(Serious) Madden - Animation Quality

[Kingd803]

This to me is Madden's overall biggest problem. The way the whole game animates. It's just ugly. Herky Jerky. And it's not this Dev teams fault. It's been like this since the start of PS3/360 era. It's sort of hard for me to explain what I'm talking about. Just overal nothing looks very natural. Even when they update animations. As in QB dropbacks.

I've seen some new QB drop backs this year. It doesn't look like all QBs get them or they trigger all the time. But they are there. Jameis Winston has it. And it does look better. When I first saw it I was very excited for it to be there. Honestly it's what I'm most excited about for madden this year. But it still has the madden look to it.

Another area that looks unnatural is the ball coming out of the QBs hand on a throw and flying through the air. It doesn't look bad when the camera is either behind the QB. But if you go on replay and look at the pass from a sideline view the ball has a hump in its flight path. It's very strange. Even bullet passes do. Obviously all passes will in real life. But In madden it just looks unatutal.

So why is this? Why is it 2015 and madden is still in this shape. They can add all the new things they want. But until something gets done about this madden will continue to look like madden so to speak.

What bothers me so much is that APF looks so much better in motion. Specially the passing game. From QB dropbacks and throwing motions to the ball flying through the air APF just looks so much better.

And no disrespect to the current madden Devs. I like these guys a lot. And I don't think it's their fault at all. I know they inherited a mess. I just don't think the overall look and feel of player motion will change until this group of devs gets the green light to start fresh. If APF could look that good then. Man id love to see what a brand new football game engine could do. Really wish madden would have started over for this gen.

By now we'd probably have all new modes. Instead of modes that have added very little since the start of this gen anyways. And a great gameplay engine to go along with it. But we're still stuck with that same clunky gameplay.

[SportsGamer94]

I think everyone on OS agrees with you including me. The dev's know its an issue, I'm not sure why it's taking them so long to address it. I think a major reason for the slow progression is that they ported the game over from last gen.
I wish they would have started fresh from scrap because now they spend a large chunck of their dev cycle fixing and taking out old crap, and even though they still have all the modes from last gen, they have not improved much. Look at NBA Live and NHL, both of those games started over, sure they took a hit the first year, but they are coming along at a much faster pace than Madden.

[newgeneration11]

From what I've seen of M16, they're starting to work some of the kinks out of this issue. It is a huge issue, but this year I've seen smoother body movement, better tackling animations, the QB/RB handoff exchange and play action looks smoooooth. Players getting up after a tackle and walking away looks really good often times.
It's getting better. I'm thinking M16 will look a good amount better than M15 visually, and even more of these kinks/herkyjerky will be out next year, maybe the majority of it will be gone.
I think this issue is the bar for next gen, we want smooth body/limb movement, really don't want to settle for less.

[kehlis]

Please post your impressions of animations in the impression thread.