[quote name='DarkTower80']That goal blows, in overtime no less. They really need to fix the cheap goals. I know you aren't going to get a shutout from the AI goalie most games, but it is so frustrating when they stop all these impossible shots and then get beat with one minute left in the game from a backhand shot from the top of the faceoff circle.[/QUOTE]
Well, actually that cheap goal was the result of cheap Alan (lol...j/k dude). He was trying to poke the puck out to one of our guys and it somehow bypassed his stick and squirted through his pads. We analyzed it like a million times over and couldn't figure out why he dropped to his knees as though he was trying to cover the puck. What's worse was the fact that the puck was sent back into our zone by a dumb AI pass, but wasn't headed for the goal until Alan gave it a little help. The other team hadn't even touched the puck for a good 20-30 seconds. It was just crazy.
As for getting screwed over and not being competitive, we seem to have found a decent solution. After ChunkyBasty, ShadyMarino, and myself lost a few early games, we joked that we should just play the 3 defensive positions and let the AI try to score for us. But we found that they were being ridiculously conservative, and sometimes wouldn't even carry the puck into the other team's zone. After playing around with the strategy settings, we set them to be super aggressive and crash the net hard.
The result was insane. It was as though it made them smarter. They were deking past guys, slamming rebounds home, and hitting the open man with relative ease. Alan joined us, and we took on a group of 6, and blew them out 6-2, with both of our AI forwards getting hat tricks (I played the other forward spot and had 3 assists).
It's not like we'll win every time doing this, but it makes the games much more competitive and its nice to see the AI actually playing their positions for once. It also greatly increased our time on attack as they were throwing themselves after loose pucks. I think we had one stretch where we kept the puck in the offensive zone for at least 4 minutes. It was awesome...and made the games much more enjoyable.
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)