Madden 15: Making Free Agency Better

[RaychelSnr]

The following suggestions are my own, following a pretty strong brainstorming session and watching the first couple of days of real-life NFL free agency happen in early March 2015.

Here are my top ideas, in no particular order..

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[speedtrucker]

I'll also add:

6. fix the logic on free agent signings and the "stories" released. for example, the Cowboys owner in our CCM let Barry Church test the FA market because in his renegotiations he wanted 30 mil over 4 years. in the first week of FA signings, Church has 0 offers, in week 2 the Cowboys owner offers him 20 mil over 4 years and Barry Church re-signs with the Cowboys. the news story on our front page is "the Cowboys have upgraded at FS and is this the missing piece?" really?!? they didn't upgrade, they just let their own player test the waters and find out that he isn't worth 7.5 mil a year.

[pjburrage]

4 would be a fantastic addition, but unlikely to get the NFLPA to allow their members to be deemed a locker-room cancer

Would love to see them approach the offseason as a whole in a more calendar based system like Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball does. anyone who has played Football Manager this year or last year will have seen the added feature where there are more steps on the day the Transfer Window ends, that could be replicated in the opening day of Free Agency - better recreating the feel of how zany that day can be sometime.

You could then extrapolate that out, into booking pro-day visits and private workouts (ala Head Coach).

[pjburrage]

Another thing I'd love to see them do is to only show stats and key measurables (SPD, STR, JUM etc) of the players in free agency, but have those key measurables in a non-numeric rating (I'd personally hide numeric ratings for all players not on your roster - or even not having been on your roster for X years). That might at least replicate some of the boom/bust element - as a player may have produced great stats on one team, but you're not entirely sure how he'd fit into your team.

Maybe this could be added to later on, with much like deciding on whether to focus on XP or Confidence, the Scouting could be set to either focus on Scouting the Draft Class, or paying more attention to the players already in the League (or a split across the two areas). The accuracy of whichever you choose is determined on the scouts ability (something that doesn't appear to matter much at present).

[cmehustle]

How about players really wanting big money contracts? Everyone in Madden can be signed for way below market value, so there's never really a decision to make choosing between your free agents. You can simply resign them all for mostly at a discount. But if someone else at a position signs a big deal, that should correspond around the league and raise up the price for a player at that position, thereby causing a trickle down effect that causing the gm to make a choice on whether you can really afford that kind of money. That causes a lot more turnover then there currently is especially in ccms where there are 30 players.

[splff3000]

I like alot of those suggestions and have one big one of my own. I always thought FA should have an element similar to recruiting in the old NCAA football franchise. You should be graded on different categories and be able to "pitch" those strengths to free agents. You lost in the AFC Championship game last season? Well pitch that to the free agent prospect to separate your team from the 2-14 team that is making the same offer as yours. Your city has nice weather all year round? Pitch that to the free agent to separate your team from the Buffalo team that has the same offer as you. Just upgraded your team facilities and got a new stadium? Pitch that to separate your team from the Raiders team that's making the same offer. I could go on and on with this. I assumed when the NCAA series was canceled that something like this would be coming to Madden, but it's been years and we've not seen anything like this.

[Throne_Taker93]

I just want their stats and stuff to be displayed again...

[CM Hooe]

Three ideas -

1 - Supplemental draft picks. The NFL's exact formula for awarding these picks is secret, but there's no reason EA couldn't approximate the system, which gives teams extra draft picks for the following year's draft based on the amount of money given to players the team acquired and lost during the current offseason's free agency period.

2 - AI GM personalities. Leveraging the supplemental draft pick concept, Madden should be able to differentiate between GMs like Ted Thompson and Ozzie Newsome - who will let players walk if the contract terms don't line up how they want and rarely spend big money in free agency in order to get the supplemental draft picks and keep their salary cap situation under control - and the big spenders - most recently Stephen Ross of the Dolphins has signed guys like Mike Wallace and Ndamukong Suh to huge contracts recently.

3 - Some sort of game mechanic which forces the user to split resources between allocating points between scouting and offseason free agency. For example, instead of scouting players for a segment of the offseason, a team could instead spend all of its time and effort attempting to recruit free agents during the "legal tampering" window in order to sway free agents to sign with their team at the start of the free agency period. Conversely, a user could also ignore the recruiting period and opt instead to keep a larger-than-normal allotment of scouting points to get a big leg up in the draft, or split the difference between the two ends. This would be especially interesting in an online CFM watching how different users choose to build their teams.