Madden NFL 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

[jpdavis82]

VSN has posted an interview with Madden NFL 25 Lead Designer for Connected Franchise, Josh Looman.

Quote:

VSN: Coach Contracts for when we just play as Coaches? Will Owners be different in the coach they want depending on their style? How will CPU Owners handle 32 Human Coaches when it comes to firing and hiring someone new? Josh Looman: We have built new logic in to the coach hiring process. We’ve added scouts and trainers to the game. So if you are an owner, you can hire a head coach, scout or trainer. If you are a coach, your owner will wait until the end of the offseason and make a decision on your contract. Last year if your contract was up, basically that was it. This year the team will actually look at you and make you an offer. Coach Firing will still be a feature that you can turn off and on but if you are an owner you can be forced to sell the team if you are running it into the red. We are also working on a feature that if you are forced to sell a team, you can’t just rejoin that league as the owner of that team. You will have to take over another team. We don’t want people running a team into the ground as the owner in an online league and then turning around and running them into the ground even more. Everything as a coach and player will be back again this year. A lot of decisions that we make sadly are the result of people trying to exploit the game. It’s not all about adding cool new things since we have to spend a lot of time coding to block exploits. One of our favorite new features this year is the ability to relocate a team in owner mode but the community guys really wanted us to have the ability to turn it on or off by league so we put that in as an option to be decided by the commissioners and league members.

[splff3000]

Quote: Originally Posted by jpdavis82

http://www.virtualsportsnetwork.com/...2s-Josh-Looman

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

[BradyFan12]

Agh! It would have been nice to know if we could have CPU vs. CPU in offline franchise mode.

[DUDERMAN]

Quote: Originally Posted by splff3000

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

Exactly. I'm sure the guides will simply say, "scout their awareness, if it is a B or higher then they are the good version of the player, if it's C or lower then they are the bad version."

What they should do is have random names and schools and slightly varied height and weights for every player coming out. Then, instead of having 30 draft classes, have all the players from every draft go into a single draft pool to create a random draft class every year. Once a player is put into the draft, they are removed from the draft pool. Obviously, it would need to be tuned so you only get X amount of stars per draft. As for the story players, you can attach one story to 10 different players and once it is used for a player, it can't be used again in future drafts.

I dare you to try to make a guide from that.

[californ14]

"VSN: Will you be able to edit your playbook in Connected Franchise?

Josh Looman: You can use custom playbooks in Connected Franchise. I didn’t work on that feature specifically but I believe you edit it outside of the mode, edit your custom playbook and then bring it back into the mode with you."


This is sounding promising....Though I fear it is only offline?

Still hoping for news on a true coach mode where one can just call the play in from the sideline and done; no more having to hike the ball.

[juggalotusx]

VSN: Will XP goals be scaled to quarter length in Madden 25? It is hard to reach the goals if you are playing shorter length quarters.

Josh Looman: I have talked to people a lot about that one. I’ve spent a lot of time based on feedback from the community guys making sure that things like OLB and CB goals have more realistic goals. The issue that we have seen when we try to do this is that the CPU teams gain XP and progress too quickly. We are looking at ways that we can scale stats for next year but it will still be based on 15 minute quarters this year. I’m paying a lot of attention to things like how many tackles you can physically get as a LB in the game. It’s impossible to get 15 tackles per game controlling the LB.
If This is true how come I never saw it,EVER. I never saw the cpu do anything right with the xp and never saw anyone hit there goals at any position.
To me it sounds like he only cared about 1 thing this year and that is owners mode, when you have 9 months to do things but you dont want the programmers to have to much code to type in it just sounds like lazyness. Sounds like a real lack of caring on EAs behalf even though they say they work there buts off.

[jpdavis82]

Quote: Originally Posted by splff3000

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

He talked about this in the GC radio show last night. The draft classes potential to be a sleeper or bust will be randomized behind the servers and guys will have different odds of being a sleeper or bust each year. I believe he said a 40-50 percent chance of being a sleeper/bust.

[jpdavis82]

[quote=californ14;2045037227]"VSN: Will you be able to edit your playbook in Connected Franchise?

Josh Looman: You can use custom playbooks in Connected Franchise. I didn’t work on that feature specifically but I believe you edit it outside of the mode, edit your custom playbook and then bring it back into the mode with you."


This is sounding promising....Though I fear it is only offline?

Still hoping for news on a true coach mode where one can just call the play in from the sideline and done; no more having to hike the ball.

The features for connected franchise work for on or offline, no difference this year.