Penalties need to be set before gameplay sliders

[Last Gunfighter]

Hello fellow Maddenites, I just want to share a little something that will hopefully help some of you avoid some undo anger and frustration from EA’s wonderfully thought out and impeccably implemented gameplay and penalty sliders.

I think we can all pretty much agree penalty sliders are unpredictable and inconsistent, that they do, in fact, affect gameplay to some degree, and that there are some penalties that will rarely, if ever, be called. Conversely I think most people will agree that gameplay sliders have no effect on penalties, and that we at least have a decent understanding of how the gameplay sliders work. The exception to this may be the Pass Defense Reaction and the Pass Defense Coverage sliders, as there still seems to be some debate about them. Actually it seems to be more about the Reaction than the Coverage, most would agree that higher coverage means better/tighter coverage, however there are differing opinions on the Reaction slider. But I digress… In light of the relationship between the different slider groups, gameplay and penalties, I think it is very important to tune the penalty sliders to your liking before messing with the gameplay sliders.

Since penalties have no effect on gameplay the only reason we should need to adjust them is to tune the frequency of a particular penalty being called. I understand many of them don’t work as we hoped they would and they affect gameplay to some degree, but we need to set them up the best we can for penalties alone, and not focus on the gameplay effect because it is too much of an unknown. From my own testing and reading just about everything on this site regarding penalty and gameplay sliders I have found, what I believe is, a pretty solid set of penalty sliders. Remember, all I want to accomplish is getting each penalty called as often as is realistic, I’m not concerned with gameplay at this point and I don’t want to see 12-15 facemask calls just to make up for the penalties that don’t get called. I’m thinking something like this for the penalty sliders.

OS – 75
FS – 75
HOLD – 80
FM – 53
DPI – 99
OPI – 99
PCI – 50
CLIP – 80
IG – 50?
RTP – 50
RTK - 50

The only one of these I am at a loss on is the IG. I have never seen it called at any setting and since that is the only reason we should be adjusting the penalty sliders (to get more or less penalties) I’m not sure we need to move it from the default. I have seen people suggest anywhere between 0-100, for a variety of reason, and I have tested with 0, 1, 10, 50, 100, and in all honesty I don’t see any distinct, consistent difference. It doesn’t seem to affect the penalty being called so it’s pretty much worthless in this context. The good thing about the penalty sliders is, if you set them up for the sole purpose of tuning the penalty frequencies, you can play on any skill level, speed, threshold, fatigue and with whatever sliders you want and your penalties should never change. None of the other settings have any affect the frequency of penalties being called, so if you set these first they should be your static settings and all your other setting can then be tuned around them

I have seen a lot of people tune their gameplay sliders first and leave the penalty sliders til last, I think this is a big mistake. Penalties are the only slider that affect 2 distinct aspects of the game and as such need to be nailed down first. Trying to tune them after you have everything else set becomes an endless tweaking of all the sliders because you cannot be certain of the affect one has on another. On the other hand, once you have the penalty sliders set you don’t have to worry about them and their affect, and what you see with the other sliders will be what you get, you eliminate the unknown of the penalty slider affect later.

Obviously this is just my take on this and I in no way claim to be a slider guru or a Madden expert, it just seems illogical to me to try to tune something when one of the components cannot be quantified. The best way to deal with that would seem to be to eliminate the unknown quantity, in this case the penalty sliders. Set them for penalties and leave them alone. For example, you want to help the CPU run game? Adjust the CPU run blocking and/or the USER PDR or TAC, don’t fool with the unpredictable and wildly inconsistent OS/FS/HOLD sliders, leave them for what they are supposed to do, determine the frequency of penalties, even if they do a poor job of it. Their influence on gameplay is far too random and volatile to be trust.

Obviously the exception to this would be if you run into a situation that you cannot correct with the gameplay sliders alone. If you reach that point “good luck”, going back and forth between the two would appear to be a maddening (no pun intended) endeavor.

[tommycoa]

I would say to start with Intentional Grounding at 80. For some reason the QB seems to have more life at this number and I think its universal. No matter what I change the qb moves around in the pocket more often. And some time amazing plays happen.

[RogueHominid]

I do not believe that the IG slider this year works the same as it has in years past. In years pas, IG @ 75 or higher created a noticeable increase in quick throws right before sacks. The difference in CPU QB AI was quite noticeable. This year, CPU QB AI does not appear to be hardwired to change around 75 IG; the behavior and animations from 75 to 100 appear not to kick in in the way they did even last year.

Just my .02, but I do believe that certain automatic penalty adjustments for legacy issues are not warranted this year because not every penalty appears to affect game play in the same way as before. I'm not sure what may have changed, but something clearly has.

[Fist Of Kings]

EA needs to make these sliders more universal, because as of now a lot of us have different theories on which slider number works, and the penalty slider should just effect penalties. I'm just guessing here, but while we'll never see pass interference called even if maxed out, setting facemask to 55 makes it called way too much.

I have slideritis myself trying to make this play decent, and it has led to confusion and frustration.

[RogueHominid]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fist Of Kings

EA needs to make these sliders more universal, because as of now a lot of us have different theories on which slider number works, and the penalty slider should just effect penalties. I'm just guessing here, but while we'll never see pass interference called even if maxed out, setting facemask to 55 makes it called way too much. I have slideritis myself trying to make this play decent, and it has led to confusion and frustration.

I've played tons of games, and I can say that facemask is one penalty that works as it has in the past. A value above 55 will make every other tackle attempt a helmet takedown and will result in that penalty being called more often.

Most penalties this year don't work like that, though.

[JoshC1977]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trojan Man

I do not believe that the IG slider this year works the same as it has in years past. In years pas, IG @ 75 or higher created a noticeable increase in quick throws right before sacks. The difference in CPU QB AI was quite noticeable. This year, CPU QB AI does not appear to be hardwired to change around 75 IG; the behavior and animations from 75 to 100 appear not to kick in in the way they did even last year.

I agree that it works differently; in fact, I really think the best thing to do is to leave it alone. I feel the same about RTP as well; something about deviating from 50 alters the QB AI. Until we can really understand what it does, there is no way to harness it.

Quote: Originally Posted by tommycoa

I would say to start with Intentional Grounding at 80. For some reason the QB seems to have more life at this number and I think its universal. No matter what I change the qb moves around in the pocket more often. And some time amazing plays happen.

But have you seen "Robo QB" set in at this level? In VERY limited testing I have done, that seems to be what happens (I was playing with a high QBA, i.e. above 2, so that may have also been the culprit)

[Last Gunfighter]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fist Of Kings

EA needs to make these sliders more universal, because as of now a lot of us have different theories on which slider number works, and the penalty slider should just effect penalties. I'm just guessing here, but while we'll never see pass interference called even if maxed out, setting facemask to 55 makes it called way too much. I have slideritis myself trying to make this play decent, and it has led to confusion and frustration.

I agree 100%, penalty sliders should not affect gameplay, but unfortunately they do, and attempting to leverage them for a desired affect on the gameplay will undoubtedly lead to confusion and frustration. This is why I am advocating setting them as best as possible for penalties alone and then tune everything else around them. Their inconsistent and unpredictable affects make it a nightmare to use them to tune the gameplay with any degree of certainty. I'm not going to waste playing time fooling around with penalty sliders that might or might not have an affect on the area of the game I'm working on. Meaning I'm not going to make changes to FS/OS/HOLD sliders in hopes it will either strengthen or weaken the USER/CPU run game. If I'm getting the best amount of penalties possible from those sliders why would I mess with them? Instead I will turn to tuning the RB, TAC, PDC or even the Difficulty level or Speed Threshold. At least I have a fair understanding of how they work and I believe they are far more consistent in their results compared to the penalty sliders.

For what it's worth I have actually seen 2 DPI calls with the penalty set at 99, of course that was over about 5 or 6 games, but that's why its at 99. As for facemask that is why I have it set at 53, any lower and it very rarely gets called, any higher and it's called on almost every drive, sometimes multiple times. I have set all penalties as high as possible until they get called with some regularity, and on the ones that seem to never get called I have set to 99. I don't believe the Penalty sliders were ever intended to be use to tune the gameplay, I think it is just an undesired side affect programing.

[Last Gunfighter]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoshC1977

I agree that it works differently; in fact, I really think the best thing to do is to leave it alone. I feel the same about RTP as well; something about deviating from 50 alters the QB AI. Until we can really understand what it does, there is no way to harness it. But have you seen "Robo QB" set in at this level? In VERY limited testing I have done, that seems to be what happens (I was playing with a high QBA, i.e. above 2, so that may have also been the culprit)

I also believe the IG and RTP should be default. Actually I haven't seen the IG make any really noticeable difference no matter what the setting, but that's exactly why I think it needs to be default. If I can't see a clear and definitive result from adjusting it I'm not messing with it.