Madden NFL 16: E3 Hands-On Preview

[cowboy_kmoney]

Quote: Originally Posted by mjavon

No it's not, per the Player Card thread.

No as in its not in the game Because u seen it or u dnt know. Anyway i was trying to find out and i did and when i asked this there wasnt a thread on this matter. But i got what i got my answer bro.

[tosa]

Does anyone that has spent time with the game know if retractable roof stadiums actually have the ability to retract in CFM? I know you have the option in Play Now, would be a nice option for those who's favorite teams play in these type of stadiums.

[mjavon]

Quote: Originally Posted by cowboy_kmoney

No as in its not in the game Because u seen it or u dnt know. Anyway i was trying to find out and i did and when i asked this there wasnt a thread on this matter. But i got what i got my answer bro.

No as in it's not in the game. Somebody who has seen the game mentioned that in the Player Card thread, that's what i was saying.

[BenGerman]

Hey guys, been a busy couple of days. Going to get to as many questions as I can now!

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More verification that the game is more difficult?

Keep in mind, this is something that frequently happens to me in Madden. I'll play the game for a few weeks, figure out some plays that work a little too well, and all the sudden things are too difficult anymore.

The difference this year is that I actually witnessed competitive player try and find cheese plays and use cheese plays from prior years. None of them worked. The CPU AI is better too, so that helps. It's hard to understate how big of a difference it makes that the CPU throws the ball away more often before taking a sack.

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I am also curious to find out if it is only overpowered if you user it.

I think CM already mentioned it, but it doesn't seem to be a user-switch kind of thing. A button pops up above the WR's head and you can press it or not press it. I saw at least a least a few pretty great catches every game, and since it was only five minute quarters, I think there's good reason to be concerned that it is going to pop-up too frequently. Small sample size, though.

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Hopefully this means counters and strong powers won't be instant money every play when playing H2H.

I can confirm that that's what it means. Counter plays have been balanced pretty well.

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Not thrilled with 'nerfed' user control of running. Running was great, why mess with it?

Running feels fine in M15, but it was really easy to exploit. That doesn't seem to be the case this year, as most plays have been balanced (especially on the user side). That's mostly what I meant by nerfed.

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No mention of the cleaner more improved physics or gang tackling?

This is true. I sort of meshed that together with my "the game looks and feels more fluid" statement, but the gang tackling was great. Not overdone, but just noticeable enough. The physics looked better, but can still be pretty frustrating. Especially post-play.

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A major concern for me will be whether the CPU QB is capable of throwing more realistic games at or near default.

This is a huge concern of mine, as well. The only time I saw missed throws was when they would go deep. Most incompletions are batted down throws or catches stripped away/dropped. This has been a big complaint of mine for a while. The developers didn't seem to feel that there was an issue, but acknowledged that sliders "should fix the issue". I wouldn't hold your breath, though.

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So have they changed the lighting since they put out the first trailer?

The game looked great. Can't emphasize that enough. The lighting made a significant difference, IMO.

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Any improvement to the sidelines or "living worlds"?

Yep! Coach animations looked a little smoother, and I noticed a wider variety of reactions/people amongst the crowd.

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Have they addressed the lack of a consistent 4 man-rush or reduced pocket time for pass plays?

This isn't something I specifically asked them about, so I can't confirm anything, but the CPU actually was getting good pressure on me without blitzes on All-Pro. Still a little too frequently from the inside and not quite enough on the outside. Definitely seemed better, though. That's definitely one of the things they could be fine tuning as they get closer to release.

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So CM and BenG, it sounds to me like the best bet is to Play Man on defense unless it is a sure fire pick situation? Kinda like, when in doubt, better safe than sorry, Play Man is the more conservative option (less risk, less reward)?

My M15 habits carried over to Madden 16, so I didn't do a lot of switching on defense. I can say that competitive players were getting frustrated with the switching because it wasn't as easy to exploit as in the past.

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Another question: If I don't press any button, will the WR do the kind of catch that is linked to his trait? Or do I still need to press the corresponding button?

The AI was doing it automatically, but I was mostly trying to do it on my own. There was definitely a couple of occasions where I was trying to see what would happen if I didn't press the button -- one of the times the WR went up for grab that looked pretty impressive, the other time the ball was sort of out of range and the WR didn't even make an effort to do anything.

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I think in one of the blogs released earlier this week they mentioned how QB spy had been improved so it wasn't so easy for the qb to swerve around the spying defender. Has anyone seen what this looks like in one of the videos so far? I'd like to see it in action.

Yeah, there was little in the way of swerving at all. Especially not QB's. The only time I saw a little bit of it was on kick returns, and even then, players were slower to change direction that they used to be.

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Have anyone been able to see if Team Abbreviations is in Players career file. Its been missing for three years now. Thanks! Also have anyone see any injuries in game while your time with it. Im thinking they had injuries off so they wouldnt give away the new system. Atleast i hope Thats the case.

Can you clarify what you mean by the first question? I'm not sure if injuries were turned off or not, but I didn't see any in my time there.

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Here comes the yearly OS show, every year it's "the best ever", vast improvements. I'm taking the wait and see approach. Fooled me last year, ain't falling for it again until I can put a jury out on it myself through a rental.

This is wise, but I'm generally a pretty straight shooter. The game isn't where it needs to be just yet, but it's a lot better than M15. They continue to strengthen their core, and I think it's best to be patient with it. Madden has always been too ambitious at the wrong times, and they're really making an effort to clean up the majority of complaints people had/have.

That said, this is not "the best game ever" or anything like that, and I certainly didn't intend to convey that.

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Anyone know if you can still play from the defense point of view?

You definitely can. Which is nice, because you're probably going to want to do less switching this year anyway.

Anyway, I got to all of the questions that I saw. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more, if needed. Got a flight back home and then I should be writing a more in-depth piece for the following week.

[Trojan21]

Quote: Originally Posted by capa

Nice summary review. JP - you gotta get the devs attention on players running out of bounds. This one is a brutal gameplay flaw. C

I think ea sports need go back to madden 25 gameplay they hit hard and it's a better overall game just take this year graphics but keep the madden 25 players models cause they look more better cause I think madden 25 one there best products since back then cause madden 15 is to robotic Like they celebrate look stupid and tackling don't look real no more... Tell me what you think ???

[Trojan21]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mr.Smif

IMO, the running was not that good in Madden 15. The main reason being that it was hard to hit holes because it was hard to perform small jukes and cuts, this issues seems to be improved in Madden 16, also one-on-one tackling was way too solid, not enough broken tackles which is another legacy issue in Madden which seems to be improved in 16. On top of that the running animations were bad, all the players carried/ran the ball the exact same and the open field running animations looked nothing like what we see in real life. From the videos ive seen the running game looks much better in Madden 16.

I think ea sports need go back to madden 25 gameplay they hit hard and it's a better overall game just take this year graphics but keep the madden 25 players models cause they look more better cause I think madden 25 one there best products since back then cause madden 15 is to robotic Like they celebrate look stupid and tackling don't look real no more... Tell me what you think ???

[cowboy_kmoney]

Ben G what i was asking was are teams named on the players files while looking at there career stats. So we can see were that player has been Playing in there Careers..Thanks and Maybe they had the injuries off.

[BenGerman]

Quote: Originally Posted by cowboy_kmoney

Ben G what i was asking was are teams named on the players files while looking at there career stats. So we can see were that player has been Playing in there Careers..Thanks and Maybe they had the injuries off.

Thanks, Cowboy.

I honestly can't say, as I wasn't looking for that specifically. It did seem like some changes were made to the overall look of player stats and the depth chart.