Connected Franchise Mode: A Rebuild

[oneamongthefence]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

Head Coaches, Coordinators & Position Coaches I'd say by far one of the most common (if not the most common) wants and requests I see when it comes to CFM is coaching staffs but more specifically coordinators. This is something that I would definitely consider a top priority for myself as well but I want it to go a lot further than coordinators. Ideally what I'd like to see is a full coaching staff with a head coach, coordinators, and position coaches. What I'm going to do here is separate those three "levels" of coaches into somewhat unique roles. One of the main things I want to try and accomplish is a system where each level of coach is unique in and of itself but also maintains the overall goal of having everything work together towards the bigger picture. I want to keep things simple enough where hiring a staff isn't a daunting off-season task that takes a lot of time but also has enough depth to be a worth the time it does take to do. There has to be a reason and an incentive to change coaches and they need to have a tangible effect on your team or it becomes a hollow addition and doesn't benefit the mode. So this is how I'm looking at it: Position Coaches (QB, RB, WR, OL, DL, LB, DB, ST) Position coaches primary role would be player development for their postion group. When you're hiring these coaches you're looking to hire coaches that would get the most out of and maximize the potential of players at those specific position groups. Coordinators (Offensive & Defensive) Coordinators would be primarily used to determine the types of offensive and defensive concepts and schemes that you want your to run. Another major focus is the week-to-week gameplanning when it comes to the other teams. Head Coach The head coach is your teams leader. Obviously this is also where you can get a little bit of both position coaches and coordinators mixed in and obviously with certain coaches you're going to have them taking precidence over one of those coordinator roles when it comes to scheme and such but one of a head coaches biggest jobs is leading his team which is something I really want to focus on here. So we're just going to start with a couple of things first: Coach DEV Trait Works similarily to a players DEV trait that determines how much and/or how quickly a coach improves over the course of his career. You could use the same five-tier setup that is used for players albeit under different names but the idea would be that coaches with the highest tiered DEV would be destined to be head coaches and the top coordinators and the middle and lower would be more reserved for coaches that would stick to being position coaches and more unlikely to get coordinator jobs over the course of their career. Position Specialty Every coach would have a specialty position that they affect in one way or another. For Andy Reid it would be Quarterbacks. For Eric Bieniemy it would be running backs. For Ken Norton Jr. it'd be linebackers. And so on. So for position coaches this creates an obvious link. If you're looking for an LB coach you're going to want to a coach that obviously specializes in LB's. Once you get to coordinators and head coaches however is where you'd have a bit more freedom in terms of what you wanted to do. Planning on drafting a rookie QB? Hire a QB minded offensive coordinator and QB minded Head Coach to try and give him the best chance to succeed. Looking to recreate the Legion of Boom? Double up on DB specialties by hiring a DB centric defensive coordinator and/or head coach. Primary Traits/Badges So this would be the tangible effect coaches would have on your team. To go along with their position specialty coaches would also have a specialty trait or badge that affects their position. A few examples: Practician Coaches with this badge would give the players at their position group a higher chance of having a "good" practice (more gold, less bronze) and earning the most XP possible. Schematic Coaches with this badge would raise a players concept medal one tier for the head coaches or coordinators top concepts. Gameday Imagine Dynamic Player Performance was refined over the years instead of completely removed. Okay. Coaches with this trait/badge would see reduced negative effects of DPP on players within their position group. A higher medal could also grant additional boosts for players on hot streaks. Developer Coaches with this badge/trait would raise the DEV trait one tier on players with a normal or lower DEV trait. The reasoning behind that is because stars are going to be stars so players with quick or SS don't really need to be affected. I was thinking this would be more to replicate coaches who are able to get the absolute most out of their players. Secondary Badges This would be similar to the primary but less impactful and important. Basically what I was thinking is that this would be used solely for attributes and/or traits and used to replicate something a coach teaches best. Accompanying this badge would be a varying XP discount on whatever their attribute or trait would be. So let's say you have a receivers coach who has a gold route running badge, your receivers and tight ends would receive the highest discounts on route running while if he only had bronze that discount would be still be present albeit much less significant. Also the discount would scale with player potential as well. Just because you had gold RTE coach wouldn't mean that you'd be able to take a slow DEV WR or TE and turn him into a premier route runner. That's about all I had as far as a "coach profile" goes but there's really endless possibilities here. The main goal though is to have some kind of give and take system where you're getting certain things out of one coach that you might not get out of another. And then based on what your team makeup is and/or what you're looking to do moving forward in regards to playstyle or team building you have multiple options and avenues to either make up for deficiencies in your roster or to amplify your strengths and build a team the way you want. For position coaches I think just about everything above covers how they would be handled. Moving on to coordinators is where everything above would also apply but where the schemes/concepts that you wanted to run would become the primary focus when it comes to hiring. This part is by far the most rough around the edges and I've had a hard time coming to a solid concept but I'm just going to go through the ideas I initially had in my head and apologize for the messiness and how disjointed it's likely going to be. Tiered Badge/Star/Some kind of rating system for Concepts So the main thing here is to kind of get away from the current scheme/player type set up that is currently in place. All it really does is change OVR's which is something that is really a meaningless number anyway so all in all schemes and player types really don't do anything. What separates Andy Reid's West Coast from Kyle Shanahan's West Coast? What separates Wade Phillips 3-4 from Dick Lebeau's 3-4? I want there to be more of an emphasis on the schemes but more so the concepts within the schemes. Schemes are built on but not limited to those concepts and that's what I'm looking to represent here. My thought process is that each coach would have a badge, rating, star tier, whatever for each offensive/defensive concept within the game. I'm thinking a Gold, Silver, Bronze type system but, again, it doesn't really matter. Just to use the Chiefs as an example here, a guy like Andy Reid is going to have most of his badges or higher ratings consist of West Coast concepts. Defensively, a coach like Bob Sutton is going to have it revolve more around man coverage concepts and Cover 1. Ideally you'd also be able to take this information and integrate it into the GamePlan system and have these concepts tied to downs and distances so that the AI also called plays more like their counterparts. To the other side, players would also have a similar badge tier system for concepts but those tiers would be based around certain attribute thresholds. So continuing to use the West Coast concepts as an example, a WR's rank or medal would be more based around specific attributes like Route Running, Catch In Traffic, and Run Blocking while a Vertical Offense's concepts would be based around criteria for, let's say, Speed, Route Running, and Spectacular Catch. So a great WR who is well rounded is likely going to be a good fit for any scheme or concept while others may be more bottled into one specific scheme because of their limitations as a player. So rather than limiting players and a coaches scheme to a certain player type, you're more so trying to build around your scheme and finding players that are most effectively execute what you're trying to run from a concept standpoint. But how is that accomplished exactly? So let's take the system currently used for practice, remove it from that and reallocate it here. So currently you practice a concept, you get a boost. The better medal you get, the higher your boost. The same concept applies here. If you take your coaches concepts and then fill your roster with players that match those concepts and are "fits" for what your coach wants to run, then the boosts get higher. Let's say Andy Reid has a gold for the Spot concept. If you have receivers that also have gold for the Spot concept you're going to receive the highest boost possible when running the spot concept. If you have silver it's going to be slightly lower. The catch here is that if you put guys in or are forced to play guys that are significantly poor scheme fits then those players start getting hit with penalties. So while you can just stack your team with typical Madden freaks or an array of random players, it would greatly benefit you on the field to find the players that match what you want to run. Think of this as something similar to MUT's chemistries. An interesting element this creates as well is the potential for unique packages to utilize specific players. Maybe your coach isn't keen on the Verticals concept but you have a backup TE and WR that are both gold, you can have a package specifically for running that or using it as a decoy. Now normally I hate the idea of these artificial boosts and penalties and I dislike how it's currently implemented but I think it actually works here. I don't think it's ideal but I think it can do a decent job of replicating system players by making them seem better than they actually are as well as worse than they actually are because they don't fit. I think it's also something lthat could greatly benefit from having the option to hide or obscure ratings. Like I mentioned before though this is an extremely messy idea and is anything but a surefire concept but I think with quite a bit of refinement it could get to a good spot. Just another thing I wanted to mention here is offseason activities and how it can play into this as well. Each offseason during an OTA or Training Camp period you could have the chance to "install" new concepts to your gameplan. And what that could entail is choosing a concept to upgrade for your coaches. So back to Andy Reid let's say he has no medal for Verticals and you choose to install it in the offseason maybe he bumps up to a Bronze or even a Silver since he's a veteran coach so heading into your next season. The other side of this is for coordinators is game preparation. Like I said before I'm not a fan of the current implementation with GamePrep and I feel like I probably have a bit of a different mindset with this but I'm more concerned with the information being given than I really am with it having any kind of in-game impact in the form of boosts, etc. An idea I have is that each week you're given a bunch of options to gameplan around and you're given information pertaining to whatever you choose. It could be something that is a coach trait but it'd be easier and more user friendly to have it be something that the user can choose each week. Here are some examples: Exploit Choosing this would highlight matchups where your team has significant advantages on paper. This could range anywhere from units to specific matchups. So let's say you have a great run blocking OL and your opponents DL collectively is weak in terms of BS or maybe you have a standout slot receiver and your opponents nickel back is a bum. This would highlight those mismatches so that you can take advantage of them in-game. Conceal This is the other side of above. This is going to highlight the mismatches that you and your team have the greatest disadvantages and where you could be most vulnerable in the upcoming game. Analytic This would show you the statistical tendencies of the other team. So defensively you'd get something like a chart showing how often and effective they run to the left, middle, and right along with something like a passing spray chart showing you where they like to throw the ball and target distribution. X's and O's This would be somewhat similar to what's in place currently where it would show you a few of your opponents top concepts and the best plays in your playbook to counter them. Obviously this is a pretty limiting and gamey way of doing things and realistically you should have all of that information at your fingertips but I kind of wanted to keep that theme of give and take going. One positive is that I think it leaves room for a lot of additional options. If you're on a short week maybe you don't get to choose any, if you're coming off a bye you get to choose two because of the extra time. This would give that first round bye some significance. Maybe coordinators could have a badge that dictates how many you can choose or that automatically unlocks one or more each week. All-in-all though I don't really think this is any better or worse than what's currently there. Preparation IMO is something that is extremely difficult to translate to a video game and I subscribe to the "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" outlook so a lot of what could be presented and used goes out the window once you're in game and adjusting to what's actually happening. On to the head coach. Again, everything I've listed above can be applied to a head coach as well. If you have Andy Reid or Kyle Shanahan your offensive coordinator is going to be overruled by the HC and not necessarily as important as the OC for a Ron Rivera or Dan Quinn. That being said one of the most important aspects of a head coach is leadership. Being in control of 53+ guys on a week-to-week basis and making sure that they're a cohesive unit that never gets too high or too low can make or break a head coach. Most veteran coaches are particularily good at maintaining control of and leading their team through thick and thin. You see all the time new coaches come in and they just never really gain control of the team and they don't end up lasting long. And then you see coaches that have kind of a mix where the highs are really high and the lows are really low and this is something I'd like to see be a major factor with hiring head coaches for your team. You should feel the effect of hiring a proven veteran coach versus an unknown rookie and there should also be a risk/reward to both. Confidence/Morale Coach Trait or Modifier This is something I really wanted to focus on for head coaches and I'm just going to use Confidence as the example here because that's what is already implemented but I think ideally it'd play out better with a morale system. The idea is that coaches have some kind of "team chemistry" trait that modifies how the confidence of players can change on a week-to-week basis. So let's say you have a coach with the "Unquestioned Leader" trait, losing a couple of games in a row isn't going to burn down your players confidence. Meanwhile if your coach has "Unproven" or "Polarizing" the effects of a couple losses could have a drastically more significant impact on the chemistry of your roster. You could also add a leadership trait or badge for players to help mitigate this as well. Just as an example let's say you hire an unproven, rookie coach so you know things could snowball quickly or the confidence/chemistry of your team could be wildly inconsistent. It would then likely incentivize you to go out and look for a couple vets with those leadership abilities to kind of balance things out a little bit and provide that leadership that your coach might be missing. This could play into a lot more things than just winning/losing games as well. Playing time as we saw last night with Malcolm Butler as well as decision making in terms of something like starting QB or roster transactions (trades, cuts, contract, etc.). I'd like to see confidence or a morale system return to being a bit more flexible in terms of peaks and valleys because in it's current form it doesn't really seem like it really does anything one way or the other. Coaching Tree's This would need to have options but I would love to see some sort of coaching tree model included. So for example, it's 2022 and Andy Reid has just retired and I'm looking for a head coach. I'm given a list of the top head coaching candidates and I find one I like. Let's just say he's been an OC for the last few years. I hire him and then I'm shown a list of coaches that he's worked with over the course of his career with certain ones highlighted that he'd like to bring along with him. This is where the options would come into place. Obviously you don't want the user to be forced into hiring coaches they don't want so that has to be allowed. But another option could be that when you hire a coach like this he also has certain coaches attached to him that he's bringing along like a real NFL coach would. So when you hired him and were shown the coaches he has worked with, the ones highlighted would be the ones that he was bringing along and you'd have to work around it. That may not seem like a whole lot for a HC but keep in mind that they'd also be acting as an additional postion coach and in a lot of cases as a coordinator as well. But the main thing I wanted to focus on was the leadership aspect for head coaches but there's definitely a lot more that could be added here but for now I just wanted to keep things pretty simple. Miscellaneous Scouting/Free Agency/Trade Block/Player Cuts This is more of a quality of life type thing than an actual feature but I think it'd be cool to have coaching staffs play into these actions in your CFM. For scouting you could have position coaches highlight players that fit your scheme the best as well as ones to avoid because they don't fit. Maybe if you're letting the CPU scout for you there could be options for each position coach to scout best scheme fits, physical freaks, potential starters, etc. Same kind of thing with free agency or the trade block. When looking through the free agent list or other teams rosters you'd see highlighted players that are either good or bad scheme fits making things a bit easier for the user. I mentioned this as something I'd like to see in the OP but having position coaches help with player cuts as well could help with building a more solid roster as well as getting through cuts more quickly. This is one of my top requests for Madden simply because of the sheer amount of things within the mode that they can touch and have an affect on. Virtually everything you do within the mode could have coaching staffs layered on top of it and have it modify it in someway which goes a long way to making what's already there deeper. Obviously there's plenty of holes in all of this but let me know your thoughts and suggestions on how you would like to see position coaches, coordinators and head coaches handled and what you'd like to see them affect in CFM. Thanks for reading.

I feel like the biggest issue with coordinators is getting them all in the game with their likeness. That's why we've had generic guys for so long. Other than that these systems sound like they compliment each other pretty well and would be a great addition to Madden.

Sent from my LG-AS993 using Tapatalk

[DaGreatOne21]

Quote: Originally Posted by oneamongthefence

I feel like the biggest issue with coordinators is getting them all in the game with their likeness. That's why we've had generic guys for so long. Other than that these systems sound like they compliment each other pretty well and would be a great addition to Madden. Sent from my LG-AS993 using Tapatalk

When is the last game that actually HAD coordinators? Madden 12? Honestly not sure.

They need to have an "edit coach" feature that allows us to edit coaches the same way we would edit players....especially the ability to edit names and appearances. At least then, we might be able to add Belichick into the game OURSELVES, as opposed to some generic coach.

[Skuxx24]

Letting us manually injure players like in 2K and the show would be a fantastic edition it would allow us when we start a franchise mode to get the right 53 man rosters without having to cut players just injury’s reflect irl.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaGreatOne21

When is the last game that actually HAD coordinators? Madden 12? Honestly not sure. They need to have an "edit coach" feature that allows us to edit coaches the same way we would edit players....especially the ability to edit names and appearances. At least then, we might be able to add Belichick into the game OURSELVES, as opposed to some generic coach.

I want to say it was 06 but I feel like they were brought back at some point during the 360/PS3 era but I think there was some sort of catch to them like you didn't hire/fire them or they did absolutely nothing but I could be wrong.

I completely agree with being able to edit coaches though and I'd really hope that not having real coordinators isn't what has been keeping them from the game. Franchise mode is a sandbox and after the first season I don't really care whether it's Jim Bob Cooter or Mikey McCoordinator that I'm looking to hire. Real coaches would be nice but it's like not having the minor leagues in The Show because you can't have real minor leaguers. I think it'd be great to just have generic staffs that were editable and also allow coaches to be created and thrown into the pool instead of just having the same generic ones we've had for years.

[jfsolo]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

I want to say it was 06 but I feel like they were brought back at some point during the 360/PS3 era but I think there was some sort of catch to them like you didn't hire/fire them or they did absolutely nothing but I could be wrong. I completely agree with being able to edit coaches though and I'd really hope that not having real coordinators isn't what has been keeping them from the game. Franchise mode is a sandbox and after the first season I don't really care whether it's Jim Bob Cooter or Mikey McCoordinator that I'm looking to hire. Real coaches would be nice but it's like not having the minor leagues in The Show because you can't have real minor leaguers. I think it'd be great to just have generic staffs that were editable and also allow coaches to be created and thrown into the pool instead of just having the same generic ones we've had for years.

Unfortunately I've heard them say that not having the real coordinators was a deterrent to adding them in, but maybe/hopefully they will have a change of heart on that front.

[Mattanite]

Great update Deuce!


I took a break for a while due to life stuff but it's great to see some of our ideas mesh together easily.

[4thQtrStre5S]

Basically, if EA/Tib just copied everything from MLB's "Road to the Show" and their Franchise, we too would have the greatest gaming experience in NFL football.

[Nunyerbiz]

I'd be happy with minor enhancements each year to glaring areas of need. Roster Management is better, but needs help. Trade / free agent interactions could be greatly enhanced by largely using AI logic already in place. The CPU already knows what it will accept for a given player, and I think they are generally pretty good at it... so it's a base to enhance. Introduce a way for the CPU to flag players that are "untouchable" in trades, so no more piling on draft picks for Aaron Rodgers... Add a counter offer dynamic based on the AI logic already in place, seeing they already know what they would accept... have them throw a counter... maybe even have them ask for more then they need to see if they can make yuou bite. Remove simplistic graphical representations of interest with slightly less simplistic text-based responses... All those are seemingly simple fixes, I wouldn't think any of it would require ground-up coding work... And you end up with a vastly improved trade system. Rinse and repeat with something else next year.

I don't think we'll ever get some PC-level OOTP styled managment sim grafted onto Madden... and to be honest I wouldn't want that anyways... But I'd have to think something of a mid-level depth between what we have now and a true management sim is certainly doable without reinventing the wheel.