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[FONT="Arial"]Every year at this time, gamers and NFL players alike get very excited about player ratings in the new Madden. Debates blaze across the internet about who’s over-rated, who’s under-rated, and why everyone on [I]“my team”[/I] should be 99 across the board. More and more, gamers are seeing the forest through the trees and are actually questioning the real meaning of ratings. Overall rating (OVR) certainly doesn’t tell the whole story and savvy gamers have a sense for a player’s true worth.
[B]Attribute Weighting and Positional Bias
[/B]Last year, OSer [I]Argoos [/I]put together a nice analysis where he determined how much each attribute impacted a player’s OVR ([url="http://www.operationsports.com/vBulletin/madden-nfl-football/353009-what-contributes-players-overall-rating-i-have-answers.html"]link[/url]). He did this via the “create-a-player” option in Madden 10 by increasing each attribute from 50 – 99 and recording the resulting change in the OVR.
The same results can be determined from the known ratings in Madden 11 ([url="http://www.operationsports.com/vBulletin/madden-nfl-football/425743-madden-nfl-11-complete-roster-ratings-vikings.html"]link[/url]) by performing a linear fit of the data. I thought this would be an interesting analysis to see if things like agility (AGI) were having a different impact on the OVR this year since the Madden Development Team (MDT) has touted this to be more important with the new Locomotion engine. My results don’t necessarily portrait a clear picture of M10 versus M11, however, since it seems that the create-a-player option might be a simplified version of what EA uses to create the actual players. Here are a few of the more interesting graphs comparing M10 “weights” to M11.
[center] [IMG]http://i27.tinypic.com/dg76np.png[/IMG]
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There’s a ton to analyze here, so I’ll keep my observations to a minimum to stay on topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts though if you’d like to leave a comment below.
First, notice that agility seems to be more heavily weighted for M11 halfbacks as compared to M10 halfbacks yet the same does not hold for the wide receiver position. One might think that all skill positions would be equally impacted by Locomotion; however, it doesn’t appear that there was any conscious balancing of the AGI weighting to acknowledge the impact of this new engine. Alternatively, the difference between these positions might be explained by inflation to the individual AGI ratings, but that’s beyond the scope of my analysis (mostly because I don’t have the M10 original data anymore).
Also notable in analyzing the top two graphs is that the importance of pass blocking seems to have dropped for halfbacks while run blocking isn’t even considered in a wide out’s OVR rating. Good blocking among skill position players can lead to huge game changers, so a case can be made for weighting these attributes more heavily.
The next two graphs focus on the other side of the ball where AGI is notably omitted from the OLB position. While the MDT has discussed the changes that player momentum has made to over-pursuing the play, it still seems that they didn’t want this to be distinguishable via the OVR rating.
I broke the OLB position down further from Argoos’ analysis to include ROLB versus LOLB. I’m sure you’ve noticed that switching players from one side of the line to the other has a concomitant increase or decrease to the OVR. This graph shows that this is likely due to different attribute rating depending on which side the player is lining up. As far as true ratings boost goes, you shouldn’t expect OLBs, DEs, or O-linemen to perform differently when switching sides other than having the potential to exploit a better matchup. I should note here that attribute weightings at OG and OT were not different for right versus left based on the modeling that I did.
At cornerback, I was shocked to see that my model predicts no impact from ACC on the OVR in 2011. This might be because there’s not enough spread in the data from the currently available EA spreadsheets, but if not then ACC is certainly an attribute to keep an eye on when evaluating talent at CB beyond comparing OVR. The apparent AGI boost at this position is more in line with what I’d expect Locomotion to deliver though, based on the lack of evidence that weighting has changed at other positions, I’m wary against crediting this difference to a conscious change in the weighting. Hence, it’s more likely representative of a greater spread in AGI. Unfortunately, I can’t compare the variation without the original roster data from M10, so this remains a speculative conclusion.
[B]Meaning of Each Attribute[/B]
Beyond attribute weighting, there’s also the point of what does each attribute mean? It would be great if there was a comprehensive instruction manual for Madden that broke down each attribute. Right now, it seems like we know more about [IMG]http://i27.tinypic.com/dqq1e.jpg[/IMG] than any of the ratings that influence how the game is played. Speed is no longer the end-all, be-all of ratings in Madden, so knowing how each attribute actually impacts gameplay is critical to really understanding personnel strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I’d love to know if there was a threshold value for certain ratings that “unlocked” animations since it would help further customize the experience for me.
With the disclaimer that I’m not an expert by any means, here’s my interpretation of a few of the more elusive (pun maybe intended) ratings in the game:
[B]Agility[/B] (AGI) – Player’s ability to make precise direction changes thereby better capitalizing on the player’s SPD rating. I haven’t really worked out my copy of NCAA 11 yet (still playing M10 actually :)), so I’m not very aware of how Locomotion has impacted gameplay. My general feeling is that if M11 has the nice feel that NCAA 11 has, then the community will agree that AGI greatly impacts gameplay even if the attribute weighting is unchanged (i.e. if there’s no impact to OVR).
[B]Awareness [/B](AWR) – This definition varies greatly from position to position, but, in general, this reflects on how well the AI is tuned toward acting like a user controlled player (and a good one at that!).
[B]Play Action[/B] (PAC) – This attribute seems like it should have some bearing on the types of animations that you see as well as the speed in and out of the play action animation, but my feeling on this is that it’s more reflective how hard defenders with lower play recognition (PRC) will bite on a play.
[B]Blocking Attributes [/B](PBK, RBK, PBS, PBF, RBS, RBF) – I was surprised to see in my analysis that the generic Run Block and Pass Block still had influence on the OVR rating with the advent of blocking strength and footwork. I’m still uncomfortable that I have any real understanding of what any of these attributes really do, so I’ll choose not to speculate on how each of these impacts gameplay.
[B]Stamina [/B](STA) – One of the general attributes that does [B]not [/B]impact a player’s OVR. This rating manifests both in how often a player will have to take a “blow” and whether or not he’ll be able to finish a long run. I’m looking forward to seeing Locomotion in action with this attribute as the choppy, huff-n-puff animations on long runs was a severe distraction in M10.
[B]Toughness [/B](TGH) – Probably the most enigmatic ratings in Madden, this attribute is rumored to be how quickly a player will rebound from injury. It could just as easily be how likely a player will sustain big hits or how likely Chuck Norris is to wear Tim Tebow pajamas.
[center][img]http://findtimtebow.com/images/chuck-norris-wears-tim-tebow-pajamas.jpg[/img][/center]
[B]Play Recognition[/B] – As mentioned above, I think this ties in heavily with play action. I don’t know whether it’s PRC or AWR that really makes the difference in a defender’s ability to jump a route (or rather turn before the receiver does).
[B]Press[/B] (PRS) and [B]Release [/B](REL) – More point, counter-point attributes that are a little hard to really gauge with respect to their importance. It seems like strength (STR), AGI, and acceleration (ACC) would have more to do with winning the battle at the line of scrimmage (LOS) for WRs and CBs, but these attributes do contribute to the OVR rating, so they [I]must [/I]be important.
[B]
Are the Overall Ratings Meaningful?[/B]
Since attribute weightings have only changed subtly, if at all, from M10, it seems that even the MDT is acknowledging that OVR isn’t really all that important. Yet casual fans and Madden junkies alike crave these scores as a direct method of comparing players irrespective of their position. The community talks in terms of the number of 90+ OVR players per team and across the league though this probably isn’t the most significant point to debate about M11. OVR can be a nice basis for comparison at a given position, but it shouldn’t be the only rating examined.
There are some rather impressive undertakings by various community members to standardize ratings (notably DCEBB2001 and his site [url]www.fbgratings.com[/url]) irrespective of position. This seems like a rather obvious improvement over the current system that seems to arbitrarily increase and decrease specific attribute ratings based on the weekly observations of one person. Donny “The Ratings Czar” Moore is much maligned among gamers and NFL players (including his “good friend” T.J. Houshmandzadeh) and can easily be accused of running a popularity contest when it comes to rating players. Personally, I’ve always felt that Donny does a great job based on the magnitude of the undertaking as well as the high visibility of his work. Imagine having literally hundreds of thousands of people questioning your work. That idea doesn’t really appeal to me, but that doesn’t mean that I excuse the shortcomings of the system. Allowing fan feedback to influence ratings (via the EA forums and voting during the NFL Draft for instance) doesn’t exactly give me any [I]warm fuzzies [/I]either.
The most appealing systems for fixing how ratings are done include both standardization of a subset of physical attributes (e.g. speed, acceleration, agility, and strength which can be tied to NFL Combine performance) and calculation of performance based attributes (e.g. catching, carrying, and throw accuracy which should be tied to on-the-field performance). Even in an improved system like this one, there are still a ton of subjective ratings that would require film room analysis and still be open to debate by NFL players and fans. Maybe an over-complication, but an interesting point to consider would be a group of ratings that were calculated based on other similar ratings (i.e. play recognition as a function of awareness and years of experience). Still not perfect, but at least a notable improvement.
[B]Conclusion
[/B]OVR ratings consist of basically two important components. First are the attribute weightings. These weightings take into account only a subset of the total player attributes and could be skewed for a given position. Even worse, they may not account for an important attribute at a given position. Second are the individual attribute ratings that trend up and down throughout an NFL season based on the observations of essentially one person. The combined result is intended to give gamers a means of comparing value, but a flawed system does little toward this end.
At a minimum, definition of attributes and what each one actually does would pay huge dividends by providing insight for the Madden community to provide feedback. Further breaking down what goes into determining attribute weights and ratings might be too much insight into the workings of the game, but could eventually provide a better system for meaningful OVR calculations.
Breaking attribute ratings into three (maybe four if you want to get really geeky) categories could be a huge improvement for how ratings are done. One category could consist solely of a player’s physical attributes such as speed, strength, and agility. While not a perfect basis for analysis, the NFL Combine is what the pros use, so why not use this for Madden? A second category could consist of what you see on the field on Sunday. Performance based calculations would drive attributes like passing accuracy up and down without having any manual intervention required from [I]The Ratings Czar[/I]. Finally, a category of more subjective ratings could round out the overall ratings process and keep an army of [I]Donnys [/I]busy.
In the end, Madden is just a game even if we treat it with the reverence of being a simulation of real football. Improving how ratings are determined won’t necessarily make the game more fun and it certainly won’t decide games. The most important rating, after all, is the user’s stick skills.
[B]Disclaimer[/B]: [I]Everything I know about football, I learned from Madden.[/I][/FONT]
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