Madden or Ncaa ?

[thenbagamer]

ya its kinda ridiculous that 2 games so similar have different controls. I mean, both are EA sports, both are football, y dont they just make them the same? Even 2k games usually have the same controls.

[GAMEC0CK2002]

NCAA easily. Presentation in madden is non-existent. I've never finished a season due to boredom. NCAA provides more variety, especially since you can schedule non-conference games aganst opponents your team normally doesn't play.

[LBzrule]

Both games also need a new way of rating players. They are way to simplistic and lean toward carbon copyism with respect to teams and players. This probably sounds mean, but I don't know another way to word it at this point. But here are my solutions. Critique where need be.


Bring some more categories into the rating of players. Too simplistic and people can get by with simply speed alone. To me this is very important to how the game plays and it makes drafting players from NCAA alot more interesting and using your brain in scouting also will be much more important especially when it comes to finding those late round gems. With that in mind here is how I think each position should be graded:

QB's: Arm Strength (already there) - but this should only determine the velocity and zip of passes.

Set up or drop back: Yes this needs to be a rating especially when people simply take the QB and run 20 yds backwards. They need a drop back or set up rating that determines how fast they set up/drop back. Is the drop back smooth and does he set up with good body position? Or is the drop back sloppy and lethargic. This is real folks. Take a look at some real QB's and how they set up.

Accuracy: Self explanatory. This should work in conjunction with the arm strength rating to determine the accuracy of short, intermediate and deep passes. A QB with a weak arm and a high accuracy rating should have trouble on the deep ball. Not because he's not accurate, but because his arm cannot get it there. Likewise a QB with a strong arm but poor accuracy should have trouble completing the deep ball. Not because he does not have a strong arm but because his accuracy sucks (Kyle Boller lol).

Field Vision: This rating is primarily for the A.I QB. Determines how well and fast the QB sees the field, looking off his primary target and finding his 2nd and 3rd and 4th options. Example, Manning = fast; Boller = Slow lol.

Scrambling Ability: Determines how well the QB avoids the blitz. How fast he can get out of the pocket and run in the open field.

Delivery: This should determine whether the QB has a Quick release, whether his passes are more often high than they are low and vice versa. This is a mechanics rating. For example, Manning has great mechanics and has a quick release. Pennington has decent mechanics but he has an awefully slow release. In college Kyle Wright has a strong arm but his delivery is kinda slow. Brady Quinn has a much smoother and faster release.

Ball Handling: Determines how well the QB fakes the defense. Also when you are running with him in the open field it should determine if he is more prone to fumbling.

Leadership: This attribute should have a two fold purpose. For the A.I it should determine the QB's poise under pressure. For both the A.I and in 2 player head to head games it should determine how well the QB leads the offense. Does your QB often make a mistake and keep on making them or is he resilent. This rating should have an effect on all the other ratings listed.

[LBzrule]

RB's:

Inside Rush - determines how fast the back hits the hole. Secondly for A.I RB's it determines his vision and the cuts he makes inside.

Outside Rush - Determines how fast a player gets to the corner and turns it up the field.

Elusiveness - Determines how well a player avoids tackles through the use of the ball carrier moves. Also determines how well he can change direction.

Power - determines how well the player balances himself; how well he breaks tackles; how good he is in short yardage situations and how often he falls forward.

Block - determines the players willingness to pass block and how good of a run blocker he is.

Hands - how well the player can catch the ball.

Route run - Determines how fast the player runs the route as well as what the player does when he is encountered by a defender that attempts to turn the route back inside or outside. Does he recover quickly and stay on his route?

Durability/toughness - Determines how often the player can take brutal hits and still remain in the game.

Running Style - Slasher/Power/Darter. You would run different types of plays based on the types of RB's you have. If you have a slasher then you would be most effective running a zone offense. If you have a power runner alot of isolation and dives should be apart of the game plan, some zone can be apart as well. If you have a darter you should use alot of outside plays so that he can get to the corner and use his speed.

[LBzrule]

WR's

Hands - explained this with the RB's

Route Run - should determine the crispness of the WR's route running, does he use alot of cuts? Is his body always under control?


Catch Long - is the WR a good threat to catch the ball deep? Some guys are just not good at it. Everyone is not Steve Smith, Santana Moss, TO, Chad Johnson ect. In College everyone is not Ted Ginn Jr.

Catch Short - Is the guy a possession WR or not?

Both the catch long and short ratings places your WR's in categories. Some guys should do both well. But some guys excel at only one of these.

RAC (Run After Catch) - determines if the WR often catches in stride or does he generally slow down and stop to catch the ball. Determines the elusiveness of the player directly after catching the ball. Once he catches it, can he do a move right away to elude a defender. The Steve Smith's and Santana Moss's of the NFL are great at doing this.

Release - this is a big one IMO. Because in Madden people run bump and run all the time and they rarely have to pay for it regardless of who your WR is. To defeat it you hike the ball while a WR is in motion. Mehhh cut that. Some guys in the NFL NEVER get jammed because the defensive coordinator is not stupid enough to do that. Randy Moss has never seen a jam after his first 5 games in the league. But yet you let him get jammed in the game. Give the WR's a release rating. Determines if the WR can avoid the jam and not get held up also determines the physicality of the WR. Does the CB jam the WR or does the WR man handle and beat up the CB. This rating should mesh with the DB's press tech rating. If the WR has a Release rating of say 90 and the DB has a press tech rating of say 77, you know that DB is about to get owned every play you have him pressing that WR.

In NCAA the defender gets beat deep ALL the time However the WR's still do not do a good job against the press. They just do a good job once they are past the press.

Ball Reaction: This rating determines how well the WR catches the ball in a crowd and his toughness over the middle.

[LBzrule]

TE's should have the same ratings as WR's but a blocking should play a more important role in their overall rating.

Offensive Linemen

Initial Quickness - determines how fast the lineman comes off the ball. Alot of linemen win battles against defensive players that are superior to them because they beat them off the snap.

Run Block - determines how well the lineman uses leverage and control in his run blocking technique.

Pass Block - determines how well the lineman uses his feet, and how fast he sets up, mirrors and adjusts to pass rushers in space.

Pull and Trap - determines how quick the lineman moves in space and how often he picks up moving defensive targets.

Hand Usage - determines how well the lineman gets seperation and keeps defensive linemen at bay. This rating should coincide with the run and pass block and pull and trap ratings. For instance with pass block suppose a lineman like hmmm Walter Jones has a high pass block rating and high Hand Usage rating. Not only is Jones going to set up fast, mirror pass rushers and adjust in space, but he is going to use his arm length and hands to keep the pass rushers at bay. This will make it very hard to get around Jones with a simple rush unless you have someone like Freeney over there, but even then it would not be easy.

Strength - determines how well the lineman moves the pile/defender and how well he anchor's. ohh and btw, not every Olineman is strong. Have no idea why in the current game the majority of them are up in the 90's

Explosion - determines how well the lineman finishes off blocks, pancakes.


Ehhh, I'll do defense later.

[rudyjuly2]

Love your ideas LB but it would take a miracle for EA to touch even one part of their rating system. They didn't even change anything when they went to the 360 for Madden!

The biggest ones that need to be added are QB accuracy - short vs. deep and pass rush ratings for defensive players. Route running is a good one too as is the QB release rating. They just need to look at the 2K series for some other ideas. I can't remember if acceleration is in the ratings or not but that should be there.

[LBzrule]

Quote: Originally Posted by rudyjuly2

Love your ideas LB but it would take a miracle for EA to touch even one part of their rating system. They didn't even change anything when they went to the 360 for Madden! The biggest ones that need to be added are QB accuracy - short vs. deep and pass rush ratings for defensive players. Route running is a good one too as is the QB release rating. They just need to look at the 2K series for some other ideas. I can't remember if acceleration is in the ratings or not but that should be there.

Thanks, Yeah it's a pipe dream, but until they do it, the game will have this carbon copyish feel with respect to teams and players.

I mean how hard would it be to say this guy is a two gap DT where as that one is not and have them play that way? The two gap DT would be the player that draws double teams. How high or how low his rating is should determine how well he deals with the double team in terms of spliting it, neutralizing it or he simply draws it but gets driven by the blockers. Just this alone would change the game completely. One rating changes the entire game. How so LB? Well if you are playing with a team that has one or more two gap DT's or a two gap NT then defensively you should be able to run alot of 7 man fronts and not miss a beat. You would be able to defend the run with 7 men effectively. Running an 8 man scheme would be a luxury. Blitzing to stop the run would also be a luxury. But if you have no two gap players on your defense running an 8 man scheme would be mandatory or you would die a slow death. Anytime a TE is in the game the defense is responsible for 8 gaps. Now let's do the math. A team without a 2 gap DT or DE, yeah DE's can be 2 gap too. But a team without any of these players and that does not run an 8 man front will die. 7 players 8 gaps all the offense has to do is run to the unassigned gap and destroy this defense at will. So 8 man fronts and blitzing would be mandatory for this team to deal with the run effectively.


Now on the flipside. Let's say you have two two gap players up front. You got two players that take 4 gaps. The remaining 5 of your front 7 is responsible for 4 gaps. You got them outnumbered with a free hit man. I just don't understand it. These games are starting to wear thin IMO. Yeah you get your 1 or 2 month high then that's it. The game wears off, you find all the problems ect. My thesis is the more you put in the game for people to learn the less they will be able to see the problems or at least they will be more forgiving of the problems. But if I can use every team the SAME way and be just as effective then I become bored When the only thing that seperates the players on my team from another one in performance is speed and maybe a different uniform, then the game loses its flavor rapidly.

All of the other genre's of games are changing for next-gen. Not just graphics, but completely interactive environments, physics ect. And what did we get? I'm trying not to be mean and overly negative here. But this has to end. The gamer deserves more. Even if you are a die hard EA gamer and have always been, you deserve more than this, especially now that you will have to spend 60 dollars to play. You deserve more than pretty graphics. You deserve more than a "feature" that markets the game. If you are going to spend 60 bucks you deserve a game that is going to be soo immersive that it tides you over to the next one and not only that, you should be soo immersed in the game that you rarely think about playing something else. And even when you get frustrated with it you should still have this desire to come back to it and learn new ways of doing things.

But two gap DT's don't matter when you have suction blocking Seven or 8 man fronts are irrelevant too. Not only that the reason why people cry about super backs in NCAA 2006 is because of the very thing I just wrote about. Their solution is for EA/Tiburon to go back to the old way and let the RB fall down just because my guy breathed on him. I say NO, because the RB is not the problem. The problems are those things that go on and do not go on around the RB. With 2 gap players there are too many 1 on 1 situations that the RB all he has to break is one tackle and he's gone. Everyone else is suction blocked. That's the problem. The problem is everyone uses the same team in the same way and get the same results and then they get frustrated. "The RB's are godly." The RB's are about where they need to be. The offensive line blocking schemes, Defensive linemen categorization, linebacker and Safety Reactions and overall interaction between the trenches are not where they need to be.

Pressure on the passer. Why does everyone look for that one nano blitz that cannot be stopped? They do it because there are no real blocking schemes and progressions in the game. What you have is PSYCHIC blocking with suction technique. So the gamer finds a way to manipulate the psychic blocking and get someone through.

There is an old saying, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I just hope that a lesson has been learned so that we will not have to deal with the same set of problems. Sure we'll have to deal with a new set of problems, but at least they are new and not beaten to death.


Ahhh LB your expectations are too high. Well to that I say, it is better to have high expectations and not have those fulfilled than to set expectations too low as an EXCUSE as to why a better job could not be done.