Madden NFL 16 News Post

Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

05:28 PM - June 15, 2015 by Steve_OS

Penalties have long not been a big part of the Madden NFL experience. This year, EA is hoping to change that legacy, which you can read fully fleshed out on their new blog:

Quote:


	"Our hardcore simulation fans have been demanding realistic penalties for years. The team finally made this a point of emphasis in Madden NFL 16, and penalties will play a bigger factor than ever before. In addition to several new penalties being added, we have updated all pre-existing penalties and built a system to control penalty frequency."

What This Means: Every player is going to get a penalty trait based on real-world NFL data, which will determine how likely they are to commit a penalty. Also, how you play the game will determine how many penalties are called as well. A pressing cornerback is used as an example, where your chances of seeing a defensive holding penalty are higher than if he is playing loose.

The penalty sliders also are getting a makeover, with the default setting based on NFL penalty averages over the last five seasons, which will make penalty type and frequency as authentic as possible, so EA says.

Penalties which got the updated treatment include: Encroachment, False Start, Offensive Holding, Facemask, Defensive Pass Interference, Illegal Block in the Back, Neutral Zone Infraction, Defensive Holding, Illegal Forward Pass, Illegal Touching, Delay of Game, Kick Catch Interference Running into the Kicker, Unnecessary Roughness and Roughing the Passer.

What do you think of the potentially improved penalties?

Game: Madden NFL 16Reader Score: 7/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / PS4 / Xbox 360 / Xbox OneVotes for game: 24 - View All

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Member Comments

# 121 CM Hooe @ 06/17/15 09:39 PM

Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff:

I played a half of a six-minute quarters game on All-Madden difficulty. Before starting this game, I maxed out every penalty slider.

At the end of this half of football, the two teams (Packers and Broncos) had combined for just over 400 yards of penalties. There was literally a penalty on every other play. It was excessive and insufferable.

Needless to say, the penalty sliders work. lol

I had opportunities to speak with Clint Oldenburg, Andrew Johnson (AJ), and Kolbe Launchbaugh (still not sure if I'm spelling his last name right, I need to check that) about penalties today, more info follows:

- Penalties are NEVER triggered by CPU-controlled characters in online head-to-head, Ultimate Team, and Draft Champions (this explains why I saw so few yesterday). A user controlling a player may still trigger a penalty in these modes, however. CPU-triggered penalties do occur in online head-to-head games in Connected Franchise, however; I specifically asked about that for clarity's sake.

- On the "caps" DeuceDouglas mentioned - at the default penalty level settings, the game keeps track of how many flags it has called, and at a certain point it will stop calling fouls which have occurred frequently. For example, if the game calls like ten defensive holding calls by the third quarter (assuming the cap is ten, I wasn't told a specific number), the game will no longer trigger defensive holding fouls and animations. This is a usability feature; mainstream players get easily frustrated when they get penalized for something they didn't do (understandably). Increasing a penalty slider's value above 50 will remove the caps for that foul altogether.

- On how penalties are tuned - Tiburon researched real-life penalty frequencies for the baseline values for how often penalties should occur. They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency.

- On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example.

- Play style influences what penalties will be called. For example, if you play a lot of 2-Man press coverage and have undisciplined cornerbacks, you are going to see more defensive holding penalties. I did a few drives on defense as the Packers (max penalty sliders game still) where I exclusively called Nickel 2-Man with press coverage, and Dmitri Goodson was effectively tackling the slot receiver he was guarding at times and getting flagged a ton. He was not very good.

- Penalties will always have an animation; there shouldn't be any situation where a penalty is called and the foul doesn't have a corresponding animation. These animations do not necessarily require contact. I saw one defensive pass interference penalty by Sam Shields where he was impeding the progress of Demaryius Thomas on a fly route; the animation was not initially triggered by contact between Shields and Thomas.

- The penalty I saw the most when the penalty sliders were maxed out was Illegal Block In The Back. Saw plenty of offensive and defensive holding, roughing the passer. I did see defensive pass interference. Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count. I do not recall seeing offensive pass interference. Strangely, offensive pass interference is an On/Off toggle, not a slider. Not sure if that's the final implementation.

If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer some, I'll be around on OS for a bit this evening.

# 122 jfsolo @ 06/17/15 09:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff: {snip}

That is on point.

# 123 DeuceDouglas @ 06/17/15 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count.

Excellent post and greatly appreciate the info! Could you elaborate a little bit more on the above? The main thing I'm wondering is if there were still false starts as well as the neutral zone infractions and offsides on CPU players without actually using the fake snap mechanic.

# 124 georgiafan @ 06/17/15 09:48 PM

Great info Cm on flags sounds like it's gonna be spot On

# 125 The JareBear @ 06/17/15 09:51 PM

Great post CFM. very promising information

# 126 jpdavis82 @ 06/17/15 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff: I played a half of a six-minute quarters game on All-Madden difficulty. Before starting this game, I maxed out every penalty slider. At the end of this half of football, the two teams (Packers and Broncos) had combined for just over 400 yards of penalties. There was literally a penalty on every other play. It was excessive and insufferable. Needless to say, the penalty sliders work. lol I had opportunities to speak with Clint Oldenburg, Andrew Johnson (AJ), and Kolbe Launchbaugh (still not sure if I'm spelling his last name right, I need to check that) about penalties today, more info follows: - Penalties are NEVER triggered by CPU-controlled characters in online head-to-head, Ultimate Team, and Draft Champions (this explains why I saw so few yesterday). A user controlling a player may still trigger a penalty in these modes, however. CPU-triggered penalties do occur in online head-to-head games in Connected Franchise, however; I specifically asked about that for clarity's sake. - On the "caps" DeuceDouglas mentioned - at the default penalty level settings, the game keeps track of how many flags it has called, and at a certain point it will stop calling fouls which have occurred frequently. For example, if the game calls like ten defensive holding calls by the third quarter (assuming the cap is ten, I wasn't told a specific number), the game will no longer trigger defensive holding fouls and animations. This is a usability feature; mainstream players get easily frustrated when they get penalized for something they didn't do (understandably). Increasing a penalty slider's value above 50 will remove the caps for that foul altogether. - On how penalties are tuned - Tiburon researched real-life penalty frequencies for the baseline values for how often penalties should occur. They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency. - On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example. - Play style influences what penalties will be called. For example, if you play a lot of 2-Man press coverage and have undisciplined cornerbacks, you are going to see more defensive holding penalties. I did a few drives on defense as the Packers (max penalty sliders game still) where I exclusively called Nickel 2-Man with press coverage, and Dmitri Goodson was effectively tackling the slot receiver he was guarding at times and getting flagged a ton. He was not very good. - Penalties will always have an animation; there shouldn't be any situation where a penalty is called and the foul doesn't have a corresponding animation. These animations do not necessarily require contact. I saw one defensive pass interference penalty by Sam Shields where he was impeding the progress of Demaryius Thomas on a fly route; the animation was not initially triggered by contact between Shields and Thomas. - The penalty I saw the most when the penalty sliders were maxed out was Illegal Block In The Back. Saw plenty of offensive and defensive holding, roughing the passer. I did see defensive pass interference. Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count. I do not recall seeing offensive pass interference. Strangely, offensive pass interference is an On/Off toggle, not a slider. Not sure if that's the final implementation. If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer some, I'll be around on OS for a bit this evening.

You said penalties do occur in online head to head in CFM, I'm assuming penalties will be called on the CPU in offline CFM games right?

# 127 CM Hooe @ 06/17/15 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas


	Excellent post and greatly appreciate the info! Could you elaborate a little bit more on the above? The main thing I'm wondering is if there were still false starts as well as the neutral zone infractions and offsides on CPU players without actually using the fake snap mechanic.

I did not see false start, offsides, or encroachment trigger without using the fake snap button, except in the case where a user manually moved his defender offsides.

I also did not see any field goal / punt plays where a pre-snap penalty was instantly called, either (which is how those penalties have always appeared to work in previous EA Sports football game). Granted, small sample size.

# 128 CM Hooe @ 06/17/15 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpdavis82


	You said penalties do occur in online head to head in CFM, I'm assuming penalties will be called on the CPU in offline CFM games right?

Yup, you'll see penalties in user vs CPU games in Connected Franchise.

# 129 extremeskins04 @ 06/17/15 09:53 PM

I'm really curious how the penalty animations flow. Like does it cut awkwardly into an animation when a player is committing a penalty? Or is it smooth and flowing normally as part of the game?

# 130 jpdavis82 @ 06/17/15 09:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by extremeskins04


	I'm really curious how the penalty animations flow. Like does it cut awkwardly into an animation when a player is committing a penalty? Or is it smooth and flowing normally as part of the game?

It flows prety naturally from what I remember.

I'm curious though, how did the Shields Thomas penalty work exactly? It called the penalty but they never made contact?

# 131 DeuceDouglas @ 06/17/15 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	I did not see false start, offsides, or encroachment trigger without using the fake snap button, except in the case where a user manually moved his defender offsides. I also did not see any field goal / punt plays where a pre-snap penalty was instantly called, either (which is how those penalties have always appeared to work in previous EA Sports football game). Granted, small sample size.

Gotcha. Thanks for the info. Hmm I wonder if that could be tuned at all so that it does happen without it. I guess the worst case scenario is I adapt and start using the fake snap button. Shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as the CPU is able to draw my CPU guys off in the same fashion.

One thing that could become a minor issue when it comes to special teams is that as the user, you don't have the ability to do a hard count, which completely makes sense. But for whatever reason the CPU does have that ability and actually used it quite often in M15

# 132 CM Hooe @ 06/17/15 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpdavis82


	It flows prety naturally from what I remember. I'm curious though, how did the Shields Thomas penalty work exactly? It called the penalty but they never made contact?

It was a two-man interaction which triggered when I used the context-sensitive control post-pass to tell Shields to play the ball, I believe. It did result with contact between the two - Shields basically cutting Thomas off and making contact with Thomas in doing so, then Thomas begging for a flag - but contact was not the trigger of the interaction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by extremeskins04


	I'm really curious how the penalty animations flow. Like does it cut awkwardly into an animation when a player is committing a penalty? Or is it smooth and flowing normally as part of the game?

The animations weren't jarring or abrupt, they all fit within the course of the game. All the penalty animations did make it completely obvious that a penalty was occurring, however; there weren't any "tough calls" as it were. I got to the point where I could identify a defensive holding foul occurring pretty quickly, because Dmitri Goodson is terrible and kept grabbing Emmanuel Sanders, lol.

# 133 jpdavis82 @ 06/17/15 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	It was a two-man interaction which triggered when I used the context-sensitive control post-pass to tell Shields to play the ball, I believe. It did result with contact between the two - Shields basically cutting Thomas off and making contact with Thomas in doing so, then Thomas begging for a flag - but contact was not the trigger of the interaction. The animations weren't jarring or abrupt, they all fit within the course of the game. All the penalty animations did make it completely obvious that a penalty was occurring, however; there weren't any "tough calls" as it were. I got to the point where I could identify a defensive holding foul occurring pretty quickly, because Dmitri Goodson is terrible and kept grabbing Emmanuel Sanders, lol.

Sounds great, but stop hating on Goodson lol. No really though I don't know how good he is yet, he hasn't played very much at this point in his career.

# 134 bcruise @ 06/17/15 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	- On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example.

First off, that whole post is the best info about Madden that I've read in many, many years. Not just for the fact that penalties exist, but because of what it represents - that the dev team really does want to make this game better for us sim heads.

I do have a question about this part as it relates to average penalties per game - is that scaled up depending on how long the quarters are? If I play a 15 minute quarter game, would I see more penalties per game than someone playing 5 minute quarters? Of course assuming the sliders work this is a non-issue, but it would be nice to not have to move them much off the defaults.

Thanks!

# 135 CM Hooe @ 06/17/15 10:16 PM

I actually did not think to ask about the quarter length the penalties were tuned for. I'll be sure to ask one of the EA guys about that tomorrow.

# 136 Danimal @ 06/18/15 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency.

This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one.

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

# 137 DeuceDouglas @ 06/18/15 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danimal


	This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one. Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

I could be wrong but he mentioned how there would be no penalties coming from CPU-controlled characters in H2H, MUT, or DC so I'd figure that those modes shouldn't play much of a role in any of those potential tunings just because the data is all coming from user input in terms of the penalties. Also possible that they have separate tuning for CFM, H2H, etc. since that is the case but, again, I could be way off on this, just speculating.

# 138 jfsolo @ 06/18/15 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas


	I could be wrong but he mentioned how there would be no penalties coming from CPU-controlled characters in H2H, MUT, or DC so I'd figure that those modes shouldn't play much of a role in any of those potential tunings just because the data is all coming from user input in terms of the penalties. Also possible that they have separate tuning for CFM, H2H, etc. since that is the case but, again, I could be way off on this, just speculating.

Yes, this should be a case of Win-Win for all. It seems like they thought the implementation of this through pretty well.

# 139 jpdavis82 @ 06/18/15 11:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danimal


	This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one. Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

Penalties aren't in for the more casual modes so hopefully if they tune things it's more like we aren't seeing PI enough so they boost it.

# 140 TD3322 @ 06/18/15 11:31 AM

I realy hope they've updated the penalty rules n how/when they're called... I lost a game after blocking a FG and being flagged for "Roughing the Kicker" when my hip/legs took out the holder... After BLOCKING the kick! Ive also been flagged for PI quite a few times after a high pass goes by the WR and theres still a Big Hit animation between my Saftey and the WR.... IDK if PI is automatically canceled when a ball is tipped on a pass either. It wasnt after tipping a kick in 15, that Im sure of....

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