AI Slider Info

[xirtamehtsitahw]

The various gameplay-balance sliders can be a bit confusing at first, but here is a quick explanation on what they do in terms of influencing the strength/"softness" of the AI.

 

The AI reversal-frequency sliders do just that--they adjust how frequently the AI attempts a reversal of each type of move listed.

 

The damage-balance sliders do more than just increase/decrease the damage finishers and weapon attacks do. They also seem to affect how much damage non-finisher/non-sig moves do, as well. If you scale down the strength of finishers, the finisher-strength slider also scales down the strength of all other moves in proportion to the increased/decreased slider setting. The weapon attack slider simply affects weapon attacks/grapples. Of course, the higher it is, the more damage each weapon attack will do, and will be more likely to cause someone to be "busted open".

 

The gameplay balance sliders do a few different things. The first six determine the size of the window of opportunity for anyone (you as well as the AI) to successfully perform a reversal. The next three determine how much or how little momentum is earned/lost from performing or receiving attacks, performing taunts, and successfully pulling off reversals. The last one is for setting how quickly/slowly stamina is gained/lost. If the stamina system is turned off, this slider seems to simply determine how much damage everyone is capable of taking before showing signs of fatigue/injury. The higher this slider setting is, the faster "kip-up" and "durability" icons will appear, but, you'll recover more health each time you use the Durability ability. If this slider is zeroed out, it will take a while for these icons to appear, even for a weaker superstar/diva equipped with these abilities, but once they appear, they're almost always there, after almost any additional damage taken from anything stronger than just a simple standing strike or reversal.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

If you're wondering why the AI seems to be relatively easy to defeat in most matches, then all of a sudden, they turn into reversal-spamming, I-refuse-to-be-pinned-or-tap-out, I'm-making-this-match-unwinnable cheapskates, it's because of a possible "maxing out" of the AI which sometimes occurs during important matches (such as number-one contender matches), and you're playing against a superstar/diva who is on your character's enemies list. "Maxed-out" AI is simply where the AI tries to pull out all the stops, and plays on the highest possible difficulty the game can throw at you (which I have dubbed "CM Punk difficulty", as in, the AI's silently yelling at you, "You don't get to win!"), in an attempt to overwhelm you with a seemingly constant barrage of suddenly very damaging counters and frustratingly hard-to-counter moves (which are usually easier to counter), as well as spamming even harder-to-counter moves, such as grappled strong strikes, and dragging you around a lot, just to keep you from countering them. However, they cannot protect their environmental-grapple moves from being countered (that's why they're dragging you--they want to use what they think is a counter-proof environmental grapple, but they've always guessed wrong on that score).

 

Also, it will be up to ten times harder to pin a maxed-out AI opponent, or make them tap to a submission. About three-fourths of all grounded "standard" pin attempts will be countered (yes, even they can be countered!), and when the AI lets a pin attempt through its otherwise nearly impenetrable reversal-god defenses, it will (usually) kick out at 2, much to your frustration (especially after getting about 20 pin attempts countered, and five or six other kick-outs at 2). If you think leverage pins will save you, think again, the maxed-out AI can and will reverse even those pin attempts, and if you reverse it on them, they'll simply reverse it back. They can do so ad nauseum, whereas each time you reverse their (reversed) leverage pin, it very quickly gets harder and harder to do so, until you nearly get a three-count just getting the green bar to the blue area of the kick-out meter. Sometimes you can't even make it that far before the ref counts 3, even if your character hasn't taken that much damage!

 

Yes, the game will even cheat on the kick-out meter, sometimes deliberately placing the blue kick-out area far to the right, just to make it impossible to kick out of the AI's pin. This has happened when I was playing as Vader (on my WWE '12 mod, which was created by CrocoX111), even though he had only taken a relatively small amount of damage!

 

There is only one way to out-cheat that type of AI cheating, and that is to use a 3-count-cancellation code, which can be found on Code-X.ws, this site's sister site. I've found a rather annoying AI tendency with that code--it will try to constantly reverse leverage-pin attempts, even after you reverse them each time, and I've counted FIFTEEN such leverage-pin transitions in a row. Seriously, when the AI doesn't want you to win, it will do whatever it can to make sure that you don't win. However...I still usually win, even without resorting to turboing my reversal button!

 

This is the slider set I use (at the moment): Legend difficulty, reversal damage and stamina system off; AI reversal-frequency set to five notches from the right, damage-balancing sliders both zeroed out (makes matches longer), reversal-window sliders all set to five notches from the left, and the momentum and stamina sliders zeroed out. This makes the reversal window pretty narrow for both me and the AI, so the AI won't reverse as much as the reversal-frequency sliders would have you think. However, having the reversal-frequency sliders as high as they are makes the AI "tougher", that is, they can take more damage (usually) before being laid out for the 3-count. There are more kick-outs and submission escapes this way, but it seems to allow for the rare "maxed-out" match, where the AI will just go hog-wild with the reversals and will have greatly increased resistance to reversals, themselves, as well as greatly increased chances for submission escapes and pin kick-outs.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

Even though the AI will sometimes max itself out (sometimes in mid-match, of all things! ), and start countering everything, I do know of a few "holes" in the AI's otherwise impenetrable defensive armor: they rarely counter standing-grapple struggle submission attempts. And, given that struggle submission damage and resistance are actually governed by your character's grapple and durability attributes (not Submission, as most people think), a maxed-out CAW can very quickly rack up tons of damage on an otherwise "invincible" AI opponent. The Submission attribute simply determines both how long you can hold a struggle submission for, and how quickly you can escape from them. A value of 80 is decent, and makes the game more "fair"; you can still break out of struggle submissions in a fairly short amount of time, and the time the AI needs (even when maxed-out, except for AI opponents in "resilience mode") is comparable to yours. If you have maxed-out durability and grapple ratings, you are very well equipped to handle the occasional ground submissions the AI will throw at you (but strangely, they never attempt standing submissions...weird). Here's an interesting factoid for you: I have never tapped out to an AI's submission hold (as a CAW)...however, I have made an AI-controlled maxed-out CAW tap out, so yes, it is possible, but the AI, while pretty tough, still isn't good enough, nor does it attempt nearly enough submissions, to make my maxed-out CAWs tap, while I am playing as them.

 

My overall win-loss record, as a percentage, is as follows: roughly 99 percent wins, with possibly only (less than?) 1 percent losses. However, I have to really earn those wins, and most matches are fairly "realistic" (well, as realistic as PSP AI can get). Matches run the whole gamut of time lengths: I've seen matches started--then almost immediately won--when the character I was playing as "swerved" his opponent, then I proceeded to land my sig and/or finisher, then pin the stunned opponent before either maxed-out AI or AI interference could take place! I've also had half-hour-long, and even hour-long, matches between me and a desperately maxed-out AI opponent, who reversed over fifty pin attempts, as well as about 90 percent of the moves I attempted on them, and engaged in a double handful (or more) of (reversed) leverage-pin reversal (reversals). Sometimes, both me and my AI opponent will be literally covered, face-to-chest, in our own blood, and will be stumbling around the ring very slowly, and even a sprint halfway across the ring will cause us to trip and fall, clutching at one of our legs. Bloodstains will be scattered all over the ring (despite the fact that they fairly quickly fade away), and we will both have gone through our entire movesets against each other (sans ladder-match, battle-royal or cell moves). In the end, though, the outcome is (usually) the same: I win. Again. And again. And again. Repeat, ad infinitum.

Here is the total list of AI exploits that I know of (an addendum to the above post):

 

Quickly exit the ring, then re-enter after a brief pause, just long enough to make the AI start taunting. Then, while they're taunting, use your strongest move (preferably a finisher--which is the best time to try this )--they can't counter you while taunting!

 

Also, during no-DQ matches, you can grab a weapon, and try to swing it at the opponent. They will (most likely) grab the weapon from you, and if you have a finisher, you can (usually) use it on them, as they are incapable of countering you while they are holding onto the weapon. Don't do this too many times during the same match, though--the AI will catch on and immediately drop the weapon they just took from you, thus re-enabling their seemingly godlike reversal abilities. Or, they will start swinging their newly acquired weapon just before your finisher would have connected, which is still usually after your character's "grapple" animation has begun.

 

If your opponent is groggy inside the ring and leaning on the ropes, they are incapable of countering (or at least seem to be), so go ahead and unload with your against-the-ropes move--I've never seen this move countered, in over two or three hundred times of using it, even when the AI is "maxed-out".

 

If you are standing on the apron, and your opponent is also standing near the ropes, inside the ring, they will only rarely counter your from-the-apron standing grapple move.

 

Here's another AI-defense hole that you can exploit, though only with a hacked moveset--if you place said hacked moves in your CAWs' chain-grapple moveset, the hacked chain-grapple moves will be very difficult for the AI to reverse, forcing them to simply try to take control of your grapple by transitioning into one of theirs. However, if you replace your CAW's standing struggle-submission and grappled-strike (not strong strike) slots with additional signature or finisher-only moves, the AI will never be able to reverse those hacked moves, and they do just as much damage as if they were actual signature or finisher moves! w00t! Bye bye, cheap AI! Heh heh...