EA vs. its fans.

[Gosens6]

Quote: Originally Posted by Junior Moe

The thing for me is perspective. I love, LOVED, AP2K8. But it's gone now. And the chances of a fully featured football game on current gen are slim. Unless its NCAA which isn't exclusive anymore if I remember correctly. But that's another bag of worms in itself. On top of who'd put the money and resources up make it. EA is probably the only ones capable at this point. It's EA or bust everywhere you look. I'm an NFL fan more than a football fan. I just am. I need the packers and Steelers. Im a franchise nerd so I want all the elements you speak of in an NFL game. I wouldn't touch HEAD COACH if the teams were fictitious. I want to win the Atlanta Falcons a Super Bowl; not the Red Birds. That's where my enjoyment and replay value comes from. Not just outstanding on field gameplay. Although I want that too. The best chances of getting that, again IMO, is to ride (even slowly) with Madden and hope they continue going in the same direction.

I totally get your point of view about needing real teams. Some guys just CAN'T play with fake teams and that's understandable. Some of us just want a football experience that rivals what we see during the season.

Whether I'm doing that with the Bills or the Buffalo Hot Wings, I don't care. For me, excellent gameplay can beat a franchise mode any day.

The thing with Madden is, the gameplay is not up to par yet, but it's still good, it's just not on the level it should be with where we are on the current generation of consoles. If Madden gave us a CFM that even came close to what they had on PS2, with some next gen elements, I could look past some of the gameplay flaws cause I'd be in football GM heaven.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by SageInfinite

Also Kolbe has now departed from Tiburon as well....

To the extent that it matters, a clarification - Kolbe was responsible for gameplay modes in Madden NFL (MUT, Franchise, Draft Champions) and in addition basically the entirety of Madden mobile. He wasn't the overseer of core gameplay, that is Rex Dickson's purview.

[Gosens6]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

To the extent that it matters, a clarification - Kolbe was responsible for gameplay modes in Madden NFL (MUT, Franchise, Draft Champions) and in addition basically the entirety of Madden mobile. He wasn't the overseer of core gameplay, that is Rex Dickson's purview.

Thanks for clarifying that. Some people might not have seen I was discussing CFM in my post when speaking about Kolbes role.

Do we have any idea who oversees CFM now?

[SageInfinite]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gosens6

Thanks for clarifying that. Some people might not have seen I was discussing CFM in my post when speaking about Kolbes role. Do we have any idea who oversees CFM now?

I believe it's John White....

[Brightline]

But I think the issue is bigger than White or whoever is running the mode. What we want a decision to either scrap the mode, drastically change the mode, or build a parallel sandbox mode.

[Kwarren3]

Here's how I look at it...
MUT will always be the cash cow, and at the end of the day, it's about making money. I love Rex, Clint, Kane, and everyone else who's been brought on board in the past few years. And I believe they truly want the best madden we can possibly have. But, they aren't really the ones in charge. They aren't the ones in the suits. Everyone likes to bring up how franchise mode took a turn for the worst around madden 09-12, and a lot of features that were once in the game are no longer there. Wel... That's about when MUT started to grow into what it is today. Franchise mode provides no additional income to EA post launch. MUT is a year round cash flow. People spend hundreds on packs trying to collect cards and what not. Franchise will never be able to offer that same incentive for the business side of things that MUT can. Like many of you have already said, franchise mode as a whole has been on an upward climb ever since Rex and company took over. I think once we get to Frostbite we will really get some good stuff. But I will just never ignore the fact that it is a business, and from a business standpoint MUT is the focus. Slowly but surely, we will get to the Franchise mode we want and deserve.

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by Kwarren3

Here's how I look at it... MUT will always be the cash cow, and at the end of the day, it's about making money. I love Rex, Clint, Kane, and everyone else who's been brought on board in the past few years. And I believe they truly want the best madden we can possibly have. But, they aren't really the ones in charge. They aren't the ones in the suits. Everyone likes to bring up how franchise mode took a turn for the worst around madden 09-12, and a lot of features that were once in the game are no longer there. Wel... That's about when MUT started to grow into what it is today. Franchise mode provides no additional income to EA post launch. MUT is a year round cash flow. People spend hundreds on packs trying to collect cards and what not. Franchise will never be able to offer that same incentive for the business side of things that MUT can. Like many of you have already said, franchise mode as a whole has been on an upward climb ever since Rex and company took over. I think once we get to Frostbite we will really get some good stuff. But I will just never ignore the fact that it is a business, and from a business standpoint MUT is the focus. Slowly but surely, we will get to the Franchise mode we want and deserve.

The thing is though, it's not just that they put focus on other modes, sometimes excessively so, at the expense of Franchise Mode, it's also that whenever they do work on Franchise Mode, they don't take an ideal approach for NFL emulation. Take M17 for example, they label that as an overhaul of CFM and one can judge for themselves how much NFL emulation seems to have came out of that.

Madden doesn't have even one mode in a NFL simulation video game, that's realistic to the nth degree. They essentially prevent the NFL hardcore gamer from having any mode to emulate a NFL Franchise as mch as possible, in the guise of inclusiveness. There are like six main modes in Madden, Play Now/Online H2H, MUT, DC, CFM Player, CFM Coach and CFM Owner, it's unfortunate, imo, that in all of them EA Tib feels the need to to give us their subjective fun version of the NFL. I've been sports gaming a long time and I don't understand why at some point EA decided various Madden game modes should stop being niche choices and became expected to be all inclusive. I'm still under the impression that individual modes, with unique and varied ways to play, would make the game as a whole more inclusive.

I wonder if people pay attention to the stuff being said by EA Tib or if I pay too much attention, maybe it's a bit of both. We've had various Madden devs and whatnot over the years say things like "can't have realistic penalties because games will last too long", "can't have the wind impact passes that's overkill", "can't have bobbled snaps, tourney guys have to feed their families!", etc. So as long as that approach to creating Madden and modes is prevalent, I don't think Frostbite or development focus gets us much closer to a NFL immersive Franchise Mode.

[roadman]

I was thinking overhaul of CFM meant something more than what was presented, so, my only conclusion from that was EA feels like it was an overhaul and our expectations of an overhaul didn't match theirs. So, next time I hear overhaul or most changes, I will temper my expectations, lesson learned. You even have Peter Moore stating it was the most changes to franchise mode in 4 years. That being said, the Madden community, ie, OS, Twitter, and other sources have been screaming for full customization since as far back as I can remember. I'm not sure if I will utilize this feature, but this feature is huge for many people.

Quite frankly, the only other sport game that I purchase is the NBA game and that one frustrated me last year with less realistic game play. So much so, it was the 1st time that game was put into hibernation before the holidays for me.