Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

[Dynamite]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

There needs to be acceleration.

Well said, but there more or less needs to be realistic expectations on the O-Line. These are 5 yard burst type of guys, meaning that they need to be swift in a 5 yard box all around them, whereas a running back needs end-line speed, with quick top speed. Hometown Buffet isn't going to beat anyone in a track meet, but you better believe that he's gonna be on you in a second when that ball snaps.

[shttymcgee]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

I agree, but that is because of the way ratings are converted into game speed (the speed curve). It is not due to the scale of the ratings. Also, variations in speed aren't determined by 40 times. The 40yd dash is mostly acceleration and a few yards of true top speed. You would need to take a split segment of the 100yd dash, for example, to get some better measurement of speed and then you would see huge gaps between elite and average speed.

In an actual football game, players rarely reach their top speed and the in-game speed is mostly agility, acceleration, lateral quickness, and quick decision making. In my opinion, the speed rating is used far too often in EA football games to determine player movement. The idea that a HB's "speed" matters in the backfield like it does in this game is simply absurd to me.

Ray Lewis can gain ground on Chris Johnson in the backfield or between the tackles or on a sweep play, but he's not going to catch him in the open field in a foot race from behind.

Agreed, my complaint is about how quickly skill position players pull away from DL and LB's, although I question what you mean by huge gaps.

[ch46647]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

NOBLE my friend, safe to say you will NOT be disappointed in the least with the Arizona Cardinals offense of Madden 10! That is, as long as Old Man Kurt Warner doesn't retire on ya! If you guys have to go with Leinart back there, it might be ugly.

I am surprised this statement was not more commented on by the community. This IMHO means that the QB position is getting alot of work. Hopefully there will now be a MUCH bigger difference between quaterbacks, other then just the arm strength.

[TDKing]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

Calvin Johnson should be fun at least.

You are talking about an 0-16 team, first of it's kind. I believe the expectation (and rightfully so IMO) from most people who care to dabble in this kind of thing, I think that expectation for the Lions in Madden 10 the video game is for them to be the very worst of all 32 teams in the league. I'm talking clear-cut, 32 of 32.

And on paper, aside from Megatron as mention above, the Lions will be pretty bad. Kevin Smith will get a nice bump, he shows signs which is OK, but then you have first round pick Gosder Cherilus....he had a Joe Average year, so he's not much to build around. Ernie Sims is the one nice thing on defense, not much else to get excited about. Name the Lions Corners. See what I mean...

Your turn, now you tell me. If you had two average, evenly matched All-Pro Mode players playing against each other....And they went heads up Steelers vs Lions....each getting to be the Steelers 5 times...what would you EXPECT/WANT the Madden 10 results to be?

Would you want a 50/50 (5-5) Detroit/Pittsburgh split? A 10-0 Steelers sweep?

I have a very strong opinion on this one (as you may or may not tell from this post). Would love to hear where everyone stands on this!

10 - 0 Steelers. I can't wait to start my Madden 10 franchise with the lowly lousy Lions and try to turn them around.

[BezO]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

The point that I'm trying to highlight in the imperfections of assigning a numerical OVR value to player is what really separates the 99 players across positions? A 99 QB, WR, LB, RB. Is it speed, catching, throwing? I just think it would be better to highlight that specific player's abilities and throw in their weakness as well. I know behind the scenes numbers are in play. We are dealing with 0's and 1's.

I could do without the overall rating since it doesn't mean much. 2 99-rated QBs are going to be 99s for different reasons. I'm only interested in those reasons. Is my QB a 99 because he's very aware & accurate? Is it because he's mobile with a strong arm? The overall doesn't tell me much other than the formula EA used to combine individual ratings resulted in a certain number.

But eliminating the numerical rating for individual ratings should not happen. I think the point someone was making was each skill will always be governed by a number whether its shown to us or not. They weren't talking about programming 0s & 1s, they were talking about the 100 point scale.

Example: 2 extremely fast guys, one runs a 4.2 & the other runs a 4.3. Both would end up with the Speed Ability, but how would you make the 4.2 guy a bit faster than the 4.3 guy? You have to do it with some sort of scale. Slapping a Speed label on the fast guys doesn't differentiate them. EA & most other sports game companies use a 100-point scale because it gives you the potential of 100 variations of speed. The only thing that could be more accurate is to stretch the scale, not eliminate it.

[thudias]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

10 - 0 Steelers. I can't wait to start my Madden 10 franchise with the lowly lousy Lions and try to turn them around.

Yup.. that is the challenge I will want to take as well.

[burnwood]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

I could do without the overall rating since it doesn't mean much. 2 99-rated QBs are going to be 99s for different reasons. I'm only interested in those reasons. Is my QB a 99 because he's very aware & accurate? Is it because he's mobile with a strong arm? The overall doesn't tell me much other than the formula EA used to combine individual ratings resulted in a certain number.

But eliminating the numerical rating for individual ratings should not happen. I think the point someone was making was each skill will always be governed by a number whether its shown to us or not. They weren't talking about programming 0s & 1s, they were talking about the 100 point scale.

Example: 2 extremely fast guys, one runs a 4.2 & the other runs a 4.3. Both would end up with the Speed Ability, but how would you make the 4.2 guy a bit faster than the 4.3 guy? You have to do it with some sort of scale. Slapping a Speed label on the fast guys doesn't differentiate them. EA & most other sports game companies use a 100-point scale because it gives you the potential of 100 variations of speed. The only thing that could be more accurate is to stretch the scale, not eliminate it.

Fair enough. If you wouldn't get rid of the numerical values then I'm sure you think some of the attributes should not be included for certain positions.

For example an offensive lineman doesn't need a attribute for KP, THA, CTH. It's this type of stuff that I'm really drilling down on that probably formulates into their OVR rating.

[thudias]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

I still prefer HC's approach to ratings. In HC ratings were determined on a value system to each team. So am undersized Tampa 2 linebacker had a higher numerical rating on the Colts than he would on the 3-4 Patriots.

[Golden28]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

All this talk of player ratings got me thinking.

As so much effort is obviously going into the ratings, when Madden 10 comes out, what skill level should we be using to create a true ratings based game?

What I mean by this... at the moment, if you aren't a particularly good player then you can select rookie skill, which in effect, will make your 75 rated reciever catch, run routes and juke like a 99 rated reciever.

If I want my reciever to play to his true ratings against the CPU doing the same, what is the 'level playing field' skill level? Pro? All Pro?

I wondered as I want a true sim style game where the only thing that matters is the ratings, not the sliders.

[BezO]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

Fair enough. If you wouldn't get rid of the numerical values then I'm sure you think some of the attributes should not be included for certain positions.

For example an offensive lineman doesn't need a attribute for KP, THA, CTH. It's this type of stuff that I'm really drilling down on that probably formulates into their OVR rating.

Absoulutely! Hide them, something, but I hated scrolling through unecessary ratings. And if they do include these irrelevent ratings in the overall formula, they should remove them.

I still prefer HC's approach to ratings. In HC ratings were determined on a value system to each team. So am undersized Tampa 2 linebacker had a higher numerical rating on the Colts than he would on the 3-4 Patriots.

I think I'd prefer absolute ratings that stuck with a player from team to team so I could determine his value on a particular team and in different schemes.

What exactly governs the ratings? Would that undersized LB have higher ratings on all Cover 2 teams? Will he hold his value if his current team changes their defensive philosophy? Does he maintain that higher value when I run man defenses with that Cover 2 team? Are all of his ratings boosted on teams that value him more? Does he cover better, have more speed, ect?

I never played HC if you can't tell.

[mrjordan]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

The problem with Madden has been that you could beat your friend with your Lions against his Steelers if you have better stick skills...player ratings do not mean as much as stick stills.

It would be revolutionary to actually have the ratings mean more then stick skills and create a TRUE sim.

If you can do that, I will become a missionary for EA.

[mavfan21]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

MUCH NEEDED, great news!


Hate to say this...but it is the same balance that NFL2K5 had. Slower players were noticeably slower, you could tell the difference between a fast and slow player immediately.

[swaldo]

I still like APF2K8 ratings better - so simple and makes it easy to scout your opponent or build a team to the style you want. Tuning gameplay would also be easier that way rather than constantly fiddling with tons of numerical ratings.

[alliance4g63]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

Calvin Johnson should be fun at least.

You are talking about an 0-16 team, first of it's kind. I believe the expectation (and rightfully so IMO) from most people who care to dabble in this kind of thing, I think that expectation for the Lions in Madden 10 the video game is for them to be the very worst of all 32 teams in the league. I'm talking clear-cut, 32 of 32.

And on paper, aside from Megatron as mention above, the Lions will be pretty bad. Kevin Smith will get a nice bump, he shows signs which is OK, but then you have first round pick Gosder Cherilus....he had a Joe Average year, so he's not much to build around. Ernie Sims is the one nice thing on defense, not much else to get excited about. Name the Lions Corners. See what I mean...

Your turn, now you tell me. If you had two average, evenly matched All-Pro Mode players playing against each other....And they went heads up Steelers vs Lions....each getting to be the Steelers 5 times...what would you EXPECT/WANT the Madden 10 results to be?

Would you want a 50/50 (5-5) Detroit/Pittsburgh split? A 10-0 Steelers sweep?

I have a very strong opinion on this one (as you may or may not tell from this post). Would love to hear where everyone stands on this!

I understand what you are saying here but you also have to take into account the real world vs the videogame world. The Lions in real life could be a player or coach away from being a better team. If I can use my few star players better than my opponent can use his whole team of star players, the win/loss gap should shorten.

Prime example, I used to use the Cowboys in Nfl2k5 while most were using the Pats, Ravens..etc.. Sure I would get those "free" giveaways just because I was playing against the Pats but guess what? I just focused on playing mistake free football and that is how I won the majority of those games. Testerverde couldn't throw more than 30 yards, so guess what? I didn't try to throw over 30 yards.

That is what I feel the previous guys are talking about. I'm already penalized for using a 0-16 team vs the Superbowl champs, we understand that. But if the Steeler user wants to always go for it on 4th down, throw off his back foot, throw into triple coverage, or come out in dime defense when I'm in a Jumbo package, we should win those games easily if we can capitalize on their continuous mistakes.

[thudias]

Re: Madden NFL 10 Blog: Player Ratings - A New Philosophy, A New Era

Absoulutely! Hide them, something, but I hated scrolling through unecessary ratings. And if they do include these irrelevent ratings in the overall formula, they should remove them.

I think I'd prefer absolute ratings that stuck with a player from team to team so I could determine his value on a particular team and in different schemes.

What exactly governs the ratings? Would that undersized LB have higher ratings on all Cover 2 teams? Will he hold his value if his current team changes their defensive philosophy? Does he maintain that higher value when I run man defenses with that Cover 2 team? Are all of his ratings boosted on teams that value him more? Does he cover better, have more speed, ect?

I never played HC if you can't tell.

After an injury, lets say a QB. If you sign one off the street will his overall be at it's lowest point based on not knowing the offense?
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Any player should not be signed off the street and be able to come in and start for a team. (unfamiliar with the playbook, conditioning etc. etc.)
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Answer: Players off the street will struggle coming on to your team if they don't know the playbook. There is a chance they'll make mistakes during the game and they won't play as well as they would if they knew the play.

We have the same core player ratings. What we changed was how the overall rating was calculated. Several grades (like real NFL scouts use) now make up the overall rating. They are Athletic (physical skills like speed), Intangibles (mental skills like awareness), Durability (how healthy a player is), Learning (how quickly a player learns and retains information), Potential (how good the player can get if everything works out in his career) and Size (does the player fit the classic mold at the position). We also use a different system to determine a player's value to the team, which in conjunction with their overall grade, determines how valuable they are in free agency or trades. Value is determined by overall, upside (remaining potential), contract value (is he overpaid, paid just right or underpaid) and playbook knowledge (how much does he know of your playbook).

From HC developer's Q and A thread.

There is actually one that goes into more detail of player value but I couldn't find it.