Good thread.
Echoing your NHL series OP, NHL 96 for Genesis, crossing in front of the goal and shooting to the top left with a backhand shot scored a goal like... four shots out of 5.
For me, this is Madden-engine football games *the thread.* The CPU has not been significantly improved in about a decade or more... they might make changes one year to one aspect of defensive skill or abilities, but then fuck something else up. Like, in Madden '17, zone defensive was completely pointless, you may as well just never play zone because it was an automatic completion with nobody covering anybody. Then, in 18, they flipped it., so cover 3 and cover 4 were effective while man couldn't keep up with any players on the field...They didn't improve zones, they just made man defense horrible, and then in 19 they rebalanced it in another way.
Usually within about a week of playing the latest Madden I figure out the flaws in defensive coverage and playcalls, and then decide whether I want to make "house rules" banning me from using those plays or not. It ends up ruining the game for me. It'd basically be like creating house rules in a game like Dark Souls, or something, where you can't use "roll" or hit enemies in the back... and maybe you stick with it against skeletons or something, but inevitably you get to a boss that's beating you and you can't help but break out the devastating moves to win. It cheapens the game and makes it less fun that you have to implement house rules like that.
CPU Defensive playcalling is *SO BROKEN* and it's been broken for at least 15 years. The defensive playcalling works by picking a handful of plays based on the play that you, the offense, selects depending on your difficulty level. It's easily testable. Have a 1st and goal at the 1 yard line, come out in a shotgun, 2 TE, 2 WR, 1 RB formation... But call a pass play. The defense will come out in a 4/3 or 3/4, maybe nickle package, expecting the pass. But, same scenario, use the same formation, but choose a run play, the defense will come out in a 4-6, goalline, or stacked box formation. Other scenarios are also plainly obvious: Come out in a fake field goal package, the CPU will have a coverage call for the fake, but come out in a field goal play and the CPU Will have a FG block play selected. It's not "cheating," it's just dumb. There is no defensive playcalling AI, it's entirely jsut based on what you pick, and the defense changes based on a couple dice rolls or variables depending on the difficulty level you're playing on. I'm fairly certain the defense has, say, 4 or 5 plays to pick from based on your offensive selection, and let's say 3 are effective, one is mildly ineffective, and one is a disaster ineffective (e.g., like a huge gain if you read the defense right), and those number shift depending on your difficulty... so if you're on the easiest, then there 2 disaster ineffective choices, 1 effective, and 2 mildly effective, if you're on the hardest then there's 4 effective and maybe one mildly ineffective... And a dice roll decides which play the CPU chooses from that pre-filtered selection based on your play.
You might think "Well, at least it ends up challenging you to find the read," but usually it ends up becoming VERY easy to spot when the CPU has picked the "ineffective" play and just exploit it. In Madden '17, one of the last Maddens I really put a lot of time into in franchise mode (all madden, adjusted sliders ot make it more difficult, etc), you'd read man or zone and then adjust to one or two plays depending on it, and basically just wait for the CPU to give away their "tell." The CPU also never learns, there's no learning, no adaptation to your playcalls. In Madden, this meant if you have a burner WR1 or 2 who has a good release rating, you just wait till the CPU plays bump and run (e.g., jams the WR), and look at the safety help... if there's no help, just throw a streak to your WR1 and it's almost a guaranteed touchdown. So, you'd have to make house rules to make this competitive for you. "No streaks" or something. WHich totally ruins the fun of the game because streaks are part of football, they're an obvious concept in football.
It ruins the game.
