EA stop testing PLAY NOW mode (MUT) and test FRANCHISE

[extremeskins04]

There is NO possible way this game got past QA for Franchise in it's current state. Not in a million years. There are so many issues, people should be fired for releasing this in it's current state. Wanna know how I know this? Because among the plethora of issuex, Wear & Tear (their STAPLE feature this year) doesn't even work in Franchise mode, it's not even showing the sliders!!!

Wonder why Play Now runs great gameplay? Cause it's for MUT.

There's a HUGE difference in gameplay from Play Now vs Franchise. It's not even close.

This is every year! Please don;'t make start having to agree with Ryan Moody. You're proving him right.

[baconbits11]

Don't think🤔 EA cares about RyanMoody

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[extremeskins04]

Don't think🤔 EA cares about RyanMoody

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Nevertheless, Franchise is overlooked every year. They don't understand it's not just the features for Franchise, its the gameplay.

[Jummyjumjin]

It’s the same thing every year. They simply don’t care because they don’t need to care. It’s released and everyone buys it, no matter how shockingly bad it is.
don’t expect them to fix it all with patches either. Madden 25 went the full year without them ever fixing the issues that the player sliders in the main menu always defaulted back to original each time you loaded the game

[WiiMaster]

The problem with this forum is people trying to convince others who are enjoying the game that the game is bad and not enjoyable.

[bkrich83]

The problem with this forum is people trying to convince others who are enjoying the game that the game is bad and not enjoyable.

For some people that's their primary goal here.

[SmashMan]

Wonder why Play Now runs great gameplay? Cause it's for MUT.

Play Now vs CPU gameplay is great because of …the mode that primarily head to head and is tuned for stick skills over everything? What sense does that even make?

Don't think🤔 EA cares about RyanMoody

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Nobody ever should.

[Lukeduke78]

I love hearing what Ryan says, I play cfb26 and am enjoying it except the lack of run game by cpu. But he’s right, madden has been around since 1988, almost 40 years, there should not be a single issue. Sports games are different to make, same concept every year, nothing much has to change compared to open world games.

[TarHeelPhenom]

I love hearing what Ryan says, I play cfb26 and am enjoying it except the lack of run game by cpu. But he’s right, madden has been around since 1988, almost 40 years, there should not be a single issue. Sports games are different to make, same concept every year, nothing much has to change compared to open world games.

There is no such thing as a perfect game. There has never been a game that has ever existed that didn't have issues. And if you, or anybody else actually believes that there is one in existence, then that's the first mistake. Ryan Moody is a tool in a rusty toolbox. His character is trash and he's made his living on trashing Madden. He'll never get any love from me.

[MiracleMet718]

The game does not play that much different, but the reason why it’s slightly different is because of all of the franchise/coach perks (or whatever they are called) that are turned on that you don’t have in Play Now. Just turn those off.

[extremeskins04]

The game does not play that much different, but the reason why it’s slightly different is because of all of the franchise/coach perks (or whatever they are called) that are turned on that you don’t have in Play Now. Just turn those off.

No it plays vastly different. It's been tested and overhauled by the slider makers for yearrs.

The game out of the box for MUT (Play Now) plays outstanding.

[noarmsduck]

I love hearing what Ryan says, I play cfb26 and am enjoying it except the lack of run game by cpu. But he’s right, madden has been around since 1988, almost 40 years, there should not be a single issue. Sports games are different to make, same concept every year, nothing much has to change compared to open world games.

Given what Madden usually does (small incremental upgrades year to year), I'd tend to agree that there should be far fewer issues. Now if they were making more strides with each installment I would expect more bugs. Last year I was more forgiving with Madden because it was kind of overhauled to match with with CFB release. This year has been a disappointment so far though, given the hype surrounding release both from EA and their influencers.

This is not exclusive to sports games though. Games in general aren't "ready to go" out of box like they were years ago. Games are also much more complex than they were years ago though.

My frustration lies in the lack of features that we should have had for years or used to have that were removed. Owner mode and custom jerseys used to be in Madden. Franchise mode used to be a lot better. The stuff that's more complex like on field gameplay and the mechanics, abilities, traits, and everything else that goes into that I understand why that's harder to get perfect. A game like Tecmo Bowl or even Madden 2005 is ultra simplistic in terms of on field stuff compared to what current Madden does in that regard.

Owner mode was in the game last year though. And how hard is it to add in letting us choose jersey colors and fonts? The Teambuilder site has it for pete sake. And on top of that they've added further restrictions on uniforms and won't even let us mix and match parts from classic sets this year. Or how about being unable to turn progressive fatigue and wear and tear both on or off? Or the editing of player styles like shotgun stance, handoff motion, under center stance, stride, etcetera that we can kind of change in CFB 26 that was advertised for Madden yet we can't do that? I mean these are things that can be done on PC with Franchise Editor, it's not like a AAA dev team couldn't figure that out. We shouldn't need to resort to 3rd party tools for things like that, and those options should be available for console players as well.

[Dingo72]

Franchise mode is still trash and lacks in realism or emersion. I stopped buying it in 22, but fell for the hype this year. CF25 & 26 are more entertaining. But overall, the animation based gameplay needs to go. The frostbite engine makes ratings etc not matter as much as it should. It's obvious that they don't care. Franchise mode shouldn't be so boring and broken. I'm done again. Unless they tear it all down and rebuild it right, the MUT players can have this broken game. If the NFL thinks this is what their brand should represent, that's just sad. But they keep changing rules and ruining the actual NFL game. Unbelievable how graphics have improved, but gaming in general has declined in quality for sports games.

[GisherJohn24]

Franchise mode is still trash and lacks in realism or emersion. I stopped buying it in 22, but fell for the hype this year. CF25 & 26 are more entertaining. But overall, the animation based gameplay needs to go. The frostbite engine makes ratings etc not matter as much as it should. It's obvious that they don't care. Franchise mode shouldn't be so boring and broken. I'm done again. Unless they tear it all down and rebuild it right, the MUT players can have this broken game. If the NFL thinks this is what their brand should represent, that's just sad. But they keep changing rules and ruining the actual NFL game. Unbelievable how graphics have improved, but gaming in general has declined in quality for sports games.

I knew when they started to use the battlefield engine to make a football game I knew things were really gonna get bad and they absolutely did


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[noarmsduck]

Franchise mode is still trash and lacks in realism or emersion. I stopped buying it in 22, but fell for the hype this year. CF25 & 26 are more entertaining. But overall, the animation based gameplay needs to go. The frostbite engine makes ratings etc not matter as much as it should. It's obvious that they don't care. Franchise mode shouldn't be so boring and broken. I'm done again. Unless they tear it all down and rebuild it right, the MUT players can have this broken game. If the NFL thinks this is what their brand should represent, that's just sad. But they keep changing rules and ruining the actual NFL game. Unbelievable how graphics have improved, but gaming in general has declined in quality for sports games.

No doubt the game was better before they switched to Frostbite. If they could get it to play optimally I don't necessarily have a problem with on field gameplay in this engine though. Obviously a lot of things are out of whack, but if they were able to tune those things, it could be a good game on field wise. My main problem with field gameplay is the abilities that they are leaning more and more into. Abilities are why ratings don't matter as much as they should, not the Frostbite engine. IMO extremely high ratings should yield the same results as the ability that corresponds.

Last year Snowballpudi on the MMC discord made a mod that enhanced the effect of sliders when they are maxed out or turned down to nothing. This was able to replicate the effects of some abilities, albeit for every player on the field who made use of that attribute. If someone on discord can do that withing the existing engine, an actual Madden dev could implement the same system only with ratings instead of sliders. But I don't think it's that Madden devs aren't capable of doing this; it's that EA doesn't want them to.

Whoever is calling the shots for MUT introduced abilities into the game and wants them to keep becoming a bigger and bigger part. This is because of the way they design MUT nowadays. In the old days (MUT 12-15 ish) you had 99 overall cards close to release that were useable for the entirety of that game's cycle. They still released new cards, but not all were 99s, and you could still field a competitive team in the 90-95 overall area even in end game. I liked it better this way and that was when I actually played MUT more regularly. It didn't pressure you to play all the time lest you miss out on something. EA realized they could change their strategy and make people play it all the time in order to remain competitive though.

This is why they start every year with the best cards in the game being mid 80s now, and they slowly get better until next year. This forces people to keep playing every week, every season, every promo in order to remain competitive and it increases their chances that these people will spend money on the mode. Eventually they saw that by the end of the game there are many players who have 96+ or even close to 99 for every key rating, and the only thing differentiating these players were names, numbers, and height.

So they came up with abilities that give extra boosts on top of ratings. "Dots" gives max accuracy, but a 99 accuracy QB should already be doing what a Dots QB does. "Truzz" makes you highly resistant to fumbles, but a 99 carry RB should already be doing what Truzz makes him do. "Run n Gun" should basically be the same thing as a 99 throw on the run rating. You get the idea. Some of the abilities introduce things that aren't present in ratings like "Mid Zone KO" which was the most effective DB ability last year and caused more KOs and for some reason better responsiveness in coverage. IMO they could add more ratings for some of these things. A KO rating could be good. Release speed for QBs should also be a rating instead of using Gunslinger and the other one for when you're under pressure. The only abilities I don't mind having are ones that for example give more hot routes, let QBs make adjustments faster, stuff like that. And even those could be tied to the Awareness rating. Make it so once a QB hits a certain awareness threshhold, he is automatically able to use all the hot routes and make quicker adjustments. I'd suggest the same thing for WRs access to extra hot routes. Or defenders and their resistance to being faked out by ball carriers. Just tie that to the awareness rating.

Point being yes the gameplay was better (for the time) on the older engine, but that's not the reason ratings don't matter as much. That's an active choice either by Madden devs, EA, or both, and it happened because of ultimate team, which once again gives franchise players the shaft so they can milk money out of kids and content creators.