Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

[Big FN Deal]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

LOL, @ the people acting as if SloeyEZ is talking crazy or something.

@SloeyEZ, I feel what you are saying man, in the context of the TOS on OS. It seems some people overlooked that point that you were making, concerning the rules of OS. According to some of the arguments against your point, then people should be able to post game play exploits too but those are not allowed on OS, so I can see your logic behind forbidding draft classes as well. I think some took your point out of context with all this talk about "people will find them anyway", as that is besides the point about whether they should be allowed on OS or not.

All that said, the free speech part is irrelevant to what is allowed to be posted or not on a privately owned message board.

[californ14]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

I would say the INTENT, of the gaming system of Madden, is to have people participating in the game to use the system as it is set up....Meaning, in the case of draft classes, we are to earn scouting points and use them on prospects we hope may fill needs or wants on our rosters - this simulating the process that goes on in the NFL, to a degree; but nonetheless setting the rules for the game.....

By having all the draft classes exposed and open for all, it removes an aspect of the game; it circumvents a part of the games' process and established rules, by the product design itself....

When playing all by ones self, I couldn't care less what others do....But when playing with others, those who choose to take circumvent the intended process of the game are cheating those who are playing within the rules of the game....Some rules are written, such as those in the NFL that would prevent a player from having an unnatural advantage, such as performance enhancing drugs and stick-em.....Some rules are implied, such as the scouting process in Madden....And when these implied rules are circumvented then it puts the game itself, as far as CCM leagues at risk to some degree....Implied rules in the NFL may fall under a category such as "actions detrimental to the league."

Granted, this game is a leisure thing; but I do not believe those who join a league are still not going to be competitive....If people are going to circumvent the intent of the game, why play?

Still, I will reiterate what I believe needs to happen - EA/Tiburon needs to create a dynamic draft class system that creates random draft classes that eliminate any chance of duplicate draft classes....Until then, this is just another UN-NFL part of the game....While EA/Tiburon is at it though - fix the damn fundamentals of MAdden to play as the fundamentals of football ARE....I do not care about new announcers or 400 new tackle and/or receiving animations, if my O-line and D-line cannot even pull off the most basic of adjustments and reads.....

[kjjnesb]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

I think the solution for all of this would be for EA to make separate more dynamic draft classes for online vs offline for Madden 14. They could have the same players just the possible bust factor should be heavier or more random in online.


I guess my biggest issue overall is I don't see the HUGE competitive advantage guides presents online as unless the guys you're playing with online are gutting their teams acquiring tons of picks at the risk of cap hell they really only have 6 maybe 5 picks to acquire good star players and are competing with both you others players and the CPU for these limited elitle players.

And in the event someone is abusing trades just treat them the way you'd treat someone who cheeses during actual gameplay and kick them out or deal with them. No reason the rest of the community should be forced to adjust if you can't deal with someone in your online league who is clearly using a guide and stock pilling absurd amounts of picks to draft all can't miss players.

The guides are also helpful in the sense that going forward we can give EA feedback about players that never become bust or too few Lineman or 4-3 DE's being produced etc..

[roll2tide]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

SloeyEZ-I wanted to really check this out so I took a guide and used it to help me in a recent draft. What I found may surprise you. I drafted a stud WR in the 1st round but he was projected a top 10 pick anyways and I picked 6th over all. No advantage gained.

The other players I drafted had good OVR and good AWR but lacked in other important areas. I drafted a CB that your run-of-the-mill scrub WR with 95 SPD will still burn on a deep routes. A great MLB....except he's slow as XMas. An OLB who's coverage ratings are both sub 50.

The guides I've seen focus on the DEV rating because this is the one consistent stat across everyone's drafts. It seems to me that there are only a few players per draft who have a great DEV rating and great attributes for their position. Many of the star DEV guys lack high positional attributes. Many with good positional attributes(found only via scouting) have low DEV ratings. Either way, for 95% of the players you have to develop one or the other. You can use the guide to locate the high DEV guys and then use scouting to narrow down the few beasts but this will apply to very few players, imo.

In the end....the guides are just that. You still have to scout and the high DEV ratings aren't the end all be all of players performances on the field. Looking back, I think I actually did myself a disservice and I would've been better off to draft a CB, for example, with high SPD and MCV attributes and just bought the DEV packages.

[SloeyEZ]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

SloeyEZ-I wanted to really check this out so I took a guide and used it to help me in a recent draft. What I found may surprise you. I drafted a stud WR in the 1st round but he was projected a top 10 pick anyways and I picked 6th over all. No advantage gained.

The other players I drafted had good OVR and good AWR but lacked in other important areas. I drafted a CB that your run-of-the-mill scrub WR with 95 SPD will still burn on a deep routes. A great MLB....except he's slow as XMas. An OLB who's coverage ratings are both sub 50.

The guides I've seen focus on the DEV rating because this is the one consistent stat across everyone's drafts. It seems to me that there are only a few players per draft who have a great DEV rating and great attributes for their position. Many of the star DEV guys lack high positional attributes. Many with good positional attributes(found only via scouting) have low DEV ratings. Either way, for 95% of the players you have to develop one or the other. You can use the guide to locate the high DEV guys and then use scouting to narrow down the few beasts but this will apply to very few players, imo.

In the end....the guides are just that. You still have to scout and the high DEV ratings aren't the end all be all of players performances on the field. Looking back, I think I actually did myself a disservice and I would've been better off to draft a CB, for example, with high SPD and MCV attributes and just bought the DEV packages.

so you're saying i caused someone to use the thread this one's on me huh? lol

[roll2tide]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

so you're saying i caused someone to use the thread this one's on me huh? lol

No I reviewed them when they 1st came out. 2 of my leagues have banned them and I've debated about using them in other leagues. this league is small & informal and virtually all games are vs CPU. Seemed like a good testing ground and I did scout quite a bit....I just didn't scout the high DEV players and those are the ones I drafted.

Point is...after my 1st online CCM offseason I feel like all this guide stuff is much ado about nothing(or close to nothing).

[Raging Raider]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

Not to derail the thread, but randomized draft players is one thing I do miss from the older Madden games.

I can see created players for the early rounds and storylines, but it would be neat to see unique players in the later rounds (some of which may be gems).

Randomized names sometimes come up with interesting combinations too.

[Ueauvan]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

frankly i couldnt care about online or offline or anything. i paid my money and i can chose how i want to play.
now in reality that means coach mode offline solo for me. some parts of me are annoyed about the game, for example no inj data available for the 200 plus that attend the combine provided free and accurately.
and by definition insinuating that anyone using draft class data is "cheating" isnt that againt t&c?

[bohawk]

I like the draft guide, but I am player that stick with my scheme and the fit of my team and the draft guides help me stir away good top picks that don't fit my scheme. Also it speeds up the process, for those who don't have time to sit and play. Keep the guides....

[splff3000]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

LOL, @ the people acting as if SloeyEZ is talking crazy or something.

@SloeyEZ, I feel what you are saying man, in the context of the TOS on OS. It seems some people overlooked that point that you were making, concerning the rules of OS. According to some of the arguments against your point, then people should be able to post game play exploits too but those are not allowed on OS, so I can see your logic behind forbidding draft classes as well. I think some took your point out of context with all this talk about "people will find them anyway", as that is besides the point about whether they should be allowed on OS or not.

All that said, the free speech part is irrelevant to what is allowed to be posted or not on a privately owned message board.

This is what I don't understand. I have seen numerous "money play" and "glitch play" posts closed and/or deleted because they violate the TOS. If that's the case how in the hell does a "guide" that tells every players development rating not violating those same TOS? I don't get that. Maybe it's because the ones that use them are very vocal or something. I would have no problem with the guides on the site if money plays and glitch plays were allowed to be posted. I still wouldn't like it, but I would understand why they aren't getting deleted and closed. It's pretty hypocritical of OS if you ask me. If you think about it, a person can use the same excuses for these money play threads that the people in here are using for their "guide" threads. It's their game, they should be allowed to play how they want. They can do whatever they want in their offline franchise. They worked hard to get extra money to buy a game so they can play it how they want. All these things can be said for the money play and glitch play threads as well. Yet OS closes and deletes those threads and leave these "guide" threads up. It's very hypocritical to me.

I think the solution for all of this would be for EA to make separate more dynamic draft classes for online vs offline for Madden 14. They could have the same players just the possible bust factor should be heavier or more random in online.


I guess my biggest issue overall is I don't see the HUGE competitive advantage guides presents online as unless the guys you're playing with online are gutting their teams acquiring tons of picks at the risk of cap hell they really only have 6 maybe 5 picks to acquire good star players and are competing with both you others players and the CPU for these limited elitle players.

And in the event someone is abusing trades just treat them the way you'd treat someone who cheeses during actual gameplay and kick them out or deal with them. No reason the rest of the community should be forced to adjust if you can't deal with someone in your online league who is clearly using a guide and stock pilling absurd amounts of picks to draft all can't miss players.

The guides are also helpful in the sense that going forward we can give EA feedback about players that never become bust or too few Lineman or 4-3 DE's being produced etc..

Here's the thing, you have no proof that they used the guide. In my online league we had 6 or 7 4th round or later projected players go in the first round. Did the people use the guide and cheat or did the people just scout them and get who they wanted with disregard to the projected round. I'd like to think it was the latter, but hell we'll never know. If there was no guide there would be no reason to even suggest that someone was cheating.

All you pro-guide guys are missing the point. No one is saying you can't do the guides. Like yall said, it's your right to do it, but to post it with no regard to all the online leagues out there is pretty selfish. I begged for you guys to share it via pm so that it's not out there for the rest of the world, but you guys don't give a crap. We had a guy in our online CC happen to just stumble upon it while looking for the answer to something else (the salary cap glitch that we're dealing with right now). It's just out there with no discretion what so ever. Oh and for you people saying that the guides are everywhere. They are most certainly not. There is a half baked guide on another site that is nowhere near as comprehensive as the one here is. It's the only other thing out there. I know because as the commish of a CC, I wanted to know how easy it was for user to get this info. A bunch of sites that had been doing it the last few years said they weren't gonna do it this year because it was gonna take too much time. I guess they had better things to do with their free time than make cheating guides. I'm seeing some of you say that the person can just scout and find the best players anyway and that's exactly my point. Why not do it the right way?

Like the other poster said tho, I put this more on EA. EA basically lied to us this year in saying that these guides wouldn't be possible anymore. I shouldn't be surprised tho. It's not exactly the first time that EA said soething about a game and it wasn't entirely true lol.

[splff3000]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

I like the draft guide, but I am player that stick with my scheme and the fit of my team and the draft guides help me stir away good top picks that don't fit my scheme. Also it speeds up the process, for those who don't have time to sit and play. Keep the guides....

There's another way to do this .......... It's called SCOUTING. LMAO, you're talking as if you can't get that info from scouting lol.

[Dempseylicious23]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

Someone said it earlier, but if a person really wanted to go ahead and flesh out a draft on their own without using the draft guide, the game allows them the opportunity to do so.

If you ban the guide, what is to stop people from firing up an offline CCM, simming through the preseason and restarting until the offline CCM draft class matches up with the online CCM draft class and scouting from that point? If I wanted to, in a couple hours I could probably have every single relevant stat for every single player in the draft scouted. I figured this out within a couple days of owning the game.

The ones making the draft guides are not to blame. EA has created a system that allows these draft class guides to be created easily and rapidly. If there were some sort of system to prevent the exploits that allow these guides to be created so quickly, or created an entirely different set of programming code that created relatively random draft classes, then this wouldn't be a problem.

Also I agree with the point above; how can you actually tell if someone used the guide or not? I just told you I could gather every numerical statistic for every draft class player if I were truly motivated, all without using the draft class guides. It would just take a lot more of my time and technically based what Sloezy is hinting at with the concept of 'working' to win a game, doing that would be the fine because I worked under my own initiative to 'study' for the 'test'. However, in reality, neither Sloezy nor I would truly believe doing what I suggest isn't 100% cheating the draft. Still, I could do it and not know a thing about a draft class guide.

Draft class guides (in my opinion) actually prevent certain types of people from cheating to an even worse degree. What's worse to you, a handful of people who have a massive leg up on everyone through "creative use of game mechanics", or that everyone have access to what is essentially considered an "extra scouting package"? Plus, most of these guides only note so many players and if they do, either only provide a development rating or an overall rating (which are heavily affected by 'awareness' and may not be truly representative of actual user controlled play). Currently, as they are, the existing draft class guides are more or less in my view, a non-issue. People get too hung up on overall ratings and draft for high overall players, not players with stats they want or that fit their scheme.

[splff3000]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

Someone said it earlier, but if a person really wanted to go ahead and flesh out a draft on their own without using the draft guide, the game allows them the opportunity to do so.

If you ban the guide, what is to stop people from firing up an offline CCM, simming through the preseason and restarting until the offline CCM draft class matches up with the online CCM draft class and scouting from that point? If I wanted to, in a couple hours I could probably have every single relevant stat for every single player in the draft scouted. I figured this out within a couple days of owning the game.

The ones making the draft guides are not to blame. EA has created a system that allows these draft class guides to be created easily and rapidly. If there were some sort of system to prevent the exploits that allow these guides to be created so quickly, or created an entirely different set of programming code that created relatively random draft classes, then this wouldn't be a problem.

Also I agree with the point above; how can you actually tell if someone used the guide or not? I just told you I could gather every numerical statistic for every draft class player if I were truly motivated, all without using the draft class guides. It would just take a lot more of my time and technically based what Sloezy is hinting at with the concept of 'working' to win a game, doing that would be the fine because I worked under my own initiative to 'study' for the 'test'. However, in reality, neither Sloezy nor I would truly believe doing what I suggest isn't 100% cheating the draft. Still, I could do it and not know a thing about a draft class guide.

Draft class guides (in my opinion) actually prevent certain types of people from cheating to an even worse degree. What's worse to you, a handful of people who have a massive leg up on everyone through "creative use of game mechanics", or that everyone have access to what is essentially considered an "extra scouting package"? Plus, most of these guides only note so many players and if they do, either only provide a development rating or an overall rating (which are heavily affected by 'awareness' and may not be truly representative of actual user controlled play). Currently, as they are, the existing draft class guides are more or less in my view, a non-issue. People get too hung up on overall ratings and draft for high overall players, not players with stats they want or that fit their scheme.

You are absolutely right, on all of your points. The thing is, at least for my league which is for mature users, most people don't have time to do that. Hell, a lot of users barely have time to get their regular games in, let alone do all of that. I do agree tho, it is very much EA's fault. Instead of taking the time to program a system that would make random names and schools, they take the easy way out and just make the classes themselves. Until EA decide to do what needs to be done about this, we will always have these "debates".

[kwpit79]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

I know dynamic drafts are possible - anyone who's played Front Office Football the past 5 years will tell you that. No clue why it hasn't been implemented for Madden, though.

The Front Office Football game was developed by ONE PERSON, and the drafts are totally random and dynamic each time you play it (with busts and gems throughout the draft!).

[KBLover]

Re: Free Speech vs Draft Class Threads

Seems this issue falls on the shoulders of EA/Tiburon.....They need to create a dynamic and random draft system that cannot be duplicated....

Exactly.

If it went back to randomly made players then there couldn't be a guide because you never know what you'd get.

This is what the "anti-guides" players need to be pushing for, not more forum rules.