Rebuilding the Off-season

[kb0731]

Quote: Originally Posted by adam3313

simplest way to fix the offseason for me... take the offseason system from NFL Head Coach 09 and add it into Madden. Problem solved.

I second this notion 👍👍. Then they can just build on that foundation.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[msdm27]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

This is more just a general thing but it's something that would add to the draft as well as possibly free agency and that is a revamped injury system. Probably will be a lengthy post so if that's not your type of thing, skip to the pictures and you should get the basic idea. The basic idea being that the overall injury rating is tweaked and spread out among body parts and areas which would include the head/neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, back, knees, and ankles. The idea being each area would have a injury and durability rating. The durability rating would have no affect in play now games and would be something strictly tied to CFM and would be something that could degrade over the years depending on factors like workload, injury history, etc. The injury rating would determine the likelihood of the player suffering an injury to that specific portion of the body. Obviously, there are times where it doesn't matter what your injury or how durable anything is, freak things happen and players get injured and that would definitely be something that would have to be accounted for. The basic gist is to try and make injury history and injury prone players, as well as health, factor more into the CFM world. You've got guys like Percy Harvin and Darren McFadden who just can't seem to stay on the field at all while you've got iron men like Joe Thomas and D'Brickashaw Ferguson who play every game. This would have to come with some sort of enhanced injury system as well. Otherwise guys like Harvin and McFadden would just constantly be going down with broken legs and dislocated hips. Those types of injuries should be more rare and fall more into the freak type things. Guys with lower durability and injuring ratings should be more susceptible to nagging injuries and injuries in things like training camp and practice. Pulls, strains, sprains, that type of thing. And the toughness rating should dictate how they handle those type of injuries. Maybe Big Ben can play with a severely sprained ankle while a guy like Jay Cutler is out for two weeks. I'd like to see that kind of variation between players to force you to make decisions on players where it's like, "Damn, every season this guy is missing 3/4th's of the season with injuries", and you have to decide whether it's worth it. Also with the durability rating you could see the big drop offs you see in real life, mainly with the running backs. Guys carry that big workload and just break down from it. Or maybe it's a situation like Steve Breaston where he just has bad knee's and at some point just disappears from football completely because nobody feels it's worth it to sign him. Or where a rookie comes in with a ton of talent but medical issues keep his career from ever taking off. I'll get into the draft part now to try to break up the wall of text with some pictures! Basically, with each prospect after the combine you would get a medical report back on the player with their injury history and ratings. What you see below is just a couple mock ups of what a potential draft prospect would look like in-game. One is a guy with an extensive injury history and is very injury prone while the second is a guy that is pretty much the exact opposite. Now, with anything, it doesn't mean that Player A will or has to get injured and that Player B won't or can't get injured either just that the likelihood for one is greater and thus less of a risk. This could cause some interesting moments as it would force a decision upon maybe choosing a guy with less talent but is more reliable than a guy with more talent but is always injured. You could even go a step further with this and have medical staffs that you hire that may have certain traits to them. Maybe an excellent training staff returns very accurate ratings while a not so excellent ones vary more. Another step in that could be hiring a Strength & Conditioning coach and having that have a minimal affect on certain aspects of a players durability and what not. Even further than that could require a physical when you sign and draft players and maybe these medical staffs have more or less strict requirements for what represents a passed physical depending on which one you have. Anyways, just spit-balling ideas. Obviously as with anything else this isn't the most perfect or realistic representation of something like this but I think it is something that would make CFM more intriguing and more importantly add more life to it which is the main thing that is trying to be accomplished.

Maaaaan.... Jermaine needs to retire! Pray for that dude's health

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by msdm27

Maaaaan.... Jermaine needs to retire! Pray for that dude's health

Haha, right? Imagine scouting that guy and he looks phenomenal and then you find that out.

And with today's news of Sidney Rice retiring it just kind of furthers this point. You'd never see that in Madden unless he broke his vertebrae or had some sort of career ending injury. Players retire and/or are phased out of the game due to injury all the time. Just the other day I was watching Hard Knocks with the Jets and they were talking about how much they loved a guy but that his knees were just terrible and are only going to get worse. Things like that I'd like to see represented.

[DeuceDouglas]

I recently booted up Madden for the first time in a while and played through a season of an offline franchise and went through the off-season and it made me want to revive the discussion on things that need to be fixed or shouldn't be an issue when it comes to off-season activities and the one that bugs me the most is this:



That is the UI when it comes to free agency. That's it. It looks smooth and slick but virtually everything on the screen is, for the most part, useless. You can't look at player attributes or player types. The scheme bar doesn't work correctly as it will tell you a player is a good scheme fit simply because his overall scheme matches your coaches even though his player type doesn't match what the coach is actually looking for. There is just so much left to be desired when it comes to free agency. Basically, you're just throwing contracts at players you know virtually nothing except their overall.

I've made the same "mistake" in two different Madden's now because of the way this works. And I call it a "mistake" because it's really out of my control but having a WR corp suffering from drops and trying to sign sure-handed, possession receivers only to find out that the players you've signed have mid 60's for catch. Gee, that would have been nice to know.

In thinking about it, I think I'd like to see free agency handled much like the scouting process for the draft. Not so much in you choose who to scout and are blind to everything else but more so in a fashion where you get more of a glimpse of a what a player is or could be with letter grades rather than just throwing out his attributes. Maybe have how accurate the letter grades are tied to a front office position with ratings whether it be the GM or DPP. Just spit-balling but this is one thing that really, really irks me about the off-season.

[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

Custom Draft Classes - This is something that needs to be implemented immediately. Especially considering the fact that it took so long to get NCAA Import back in and now NCAA is gone. Like I said before, I'd honestly just prefer that they trashed the storylines and just had the newsfeed talk about some of the top prospects and then add depth to the draft commentary. The one thing about custom/editable draft classes is that if I'm playing a offline CCM with just myself, I still want there to be some mystery there. There needs to be some sort of way to randomize certain pieces of info so that you can't pinpoint the exact players you created in your draft class and just target them. Obviously, this would be an option as the vast majority would like to be able to pinpoint the players they created as well as not have issues with such things as creating authentic NCAA draft classes. This also gives the user the ability to correct the flaws in the base EA generated draft classes. No more wide receivers, corners, and running backs with 60's for speed. No more classes where entire positions are gone with a couple of rounds to go. This is something that would give the user a great amount of creativity and control in their CCM.

I love it, I love it, I LOVE IT!

[oneamongthefence]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

This is more just a general thing but it's something that would add to the draft as well as possibly free agency and that is a revamped injury system. Probably will be a lengthy post so if that's not your type of thing, skip to the pictures and you should get the basic idea. The basic idea being that the overall injury rating is tweaked and spread out among body parts and areas which would include the head/neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, back, knees, and ankles. The idea being each area would have a injury and durability rating. The durability rating would have no affect in play now games and would be something strictly tied to CFM and would be something that could degrade over the years depending on factors like workload, injury history, etc. The injury rating would determine the likelihood of the player suffering an injury to that specific portion of the body. Obviously, there are times where it doesn't matter what your injury or how durable anything is, freak things happen and players get injured and that would definitely be something that would have to be accounted for. The basic gist is to try and make injury history and injury prone players, as well as health, factor more into the CFM world. You've got guys like Percy Harvin and Darren McFadden who just can't seem to stay on the field at all while you've got iron men like Joe Thomas and D'Brickashaw Ferguson who play every game. This would have to come with some sort of enhanced injury system as well. Otherwise guys like Harvin and McFadden would just constantly be going down with broken legs and dislocated hips. Those types of injuries should be more rare and fall more into the freak type things. Guys with lower durability and injuring ratings should be more susceptible to nagging injuries and injuries in things like training camp and practice. Pulls, strains, sprains, that type of thing. And the toughness rating should dictate how they handle those type of injuries. Maybe Big Ben can play with a severely sprained ankle while a guy like Jay Cutler is out for two weeks. I'd like to see that kind of variation between players to force you to make decisions on players where it's like, "Damn, every season this guy is missing 3/4th's of the season with injuries", and you have to decide whether it's worth it. Also with the durability rating you could see the big drop offs you see in real life, mainly with the running backs. Guys carry that big workload and just break down from it. Or maybe it's a situation like Steve Breaston where he just has bad knee's and at some point just disappears from football completely because nobody feels it's worth it to sign him. Or where a rookie comes in with a ton of talent but medical issues keep his career from ever taking off. I'll get into the draft part now to try to break up the wall of text with some pictures! Basically, with each prospect after the combine you would get a medical report back on the player with their injury history and ratings. What you see below is just a couple mock ups of what a potential draft prospect would look like in-game. One is a guy with an extensive injury history and is very injury prone while the second is a guy that is pretty much the exact opposite. Now, with anything, it doesn't mean that Player A will or has to get injured and that Player B won't or can't get injured either just that the likelihood for one is greater and thus less of a risk. This could cause some interesting moments as it would force a decision upon maybe choosing a guy with less talent but is more reliable than a guy with more talent but is always injured. You could even go a step further with this and have medical staffs that you hire that may have certain traits to them. Maybe an excellent training staff returns very accurate ratings while a not so excellent ones vary more. Another step in that could be hiring a Strength & Conditioning coach and having that have a minimal affect on certain aspects of a players durability and what not. Even further than that could require a physical when you sign and draft players and maybe these medical staffs have more or less strict requirements for what represents a passed physical depending on which one you have. Anyways, just spit-balling ideas. Obviously as with anything else this isn't the most perfect or realistic representation of something like this but I think it is something that would make CFM more intriguing and more importantly add more life to it which is the main thing that is trying to be accomplished.

To also add to this I think conditioning is needed as well. Frank Gore was a very injury prone guy coming in but he's had a very long productive and fairly injury career but a lot of that is conditioning. He keeps himself in good shape all year around. Basically it would be a modifier for injury chances and recovery time. So a guy could be injury prone coming in but his conditioning is high so injuries are less likely to happen.

Just have an injury system similar to Head Coach where different body parts wear down over time. make it part of the scouting process for players in the draft. A guy might have bad knees or a history of lingering shoulder injuries. Conditioning helps reduce those chances but a guy with lower condition increases those chances. As some guys get older they work out harder in order to stay healthy throughout the year and some guys don't increasing their injury risks as they get older. Sort of like comparing Larry Fitzgerald who stays in amazing shape all the time to Trent Richardson who really isn't known to stay in shape all that much and probably won't have much of a career.

[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

I recently went through the off-season of Madden 25 in my 32-team franchise and I really enjoyed doing it, although it was quite the process, but it really got me to thinking about some ways that Madden needs to improve the off-season to become much better than what is currently in place. I didn't realize this was going to be so long when I began writing it so I apologize for that but I believe there is a lot of stuff here that would greatly improve the enjoyment and quality of going through the off-season. Anyways, if you make it through it all, let me know your thoughts and other ideas on ways to improve the off-season. With any of the pictures you see below, just give them a click and it will open the full size of each one. Free Agency Pretty much everything here is stuff that should be essential but is just not included or avoided for whatever reason. Restricted Free Agents - This is a necessity, plain and simple. No explanation needed. No reason why this isn't or shouldn't be part of the off-season. Waivers - Applicable players who get released should have to go through the waivers process. I still look at the preseason as very much the offseason so it fits here as well as during the regular season. Just this last preseason, the Chiefs claimed 7 guys off waivers after final cuts. They were first in line due to being the worst team the year before. When Kyle Williams got cut during the regular season by the 49ers, the Chiefs put in a claim on him and were awarded him because no other team put a claim in on him. It's a very simple process that could be simply added to the actions part of your given week every time an eligible player is released. You hear it ALL the time when it comes to players getting cut mid-season and during the preseason that these players have to go through waivers before they truly become a free agent. Compensatory Picks - This is something that may be a bit more difficult but, again, something that should be a necessary part of the off-season. The process of dispersing picks doesn't necessarily have to be perfect, just somewhat logical. This is an entire round of the draft that we miss out on as well as the possible bit of strategy that goes into letting players walk versus signing new players in free agency. Restructuring Contracts - This is something we have seen a ton of already this off-season. Best way to do it would be to simply have a player have a yes-no option on whether or not he is willing to restructure. If not, you may be forced to cut/trade him as we've seen with DeMarcus Ware and Darrelle Revis. Front/Back Loaded Contracts - This is something that was in Madden before and I have no clue why they took it out. It's something that allows you to be a little more versatile depending on your cap situation and should certainly be brought back. Player/Team Options- Allow for player/team options to be negotiated in contracts. Allows for more creativity in negotiating contracts as well as additional management duties if a player opts out or if you feel the need to opt out of a contract of a under-performing player. Transition Tag - The transition tag it a less expensive alternative to the franchise tag. The difference is that other teams can sign the player to an offer sheet as if they were an unrestricted free agent, but the original team has seven days to match. And unlike the franchise tag, if the player signs with another team, his original team receives no compensation. Scheme Knowledge - I think that every player shouldn't be limited to one specific scheme, but should have some sort of knowledge rating whether it's a bar, letter grade, number, or whatever. This would apply to mainly to free agency as well as trades possibly. Basically, each player would be able to potentially fit multiple schemes and also have a variable of which schemes he fit/knew better. This would be something that both the player and teams would have to consider in free agency. Do they really want to bring a guy in that does not fit the scheme at all and try to make him fit in a square peg, round hole type of scenario? Or do they go for the safer choice who is less talented but has a greater knowledge or fit to their specific scheme? Also, does the player turn down extra money and a winning team to go to a scheme he is more familiar with (i.e. Red Bryant, Chris Clemons)? Playbook Knowledge - This goes along with the scheme knowledge above. Basically, each player has a knowledge rating of each playbook in the game. The way I figure it would work is that they have a knowledge tied to each given play/route/run/block/etc. so that if they go from one playbook to another that has a lot of the same or similar plays, they're not completely out of the blue. This would affect not only free agents but also rookies greatly. Ideally, you would have position coaches as well as coordinators that affect how quickly your younger guys get acclimated/pick up the playbook and so forth. This is something that would not only directly affect the management side but would also contribute to potential changes in gameplay based on how much knowledge a player has of his teams given scheme/playbook. It would also greatly prevent or hinder the ability to just sign any players off the street and plug them in with no penalty at all. As well as putting you in a situation where you will kind of have to deal with rookie growing pains and things along those lines. The Draft IMO, the way the draft is handled needs a complete overhaul. From scouting to presentation, it all has to change. It doesn't necessarily need a complete rebuild, just a different direction using some of the things that already currently have in place. Scouting - This has been one of the more difficult things to deal with and it seems like the process is changing every other year. I like the idea of the letter grades. I don't really like the idea of just throwing points at a guy and knowing his exact attributes though. This also brings up the issue of having to scout things like speed, player type, strength, and other attributes that would be common knowledge to virtually everybody in the NFL. The idea I have for this is implementing guys like Mel Kiper, Todd McShay, Mike Mayock, and other so-called draft experts into the mix of the scouting process. The season would start with each of them having their big board which would be like a mock first-round with their top 32 or maybe even top 50 players. In addition, they would each have their own additional letter grades for important attributes connected to that players position. This would be something that would be dynamic throughout the season and would play extremely well with the storyline and twitter feed aspects of CCM. No NFL teams are contacting Kiper, McShay, or Mayock for draft suggestions but this would be something a bit more cosmetic and would benefit the presentation of the draft (which I'll get to later) more than anything else as well as giving you additional data to ponder on prospects. In addition to this, you would also have a staff of scouts. I haven't really thought this side of it all the way through but my initial thought was that you would have something along the lines of a head/national scout(s) and regional scouts. The national scout(s) would give you letter grades on virtually every player in the draft but they might be a little bit more vague (my thinking was strictly letter grades, no + or -), while the regional scouts give you a bit more detailed scouting but they are only limited to the players in that scouts designated region. These scouts would have ratings or attributes that would determine how close or accurate the player ratings were to the scouting grades they returned to you. So while you may have a great scout in one region bringing you very accurate grades, another region might suffer or conflict with what your other scouts are bringing back to you. Combine & Pro Days - Two things completely ignored currently throughout the scouting process. This needs to be an offseason stage that offers nothing but simple, raw data. 40 times, bench reps, vertical height, hand size, height, weight, so on and so on. Again, this should just be raw data that you would get from the combine. A couple official 40 times and everything else you could possibly think of. One of the more difficult things to deal with would be the position specific drills. I think I would simply have a grade on these drills that ranked from 'Very Poor' to 'Outstanding' and have that grade come from the draft gurus as well as your head scout and even head coach. Same could be done for the 60 interviews allotted to teams where you get a grade based on whether your coach came away impressed, discouraged, indifferent, and so on from the interview. A wrinkle that could be added into this as well is having certain players not participate in certain drills and thus, not giving you any data for that category for the combine. Which brings me to pro days. Have an additional stage of the off-season for the Pro Days where once again, you get more raw data in addition to everything else you've previously acquired. So for a player that participated in all the combine drills and pro days you'll have something along the lines of four 40-times along with all the other data. This also allows for players who "weren't invited" to the combine to have raw data attributed to them. It also allows you to have an abundance of diverse information on virtually every prospect in the draft while maintaining a decent piece of mystery behind each prospect. Draft Projections - This is where the gurus come in again. Get rid of the round-pick specific draft projections and broaden them out. 1st, 1st-2nd, Top 5-Late 1st, that sort of thing. Also, have these draft projections be unique to Kiper, McShay, Mayock, etc. So maybe a QB is projected to be a Top 5-Top 20 for Kiper, but McShay sees the player as a Late 1st-Late 2nd. This continues to add to the intrigue of each individual player. In addition to this, allow the user to create their own team big board where we can essentially put the players in order from who the user thinks are the best prospects to the worst based on scheme, attributes, or whatever the user deems most valuable. Presentation - This is probably one of my biggest issues with the draft. It's just so bland and boring. All you really have to do is sit there and look at your draft board and maybe wait for Trey Wingo to pop on. There's a lot of ways to quickly and, IMO, drastically improve the draft process from an entertainment standpoint. The storylines IMO opinion need to go. If they were more integrated into the CCM then I might be on board with them but the moment Adam Schefter stops talking they have zero relevance from that point on. I know the word generic scares a lot of people but I would honestly be fine with generic voice overs from Mel Kiper or McShay or Mayock for each prospect. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, I don't really care about the players backstory or his recent college escapades. I'd be fine with a quick, two-three line description that is relevant to the player drafted. And I know a lot of people really want something along the lines of the player walking up and shaking hands with the commish but, personally, I'd be completely okay with hearing that classic draft chime when a selection is in, and then a cut to something like this along with the quick description from Kiper, McShay, etc. This way you've got some sort of constant action and banter and it helps you get closer to resembling the real draft. You could even throw in lines while the clock is running where Wingo asks what somebody thinks this team will be looking for and then have Kiper, McShay, etc. say this team is probably looking for and then list some of that teams needs. The last thing is to change the look of the draft while drafting. There needs to be the ticker along the bottom showing all the previous picks and upcoming teams on the board. Adding another bar with thigns like Kiper's best available, team needs, upcoming picks for each team, and all the stuff you see on a ESPN or NFL Network broadcast are essential to creating the illusion that you're actually participating in a real NFL draft. Ideally, you'd have something similar to this here with your draft board and other vital information taking place of the TV crew in the middle. You could also throw in things like cheers and boos (like they used to have) for picks that you see every year at the actual draft, they don't have to have any meaning whatsoever, just be cosmetic and add to the presentation. Custom Draft Classes - This is something that needs to be implemented immediately. Especially considering the fact that it took so long to get NCAA Import back in and now NCAA is gone. Like I said before, I'd honestly just prefer that they trashed the storylines and just had the newsfeed talk about some of the top prospects and then add depth to the draft commentary. The one thing about custom/editable draft classes is that if I'm playing a offline CCM with just myself, I still want there to be some mystery there. There needs to be some sort of way to randomize certain pieces of info so that you can't pinpoint the exact players you created in your draft class and just target them. Obviously, this would be an option as the vast majority would like to be able to pinpoint the players they created as well as not have issues with such things as creating authentic NCAA draft classes. This also gives the user the ability to correct the flaws in the base EA generated draft classes. No more wide receivers, corners, and running backs with 60's for speed. No more classes where entire positions are gone with a couple of rounds to go. This is something that would give the user a great amount of creativity and control in their CCM.

WHY IS THIS NOT GETTING FUNDED?!

[daygoboy6191]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

I'm totally with you and that's what I hate about the current scouting is that with every prospect, you can just scout to the letter of certain attributes on a player and, more or less, know exactly what you're getting. That's why I tried taking it and making it to where you've got the input from many different sources to try and maintain the mystery while still giving you a somewhat general outlook of a player. This way, instead of simply getting an A and knowing that attribute is somewhere around a 90, you've got 10 different letter grades for one attribute that could range from say, C- to A+ which could be potentially anywhere from high 60's to high 90's. Throw in the fact that these could be changing every four or eight weeks and the mystery becomes a little bit greater. It's definitely not perfect but it would make you think and evaluate way more than you do now and allow, I would think, for more uncertainty while drafting. I watched a video on Madden 2004 scouting earlier and I kind of liked what they did where for, like a LB, you would get combine data, a tackle and interview rating ranging from Poor to Amazing, and some general comments. That's kind of what I tried to do here just on a bit of an expanded level. But I totally agree with you on roster management being too easy and I definitely wouldn't mind having opponents rosters hidden or very limited in terms of what is available to you.

I watched a similar video of a guy using the Texans, and I am absolutely disgusted in how far behind Madden 2015 is from 2004. In 2004 they had combine #'s and had a quick evaluation of the player, as well as where they expect him to be drafted.
I love your idea of the scouting department, and I don't remember if you mentioned this but having I think having them priced differently from bad to amazing scouts would be great kind of like how they have it when it comes to signing coaches. If they could merge the idea of this between the show and NBA 2k would be ideal. The show I like depending how good your scout is depends on how much he gets done in a period of time depending on his abilities, and NBA side depending how good he is depends on how much he can get done.
I like how NBA 2k gives you his strengths and weaknesses when you scout the player all though I think it could be more comprehensive and less vague It at least gives you an idea of the player and his upside/ downside.
The Combine idea is something that should have never been taken out, and amazing it hasn't been on the game for so long considering it is one of the most important parts come draft time, and the only way to really evaluate the type of player you will get in the game also the incredible amount of viewers in real life of the underwear olympics.
The pro day idea is a great one also, and if you could go to 12 pro days lets say to evaluate the players you are most interested in to get more info on the players from those schools would add an extra dimension that could be fun. Example if you have 4 guys you are intrigued by at UCF that might be 2nd - 4th round grades vs UF who has a 2 possible 1st rounders you might consider the UCF trip because your getting more bang for your buck, and you might have a good idea who you might want in the 1st.
Then you have team days who you can bring in 15 players to get mental evaluations for.
I'm not sure how many scouts they should do because I like having East, Central, and West and maybe a head scouting director.
At the end of the day most players on madden build their teams through the draft, and the current system is almost impossible to do so and absolutely boring. Making the draft and the process leading up to it needs to be almost a game in itself in my opinion and hopefully madden can finally do it.