aggressive actions. The Aggression value is influenced by a bunch of things including a fighter's (& opponent's) health, stamina, time in the round, rounds remaining, percieved score difference, health events (ie am I or is my opponent rocked), and level of activity (ie am I / is my opponent not doing anything). Different fighters have different tuning sets that make them more or less interested in the different factors, so going with your 3 groups, and taking the 'level of activity' as an example, Low Aggro would try to create space when their opponent is 'active', and High Aggro would try to close the distance and go toe to toe. We can create as many of these different tuning sets as we like, but at the same time we don't want to muddy the waters. Right now I'm looking into toning down the aggro across all the different types, but especially for the 'Low aggro' fighters.

Thanks for the explanation. I think a good baseline for aggression settings should be what they do in the first round.

Using Machida as an example, in the first I should have to pretty much chase him around the cage. He should be using movement and counters regularly and his punch output should be low.

Now I dont think any of us mind if after round 2, AI Machida decides to be more aggressive if he is losing the fight but if he's winning that should be his strategy throughout the fight.

I'd also add Cruz to the low agg list after reading your post. He uses a ton of movement and space.

A good example of what appears to be a medium aggressive fighter in the game is Takeya Mizugaki. I faced him twice last night and while he was somewhat aggressive...it was never overly aggressive. I'd actually call it just active than aggressive. It was only two fights but assuming that it wasnt a placebo, Mizugaki is a good medium example.

Regarding high aggressiveness, I'm re-thinking it after reading your post and I'd remove Diaz and Dillashaw from my list. Diaz is offensive but not to the level of a Belfort or W. Silva.

Assuming that the aggression system value is more than just 1-3, me and I'm sure the other MMA nerds here are willing to rank the fighters on a scale of 1-10 if that helps you organize them. Just let us know.

[ThinkingOfRobots]

Quote: Originally Posted by jeremym480

First off, thanks for coming here. We have a small. but passionate and knowledgeable MMA group here. Having you guys come here and ask for our input gives me a lot of hope for this game as well as future iterations. As for your two points I think both can be difficult to balance, but here are my suggestions 1) Aggressiveness - This one is tough, because if the AI has an opening you obviously want them to take it and if the User is aggressive, then you would probably want the CPU to mirror that so they can keep up. I'm no programmer, but I'd imagine that could be a tough thing to code. With that since you guys are aiming for a sim experience, then the first place I would look would be a site like FightMetric. Find two fighters who are in the game data against each other of FM then set them up in a CPU vs. CPU and compare the two.

Thanks for having me! Being able to discuss with you guys is really helpful in knowing what changes can have the best impact.

There is a specific mechanism for dealing with overly aggressive users where at first it defends until they're theoretically drained, and then it flips and becomes the aggressor. There's also some counterpunching mechanisms in place to address people who are spamming strikes.
It would be ideal to not have to have the latter in place, but it's there to prevent people from having to implement house rules as have been mentioned above.

Another thing that is difficult to balance is keeping the fights engaging vs being realistic statistically. We need to be able to handle both a) a user that runs away the whole fight and b) a fighter who is elusive by nature

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2) Individualism - Again, I'd imagine that this isn't easy, but the main thing is that wrestlers should wrestle, judo guys should look for clinch and use their throws, etc. I think most of us just want fighters to behave closer to what the do in real life and we would like every fight to have a little bit of a different feel.

Fighters have a game plan going into the fight, the trick is to balance how much they will stray from that plan based on the changing face of the fight. We actually have a per-fighter tunable value for how much they stick to what they know vs how adaptive they are.

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Also, it would be nice if fighters were more aware of their opponent. If I'm using Big Nog and fighting against Pat Barry, then Barry shouldn't really be looking to take him down. Conversely, if the I'm Pat Barry fighting against Big Nog and I do somehow end up in his guard then he should look to keep me there instead of getting up. Furthermore, if I'm Cain Valesquez or a Ground and Pound guys I shouldn't be letting guys up. Lastly, some fighters, Machida and Anderson Silva for example should look to counter rather than strike first.

This is an interesting point - fighters definitely look to fight to their game plan, but there isn't currently much in the way of counteracting their opponent's game plan. I'll investigate further on this one.

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Like Phobia suggested earlier today sliders would really help, especially things like a slider for CPU aggression. Ultimately, the majority of sports games that are really popular do one thing great and that is give the User's options to make the game play how they see fit. In this day and age (speaking strictly about offline) there's no reason for my game to play the exact same for me as it does my neighbor. Especially, if I'm looking for a sim and my neighbor just wants to play rock em' sock em' robots.

I agree on this one, unfortunately it's a cross-disipline area that I can't speak to

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The last thing I wanted to say is sorry, for the long post and I apologize if there are bunch of errors. My wife has been yelling at me to come eat dinner for the last few minutes so I didn't get a chance to proofread. However, if you think this is long just get the the CAF and Game Mode devs to come here and I could write a book. Again, thanks for coming here and communicating with us. We really appreciate it.

No worries! Hopefully you didn't draw too much wife aggro as again this is the stuff that helps us get the necessary changes into the game.

[pdandy]

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/10136968.page

in case it hasn't been posted.

Stellar job by the devs for being honest and listening to the community. These are the types of things that help rebuild EA's reputation. Fantastic job guys!

[ThinkingOfRobots]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

In a nutshell, I would like to see the following for AI: BJJ Fighters 1. I would like them to look to take the fight to the ground and try to keep the fight on the ground. Especially those who aren't good at stand up, like Maia. 2. I would like those who are highly skilled use more advanced BJJ moves, like rubber guard, rubber guard sweep. Butterfly guard, butterfly guard sweep, kimura sweep. And I definitely would like to see them take the back more often. 3. More Leg locks and ankle lock attempts. 4. Basically if I do a CPU vs CPU match between 2 highly trained BJJ fighters, I should be seeing a grappling clinic being displayed with them rolling around on the mat looking for subs like they would in real life. 5. More BJJ type of throws and take downs. Wrestlers 1. More double leg take down attempts, with various forms of double leg take downs for the highly skilled wrestlers such as Sonnen, GSP, Hendricks, Edgar 2. Dominant wrestlers should look to ground and pound in full guard and half guard. Dropping elbows and hammer fists. Nothing more irritating then seeing Cormier, Sonnen, Cain,etc look to stand up instead of doing ground and pound. Leg Kick TKO Needs to Happen 1. It is disheartening to fight guys like Aldo, Cerrone, Ben Henderson, etc and they don't attack the legs with leg kicks a lot, like they should. 2. Same can be said about fighters who are known to throw elbows and knees a lot in real life, don't do it in the game.

Overall having a more clear separation between the different styles should be mostly just going back and retuning the tendencies of the fighters to be more clear cut. Posts like this though help in the overall tuning, as it's easy to focus too much on one particular style and lose sight of some of the balance across all of the fighter styles.
I'll look into the move sets on the ground that the skilled bjj fighters are using.
For the wrestlers again that should hopefully be just numbers tuning.
Same for leg kicks.
Elbows and knees can be a little trickier because of the reduced range they provide, but I can look into it.

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Strikers 1. More combos, less over the top flashy moves that rarely happen in real life. 2. Fighters with a reach advantage should fight like they have one. Keep their opponent at distance by using a lot of jabs and front kicks. 3. On the flip side, fighters with a reach disadvantage should look to clinch more or take the fight down to the ground to nullify their reach disadvantage. 4. Counter fighters like Machida should be way less aggressive and should look to circle more. Hell all the strikers should look to circle more. 5. The really good strikers like the Diaz brothers for example, should be putting on a combo clinic.

Already working on the first point.
Good point on the reach advantage.
See above posts for aggression.

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OVER ALL General Stuff 1. AI needs to adapt much quicker to what you are doing. 2. AI needs to attack and look for the kill when they see you are injured. If they are a striker, they should be looking to knock you out. If they are a wrestler they should immediately look to take the fight to the ground and look to ground and pound you into a TKO. If they are a BJJ guy, they should immediately look for a submission. 3, Individual limb damage should be permanent for the entire fight. And it should be more vulnerable to submission attacks on that damaged limb. 4. AI should look to cut off the ring when they see you circling. 5. Stop the AI from getting underhooks or over and under but yet they do NOTHING but shoulder thrusts for over a minute straight. They either need to take you down or push away. Far too often the AI is just content to hug you and do shoulder thrusts. 6. Guys like Dan Henderson, Sonnen and Cormier should look to clinch and dirty box. Dirty boxing is completely missing from the AI. 7. The AI needs to be more aware of the clock and what round it is. Nothing more sickening then seeing the AI back up for the last 30 seconds of a fight and not really try to engage.

1. The one thing that's risky with adaptiveness is having fighters suddenly doing things they don't tend to do IRL. For example, the sensible thing to do when rocked is attempt a takedown to recover your senses. If the fighter then always attempts a takedown in that situation but are not nearly as good on the ground as their opponent, they're not necessarily fighting true to their real life counterpart. This is maybe an overly simple example, but it's definitely a tricky thing to get right.
2. I'm surprised you're not seeing the AI try to finish the fight when they smell blood - is that true for all fighters or are you seeing it on certain ones? I'd say definitely for the strikers they should be trying to tee off on you at least.
3. That's more than just an AI change, interesting idea.
4. That exists, I'll look into making it more pronounced.
5. I don't like hearing about the AI getting stuck, I'll definitiely investigate stagnation in the clinch.
6. We actually have dirty boxer as a style, but I don't think it came through in the final product. I'll see if I can't get those guys focusing more on the dirty boxing goals more than they currently are.
7. I don't want you to feel sick! There is clock awareness logic, but again it can be tuned to become more pronounced. I'll have a look.

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Take Down Overhaul Take downs need to be more fighting style specific. In real life, depending on their background, fighters prefer different styles of take downs. Some prefer single leg and double legs, others prefer trips and throws. Me personally I will like to see BJJ fighters use more trips and throws. Were as the average wrestlers use single legs, while the dominant wrestlers such as Sonnen, Cormier, etc use double legs. No matter the style though, there needs to be more of a struggle animation when it comes to take downs. Take downs in real life aren't 100% instant like it is in this game. Usually there is a struggle and the aggressor will drive his legs to complete the take down. They had this in UFC Undisputed 3, which I think will work in this game as well. It will give it a more realistic look instead of that canned animations they have for take downs in this game that you know once it starts, you might as well put the controller down for 10 seconds and let the animation play out because hey, it is going to play it regardless. I would also like to see the fighters body type and height play more of a role in the type of take downs they can do as well. And stop with all these single leg and double leg take downs ending in side control 100% of the time. Because in reality they end up in half guard in real life when people do take downs or even full guard more often then not. Very rarely do they land in side control from a single leg or double leg.

Take down type preference is something that tunables exist for, I'll double check that the different preferences are distinct enough based on the tuning at launch.

I'll let my collegue speak to the animation side if he has a chance.

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Some Additional things I would like 1. Up against the cage specific take downs, throws and submission attempts. 2. Standing submissions from the front and back. 3. Push off the cage to create space when you on the bottom up against the cage. 4. Wall walk, wizards. 5. Fighters who are good at leg locks, attempting a high volume of leg lock attempts. Same thing can said about fighters who are known to hop on the back a lot and attack, they should do it in the game. 6. More sweat on the bodies in the later rounds, especially in 5 round fights. Might as well add more visual body damage too. Nothing grinds my gears more then to work the legs an entire fight and come last round, you can't see a visual bruising or swollen of said leg. Same thing can be said about working the body or face. About the only visual damage you see is a line n the face where a cut happened. For all this talk about body deformation, I thought I would be wowed by bruises, cuts and all sorts of visual body damage. But nope, come next round, they are all healed up.

Good wish list.
For 5., I'll look into getting more variety in the submission attempts, tying into what you were talking about earlier with the bjj specialists.

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Add Editable CPU AI Tendency Sliders

There are already tunables for a lot of the things on your list, but unfortunately adding sliders is a cross-disciplinary task, and I can only speak to the AI side of things.

[ThinkingOfRobots]

Already looking into this one.

Quote: Originally Posted by jeremym480

ThinkingOfRobots, I think that it would also be helpful if you could tune the amount of special moves a fighter does. Last night I was fighting against Barao and he threw three cartwheel kicks in the first two minutes of the fight. If those were jabs or legs kick I could stomach the inflated strikes per round/fight a little better, but since they special moves that exposes their over aggressiveness even more.

[tha_show256]

Game developers I'm know myself and a few others here would like for you all to look at how quickly fighters are made to stand from the ground...I don't know why we get stood up so quickly at times?? , the other day I was fighting a guy, had him in side mount and was stood up while punching him in the face repeatedly. I don't why this happens??

[tha_show256]

Also, I know this has been touched on a little in this thread or maybe another (I'm not quite sure) previously but, more involvement from the ref. Are you all able to add in the ref actually being shown pulling you off of one another?! Or actually stepping in during certain sequences...not a big deal, but it does add to the overall feel of the game in my eyes. I was watching old Undisputed 3 clips, and that among other things was something I believe this team should implement.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Quote: Originally Posted by tha_show256

Game developers I'm know myself and a few others here would like for you all to look at how quickly fighters are made to stand from the ground...I don't know why we get stood up so quickly at times?? , the other day I was fighting a guy, had him in side mount and was stood up while punching him in the face repeatedly. I don't why this happens??

Yeah that grinds my gears. We should be able to ground n pound from side control, half guard, full guard, side back mount, full back mount. As it is now, you can only do it from full mount. If I want to drive my knees into a guy's side until he passes out, I should be able to.

But nope...the ref will you stand you up.