How Would You Differentiate How QBs Play in Madden 23 and Beyond

[Caulfield]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

maybe some sort of third down rating, that either makes your qb more, or less, or even the same,
accurate with passes. depending on how accurate they are on 3rd down IRL

[Broncos86]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I absolutely loved it. The skinnier the cone the better the feature was too, once you kinda had the grasp. I loved using guys like Vick, with skinny cones, and literally look off user defenders by placing the cone away from where I’d eventually throw. The feature got a bad rap.

The Vision Cone was a giant pain in the butt that simply turned into pressing your target's button twice for anyone who played offline. That's literally all it was. It was a pain and it added nothing to gameplay beyond a second button press. Or you had Peyton Manning and his cone basically covered 90% of the field.

[Hooe]

How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

Nailed it. 100% what should be done. But in the world of online "competitive" gaming, I doubt they would ever do it. Maybe they could at least put this in place for offline modes, and an opt-in setting for online leagues/unranked matches?

I don’t think it is really a competitive vs sim thing, to be honest. The bigger problem that Tiburon has to stare down every year when deciding what to add into the game IMO is that (I’m roughly guessing here) probably 70% of their audience doesn’t understand how football actually works.

Anything advanced football mechanic that Tiburon wants to add into the game, they also have to teach it. Building teaching tools requires more development time. Otherwise it just gets left hanging like ID The Mike, and people complain about nano blitzes in 2022 because they don’t understand the offensive line’s pass protection rules and how to manipulate them to their own advantage. Heck, the game’s own AI doesn’t even understand how to manipulate pass protection. A more recent example is the Skill Based Passing in the Madden 23 beta; one of the most common responses I saw in the impressions thread on here was “how the hell do I use this, the game doesn’t tell me how”, lol.

This isn’t just a Madden problem. The sport of football has always had an extremely secretive and insular culture, and up until the past five years or so, it has been tough to get knowledge of the game out to the public. Keeping on theme, I didn’t understand how pass protection worked in football until this past year. I didn’t really begin to have any clue what was actually going on in football until about five years ago.

[iMac2307]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I've always had an idea for a feature that I feel would bring more realism to how both the user and CPU QB's react to the defense in front of them, and really isn't complicated for EA to apply. It works as follows:

While at the LOS, similar to hot-routing or calling an audible, an input can be pressed that would allow for the QB to 'Read the Defense'. All this simply provides, after a short animation, is visual feedback within the play art on who the QB thinks their primary receiver is. This shouldn't be locked behind an 'ability', or made into a gimmick behind a set of rules as to when it can or can't be used. Attempting to read the defense at the LOS is something that should be expected out of a professional QB.

Here's the caveat....this feature would rely upon a rating that determines the QB's ability to read the defense. This means, when the input is pressed, players such as Tom Brady and Joe Burrow, who score really high in their ability to read a defense, would consistently provide the user (and CPU) reliable feedback on who is best to target on that play. This doesn't mean it's an auto-completion, as ratings such as accuracy, WR vs DB match-up, pressure, timing etc still impact the outcome. It also doesn't mean it's 100% correct every time.

On the other hand, if I take a QB like Sam Darnold, or a rookie QB who's 'Read Defense' rating may be low, the feedback I receive on who they feel is the primary receiver is could very well be wrong. You're now much more at the mercy of bad reads of lower rated QB's, or at the mercy of a young guy who's still getting the grips with NFL defenses. Should you trust their judgement? Should you improvise and target someone else? Should you tailor the gameplan if you notice they consistently read the defense wrong?

This input at the LOS would be optional, so you can play more 'freestyle' and make your own reads, or if you want to play really sim to your QB's ratings, you could utilise the feature as often as you like. And for those who play competitively, it's a feature that is simply turned off.

While there are maybe details or renditions of this concept that could work better than what I've proposed, what I ultimately want to see is the outcome of a play being about more than just the accuracy ratings. There's much more to success at the QB position than just how accurate you are. Madden currently does nothing to reflect this.

[PhillyPhanatic14]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

If there's one player they need to mo-cap for his unique quirks it's NYG WR Kadarius Toney. It's a crime to have a game where he moves like every other receiver/ball carrier.

Yeah some mocap of him walking to the trainer's table and getting on the workout bike would really help the realism of his on field impact in the NFL.


Jk. I do think it would be cool if they could start to get some mocap during the Senior Bowl practices/game. If they get the young guys as they enter the league they could get more use of the work they put in. Even getting the top young QBs like Kyler, Allen, Mahomes, Burrow, Herbert, etc to mocap some releases and footwork would be cool.

[kennylc321]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

My suggestion would not sit well with the Madden crowd but here goes:

Since the beginning of time, in madden if you want to throw to the 'a' receiver, you press 'a'. "A" was always the receiver on the far left and "X" was always the recever on the far right. My solution...

This changes with QBs with low awareness. So if your awareness is 99-90, this remains status quo. If you're awareness is 89-80, then maybe "X" becomes the button for the left receiver and "A" becomes the button for the right receiver. If youre awareness is 79-70 then maybe the buttons changes for three different receivers. If the awareness is below 60 then you don't know which button is for which receiver until you snap the ball.

You would really have to relearn how to play the game and I recognize that not everyone is willing to do that.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

While at the LOS, similar to hot-routing or calling an audible, an input can be pressed that would allow for the QB to 'Read the Defense'. All this simply provides, after a short animation, is visual feedback within the play art on who the QB thinks their primary receiver is.

I like this, because there are some QBs (Goff and Ryan Fitzpatrick come to mind) who do decently at reading the play pre-snap but then can get real confused during the play. It would allow for disguised coverages to affect QBs differently based upon their pre- and post-snap reads.

[GoJags904]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I don’t think it is really a competitive vs sim thing, to be honest. The bigger problem that Tiburon has to stare down every year when deciding what to add into the game IMO is that (I’m roughly guessing here) probably 70% of their audience doesn’t understand how football actually works.

Anything advanced football mechanic that Tiburon wants to add into the game, they also have to teach it. Building teaching tools requires more development time. Otherwise it just gets left hanging like ID The Mike, and people complain about nano blitzes in 2022 because they don’t understand the offensive line’s pass protection rules and how to manipulate them to their own advantage. Heck, the game’s own AI doesn’t even understand how to manipulate pass protection. A more recent example is the Skill Based Passing in the Madden 23 beta; one of the most common responses I saw in the impressions thread on here was “how the hell do I use this, the game doesn’t tell me how”, lol.

This isn’t just a Madden problem. The sport of football has always had an extremely secretive and insular culture, and up until the past five years or so, it has been tough to get knowledge of the game out to the public. Keeping on theme, I didn’t understand how pass protection worked in football until this past year. I didn’t really begin to have any clue what was actually going on in football until about five years ago.

I really have to disagree with the root of the football iQ part you touched on. Madden has pop warner logic in its nfl model of football gaming. Understanding line play etc, sounds good to make EA seem like the smartesr ppl in the room, but lets be honest. As you stated, madden OL AI doesnt even understand how to work properly; yet you say its the users lack of football IQ that makes it hard to improve the game.

Im trying to understand what could possibly be so confusing to users about fixing blocking and instashed to match ratings and ratios consistent with the nfl. Forming a true to life pocket or having wr fight for the ball and adjust to passes thrown in real time instead of the db getting the split second faster reaction to the QB release. What knowledge is confusing about defenders not seeing players run across their face to open holes they should have contained or covered with match logic. These are basic football things, hell even backyard football knowledge but the IQ statement is what makes it hard for them.

I think youre speaking from madden 33 and we are still stuck in 2022 unfortunately. Saying this because until they get to even full pop warner level logic and high school and college level qb play and blocking correctly, then its a sad excuse but ur not an employee so you get a pass for trying to help. I just have to agree to disagree.
Dont even start me on rb vision or timeout logic, ai natural common sense to adjust route based on play call and coverage post snap etc. I wish they were as smart as you assume tho so we could get the ball rolling a hell of alot faster with development each yr.

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[Dagan]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I'm just hoping they keep mocapping throwing motions of everyone they can because I would prefer more to choose from. I like more passing trajectories, too, if they can get those in.

[JoshC1977]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I love a lot of the items referenced in this thread, specifically CM Hooe's post.

There's another element here; and I am looking strictly at CPU QBs; the 'sense pressure' and 'force passes' traits. These are both fairly critical to QB behavior but I think there is one flaw that stands out to me.

These traits need to be dynamic in franchise based on specific ratings combinations. As QBs evolve or regress, these traits (IMO) should change over time as well. Seeing game-generated players with high-awareness still exhibit the paranoid trait (because it is locked, barring a user edit) doesn't make a ton of sense IMO. (As an aside, 'tight spiral' should also be dynamic based on throwing power and possibly the accuracy ratings)

If not changing the current ratings in the game, I would think that force passes would be based on a combination of awareness and throwing power (argument here is that QBs with big arms tend to force passes more). I think 'sense pressure' would be based on awareness, TUP, and maybe break sack.

To really do this well though, the approach to how regression is handled for QBs needs to be modified as well. I'd like to see older QBs take bigger hits to athletic skills and throwing power while losing less in the "mental traits". Watching Drew Brees age is such a good recent example - he was still savvy, still pretty accurate with his throws, but he just couldn't get the ball downfield very well. He was a far different player than when he was in his prime.
Watching regression in Madden; QBs get dumber too...which doesn't make sense to me.

[lawspecter816]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I quit Madden 22 for the similar problem: Team building was too easy because the user had no need to have an elite QB. Athletic abilities + decent accuracy was enough. I was really good with Trey Lance in year because with me as "his brain" his actual issues did not show up on the field. The CPU QBs differentiated better than ever before in my opinion (obviously still a lot of room for improvement.

With some of the ideas I saw I might be trying the following workarounds in the futures, as I am pretty sure EA will not give us anything to limit the users influence of QB play.

- I will build QB tiers with the AWR rating as a guideline.
- Bad AWR ==> I will use Zoom Cam for passing (I struggle with it when passing); Elite AWR ==> I will use all 22 for passing (I find it much easier for passing); I will have to look at the AWR distribution with the ratings, but I will use standard cam only for above average QBs as I was rather good with it at the mental part of QBing
- I also will restrict the numbers of reads per play based on the AWR rating
- No audibles with bad AWR ratings

Im looking forward to see if this brings fresh air for me to the game. Thanks for the inspiration.

[Junior Moe]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I think limiting the reciever icons is a good way to simulate QB awareness, traits and playbook familiarity. If a QB has like a 65 awareness they can only see the primary reciever. You could still throw to the other receivers whose icons you can't see but it would come with a big accuracy hit.

It could also work in situations where a QB has high awareness but has the "happy feet" trait. As long as I have protection I can see all my receivers, but if the pocket starts collapsing the icons could flip, or disappear, or fade to simulate the user QB getting nervous. It could make blitzing and applying pressure a legit good strategy against even human opponents.

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[Hooe]

How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I really have to disagree with the root of the football iQ part you touched on. Madden has pop warner logic in its nfl model of football gaming. Understanding line play etc, sounds good to make EA seem like the smartesr ppl in the room, but lets be honest. As you stated, madden OL AI doesnt even understand how to work properly; yet you say its the users lack of football IQ that makes it hard to improve the game.

No, you are misunderstanding what I am saying. The protection concepts and tools are indeed already in Madden 22; my point was the CPU doesn’t demonstrate knowledge of these mechanics to use them to set up more advanced protections.

There’s a lot of authentic pass blocking behavior that is already in Madden. Big-on-big and nearest-threat principles are in the game. Jet protection is in the game. Scat protection is in the game. 5-0 protection is in the game. Running back 2-read behavior is in the game. Four-man slide protection is in the game. These are all NFL concepts and protections used every Sunday, and they are all represented in Madden. Tiburon could add more, absolutely, but until we get E-T stunts, read blitzes, and more advanced defensive mechanics adding more here is arguably unnecessary.

Most of the time, Madden handles how to set the protection for the offense as best it can (because again, OL play is arcane to the average football fan), based on offensive formation, defensive front, and player ratings. For a user to manually set a specific protection, it is often required to use a combination of ID The Mike, slide protection, and formation shifts all in one play to set up that one protection correctly, but this is all very possible in the Madden 22 game you and I both have right now. The pass blocking animations aren’t great in M22 (especially the lack of depth of the tackles in five and seven step dropback passes), but the acts of picking targets and passing off rushers are on point.

The note I was making about the CPU was specifically that they don’t do these manual actions. The CPU lives with whatever Mike the OL IDs, cannot call a pass blocking hot route for a back or a tight end, cannot call a slide protection (it relies solely on the OL doing that post-snap based on the Mike ID at formation set), and so on.

As an aside - given that the Madden NFL team literally has a former NFL offensive lineman as one of its most senior members, not to mention access to coaching materials none of us are privy to, I am inclined to believe they have more institutional knowledge about how OL play should play out than us folks, none of us who ever played offensive line in the NFL.

Additionally: though I wasn’t talking about run blocking, the run block schemes and targeting for Power-O, Counter, Trap, Toss, Crack Toss, Inside Zone, Outside Zone, and Split Zone all work great to fantastic. The run blocking in Madden 22 is easily better than any other football game that has ever existed, it’s honestly the only remarkable component of the game IMO.

Im trying to understand what could possibly be so confusing to users about fixing blocking and instashed to match ratings and ratios consistent with the nfl.

Again, you aren’t understanding what I am saying. Most people don’t know what Jet / Scat / Solid / 5-0 / Lucy / Rita / Lasso / etc. protection calls are. Most people don’t know the implications of ID’ing the Mike. Most people don’t understand how Power-O blocking changes based on the surface the defense presents. You are kidding yourself if you think the average NFL football fan understands offensive line play beyond “Von Miller has beat that tackle like a drum”.

[Dagan]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

I think limiting the reciever icons is a good way to simulate QB awareness, traits and playbook familiarity. If a QB has like a 65 awareness they can only see the primary reciever. You could still throw to the other receivers whose icons you can't see but it would come with a big accuracy hit.

It could also work in situations where a QB has high awareness but has the "happy feet" trait. As long as I have protection I can see all my receivers, but if the pocket starts collapsing the icons could flip, or disappear, or fade to simulate the user QB getting nervous. It could make blitzing and applying pressure a legit good strategy against even human opponents.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Operation Sports mobile app

Piggybacking this line of thinking, definitely. Like, if the QB has a 65 or lower rating, they see the WR icons only a split second after the snap. 66 to 75 rating, they see primary WR for 3 seconds and two other WR for 1 second only. 76-89 rating, they see primary WR the whole time, secondary WR for 3 seconds, slot WR and HB in the flat for 1 second. 90+ rating, they see every icon the whole time.

THAT would be huge and change the game.

[Therebelyell626]

Re: How do you think EA could better differentiate QB play?

maybe some sort of third down rating, that either makes your qb more, or less, or even the same,
accurate with passes. depending on how accurate they are on 3rd down IRL

I actually really like that idea