NFL Head Coach to be released Tuesday, 6/20

[MTK]

Anybody play the game yet?

Let's hear a review.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by mheisig

I'm an avid PC gamer and in the past two years I've played nothing but online, multiplayer games like Battlefield 2. Once you play in an arena with 63 other humans, all actively thinking, plotting, planning and adjusting to the changing battle, Artificial Intelligence as competition just seems pathetic.

I got a couple of PC games recently where I played the AI - got bored after a few hours. There's just no challenge in playing a computer. Human vs. Human is where it's at.

except its not. if you've got 64, i gaurantee at least 20 suck, and you can win by just picking on them. MMOs are even worse because you're skill level is deeply related to time played (or money used to buy stuff). I've done that and I find UT bots FAR more challenging than most of the humans i've met. The guys that compete for money are generally pretty good, but they rely on memorizing maps and playing 8 hours a day to get there, and i'm just not willing to do that... that's boring. The best games tend to be old ones like total annihilation, alien soldier, civ, xcom, BG/2/planescape etc.

Some new games (like rome total war or unreal tournament) do have good AI though. UT is still path based, so it depends entirely on the mapper, but the illusion works well and at max it's better than 99% of human players.

Huge multiplayer games aren't new though. neverwinter nights (the original one) was up in 1987/88 or I played hundred years war on aol (with 300+ other people) as far back as 1994.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by Mattyk72

Anybody play the game yet?

Let's hear a review.

I'll install it and give it a try. I only have the demo right now though.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by That Guy

except its not. if you've got 64, i gaurantee at least 20 suck, and you can win by just picking on them. MMOs are even worse because you're skill level is deeply related to time played (or money used to buy stuff). I've done that and I find UT bots FAR more challenging than most of the humans i've met. The guys that compete for money are generally pretty good, but they rely on memorizing maps and playing 8 hours a day to get there, and i'm just not willing to do that... that's boring. The best games tend to be old ones like total annihilation, alien soldier, civ, xcom, BG/2/planescape etc.

Some new games (like rome total war or unreal tournament) do have good AI though. UT is still path based, so it depends entirely on the mapper, but the illusion works well and at max it's better than 99% of human players.

Huge multiplayer games aren't new though. neverwinter nights (the original one) was up in 1987/88 or I played hundred years war on aol (with 300+ other people) as far back as 1994.

The difference in playing humans is that unless you're playing a complete F-in' retard, they'll learn. Sure, you might pick some "n00bs" off over and over, but they'll catch on and learn from their mistakes.

I'm not talking about twitch skills. Yeah, AI can jump super fast and can be given perfect aim, but that's boring to play against because the only way to win is just "be faster." Games like BF2 actually de-emphasize twitch skills in favor of teamwork and strategy. Watching a dozen defenders hold a building against attack, and then watching the attackers adjust their tactics, use surprise, diversions, etc. is truly a great gaming moment. AI is decades away from being that intelligent.

"Great AI" is currently when the computer opponent will seek cover or toss a grenade around a corner. Occasionaly the really good AI will try to flank you. Human players can recognize overall strategies and apply the necessary team tactics to adapt. I'd love to see the current crop of AI recognize that it's being dominated from the air, organize an attack on an airfield effectively utilizing armor, air and infantry assets, secure the airfield and hold it from counterattack. Even if it WERE able to do this now, a human player could eventually recognize a pattern in the AI programming and exploit it. Humans can adapt - AI can't (yet).

Games like X-Com (one of my all time favorites) and Civ are great games in their own right, but at this point I like them more for nostalgia's sake as opposed to the challenge offered by the AI.

[That Guy]

alright, they have sabol and trey wingo doing spots in the game (reports, HoF induction) as crappy looking 3d guys. They also had the steelers/hawks SB highlights re-enacted and its pretty funny to watch


the playbook is done a lot differently in this game. It's organized by situation (2nd and long, goaline, 4th and go for it, etc). When running practice, you choose the offense and defensive plays, and which string (1st 2nd or 3rd) that'll be running each side of that play.

During practice, you have a menu in the bottom right with 4 options: talk to players, pre-snap control, roster, game stats

At any time you can stop to talk to the players (either on the field as an individual or a whole, or a position group) for motivation or strategy (talking = choosing menu options) which can improve stats for a bit.

Strategy lets you tell specific players how to run plays (either jut that time or EVERY time you ever call the play). You can tell your RB to wait on the OL to open holes, try to bounce it outside etc and you have similar options for other positions.

You can also call audibles and formation shifts in the same manner (pre-snap control) which works a lot like it has in every other madden game, though this time menu driven.

Game Stats is what it sounds like, and roster just shows your most fatigued players.

practice has limited snaps, but running a play a lot will make it a "money" play, which, I assume, makes your team run it better in game situations.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by mheisig

The difference in playing humans is that unless you're playing a complete F-in' retard, they'll learn. Sure, you might pick some "n00bs" off over and over, but they'll catch on and learn from their mistakes.

I'm not talking about twitch skills. Yeah, AI can jump super fast and can be given perfect aim, but that's boring to play against because the only way to win is just "be faster." Games like BF2 actually de-emphasize twitch skills in favor of teamwork and strategy. Watching a dozen defenders hold a building against attack, and then watching the attackers adjust their tactics, use surprise, diversions, etc. is truly a great gaming moment. AI is decades away from being that intelligent.

"Great AI" is currently when the computer opponent will seek cover or toss a grenade around a corner. Occasionaly the really good AI will try to flank you. Human players can recognize overall strategies and apply the necessary team tactics to adapt. I'd love to see the current crop of AI recognize that it's being dominated from the air, organize an attack on an airfield effectively utilizing armor, air and infantry assets, secure the airfield and hold it from counterattack. Even if it WERE able to do this now, a human player could eventually recognize a pattern in the AI programming and exploit it. Humans can adapt - AI can't (yet).

Games like X-Com (one of my all time favorites) and Civ are great games in their own right, but at this point I like them more for nostalgia's sake as opposed to the challenge offered by the AI.

have you ever played UT2004? cause the AI does all of that. and no, some n00bs never learn or they leave and more n00btards take their place. Uscript is open for ANYONE to improve the AI, and people have. the AI for UT came from the guy who made reaperbot for quake 1, so good single entity ai has been around in 3d games since 96, and since then a lot of focus has been put on teamwork. Which you'll see if you try CTF or assault or domination or whatnot. Just cause the battlefield guys write the worst AI known to man doesn't mean everyone else's sucks as equally. Farcry's AI is pretty good too. in fact, if you start attacking a base there, the AI will helo in reinforcements very quickly as well.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by That Guy

have you ever played UT2004? cause the AI does all of that. and no, some n00bs never learn or they leave and more n00btards take their place. Uscript is open for ANYONE to improve the AI, and people have. the AI for UT came from the guy who made reaperbot for quake 1, so good single entity ai has been around in 3d games since 96, and since then a lot of focus has been put on teamwork. Which you'll see if you try CTF or assault or domination or whatnot. Just cause the battlefield guys write the worst AI known to man doesn't mean everyone else's sucks as equally. Farcry's AI is pretty good too. in fact, if you start attacking a base there, the AI will helo in reinforcements very quickly as well.

Played UT2004 extensively for about a year or two - completely unimpressed with the AI, including 3rd-party add ons. In all my time of battling UT2004 bots I never saw problem solving skills that even approached those of a n00b in BF2. Have you actually played BF2?

I still think you're confusing Artificial INTELLIGENCE with faster bots. Bots in UT2004 are incapable of using creativity to concot a strategic plan and can only respond as they've been preprogrammed to respond. That's not really "Intelligence." HL2 with all it's scripted events comes about as close as any game has to portraying Artificial Intelligence, but you play it through a 2nd time and it's the same thing. Same deal with Unreal. Far Cry did a good job with unscripted AI, but even that got really predictable in no time.

Bots in BF2 (even if they had the magical UT Uscript) would never have thought to take a hummer, pack it full of C4 and make a car bomb with it, let alone be able to target the appropriately weak portion of the enemy. They never would have thought of it because it requires creativity, which can be preprogrammed.

Rome: Total War (one of my favorites of the past few years) had pretty good AI, but even that showed gaping flaws. On the hardest level the AI seems incapable of probing for weaknesses in a defensive line or using spies appropriately.

To each his own - I'm glad you enjoy competitions with the AI. Personally I find it incredibly dull when compared to something like BF2. The designers of BF2 didn't need to bother programming good AI because the multiplayer aspect would blow any AI out of the water.

I guess I'm a bit baffled how someone could be endlessly entertained by AI that can eventually be predicted perfectly, but be bored competing with humans who offer an infinite number of different possibilities and challenges that will never be the same.

Different strokes for different folks - I guess in my mind it's as simple as playing something that can't adapt or playing something that can.

[That Guy]

You can play the ENTIRE game in windowed mode, which is awesome. now I can watch TV or read webpages while idling fooling around. quicker load times than madden too, but that may be due to lower res textures or whatnot for this demo; the GFX in this are noticeable less than in madden 06 (PC) though. However, the animations are more important and they're pretty solid.

The music, instead of a modern soudtrack, usses the NFL band exclusively. Since everyone's heard them on SB replays and various NFL shows, it's a decent fit.

after finishing the demo, I think NFL coach is alright. You don't play at all though, you just call the plays. its a nice change of pace and more strategy based... great for people that just aren't that good at madden too. Its more fun than sitting through simmed games in franchise and I like it.


for the offseason, you have a calender with daily tasks and such. you can look up your coach stats (legend ranking, trust, job security, OL, DL, etc) and talk to the owner, position coaches, et al.

You have no control over scouting directors, but you deal with the rest of the staff, other teams' GMs and players' agents directly as well as acting as a GM yourself.

I hate the offseason roster/depth chart menus though. they've redone them so you can only see five stats from a single player at a time (instead of 20 stats or so on 25+ players at once).


The Draft:
They got Kiper! and not only that, he's not even doing the retared generic-speak but being very specific about the (2006) draft. that's a plus. The menus are terrible though. I couldn't find a draft list besides the little scroller thing and everything player related has switched from lists to icons (which take up a lot of space while conveying almost no information).

for something so menu driven, you figure they'd at least get that part right. instead the took what madden is pretty decent at and replace all the menus with terrible clumsy icon based monstrosities.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by mheisig

Played UT2004 extensively for about a year or two - completely unimpressed with the AI, including 3rd-party add ons. In all my time of battling UT2004 bots I never saw problem solving skills that even approached those of a n00b in BF2. Have you actually played BF2?

I still think you're confusing Artificial INTELLIGENCE with faster bots. Bots in UT2004 are incapable of using creativity to concot a strategic plan and can only respond as they've been preprogrammed to respond. That's not really "Intelligence." HL2 with all it's scripted events comes about as close as any game has to portraying Artificial Intelligence, but you play it through a 2nd time and it's the same thing. Same deal with Unreal. Far Cry did a good job with unscripted AI, but even that got really predictable in no time.

Bots in BF2 (even if they had the magical UT Uscript) would never have thought to take a hummer, pack it full of C4 and make a car bomb with it, let alone be able to target the appropriately weak portion of the enemy. They never would have thought of it because it requires creativity, which can be preprogrammed.

Rome: Total War (one of my favorites of the past few years) had pretty good AI, but even that showed gaping flaws. On the hardest level the AI seems incapable of probing for weaknesses in a defensive line or using spies appropriately.

To each his own - I'm glad you enjoy competitions with the AI. Personally I find it incredibly dull when compared to something like BF2. The designers of BF2 didn't need to bother programming good AI because the multiplayer aspect would blow any AI out of the water.

I guess I'm a bit baffled how someone could be endlessly entertained by AI that can eventually be predicted perfectly, but be bored competing with humans who offer an infinite number of different possibilities and challenges that will never be the same.

Different strokes for different folks - I guess in my mind it's as simple as playing something that can't adapt or playing something that can.

first off, BF2 has no UScript, so i have no idea what you're talking about there, and secondly, UT bots can easily be made to consider using a car as a bomb. I don't know why you'd play through HL2 twice, but that's your thing. And who said anyone was endlessly entertained? I just said the AI at max in UT2004 blows away the average BF2 player by a mile. Anything else you took from that is fine, but human intelligence ain't some magical cure all that makes games fun. In FPS's especially, it's mainly a way to play while getting cussed out and subjected to aimbots :P.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by That Guy

first off, BF2 has no UScript, so i have no idea what you're talking about there, and secondly, UT bots can easily be made to consider using a car as a bomb. I don't know why you'd play through HL2 twice, but that's your thing. And who said anyone was endlessly entertained? I just said the AI at max in UT2004 blows away the average BF2 player by a mile. Anything else you took from that is fine, but human intelligence ain't some magical cure all that makes games fun. In FPS's especially, it's mainly a way to play while getting cussed out and subjected to aimbots :P.

The sentence was "even if BF2 had the magical Uscript," as in even if BF2 "enjoyed" the benefits of the Uscript functionality, it wouldn't matter. Sentence comprehension man, sentence comprehension.

Sure, UT Bots could be made to do it - but they didn't do it on their OWN. When the human playing that Bot figures out how to counteract that particular trick (in this case the bot making a car bomb), what happens? Well, nothing happens (except getting bored) until someone reprograms the AI to counteract. It's an absurdly slow and inefficient way to have an action-reaction response.

It sounds like you must have had some bad experiences in BF2, and for that I'm sorry. I can say that in 15 odd years of playing computer games, the problem solving ability demonstrated in BF2 makes every other AI-opponent game look utterly pathetic.

Complaining about aimbots seems odd for someone who thinks bots present a great challenge - what's the difference, they're both computer-controlled aiming. Oh, and I've never seen nor heard of an aimbot in BF2

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by mheisig

Sure, UT Bots could be made to do it - but they didn't do it on their OWN.

please provide one example of a computer program that wrote itself, or how about a self-assembling car? All AI needs to be programmed, and if it's ever going to get better, it needs to be worked on. That's really a pretty silly arguement.

and if you've never heard of a BF2 aimbot, you're not looking hard enough.
google BF2 aimbot and loads of crap pops up.

http://www.msxsecurity.com//bf2.php

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by That Guy

please provide one example of a computer program that wrote itself, or how about a self-assembling car? All AI needs to be programmed, and if it's ever going to get better, it needs to be worked on. That's really a pretty silly arguement.

and if you've never heard of a BF2 aimbot, you're not looking hard enough.
google BF2 aimbot and loads of crap pops up.

http://www.msxsecurity.com//bf2.php

It's no a "silly argument" if you're comparing and contrasting AI vs. human players. AI vs AI yeah that'd be a silly argument. Human play is not preprogrammed, the fundamental difference between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. It's incredibly valid and at the heart of what we're talking about. Nobody was ever saying one AI is better than another, we're arguing about AI vs. humans.

I didn't say I hadn't heard of a BF2 aimbot, I said in my years of playing I haven't seen one in use. As far as I'm concerned everyone who's killed me either got lucky or was better than me. If they were using an aimbot, fine - I really couldn't care less. I've never witnessed someone in BF2 dominate the scoreboards to the point where it was just suspicously high to make someone think "cheater."

Sounds like I just play with cooler/nice people than you do

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by mheisig

It's no a "silly argument" if you're comparing and contrasting AI vs. human players. AI vs AI yeah that'd be a silly argument. Human play is not preprogrammed, the fundamental difference between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. It's incredibly valid and at the heart of what we're talking about. Nobody was ever saying one AI is better than another, we're arguing about AI vs. humans.

I didn't say I hadn't heard of a BF2 aimbot, I said in my years of playing I haven't seen one in use. As far as I'm concerned everyone who's killed me either got lucky or was better than me. If they were using an aimbot, fine - I really couldn't care less. I've never witnessed someone in BF2 dominate the scoreboards to the point where it was just suspicously high to make someone think "cheater."

Sounds like I just play with cooler/nice people than you do

complaining that AI doesn't program itself is silly. the tech just isn't anywhere to being a reality or to make such a feat seem possible right now. It's like complaining that the sky is blue when you'd rather it be fuscia like your ceiling. It's a known limitation. right now AI learns from programmers, and whatever you can do, they can be taught.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by That Guy

complaining that AI doesn't program itself is silly. the tech just isn't anywhere to being a reality or to make such a feat seem possible right now. It's like complaining that the sky is blue when you'd rather it be fuscia like your ceiling. It's a known limitation. right now AI learns from programmers, and whatever you can do, they can be taught.

:confused-

Nobody is arguing that the current generation of AI programs itself. I never said that. Unless someone else jumped into this thread when I wasn't lookin, nobody ever proposed that argument.

Ideally in the future AI WILL program itself, at which point it will be actual "intelligence." Right now, the fundamental flaw in AI is that it CAN'T program itself, hence the overall inferiority to human play in terms of problem solving and creative thinking. I'm not saying a Bot can't beat a human or be better than your average player, I'm saying that in terms of reasoning ability, problem solving and creative solutions AI is incapable of matching a human.

It's an incredibly simple argument to follow - I'm not sure why there's such a huge miscommunication here. Let's go real slow:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently incapable of programming itself on the fly. Consequently, AI is currently incapable of truly reacting to problems in an "intelligent" manner and is also incapable of solving problems or creating solutions to problems with which it has not already received progamming. Stated another way, AI can't think "creatively" and it can't "learn." Conversely, Human Intelligence (HI) is capable of adjusting and reacting to problems and creatively creating solutions to which it has not previously been given the answer or solution. Thus, HI is able to do something AI cannot - learn, "think" creatively, and solve problems to which it has not been previously given a solution.

That's not debate, that's simply fact. There's nothing to argue about. Now if you think playing a bot is as fun or more fun, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it and I've got no problem with that. Personally, based on the argument above MY opinion is that HI offers more of a challenging environment as I associate challenging play with changing, dynamic play that I cannot ever predict.

[That Guy]

you're making up arguements and strawmen.

I simply said the UT bots are better than 95% of human competition at actually being good and hard to beat. then you went off on how "yeah well, that's only cause they aim better, but they don't have any strategy" crap that had nothing to do with what I was saying.

its a real easy arguement when you say whatever a computer does better than humans is meaningles and whatever humans do better is all that matters. but its stupid cause I was talking about actual challenge, not whatever it is you're driveling on about. I seriously think you're arguing just to argue.

I already said AI can't program itself and that's well understood, so this whole two paragraph response is a waste cause its just rehashing arguements i never made or ever said i disagreed with.