Madden NFL 12 Game Play Settings Part 1 - PGaither84's Blog

PGaither84's Blog

Madden NFL 12 Game Play Settings Part 1

Posted on October 4, 2012 at 02:54 AM.

Today I want to write about my Madden NFL 12 Game Play Settings. These are the settings that i use to get the most enjoyment and most realistic NFL experience I can out of an otherwise unrealistic game. Sure, these settings won't fix very issue, but they do try to address a lot of them.

The biggest change I ever made came thanks to the advice of fellow OS user KBLover - Fatigue. I now use 100 fatigue with 3 Injury and custom coaching substitution settings.

I set every player to sub out at 1 and back in at 2 with three exceptions:

1) HB sub out at 75 and back in at 85. With 12min quarters and accelerated clock, I get the NFL average of about 120 plays per game, and in these games I see the #1 and #2 HB on the field a lot, and the #3 HB about 4 or 5 plays a game. That looks and feels right to me. Depending on the play call, the #3 HB may not even get a touch in the game. Sometimes he might get 4 or 5, but that's it.

2) DE sub back in at 3. Each point matters, and just set to 3 instead of 2 makes a difference. DEs rarely miss action, but it helps to use the D-Line sub feature after giving up a pair of first downs to an offense for a few plays to rest up and try and make a big 3rd down stop.

3) DT sub back in at 4. Se above, but I set the big guys to sub back in at 4.

*EDIT/NOTE: For Madden 25, I use 75 fatigue and set auto subs for the DE's to 25/35 and DTs to 35/45 and added LBs at 15/25*

You see, with 100 fatigue settings, going 3 and out matters a lot more. Having a drive last 10+ plays can really wear down a defense. Tempo just matters a lot more in my opinion. Having a that back-and-forth defensive battle for field position, but also running the ball and resting your defense matters. Fatigue has a demonstrable impact on performance. As a player becomes exhausted, their performance decreases. This means that the stamina rating plays a bigger role than ever before. It also increases the value of roster depth. You cannot just have a 90+ player with a 67 backup and feel safe. That backup will play and will get exposed.

The next big settings change I made came thanks to the advice of EA Game Changer RGiles 36. 100 speed threshold.

Now, Giles didn't recommend 100 speed threshold, but he did recommend about 75-80. I wanted to try the extreme and work my way down... but I liked 100 so much I never wanted to lower it.

*EDIT/NOTE: For Madden 25, I use 75 speed threshold as suggested, though 100 is still great for Madden 12*

In my opinion, it makes speed matter MORE. I used to play with 0 speed threshold, and the best way for me to describe the difference between 0, 50, and 100 speed thresholds are like seeing High School, College, and NFL separation on plays.

In Madden there are some slow line backers with only 76 speed, and there are some fast ones like Patric Willis, Manny Lawson, and Thomas Howard who have 89-91 speed. However, most are between 84-86 speed. With 0 speed threshold I could take a 90 speed back and get around the corner on a sweep and break off big runs all game long. Also, when a receiver caught a pass in the open field, it was almost always a house call.

By switching to 100 speed threshold, every point of speed matters. You must have elite speed and acceleration (think 97-99) to hit the edge and outrun linebackers. When combined with 100 fatigue settings, having a fast #2 HB with fresh legs come off the bench when the defense is tired can really be a game changer.

Also, because of the speed threshold, I find that the pursuit rating matter more as well. A linebacker like Garry Bracket [Chubs] who is slower, but has great pursuit isn't worthless anymore. In fact, he is more difficult to run against than some younger and faster [but less disciplined] line backers. Chubs doesn't bit on counters, and he flows and fills his gaps. On the other end of the spectrum, Patrick Willis is already beastly in Madden on the default settings, but MY GOODNESS is he becomes the dominate LB one would expect with these settings.

Now that we have talked about the two biggest game changing settings I have ever implemented, I now would like to talk about some of the roster edits I have made to Madden NFL 12... and I want to start with my little experiment that has had big results: Line Backer Zone Coverage ratings.

I was messing around in practice mode one day and was getting frustrated with the terrible zone coverage in Madden. Even with my custom slider settings, I still couldn't find a way to make line backers play zone coverage very well. I don't know why I never thought about it before [maybe it's because I don't tend to change rating much at all] but I finally decided to back out of practice and take a look at the rosters. I sorted by all teams and all MLB, all ROLB, and then all LOLB by ZCV [Zone Coverage] I found that in the final roster update, the player with the highest ZCV rating was Brian Urlacher with 85 ZCV. That's right, there were no line backers with 90+ ZCV in the entire game. How can this be? Droping into hook zones is half the job of being a linebacker. In fact, it turns out that only nine linebackers in all of Madden 12 had an ZCV rating of at least 80 and only five of those were above 80. I am 99% positive that this has to do with the bias and thought process that "a linebacker should not have a coverage rating equal to or above starting corner backs", which is a fallacy.

In all my years of playing Madden, I have found that a rating between 70-75 is about the threshold for failure. What I mean is, if you have a rating between 12 and 70, you pretty much play about the same. So, I went in and did a painstakingly long process where I edited each and every linebacker who had a 65 or higher ZCV rating and gave them a 10 point boost. I figured that if you had below a 65 ZCV rating, you were not worth increasing. You simply are not a coverage linebacker in my opinion. Well, what this did was made 9 line backers with 90+ ZCV ratings and a pile of 80+ ZCV guys. This has since had quite a positive impact in how AI controlled line backers cover the middle of the filed, making it more difficult to throw over the middle, and to play offense against in general without feeling cheated. Line Backers [more than ever before] finally do their freaking jobs. What a shock! They are far from perfect, but they are so much better. Those "elite" coverage Linebackers like Urlacher are just that. Elite.

Another big change I made was to Corner Backs. I went in and gave all CBs with like 70+ Catch the "makes sideline catches: Yes" trait. I also increased their Catch in Traffic and spectacular catch ratings to be equal to or above their catch rating in some cases. Now, I am not sure if that has made a real difference on game play or not, but I think it has. Madden 12 had a bad habit of never letting a CB catch an interception on the sideline or in the back of the endzone. That is no longer true. I don't see it all the time, but it doesn't look/feel like an auto fail anymore like it used to either.

I also just went in and edited a LOT of player traits for rookies and young players who went untouched by Donny Moore as the season went on. Players like NaVorro Bowman who is a total beast in real life only has 1 star consistency and "Big Hitter: No" in Madden 12. That had to change to 5 stars and "Big Hitter: Yes." A lot of rookies and 2nd year real life stars I also set to 3 or 4 star consistency from 1. This was based only on my opinion, but the fact of the matter is that Donny adjusted player ratings, but didn't touch player traits at all. Now that Madden 13 is out, we know he never will either. If you want to keep playing Madden 12 [like I do] it's up to us to make these changes. Please, share your player trait changes in the comments!

This will conclude part 1 of Game Play Settings. In Part 2 I will talk about slider settings and more. Part 1 was all about improving general game play and defense for both the user and computer.