The Story Mode AI is unbalanced and feels poorly designed

[Shilic]

Or
"Ridiculously Hard or do I just suck? 2: This time with Boss Fights"


I've played a lot of fighting games. I even consider myself DECENT at some of them. I'd be destroyed by most human opponents out there, but when I comes to AI, yeah, I can beat most fighting games' AI on Normal, at least. But there's something about this game, where no matter how hard the devs try, they can never quite get the AI right.

Over two years ago, when this game first came out in Early Access, I started a thread called "Ridiculously Hard or do I just suck?", where I asked if anyone else was having trouble with the games AI opponents. At launch, the game had absurdly overpowered AI, who would absolutely destroy unprepared new players. Even on Easy, they were comparable to other games' Hard or even levels above that.

Over time, the AI slowly began to be fine tuned and balanced. I'll admit, I haven't played the game that much between launch and now, due to the lack of single-player content and other games, but I would pop back every now and again, and the game seemed fine. I was really excited for the Story Mode, since now the game would finally have that single-player content that I prefer. (Yes, I play fighting games for single-player. I said I'm bad against humans.)

And then I played it.

Right of the bat, I should make clear: The AI is, as far as I can recall, not nearly as bad as it was at Early Access launch. It doesn't behave like an input reading god. It is, however, not good.
Enemies will block... pretty much everything. I think I've had 1 magic attack/super land for me, with every other one being blocked. This on it's own isn't bad, but combined with the other problems, it becomes the backbone of the major issue.

Next, enemies (mainly bosses), have insane zoning. The Snake Boss, for instance, is so aggressive at this that if you move out of your attacking range once during the final phase, the fight is over, because you aren't ever getting close enough again. This means that, in order to actually deal any damage, you need to either get in the right spot to use the lasso without being stunned by any long range attacks, or just rush in there and hope you can land a hit. Which leads me to the last point.

As far as my skill level goes, the only way to actually WIN fights is to rush up to your opponent and spam attacks, hoping that one will finally go through the block and you can start a combo. Any strategy I tried either didn't work, or was an inferior tactic. I'm sure that highly skilled players could find a way to win that DOESN'T involve a direct rush, but I doubt that the majority of players have that level of skill. And if they DO, they aren't gonna play on Normal.

The AI in a fighting game should teach the player the basics of the games mechanics. What tactics work, what combos are good, how do deal with certain types of attacks. The AI in Story Mode does none of those things. It teaches the player to run up in their face and mash Forward and Light/Med attacks until it dies. And if you let up, YOU will die. My first time fighting Velvet, I legit thought it might be supposed to be an unwinnable fight, because that's how perfect the AI acted, until I got up in her face and mashed.

I'm sure someone in the replies is gonna give the classic reply of "git gud" or something along those lines. And as a pre-emptive counter: That's not the point. It's not about getting better at the game, it's about the fact the game's AI feels like it's incentivising the wrong thing. Not teaching the player the mechanics of the game through fights only to test it with bosses, but teaching the player that the way to win is to rush in and attack like this is a hack and slash.

It's a shame, too, because I LOVE the rest of story mode. The presentation, the concepts of the boss fights, the little secrets in the overworld... But the fighting itself feels unpolished. It doesn't feel like this game went through two years of Early Access. And it takes me right back to when I asked if this game was Ridiculously Hard, or did I just suck.

(TL;DR: Game's AI seems to incentivize rushing in and mashing attacks rather than any actual strategy, and punishes you harshly for doing anything else.)

[Stichez]

You do know that Arizona is what's known as a rushdown character, right? Rushing in and mixing people up until you find an opening is what rushdown characters are supposed to do and according to you, it actually taught you that pretty well.

You know, there's two things you didn't say in your post: One, you didn't say what difficulty you're playing on. And two, you didn't say if you actually learned anything from other games' story modes. You just said that you could beat them and well, did you learn anything from that, other than what buttons do what (which you could learn pretty easily in the tutorial or training mode)?

[Shilic]

Originally posted by Stichez:

You do know that Arizona is what's known as a rushdown character, right? Rushing in and mixing people up until you find an opening is what rushdown characters are supposed to do and according to you, it actually taught you that pretty well.

You know, there's two things you didn't say in your post: One, you didn't say what difficulty you're playing on. And two, you didn't say if you actually learned anything from other games' story modes. You just said that you could beat them and well, did you learn anything from that, other than what buttons do what (which you could learn pretty easily in the tutorial or training mode)?

I get that she's a rushdown character, but there's a difference between rushing in, putting on the pressure and using mix-ups and combos, and just getting right up and mashing buttons and hoping things work out. Every time I start identifying strong moves or combos and then trying to work them in, it feels like the game slaps me and goes "nope" by having the opponent stun lock me or pushing me into the corner and comboing a massive chunk of my health away.

As for my difficulty, I'm playing on whatever the second-easiest one was called. (I'm never any good at remembering names. I WANT to say that they had more normal names that the game's actual AI difficulty levels, but don't quote me on that) Although, at this point I almost want to go bump it down to the easiest because I'm not having any fun.

When I say "teaching" I don't so much mean "act as a tutorial" as a mean it should test the player's skills. As the game goes on, each fight gets harder, but the player can keep up because as they play, they figure out how best to use the tools available. And when a boss fight comes along, what the player has learned from those previous fights should be put to the test. And I just don't feel like this game does that. Which, to be fair, could be a result of said boss fights being against a completely different type of opponent, but that creates an entirely different problem.

I'm not going to sit here and say I'm GOOD at fighting games. I'm average, maybe somewhere between average and good on a good day. But considering the difficulty setting and how much damage the bosses can do without you being given a single chance to do anything, I can't help but feel there's a mismatch here. It feels like either the classic problem of the devs playing their game so much they can't tell what is or isn't hard for normal players anymore, or I really am expected to hold forward and mash buttons until I win.

[becc]

Originally posted by Shilic:

Every time I start identifying strong moves or combos and then trying to work them in, it feels like the game slaps me and goes "nope" by having the opponent stun lock me or pushing me into the corner and comboing a massive chunk of my health away.

The thing about strong moves is that they are slow and give the opponent lots of opportunity to block. Especially supers. That's why you should always start with light attacks, which are quick, and then combo into heavier attacks. The combo trials in training mode have a lot of combos of various difficulty that show how you can chain moves together.

Originally posted by Shilic:

As for my difficulty, I'm playing on whatever the second-easiest one was called.

That difficulty has now been renamed to Intermediate, btw.

[Athari]

I'm a noob in fighter games. This is why I chose the "narrative" difficulty which normally means "a five year old could beat this with closed eyes".

And holy hell I was wrong! Frame-tight button combos, infinite stunlocks — who cares whether I have 50% more HP if I can't hit a freaking boss once?

The only mechanic which the game teaches through gameplay in the story mode is jumping — and that thing is utterly completely absolutely useless in any actual fight. Blocks? Rolls? Recoveries? Nope. Never mentioned. I'm supposed to learn everything somewhere outside of the story mode. This is terribly designed.

Devs, I don't care what gods of buttons mashing you balance the game around, but for heaven's sake, rename your "noob, easy, normal, hard" to "hard, pro, impossible, rambo" and add actual easy modes! Slow down the game if you can't understand what easy means.

[frrt]

I'm not bad at fighting games, but I can adapt to most situations when it comes to who I'm fighting. I'm not complaining about the difficulty, but it's obvious the AI is just reading inputs and walling you out with a plainly superior character. This isn't teaching you how to rushdown and play the neutral against a stronger character than you are, this is just plain cruel for people who've never played fighting games before.

Let's be honest, the boss before Cuddles with the tiny wolves was ridiculous. If you got up and didn't have any bar, you get chipped to death, because low blocking the wolves (or standing which happened sometimes) would just infinitely chain the jump attack with the big wolf and the spit.

I'm playing on experienced and it looks like from that, I've got regular health, and I can tell the last for the last few fights, the input reading and the unblockable fireballs make this boss a little extreme. I don't know optimal setups, and that's true of any time you want to play a character in a fighting game, but having to go through the advanced tutorial is just not something people are going to do. I appreciate the difficulty because I don't mind a little bit of a grind and learning the engine the hard way, but this is kind of the AI I would expect on the hardest difficulty setting.

[Petralicious]

Hi, I suck at Arizona (and basically everything that isn't Tian, hoping for her story mode soon) and been bashing my head against the highest difficulty until I beat the game up to Velvet.
This is from someone who has no idea how to play without spamming my lovely airdashes and flying out of reach all the time.

Don't go for optimal combos, just don't, fish for landing the lightest attacks (down+A is your best bet here as it's a low and the fastest, but jumping A also works, jumping B can work at longer ranges but mind the slower startup), mash it 1-2 times and check the hitsound to see if it connected or got blocked.
On successful hit, just mash out A > B > C > launcher > air combo (the move list even shows you this universal combo). If you get things right you can land after and land some more hits after the enemy gets groundbounced.
Use neutral lasso at long range and connect a standing A off of it into the same combo for safety.
Any more advanced things you can pick up on by experimenting (like adding stomp or headbuck specials to your combos).
Just make sure to back off after every combo (spam backdashes, or end your combos in headbuck C) to avoid the mixup from the AI.

And most importantly, the move that absolutely murders half the enemies in the game (if not more): hold forwards toward the enemy and hit A. That's your antiair. It's straight up invulnerable to all air attacks. Hits them clean out of the air and can be jump cancelled into a combo.

If you have to block, crouch block until you see the enemy jump (this is harder vs the snakes so watch out for their fast overhead tail swing) then switch to standing block, always keeping your fingers on B+C to press when you get grabbed to break out of the grab.
Be ready to hit forward A to antiair jump attacks.
Oh and pushblock panthers. A lot.

Try to land the finishing blow with a super to get some health pickups.

As for the snake boss, all phases except the fourth one are easy, just casually dodge some projectiles and be ready to hop over the tail swipe, dodge the bite by dashing and punish with anything on the second stage, third stage is just block standing and punish with light attacks into combo about x3 times.
The fourth phase is about having done the previous 3 with enough health left. Just keep your cool, keep blocking and wait for an opening. Either antiair a jump or superjump forwards and try to either air block some attack to get closer or try to land a jumping A or C.
If you feel like your reactions are up to the task, try to react to the snake winding up an attack with your super move and it should beat it cleanly (I had a trade once, but generally it works!) and if you have 2 bars of meter you can do the followup to get a combo off of that!

The snake's a zoner, it's gonna force you to block a lot, just needd some patience.

I can confidently say that the AI was not reading my inputs at all at the highest difficulty and it was a matter of finding the openings (or using a metric ton of stomps because long ranged lows are good).

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but use your magic specials!
Magic headbuck has armor and is useful to blow through single-hit moves (like snakes' long range swipes)
Magic counter can get you out of sticky situations BUT IT CAN BE GRABBED OH GOD NEVER USE THIS ON PANTHERS OR BEARS OUCH
Magic stomp is unblockable, throughout the whole stage. Unless they jump, they WILL get hit, and you have plenty of time to confirm a combo off of it.
Magic dash(?) lets you close distance really fast and I think it has some invulnerability..?

[Stichez]

Interesting. Although, I hope you realize that most fighting games just make their AI brain dead easy in order to appeal to as many players as possible without having to actually think about players' strengths and weaknesses, which can get really specific in a fighting game. Difficulty can be adjusted; in fact, it's already been adjusted a bit in a patch that just came out. No, the AI doesn't read your inputs, please stop using that excuse if you don't actually know how things like that work. If you got hit or blocked, there's always something you could've done to stop, mitigate, and/or punish that.

Going back to character archetypes like rushdown, how many fighting games like actually show you that through their gameplay? Story modes, by their very nature, are character based, showing their personalities, why they fight, how they interact with others, etc. Doesn't it makes sense to show you their gameplay archetype too?

Yeah, the game is showing you the rushdown archetype right now because you're playing as Arizona in this first chapter. The next chapter will have you play as Velvet, who's a zoner, so most likely it will be about keeping you opponents away and hitting them from afar. Later, we will probably have a Tianhuo chapter that will be about aerial movement and pressuring through higher combos. It would actually make sense if Oleander was the last chapter, because testing you on what you learned in previous chapters would show you what an all rounder is about.

What I'm saying is, this game really makes you feel like the stompy cow. Okay, I'm joking, but seriously. Maybe you should think less about what a fighting game story mode "should" be and more about what it COULD be. Especially since this game is treating its story mode very, very differently than any other story mode before it.

[Shilic]

Originally posted by Petralicious:

Hi, I suck at Arizona (and basically everything that isn't Tian, hoping for her story mode soon) and been bashing my head against the highest difficulty until I beat the game up to Velvet.
This is from someone who has no idea how to play without spamming my lovely airdashes and flying out of reach all the time.

Don't go for optimal combos, just don't, fish for landing the lightest attacks (down+A is your best bet here as it's a low and the fastest, but jumping A also works, jumping B can work at longer ranges but mind the slower startup), mash it 1-2 times and check the hitsound to see if it connected or got blocked.
On successful hit, just mash out A > B > C > launcher > air combo (the move list even shows you this universal combo). If you get things right you can land after and land some more hits after the enemy gets groundbounced.
Use neutral lasso at long range and connect a standing A off of it into the same combo for safety.
Any more advanced things you can pick up on by experimenting (like adding stomp or headbuck specials to your combos).
Just make sure to back off after every combo (spam backdashes, or end your combos in headbuck C) to avoid the mixup from the AI.

And most importantly, the move that absolutely murders half the enemies in the game (if not more): hold forwards toward the enemy and hit A. That's your antiair. It's straight up invulnerable to all air attacks. Hits them clean out of the air and can be jump cancelled into a combo.

If you have to block, crouch block until you see the enemy jump (this is harder vs the snakes so watch out for their fast overhead tail swing) then switch to standing block, always keeping your fingers on B+C to press when you get grabbed to break out of the grab.
Be ready to hit forward A to antiair jump attacks.
Oh and pushblock panthers. A lot.

Try to land the finishing blow with a super to get some health pickups.

As for the snake boss, all phases except the fourth one are easy, just casually dodge some projectiles and be ready to hop over the tail swipe, dodge the bite by dashing and punish with anything on the second stage, third stage is just block standing and punish with light attacks into combo about x3 times.
The fourth phase is about having done the previous 3 with enough health left. Just keep your cool, keep blocking and wait for an opening. Either antiair a jump or superjump forwards and try to either air block some attack to get closer or try to land a jumping A or C.
If you feel like your reactions are up to the task, try to react to the snake winding up an attack with your super move and it should beat it cleanly (I had a trade once, but generally it works!) and if you have 2 bars of meter you can do the followup to get a combo off of that!

The snake's a zoner, it's gonna force you to block a lot, just needd some patience.

I can confidently say that the AI was not reading my inputs at all at the highest difficulty and it was a matter of finding the openings (or using a metric ton of stomps because long ranged lows are good).

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but use your magic specials!
Magic headbuck has armor and is useful to blow through single-hit moves (like snakes' long range swipes)
Magic counter can get you out of sticky situations BUT IT CAN BE GRABBED OH GOD NEVER USE THIS ON PANTHERS OR BEARS OUCH
Magic stomp is unblockable, throughout the whole stage. Unless they jump, they WILL get hit, and you have plenty of time to confirm a combo off of it.
Magic dash(?) lets you close distance really fast and I think it has some invulnerability..?

This. I'm actually gonna make this the topic answer, because it's pretty everything I did to beat the content the currently exists, except in more detail than "just mash the attacks and hope it works".

Having reached "the end" for now (and holy crap Oleander is nasty, I still don't feel like I won from anything other than luck), I can safely say that, even ignoring my statements on the games design choices, the difficulty is much, MUCH higher than you would be expected for Chapter 1 on Intermediate. It feels like one of those old school fighting games from the arcades where all the AI are designed to destroy you so you put more quarters in, the ones that are blatantly unfair and can pull off moves you actually couldn't do. If the bosses in the later chapters are going to be even harder... Well, I doubt I'll be the only one throwing in the towel. And while I'm not against those kinds of games, this game doesn't really seem like that's what it's trying to be. Which leaves me with the question: Is it supposed to be like this, or is this a balance issue that needs patching?

[Petralicious]

^ The AI doesn't read your moves or have absurdly buffed damage/health (unless you play on Hardcore in which case it's not that high anyways), they just aren't like most fighting game singleplayer modes where all the enemies' moves are TERRIBLE moves and their AI just throws them out randomly.
This AI actually throws out long ranged moves at long range, mixes you up on knockdown, knows how to confirm combos, blocks in a way that makes sense (quick mixups usually catch even Hardcore CPUs, while slamming mids and slow jump ins is often blocked because it's easy even for a human to do that), instead of on a random chance like a lot of FG AI is designed and knows how to punish your unsafe moves.
And all their moves are not terrible mids that are punishable, for example the most low-level grunt (wolf)'s overhead is actually safe on block, you will eat a mixup if you block that, but it's slow enough to interrupt with an antiair which is what you're supposed to do. Their sliding attack is a good antiair, and they have ways to enforce a strike/throw mixup where you simply have to guess right because you didn't avoid that situation.

It's closer to fighting a real opponent which makes people used to singleplayer modes see their usual strats fall flat on their faces because backing off and repeatedly poking with mids until RNG gives you a hit is not a valid strategy anymore.

I can't stress this enough, you have to learn to play the game (as you would against a real person, not the usual AI cheese strats), but once you do, you can pretty consistently beat this AI.
If you're having trouble, hit up the tutorials and training mode, look up what your moves do, then come back with more knowledge; instead of the usual "just keep trying until you find the AI cheese or get lucky" that works on most fighting game CPUs.

Maybe even playing some real opponents can help, as the AI is designed to be more human-like.

[Azimuth]

For real though this game's story mode is easy, even on hardcore difficulty, and has a nice progression. I seriously hope Mane6 ignores any suggestions of making the game easier and instead focuses on missing content and promised features.
Yes I'm biased because I'm 300hrs into the game right now. But I wasn't very good when I started and this is quite simply the EASIEST fighting game to learn, thanks to the combo trials and great tutorials.
OP, have you tried playing all the tutorials, and the combo trials for Arizona? There are many tools available to you, and definitely no lack of help and introduction to the game. I don't know why you're complaining at all.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Originally posted by Shilic:

I'm sure someone in the replies is gonna give the classic reply of "git gud" or something along those lines. And as a pre-emptive counter: That's not the point. It's not about getting better at the game, it's about the fact the game's AI feels like it's incentivising the wrong thing. Not teaching the player the mechanics of the game through fights only to test it with bosses, but teaching the player that the way to win is to rush in and attack like this is a hack and slash.

I'm pretty sure that no fighting game single player mode has EVER been designed to teach the player to play well.

[The Dapper Dragon]

They just need to tone down the input reading, honestly. Every time, it's frame perfect.

Oh, you were blocking in the air, here's a ground attack that hits the FRAME you hit the ground.

Oh, lasso? Guess what, jump during the impact frame every time.

Oh, you were getting up? Here's a throw combo before your model even stands up.

[Stichez]

The AI doesn't read your inputs. It literally can not with the way it is set up. It can however pick up on you doing certain things that you've done multiple times in the same situation.

Also, it depends on your difficulty with how fast they react or predict your actions

[The Dapper Dragon]

Originally posted by Athari:

I'm a noob in fighter games. This is why I chose the "narrative" difficulty which normally means "a five year old could beat this with closed eyes".

And holy hell I was wrong! Frame-tight button combos, infinite stunlocks — who cares whether I have 50% more HP if I can't hit a freaking boss once?

The only mechanic which the game teaches through gameplay in the story mode is jumping — and that thing is utterly completely absolutely useless in any actual fight. Blocks? Rolls? Recoveries? Nope. Never mentioned. I'm supposed to learn everything somewhere outside of the story mode. This is terribly designed.

Devs, I don't care what gods of buttons mashing you balance the game around, but for heaven's sake, rename your "noob, easy, normal, hard" to "hard, pro, impossible, rambo" and add actual easy modes! Slow down the game if you can't understand what easy means.

Honestly, it feels like they're modeling the game under people just say 'Oh yeah, every fighting game is easy, make it harder.', but play every game on 'games journalist.'

[DerpyDash]

Originally posted by Stichez:

The AI doesn't read your inputs. It literally can not with the way it is set up. It can however pick up on you doing certain things that you've done multiple times in the same situation.

Also, it depends on your difficulty with how fast they react or predict your actions

I'm not sure about that. Velvet and Ollie sometimes can instantly antiair me as soon as my hooves were off the ground. Buuut i can rope them like 20 times in a row (don't change that please, i woldn't have completed story mode on a 3rd difficulty without my rope :D)