Madden 2012 impressions thread

[whomario]

After spending a couple hours setting up my "franchise" (32 team controll with "cpu" for everything besides cuts, making releases and cuts for every team so that there aren´t 5-10 Uundrafted guys in the 30s and 40s on every roster) i finally got started yesterday.

Not sure if i have the energy to do all that work for coming offseasons to do a real franchise ...

I´m going to play it more as a season-mode type thing, went through preseason with injuries off (+ the cutting and releasing) and then saved it on the first week of the season so that i can get back to it and try with another team with everything set up.

First go around i´ve taken the Packers because 1) i loved watching them last year and 2) i suck and wanted to play with a good team

Week 1 was a tough 28-31 loss to the Saints, very fun game though. The backbreaker was when i threw my only Interception with the game tied 21-21 at the start of the 4th quarter, after a great drive i ended up with 2nd and goal on the 5 and totally didn´t recognize a defender that ended up getting the Interceptions. I was sure i had Jennings open and didn´t see the guy standing 2 feet next to where i threw the ball ...

5 plays later Brees threw a great 40 yard TD and i never recovered ...

I really played an exceptionally mistake-free and controlled game for my standards (it helps that the run game is fun for me for like the first time ever in a football game) but then had to throw that god-awfull pass ...

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by whomario

After spending a couple hours setting up my "franchise" (32 team controll with "cpu" for everything besides cuts, making releases and cuts for every team so that there aren´t 5-10 Uundrafted guys in the 30s and 40s on every roster) i finally got started yesterday.

Not sure if i have the energy to do all that work for coming offseasons to do a real franchise ...

I´m going to play it more as a season-mode type thing, went through preseason with injuries off (+ the cutting and releasing) and then saved it on the first week of the season so that i can get back to it and try with another team with everything set up.

First go around i´ve taken the Packers because 1) i loved watching them last year and 2) i suck and wanted to play with a good team

Week 1 was a tough 28-31 loss to the Saints, very fun game though. The backbreaker was when i threw my only Interception with the game tied 21-21 at the start of the 4th quarter, after a great drive i ended up with 2nd and goal on the 5 and totally didn´t recognize a defender that ended up getting the Interceptions. I was sure i had Jennings open and didn´t see the guy standing 2 feet next to where i threw the ball ...

5 plays later Brees threw a great 40 yard TD and i never recovered ...

I really played an exceptionally mistake-free and controlled game for my standards (it helps that the run game is fun for me for like the first time ever in a football game) but then had to throw that god-awfull pass ...

I am going ahead with my single team franchise, here is why..

Set up an "all teams" franchise and don't like it. Using the change\backout instructions to make changes stick for each team and couldn't get my team to user scout and other teams to cpu scout. It was either all cpu or all human. Not playing if I can't scout for my team and certainly not scouting for every team.

In my single team franchise I go back and look at opening day rosters since I'd only played one game and hadn't advanced to week two. Some teams had only 1 udfa while others had a few but I'd say approx half of those guys were good enough to make a team.
So of course to fix the problem I had to also delete anyone that did have the ability to play. I also notice, as others have said, low rated players don't even get into the depth chart so pretty much never see the field. My hope is major injury results in cpu using IR and signing a player instead of using one of these scrubs but until that happens the cpu should be keeping these players as they do count against the cap if cut. It is like RL, team made a bad call and is now living with it until next year when the contract is up.

I do think this is an issue.

I do think it needs to be patched to work better.

I don't think this should have gotten through testing if it is indeed a bug, but wouldn't be surprised to find it is actually working as designed and is simply poorly done.

I'm still not convinced it is a game breaker. I would think the cpu, once knowing true value of a player, will in the second season cut those with low ratings and only keep UDFAs that have the attributes to make the team. There is a post talking about a couple of udfas coming back for a second season but no mention if it's because they are scrubs or actually have the attributes to justify it. My guess is they do.

Anyway my hope is that EA does patch this to make it better, it's certainly not good "as is". I will continue my single team franchise figuring if it is patched it will fix the issue in an on-going game.

[BillJasper]

Yeah... I just plan to push forward with my single player franchise. I'll put in some house rules if things get too out of hand, no signing 90+ OVR free agents is one I've used for years.

My Redskins are finally atop the NFC East with an 8-3 record after beating the winless Seahawks 24-3.

[MizzouRah]

Week 5, I traded Mark Clayton to the Bills for a 2nd string CB who could be good in a few years - I then released my worst CB and signed TO to a 1 yr/$850 deal. He had 1 catch for 27 yards on a jump ball.

We went into Lambeau field and upset the Super Bowl Champs, 31-17!
Rogers had 4 INT's and up until this game, I only had 1 INT. I have a stud DT who got 4 sacks and I was blitzing Rogers all game.

We were down 17-14 at the half after I missed a short FG right before the half and in the second half I decided to put the game on Jackson's shoulders. Bradford had 2 TD's and only 1 INT and Jackson ran for 166 yards and added a receiving TD. The CPU also missed a FG, which was good to see.

When the Packers scored, Jennings did the Lambeau leap.. kind of cool to see and the crowd kept yelling, "GO PACK GO". First time I got to see dymanic lighting - the game is really beautiful, especially the blimp shots of the whole stadium between quarters.

It was cool to see former Packer Al Harris have a spectacular game with 2 INT's, one returned for a TD and he was the player of the game.

Philly is the only undefeated team at 6-0 and the Browns and Panthers both sit at 0-6.

We play the 1-4 Dallas Cowboys next.

[MizzouRah]

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[RainMaker]

I had this game in my Amazon cart before you guys pointed out that franchise bug. Going to hold on a little longer and see how things play out.

[Groundhog]

I'm hopeful it will be patched before I finish my season.

You'll have to excuse me if I'm being naive, I've avoided Madden for a few years now...

[whomario]

season 1 is actually ok because some teams in the current roster have 70+ real players on the roster and thus only get assigned a couple UDFAs. Just wait till you start a franchise with the opening day roster update with 55 players (or until you get to season 2) when every team will start the season with 10-15 guys rated in the 30s and 40s.

Originally Posted by Sweed

I am going ahead with my single team franchise, here is why..

Set up an "all teams" franchise and don't like it. Using the change\backout instructions to make changes stick for each team and couldn't get my team to user scout and other teams to cpu scout. It was either all cpu or all human. Not playing if I can't scout for my team and certainly not scouting for every team.


I'm still not convinced it is a game breaker. I would think the cpu, once knowing true value of a player, will in the second season cut those with low ratings and only keep UDFAs that have the attributes to make the team. There is a post talking about a couple of udfas coming back for a second season but no mention if it's because they are scrubs or actually have the attributes to justify it. My guess is they do.

Anyway my hope is that EA does patch this to make it better, it's certainly not good "as is". I will continue my single team franchise figuring if it is patched it will fix the issue in an on-going game.

1) You have to set everything to auto at the startup screen. Then once it´s started, you just have to scroll to your team and then go to the options menu, change things for your team only and then go back to themain screen. No problems here really

2) Oh, they let them go allright. Problem is that they sign the next batch of theese guys instead At the start of season 2 and season 3 each team has 10-15 guys rated in the 30s and 40s while legit free agents (and drafted players that were released) vanish from the database after sitting in FA for a year.

3) It isn´t a design choice, the CPU clearly goes by the projected rating (the one with the little "?" behind it for rookies) and there you´ll have some first rounders rated in the 20s and many UDFAs in the 90s.

[thesloppy]

It really is fucking infuriatingly frustrating how EA can't (won't?) get player progression right, over the course of 80 billion collective iterations of sports games.

Single man text sims have gotten it right before. It's all simple math and modeling involving only player attributes valued between 1-100, there's no graphics involved, no player input, no collision detection, or polygon mapping or any of that shit. Players and critics are able to precisely point out the simple logical flaws in their models/results, with only hours of solo-playtime, so it's really hard to believe that they don't know that player progression is/has always been screwed.

Most 'madden'ing is that most of EAs sports games keep improving in most other aspects/systems, that are seemingly much more complex than the simple back-end stuff that keeps repeatedly, and comically fouling up their best efforts. It's hard NOT to come up with conspiracy theories at this point. Froggy LBs, psychic CBs, player progression....you can almost see a big white board at EA, detailing exactly how and what individual sliver of an 'upgrade' they're going to spoon feed us over each of the next 20 years.

[RainMaker]

The weird thing about it is that it's not something you necessarily have to change every year. Once you get good progression logic in place, it's their forever. Just make the occasional tweaks year in and year out and go.

[markprior22]

I'm definitely not buying any more EA games until the progression, roster handling, trade/FA logic, etc is better. I'll stick with MLB "The Show" (It's not perfect but I get a full year's use out of RTTS itself) and NBA 2K. Sure wish there were more text sports sims to fill the void (esp football).

[RainMaker]

In fairness, NHL is a really great game.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

In fairness, NHL is a really great game.

Not BeaGm.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by markprior22

I'm definitely not buying any more EA games until the progression, roster handling, trade/FA logic, etc is better. I'll stick with MLB "The Show" (It's not perfect but I get a full year's use out of RTTS itself) and NBA 2K. Sure wish there were more text sports sims to fill the void (esp football).

FWIW I don't think the NBA 2K crew has it down pat either, yet. The potential rating is far too high on the starting roster for young players and too many of them end up stars, and while progression is pretty good for the incoming generated rookies, there are still too few PFs or Cs scorers.

[Sweed]

A guy at OS came up with an interesting way to deal with UDFA. Here are two posts I found buried in the thread dealing with the subject.

Edit: adding link to original thread at OS I May Have Found A Good Solution For a 1-Team Franchise. - Operation Sports Forums

Originally Posted by Revis24
So the big problem for everybody is the UDFA. Here is what i did. I start off with the Jets (Or w.e. team your going to use) and i get rid of all my UDFA and then on the "Player Management" screen i went to every team and changed the position of there UDFA to a position that team is set at and dont have any rookies at all. So for example the Eagles are fine with Vick, Young and Kafka so for all other UDFA the Eagles have change there position to QB or im sure there fine with Rocca(sp?) so if QB gets full then change the rest to a "P". When you sim the cuts there other teams will cut all the UDFA. Do it for all the teams just change the positions of the UDFA to a position that the team is set at already and doesent have any rookies at all. Then all you have to worry about is your one team after that. Hope you guys understand it

.

Originally posted by kpkpkp
Basically he is saying every pre-season right after the CPU controlled teams "sign" these fakeUDFA's to their 1-year 310K contracts go into edit mode.

While in edit mode change every FakeUDFA guy's position to either QB or P (or any position the CPU is "all set" at as he put it) so the CPU see's themselves as having way to many extra guys at that position it has no need for.

He says in year 2 of his franchise there is not a single FakeUDFA in his league.

Thoughts?

Not sure if you have to be in 32 team control to change positions for other teams or if you can do it in a single team league. Either way sounds promising.

Someone just posted on OS that this can be done with single team control.

[MizzouRah]

Madden 12 is the best Madden since the Sega Genesis days.. there, I said it and I stand by it.

Played Dallas in Week 6, they were 1-4 and we were 2-3. We win 20-12 and it's fitting that TO has a 61 yd touchdown against the Cowboys.

First game where I threw no INT's, in fact no turnovers whatsoever in the game from either team.

Each week has been a completely different game and feel to it, makes me want to play more and more which is all I can ask for from a video game.

It's not issue free, but damn is it fun to play.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by Sweed

A guy at OS came up with an interesting way to deal with UDFA. Here are two posts I found buried in the thread dealing with the subject.

Edit: adding link to original thread at OS I May Have Found A Good Solution For a 1-Team Franchise. - Operation Sports Forums

.



Not sure if you have to be in 32 team control to change positions for other teams or if you can do it in a single team league. Either way sounds promising.

Someone just posted on OS that this can be done with single team control.

thanks for that, this sounds like a very viable workaround and i like it much better than the 32 team controll option Teams still might release their draft picks (that get shown as like in the 20s with a "?"), but you can allways sign them and trade them for the other team while exchanging 7th round picks.

@ groundhog : Yeah, NBA 2K has issues of it´s own, but they (imo) were very easy to work around and manager without a lot of extra work. (what i hated most was not being able to edit contracts in another way than changing it by 0.01 at a time, basically having to push the left way for like minutes ....)

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Madden 12 is the best Madden since the Sega Genesis days.. there, I said it and I stand by it.

Played Dallas in Week 6, they were 1-4 and we were 2-3. We win 20-12 and it's fitting that TO has a 61 yd touchdown against the Cowboys.

First game where I threw no INT's, in fact no turnovers whatsoever in the game from either team.

Each week has been a completely different game and feel to it, makes me want to play more and more which is all I can ask for from a video game.

It's not issue free, but damn is it fun to play.

I agree, the game is just fun on the field. I just got done playing the Dallas game and I knocked them off 12-10. Love the running game, Jackson is a beast.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I agree, the game is just fun on the field. I just got done playing the Dallas game and I knocked them off 12-10. Love the running game, Jackson is a beast.

Yes he is

[CleBrownsfan]

I really am enjoying Madden this year BUT I feel the presentation is lacking. I'll never understand how a game created in 2004 has so much more in the presentation department than Madden 12.

Hell - I remember Madden on the Sega use to cut into played games and give updates on games in process...


How awesome is/was this?:


[IMG][/IMG]

[gstelmack]

Is that a rhetorical question? The answer is: so awesome that EA had to buy the exclusive NFL rights to kill it!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by CleBrownsfan

I really am enjoying Madden this year BUT I feel the presentation is lacking. I'll never understand how a game created in 2004 has so much more in the presentation department than Madden 12.

Hell - I remember Madden on the Sega use to cut into played games and give updates on games in process...


How awesome is/was this?:


[IMG][/IMG]

Watching that video just makes me sick to my stomach. I really hope the Madden monopoly gets broken up relatively soon. So many years wasted.

[ColtCrazy]

Does 2k5 work on the 360? If it does, I'm going to go dig it out of the garage. Would be fun to play again.

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

I still play 2k5 with updated rosters found on nfl2k5rosters.com

Franchise mode is busted, but playing out the season is a blast.

[Groundhog]

I played game 5 of my season last night vs the Saints, this time pumping the CPU up to 100 in just about everything. Saints were surprisingly 0-4 but I expected to get torched by Brees with the new sliders. Yet still, any time I rushed more than two players – quick CBs in particular – I was sacking Brees or at least causing him to bobble the ball forward. He was just taking way too long to get rid of the ball. I went into the half up 17-3, although the running game was thankfully proving much harder for me, although the CPU still sucked. I’m more than a little concerned now because I’m simply not that good at Madden, I shouldn’t be able to continuously shut down opposing QBs with the Panthers, and this would be 5 games in a row where the opposing QB completed less than 50% of his passes.

Thankfully something changed in the 2nd half. Suddenly Newton wasn’t connecting with his WRs and my running game – outside of an excellent 57 yard TD run – stalled, while Brees was starting to find his way. I tried changing the game speed to “Slow” to see if it gave the CPU some more time to throw and it definitely seemed to work, as he was starting to beat my rushes. We still won the game, but it was a more satisfying 27-20 victory, with us picking off Brees on a 4th and goal with 1:30 left.

I’m still concerned with the CPU QB decision making, and there were more than a couple of times even on Slow speed that Brees threw the ball in to triple coverage and had it batted down… I imagine if my INT slider was on 50 still I’d have had about 6 picks this game.

[ColtCrazy]

Originally Posted by LastWhiteSoxFanStanding

I still play 2k5 with updated rosters found on nfl2k5rosters.com

Franchise mode is busted, but playing out the season is a blast.

Thanks. That's seriously cool. Would love to play with those 80s rosters. What was the name of the device you needed to load files from a computer onto a storage card? I need to try to find one.

[Kodos]

Finally cracked this game open last night. Has anyone had problems with it being a little stuttery?

[gstelmack]

From the Dubious Quality blog this morning:

Originally Posted by DQ

Kim Wong sent me a list (originally seen in the NeoGaf forum) of Madden "innovations" that are now at the bottom of the sea:
--Vision Cone
--"Weapons" Feature
--Obi-Wan John Madden
--Madden IQ Test To Judge Difficulty
--Fight For The Fumble
--Playmaker control system
--Rewinds
--EA Sports Radio in Franchise Mode
--Owner Mode
--Pro-Tak
--Create-A-Fan
--Ring of a Champion
--Live Opponent

[Pumpy Tudors]

I've always thought that the two most appropriately-titled blogs on the internet are "Dubious Quality" and "Fuck You, Penguin."

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by TroyF

My first impressions have been better, but Madden 12 may or may not be the game for me.

But it is absolutely not a big deal to me that a team who went 4-12 last year goes 12-4 in Madden.

Every year two or three teams jump from 3 or 4 wins to the playoffs. KC and Tampa jumped from 3 or 4 wins to 10 last year. Obviously, we know that talent shifts in the NFL due to salary cap issues, but beyond that there are a crapload of close games. SF Of that disaster stretch last year, SF lost 4 of their first 7 games by 3 points or less. 3 of those 4 losses came against playoff teams.

They get lucky and win those 4 coin flips and they sit 5-2 after 7 games last year with momentum. This year they get 8 games against Arizona, St.Louis, Seattle, Cincy and Cleveland. They have another game against what I feel is an overrated Tampa Bay team who was the reverse of SF last year.

Do they win 12 games? I highly doubt it. Hell, I don't think they win 8. But would it shock me if they won a few close ones to start the year and then caught fire like TB or KC last year? umm, no. If you look at their first 8 games, I could easily see a scenario where they went 6-2 or 5-3. (home games against Seattle, Dallas, Tampa and Cleveland. Road games against Cincy, Philly, Detroit and Washington)

Again, I'm not trying to say it is the game for you. And I'm not trying to say it's the game for me until I play around with it more.I just think ripping on an NFL sim because a 4 win team turned into a 12 win one is a little silly. My opinion, nothing more.

Good lord, I did not really believe when I wrote this that the 49ers would be this good. They are now 5-1 with 5 games left against their garbage division. Throw in a home tilt and I can see how this team goes 11-5 with relative ease. Madden had it nailed? Go figure.

[AENeuman]

I keep getting beat head to head with a defense where they drop everyone into coverage, including (especially) the linemen. Anyone know what this defense is? Would like to practice against it.

[BillJasper]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

I keep getting beat head to head with a defense where they drop everyone into coverage, including (especially) the linemen. Anyone know what this defense is? Would like to practice against it.

I forget what it's called but use the QB to run the ball and use draw plays. That'll suck the defense right back up.

[mh2365]

sorry but I don't have time to read the whole thread ... before I buy Madden this year did they fix NCAA 2012 draft classes to where the QB's don't always suck?