Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

Madden NFL 17 will feature a new approach to the biggest decisions you'll make in Franchise Mode aptly titled, "Big Decisions". In a new blog post, EA details this new feature.


Below is a breakdown of the big decisions you'll face:

• Season Goal - The first big decision you’ll make as a coach or player in the regular season is to set your season goal. As a coach, you can decide whether you are going to make the playoffs or shoot low with a 7-win season.
• Injuries: Once doctors have medically cleared a player that was hurt earlier in the season, you can either play him with a lingering injury or sit him to heal to 100%.
• Acquisitions: Picking up free agents and players on the trade block is easier than ever with the new Acquisitions menu. You will be able to easily browse the available players by position and compare them to your current depth chart.
• Re-Signing Players: When your players are on the last year of their contract, you can now re-sign them using a more intuitive menu. All the information you need to decide if you want to retain the player is available.
• Spending XP: Your players progress through the season as they earn experience points (XP) from training and by completing weekly game goals, drive goals, fantasy goals, season goals, and career goals.
• Cutting Players: During the preseason, you will now be presented with a new menu layout where your coaches will recommend players to cut based on position depth and player skills. This allows you to make key decisions about player retention quickly so you can progress through the preseason.
• Free Agent Bidding: While bidding for players in the off-season, you will now be able to easily see your depth chart at the various positions so you know who to bid on.

What do you think of the new Big Decisions feature in franchise mode?

Well good, we are heading in the right direction!

wow awesome feature ever i read.. CFM look like huge leap forward for Madden 17 this year

Re: Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

The only new things in this are the ability to set your own season goal, and to bring a player back from injury a week or 2 early. Everything else has been in the game, just rebranded under a new menu.

Re: Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

Don't know why you can only set season goal as a coach or player. I would have thought an Owner would be able to set a season goal for their head coach.

Re: Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

This is all sounding promising! Nice additions.

Re: Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

Love the direction, it's the execution that worries me.

All of these XP based "improvements" we're buggy and flawed and overall you could say negatively affected the gameplay, so much to the point that you had to use the 32 team setup method to try and trouble-shoot you're way around a lot of the issues regarding the XP system.

If all this works, that's phenomenal. If its all buggy like last years release, then this will simply been seen as more ways to bug up franchise mode.

Re: Madden NFL 17's Franchise Mode Now Features 'Big Decisions'
 

I hope there are some under the hood safeguards in place to prevent 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and even to a lesser extent 4th round picks from being cut within the first 2-3 years of their careers due to low overall. The AI should be working to develop and make those players work, not letting them rot on the bench and cutting them early in their careers as a "Big Decision" type thing.

I don't want to see a bunch of high draft picks in FA in year one or two for me to pick up and develop myself. The AI for computer controlled teams needs to make sure they aren't drafting or signing tons of guys at the same position and cutting ones that never got a shot to develop for them.