An In-Depth Look at Player Development and How It Works in M17

[Fist Of Kings]

I'm not sure if this is the best way to handle development, but I understand why they did it this way. In madden 15, I had 90+ ovr players all over the field.

I have my xp slider higher for defensive players though, since it's harder to have dominant games to earn xp.

[rich8682]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sanchez_Mareno

26 is too young a cut off. Id say 28 or at least 27

This is football. Most guys who aren't QB, OL, K/P don't play past 31 or so.

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[Tatupu_64]

Quote: Originally Posted by nightRAMcometh

26 seems pretty young for players to be hitting the "wall" on their development. Most QB's don't really hit their prime until their late 20's and early 30's. Offensive lineman are another group that peak later in their careers. Thankfully you can adjust XP sliders, tdawg has a good set that helps counter what the dev team has implemented. Otherwise it'd take an entire season to improve your right guard by one point to run blocking. I like the idea, but the "wall" age should've been 29 in my opinion.

I think you're on to something with your mention of positions. The wall should be different by position

QB/K/P - 30
RB/WR/TE/DE/LB/CB/S - 26
OL/FB/DT - 28

They also need to lower the average age of draft prospects by at least a year on average

[adembroski]

John White did his homework. Outside of a few differences, these are almost the cost increases I came up with, though it wasn't implimented at the time.

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[adembroski]

Quote: Originally Posted by nightRAMcometh

26 seems pretty young for players to be hitting the "wall" on their development. Most QB's don't really hit their prime until their late 20's and early 30's. Offensive lineman are another group that peak later in their careers. Thankfully you can adjust XP sliders, tdawg has a good set that helps counter what the dev team has implemented. Otherwise it'd take an entire season to improve your right guard by one point to run blocking. I like the idea, but the "wall" age should've been 29 in my opinion.

Tons of studies, coach observations, and scientific reseach has shown 26 is precisely when athletes hit a wall. The mid 20s to early 30s are effectively flat for most players. They don't fall off a cliff, but the don't get appreciable better.

On average, most NFL players have their greatest production in year 3-4... one year later for QBs, one year sooner for RBs.

What was really shocking was how consistent it was. Outliers were extremely rare and tended to have reasonable explanations to exclude them. Rich Gannon and Jeff Garcia were notable outliers.

I did a ton of research on this when I was tuning progression for Madden 12. I did the same for Madden 13 but it wasn't used. I looked at stats going back 30 years, was provided proprietary study data from an NFL team's head coach, and looked into several university studies on the subject. I think White looked at some of the same data I did because what he put in looks a lot like what I was recommending 4 years ago.

From a biological perspective, 26 is the point at which an elite athlete will no longer be able to offset the body's degredation. They'll begin losing strength and agility somewhere around a 1% every 2 years clip until their mid 30s, when that begins to accelerate, and that's without accounting for physical punishment.

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[CM Hooe]

Even without the real-world data backing it up - which it appears there is plenty, to be clear - I like that the Madden 17 progression / regression career arc for a player is reasonably predictable as a video game mechanic. It makes the act of long-term team-building, especially the draft, meaningful and consequential; you know your current players will not improve for the entirety of their careers, and you know the game is going to apply consistent downward pressure on your older experienced players to encourage you to replace them with younger and less experienced ones.

To offer a constructive criticism, I think that player progression / regression career arcs are now probably too formulaic, especially for quarterbacks, and at other positions there is little to no wiggle room for outliers like, say, a Steve Smith Sr. That said, compared to progression / regression in any other Madden football game I've played - which was either too dependent on accumulating counting stats (M13 - M16) or completely opaque to the user as to how to influence (M12 and earlier) - I think what now exists is a good base to build upon going forward.

[BleedGreen710]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Even without the real-world data backing it up - which it appears there is plenty, to be clear - I like that the Madden 17 progression / regression career arc for a player is reasonably predictable as a video game mechanic. It makes the act of long-term team-building, especially the draft, meaningful and consequential; you know your current players will not improve for the entirety of their careers, and you know the game is going to apply consistent downward pressure on your older experienced players to encourage you to replace them with younger and less experienced ones. To offer a constructive criticism, I think that player progression / regression career arcs are now probably too formulaic, especially for quarterbacks, and at other positions there is little to no wiggle room for outliers like, say, a Steve Smith Sr. That said, compared to progression / regression in any other Madden football game I've played - which was either too dependent on accumulating counting stats (M13 - M16) or completely opaque to the user as to how to influence (M12 and earlier) - I think what now exists is a good base to build upon going forward.

I agree completely. At first I hated it but I've come to like it. I think all thats missing at this point is a new rating for each player that serves as a modifier for regression. Kind of like development but for regression not progression. Someone with the highest version of the trait would be able to play longer, retire later, and not lose very many attributes whereas someone with the low trait would hit their wall about where they do in the game currently. You could even have the trait hidden until the player turns 26, so you wouldn't know right at the beginning of the players career.

I think the hardest part of implementing this though might be assigning the current players a regression trait rating, since there's really no way to know how long players careers may last. How do you decide how fast a rookie such as Carson Wentz or Dak Prescott should begin to regress? Perhaps they could give all young players normal regression trait and just have the generated players from the drafts be more varied. Either way, I think it could be an awesome addition to the game and it's one of the things I want most in M17.

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[Old Man Nathy]

Quote: Originally Posted by BleedGreen710

I agree completely. At first I hated it but I've come to like it. I think all thats missing at this point is a new rating for each player that serves as a modifier for regression. Kind of like development but for regression not progression. Someone with the highest version of the trait would be able to play longer, retire later, and not lose very many attributes whereas someone with the low trait would hit their wall about where they do in the game currently. You could even have the trait hidden until the player turns 26, so you wouldn't know right at the beginning of the players career. I think the hardest part of implementing this though might be assigning the current players a regression trait rating, since there's really no way to know how long players careers may last. How do you decide how fast a rookie such as Carson Wentz or Dak Prescott should begin to regress? Perhaps they could give all young players normal regression trait and just have the generated players from the drafts be more varied. Either way, I think it could be an awesome addition to the game and it's one of the things I want most in M17. Sent from my HTC Desire 625 using Tapatalk

Yeah I agree. A similar trait to Dyna Dev for regression would make it perfect IMO. If guys continue playing at an all pro level into their 30s, they shouldn't be regressing much. But once they have a down season or a serious injury, their regression trait should be downgraded and they end up going down in ratings pretty quickly. This would mean you get your Favre's, Brady's and Steve Smith's who play well despite their advancing years, but also get guys like Matt Schaub or Donovan McNabb who suddenly just "lose it" and end up regressing sharply despite previously being good players. Would also mean guys who start their careers at a high level but flame out early (like Shawn Merriman or Percy Harvin) can progress very high but then quickly drop off in their late 20s if they pick up knocks or don't retain their pro bowl level play.


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