AI on higher difficulty

[von Funfkirchen]

I mainly play single player and i decided to up the difficulty, since intermediate is horribly stupid and way too easy to beat(currently 65-0-0 in career mode). So when I started a career on Pro, i was expecting an AI that fights smarter, so i don't end up with a KO in the first or second round.
However, instead i got an AI that fights just about the same as on intermediate, but blatantly cheating. Refusing to take damage(hell, i even had a fight when his head health was going up while i was bashing it with haymakers), heals instantly(back to full head or body health from red within 3 seconds, meanwhile even with high level I need a lot more time), gets up 6 times in 3 rounds, with bad cuts and swelling, only to one shot me in the 4th.
Now, this would make more sense if i actually fought opponents 10-15 overall above my character, but these are the guys that have the same or 5-10 lower overall stats than me. So the maths doesn't add up at all.
So please, make the AI a better fighter by making it fight smarter, instead of artificially pumping it up on higher difficulty.

[tobecontinued]

The only difference between amateur and undisputed is the delayed response to it's ability to read your button inputs. If anything, the AI needs to be nerfed. It needs human like flaws, such as not being able to perfectly counter, slip, and land nearly every single punch it throws.

[adan3891]

Yes, the problem with AI is both its stupidity and the game not working as it should. A simple example: If the AI ​​does not attack, it simply circles at a distance in a block)) After a few circles in place, it will start to approach you and attack. To remove its block, you need to hit the left in the stomach and immediately transfer the right to the head. Now the most interesting part. After you have opened it through the stomach and caught it with a power counterattack - it never falls from such a counterattack, despite the fact that the blow is very powerful visually. I monotonously hit the stomach - head with a power emphasis on the second blow 5 times in a row, just to bring it to the grog. This is so stupid and far from reality! Why does not it fall immediately??? That is, physics and accuracy do not work, and you just need to overcome the health bar. And the stupidest thing is the grog state. Make at least 50/50 grog - knockdown. After all, very often they fall from a powerful accurate hit. Few people stay on their feet and float - these are boxers with a very strong grip. Well, and the biggest trash is that the health bar of the AI ​​does not fall below 60%, and damage does not work here at all. The most important thing here is endurance, which is always above 60% for the AI. Mine steadily drops to 20% at the end of the fight. And it turns out that the AI, who has let through a hundred blows, but with better endurance, can knock me out with one or two blows, and my blows cannot finish off his head, which has let through. A specific imbalance! As a result, the game is terribly annoying. In fact, the mechanics are not playable. The game after the 6th round with the AI ​​is boring survival with a consistently lacking endurance. At the same time, the AI ​​becomes many times stronger than you! Although logically it should be the other way around! Well, the opponent you beat up cannot be stronger with each round because of this))

[lrp.las]

Originally posted by adan3891:

Yes, the problem with AI is both its stupidity and the game not working as it should. A simple example: If the AI ​​does not attack, it simply circles at a distance in a block)) After a few circles in place, it will start to approach you and attack. To remove its block, you need to hit the left in the stomach and immediately transfer the right to the head. Now the most interesting part. After you have opened it through the stomach and caught it with a power counterattack - it never falls from such a counterattack, despite the fact that the blow is very powerful visually. I monotonously hit the stomach - head with a power emphasis on the second blow 5 times in a row, just to bring it to the grog. This is so stupid and far from reality! Why does not it fall immediately??? That is, physics and accuracy do not work, and you just need to overcome the health bar. And the stupidest thing is the grog state. Make at least 50/50 grog - knockdown. After all, very often they fall from a powerful accurate hit. Few people stay on their feet and float - these are boxers with a very strong grip. Well, and the biggest trash is that the health bar of the AI ​​does not fall below 60%, and damage does not work here at all. The most important thing here is endurance, which is always above 60% for the AI. Mine steadily drops to 20% at the end of the fight. And it turns out that the AI, who has let through a hundred blows, but with better endurance, can knock me out with one or two blows, and my blows cannot finish off his head, which has let through. A specific imbalance! As a result, the game is terribly annoying. In fact, the mechanics are not playable. The game after the 6th round with the AI ​​is boring survival with a consistently lacking endurance. At the same time, the AI ​​becomes many times stronger than you! Although logically it should be the other way around! Well, the opponent you beat up cannot be stronger with each round because of this))

The AI is basically stupid, I am currently progressing through a career with Sugar Ray Leonard I unified Middleweight and dropped to Welterweight. I have just had my second fight at this weight, my overall stats are 96% with stamina being 99%. I conserve my stamina so I can virtually last a fight without going into the 40% flat footed state. The fight I just had I inflicted 2 Knockdowns on the AI by round 5 clearly ahead but my stamina was suffering trying to get the KO. All the way through this the AI is still on 90% to 95% stamina with a similar punch output to mine. I was hitting them with power punches to both head and body with very little effect hardly any damage being done then round 7 I was below 40% so moving like a cow chained to a fence, then one power punch from the AI and I was down 1 punch completely drained all of my body endurance. In the many hours I have put into this game apart from flash KO's and Knockdowns not once have I had a power punch completely drain the AI Head or Body levels.
The AI stun state is also ridiculous, there was several times I had the AI stunned and my punches just would not land! it is like your controller disconnects from your boxer and you can not hit a wall in front of you.
There is so much still wrong with this game, the AI needs toning down from PRO level up and from the very start of the ear;y access the Player Boxer Stamina needs to be sorted out or the AI needs to match the Players rather than having hardly any drain at all!!

[gage]

can somebody tell me when the update is? i could not sit threw the whole interview listening to him talk i was too focused on his hair line

[adrianpro1987]

next week maybe

[lrp.las]

Or next year, I do not think they are bothered.

[Neo'teh]

The problem with players stamina in career mode is CONDITIONING. You can't build it up apart from a few objectives which take forever to get and one of them is bugged ( the send a fighter an insulting comment one)
I've juist got undisputed in 2 weights with Frank Bruno but even at 95 overall my conditioning is so bad, that it doesn't regenerate during breaks so, like you said, you basically have to run for the last 5/6 rounds cos you're flat footed on %20 and can barely throw a punch.
I've just started a new career with conditioning starting at 70 to see if it helps but either way, it defo needs fixing!

[Rage674]

When youre winning on undisputed the AI just flips the "amazing" switch and they suddenly become amazign, cant miss, cant be hit and have a pile of stamina all of a sudden and require 5-7 knockdowns to finish.

[gage]

Originally posted by Rage674:

When youre winning on undisputed the AI just flips the "amazing" switch and they suddenly become amazign, cant miss, cant be hit and have a pile of stamina all of a sudden and require 5-7 knockdowns to finish.

☝yep that pretty much sums it up

[adan3891]

Well, yeah) I wonder if they play their own game?)) They've been fixing something that should have been fixed in a month for two years now! Endurance is awful! The game motivates you to be inactive. You don't hit the whole fight and when the enemy gets tired, you knock him out with one hit)) That's how the AI ​​works now. He doesn't really want to box and hide behind a block while being two meters away from you) And even if you hit his head, it doesn't affect his overall health and endurance (Yes - WHEN YOU MISS, YOUR ENDURANCE SHOULD ALSO DROPPING!!!!) But at the end of the fight, he comes back to life and starts chasing your body. He needs two hits to knock you down. And all your achievements before that are simply stolen by the unfair system of calculating overall health and endurance.
I really hope that testers and developers read us and they will fix this by the next update. If everything stays the same, I'll play the old Fight Night and enjoy boxing.

[von Funfkirchen]

At this point the more i play this game, the worse it gets. I stopped going at the opponent to force him to fight. What they do? Absolutely nothing. I was standing in the middle of the ring and it just kept dancing in front of me, never getting near punching range. So we just watched each other for 3 minutes. Then in the next round i went in again and the animations were all over the place. At some point we stepped away from each other and punched. I didn't hit as i was miles away. My opponents hand however, somehow turned all the way behind his back and still hit me somehow. On another occasion, we were standing and trading, or at least we tried, while his jabs kept flying straight up above his head, hitting nothing at all. This is 100% the worst boxing game I have ever played.
In 2025, Fight Night 2004 is still a better game than this piece of crap.

[Tr3m0r]

Originally posted by tobecontinued:

The only difference between amateur and undisputed is the delayed response to it's ability to read your button inputs. If anything, the AI needs to be nerfed. It needs human like flaws, such as not being able to perfectly counter, slip, and land nearly every single punch it throws.

In early access i noted it was mostly in relation to the ai resilience in getting up from knock downs and I think that's still primarily the difference. Low ranks only get up 1 to 2X with undisputed getting up 3-5x.

[Tr3m0r]

Originally posted by von Funfkirchen:

At this point the more i play this game, the worse it gets. I stopped going at the opponent to force him to fight. What they do? Absolutely nothing. I was standing in the middle of the ring and it just kept dancing in front of me, never getting near punching range. So we just watched each other for 3 minutes. Then in the next round i went in again and the animations were all over the place. At some point we stepped away from each other and punched. I didn't hit as i was miles away. My opponents hand however, somehow turned all the way behind his back and still hit me somehow. On another occasion, we were standing and trading, or at least we tried, while his jabs kept flying straight up above his head, hitting nothing at all. This is 100% the worst boxing game I have ever played.
In 2025, Fight Night 2004 is still a better game than this piece of crap.

Yeah ao one aspect that just doesn't seem to get any traction with people is understanding how the stats predetermine outcomes a lot. The majority of the mechanics are tied only to the stats the fighter has and there are not a lot of sub systems. The best way to describe what a deeper system would be would be to look into customizing an NBA 2k25, fifa or madden game and see all the sliders for the player, the cpu, the stats of players, their tendencies, etc. We are talking thousands of variables at your finger tips.

So let's say two players are gonna try to rebound the missed shot in the basketball game, the player may have a crappy character but amazing timing and actually outskill the other player using a baller with a 98 rebound ability. However, it's easy to notice when the skill is taken away from you with the inability to jump for the rebound, shoot with perfect timing or any other factor in order to sway the game in the other way. And it all makes sense. It has to be like that. But the idea is to make it as skillful as possible and not noticeable how limited the player actions really can be.

With undisputed, it's not punch tracking missing the shots. It's just that there are not so many complex sub systems and variables that make the game feel authentic and nuanced. It's simply a big shield that prevents the fighter from getting hit because there stats tell the story OR the other player can't land that many consecutive strikes or else the fighter will be KOd or knocked down way too quickly. So it's all a way to make games feel a bit more even and is part of a really messed up philosophy in gaming coupled with biased data driven studies that will show more monetization and "engagement" if the matches look like X instead of Y.

But it seems like this was fixed a bit in the last player test so I'm assuming they have tuned it again to allow players to actually hit their opponents and if they get hit a lot and fall...so be it. Which is the way it should be. But the complexity isn't there and the invisible wall has been a talked about issue from day 1 so only so much can be done.

[hellbreaux]

feels like the AI reads inputs also. i feel terribly cheated..

[Tr3m0r]

Originally posted by hellbreaux:

feels like the AI reads inputs also. i feel terribly cheated..

They do, but all Ai do this to a degree. However as the game is currently, it's just overly obvious given how slow everything unfolds. So you can literally see when you throw a punch that they will be able to have a non human reaction as they block it before the punch even lands. Even if you try to be totally unpredictable it won't matter as it's just overtuned currently. Then the other main mechanic is that the invisible wall will just block off any punches that are determined to not land. However people that did the player test said that a lot of these issues will be fixed in the next update so that will be good for a lot of people.