Hits and Misses of Franchise mode

[theycallmeyango]

scheduling past year one is another big problem. again playing as the Lions in just year two I have one week in between Vikings games, 3 weeks including a bye for Packers, and 2 weeks in between the Bears.

Also my last division game is week 12.

[xCoachDx]

Quote: Originally Posted by Toupal

It has already been a few days, and I am sure the Madden community has taken a swan dive into Franchise mode. I want to hear the community's feedback on what I consider to be the most complete franchise mode put together for any football game. Hit Player Editing- Finally, they are giving us complete control over our franchise mode. Commentary- IMO, this is the best commentary I have eve seen in a sports game. Madden raised the bar on this one for other sports games. Presentation- Between the score ticker on the bottom of the screen, to updating me on injuries, previous draft classes, and standings; I have never been so happy with the presentation in this game Living Worlds- Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night football actual feel like those games. Playoff games even feel like real playoff games. Madden did a great job of portraying a real life game atmosphere. The crowd reacts to what is actual going on on the field. Misses Player Editing- Allow us to edit the players body type/ build. So far we can only edit height, weight, skin color, and pick between heads Additionally, let us edit draft prospects before the draft. Right now I just simulate through the draft, and then immediately after go in and edit real draft prospects to reflect real mock drafts Stat/ Record Tracking- Madden does a great job of tracking stats from game to game. However, I want to see an improvement of tracking stats season to season. I believe it was Madden 11, where I could go back to any season I wanted, and look up any game that I wanted. I would also like to be able to see who won the super bowl in years before, and we currently have no way of knowing who won the super bowl after we advance to the off-season. Coaches- I was happy to see them add more features to edit a coach, but there really wasn't much of an addition. I want to see more options for coach editing. Most importantly with coaching, I am disappointed to see that assistant coaches were not put into the game. So lets hear what the rest of the community thinks!

In regards to commentary and presentation, if you think this is even close to 2K you are insane bro. Lol

[fballturkey]

Yeah, commentary is good compared to previous Maddens but 2K level? No, not even close.

[NewscasterNews4]

After 11 games in my franchise, here's my opinions on the mode so far.

Hits

Full Player Editing: This is a huge feature. Not only does it allow us to have real-life rookies, it allows us to give faces to those with blank silhouettes and we can edit players in correspondence to how they do irl (ex. Giving Jared Goff slow development after his bad preseason.)

In Game Ticker: This is HUGE. I love the way it looks in-game and it really gets me immersed in my league. For example back in week 2 I saw the Bengals had a 35-10 lead in the 2nd quarter. As my game went on, I saw the Steelers begin to come back and eventually they took a 42-39 lead and that was really cool to see the game play out live instead of just checking the box score after my game and seeing the Steelers made a massive comeback.

Menus Being More Functional

Thank god they adressed this! It was so tedious to view a player card for someone on another team just to have it take you back to your own team the minute you exit out of it. It's so much easier to view information now.

CPU vs CPU

About time they brought this back.

Misses

32 Team Control and In Game Ticker

This is my biggest problem with franchise now. I love using 32 team control and it sucks I have to give up seeing live scores on the ticker for it to work. It eliminates a number of storylines I could've incorporated into my franchise such as Tom Brady's suspension, Case Keenum and Trevor Siemien starting the season over Jared Goff and Paxton Lynch, Teddy Bridgewater's injury, and more. Hopefully they can fix this because that would make franchise 10x better.

News Stories

Gonna be honest, not a fan of the new layout. I actually liked the way stories were from Madden 13-16. At least your team specific stories and top league stories aren't buried in the news menu now.

[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by RicoLaguno

Huge Misses: -It isnt much of a franchise when you cant even access any stats, scores, results, information from previous seasons....its like when each season ends, all data is erased and replaced with another season. Not much different than just playing a single season, over and over.....EA declined big time in this area! Madden 12 and earlier had a better Franchise Mode! -Not having the ability to just jump in and play any teams games or control all 32 teams without having to jump thru hoops to set up all 32 profiles then having to switch back and forth all the time between each teams Home Page....just to play a random game on the schedule. Too much work! Again Madden 12 and earlier versions did this much better! -Horrible Interface and League Pages. Navigating to information is such a chore and also requires to many clicks and arrow overs! Hasnt EA ever heard of Hyperlinking stuff!? Why cant I drill down to a teams record or their schedule by just clicking on the teams name in the Standings Screen to get more information easily and more intelligently linked?? Why cant I see a team's Win/Loss record from the Weekly Schedule??....Why cant I click on that matchup from the schedule and see a brief preview of key information for the game like injuries, previous head to head matchup records and results, key players on each team, their hot and cold stats, etc All this stuff is in NBA 2K and is so much more intelligently imbedded into drill down links from the main screens We love Stats and we love to drill down and preview more stats!!!...When will you realize this EA? Your Franchise Interface and Navigation is so horrible! And for God's sakes, most people have 1080 HD TVs now, which means more screen real estate.......Cant we see a real newspaper style STANDINGS screen on the entire screen??....Why do I have to click all this buttons just to view the standings in each division. Lay out the entire NFL in a division view on the screen at the same time!!....Jeeeze!!

THIS >>>>

The lack of improved stats and tracking history kills me.

If you move from one season to the next, everything from the year before is erased.

Additionally, I would like to see madden track more records. I like how they have the top 10 list for the big stats, but realistically, I would like to even more players. Like a top 25.

I want to see more legends on lists, and referenced. We still can't go a full Packers game in real life without hearing Brett Favres name. I want to hear comments in the broadcast say something like, "Adrian Peterson only needs 100 more yards to pass Marshall Faulk for number 10 on the all-time rushing yard lists."

Also, I would like to hear the commentary update from year to year. When I am in the year 2017, I don't want to hear the announcers refer to Amari Coopers rookie season the year before.

An in depth hall-of-fame would be more than welcomed by me.

[Trick13]

Hits;

Ability to edit players

Improved FA in terms of bigger names signing quickly...

Practice squad

Foul Balls;

Big decisions - good idea, but should be expanded in several areas. I would like to see you as the coach pick your run/pass, aggressive/conservative, and RB carries splits and see that impact player goals - I also think you should be able to set team goals like rushing yrds, pts allowed, takeaways, and so forth.

Also within this the injury stuff should have included "out, questionable, doubtful" and there should have been a bit of a better diversity within the negatives that you might play with - INJ, CAR, SPD those things seem very cookie cutter in terms of I did not see much variance from week to week.

FA - still no screen where you can sort players according to their ratings - I mean every NFL team has a pro scouting department - so what the heck is with this anyway...

Draft day trades...

Misses;

Still has XP progression

Missing additional settings and sliders such as CPU trade difficulty, limit number of trades each user can make with CPU, CPU progression slider, and several others

Formation subs over custom sub packages was a huge mistake

Lack of Commish Tools - trade approval, transaction undo, cap growth control, and a couple others

No in game messenger for multi-user CFM scheduling and the as yet missing app where we could control certain tasks like drafting, signing, resigning, cutting players, etc

No coordinators, position coaches

No "MY Draft Board" is a huge letdown particularly if you miss the draft..

No custom division alignments, custom schedules - particularly the inability to move User v User games to near end of season

FA points system for contracts is terrible

Missing long term stat tracking, playoff results, superbowl results, season leaders and so on

Zero support for custom playbooks (form subs, coaches assigned, etc)

Scouting system is contrived, still and I hate it - tells you nothing, prevents anything resembling finding guys with particular skill sets - for instance CBs I can't scout every CBs press rating, so if it isn't top 3 in their skills I have no idea where in the real world you would just go watch film and see how the player performed in those situations - the current Madden scouting system is terrible and completely fails to mirror anything in the real world...

Players should get practice XP every week, maybe not lots of it, but all players practicing - ie not injured, should be getting some xp. Though I would completely scrap XP and tie skill development into practice and drill focus combined with coach ratings and hidden development ratings...

[Northernwolf]

Hits:

Commentary - I think everyone else has said it already, but the dynamic duo is fantastic. This "feature" alone breathes life into a part of the game that was completely stale. Good job!

Stadium life and lighting - PS4 felt a bit dulled in colors in past seasons.
Not this year. I really like the light shimmering of Raiders, Cowboys, Saints, Panthers and Patriots (and old Seahawks) helmets. I like that the different helmets have different "sheens" to them. Weather has been fantastic for me in CFM. I have gotten snow in Denver (did not get one snow match last year M 16) and rain varies in thickness and density. The time of day comes through and really livens up the stadium as you see the sunset in late 3rd or 4th quarter. Only thing I would change is the terribly overdone pink of october.

Player editing - It is great! But Please: Let us zoom in more so we can see the details before we hit the pitch?

Reduced ratings - I am a fan. Too many 90+ in earlier seasons. I dont see too many Rookies that have high ratings anymore. Seem like most players are not defined by just one stat in their ratings.

Play the moments - It is a great way to get more game balance and time managment (for those of us who cant play 3-5 hours straight). I like to mix up the ways to play franchise now.
Too bad simming means you loose out on all the awesome commentary gold that keeps dropping.

Misses:

Rams stadium after the Coliseum - it is dreadful! Please dont make the Rams change this stadium in CFM.

Uniforms - Where is the dreadful last years color rush unis? Where are the late 60s unis? I want a full spectrum of new and old unis.

Create a team Franchise - I will keep saying it forever: Do it. Do it now.

Cuts in preseason - This needs a fix. It seems the AI keep cutting all my players? Its a bit frustrating having to go into free agency and see a ton of young (pretty solid rookies) and manually re sign and re cut all the ones I want. I dont even want to know how people who are playing 32 man franchise is feeling ( Ifeel for you ladies and gents!) An extra chore that I guess is a bug or a glitch, but seem to be unadressed at this point.

Practice squad - As above, or because of the situation above. Its either broken or I have so few players left after the AI is done cutting all it wants I cannot form a practice squad. I played a CFM withthe Bills and the AI just goes overboard cutting all my potential talent = no practie squad!

Players resigning too soon? - I understand. Calvin Johnson did it so now it is the new normal. However: I feel all the good QBs decide to call it quits after 2016-17 season.. I dont understand. Why would Tom Brady call it quits after another playoff run? Why would Rodgers? More variation on when players resign is cool. Just make it more plausible! Maybe we could have a rating called: Staying power, indicating a players wish to keep playing in the league, then we could edit that. Editing Tom or Aarons age just feels weird.

Newsfeed - Why?
Why did they mess this one up?
I loved going in and reading the newsfeed in past seasons to see how different teams were doing. I really dont like the "new" news feed. It feels shallow. Often the big news (someone breaks a record) gets drowned in talks about scouting. Not cool.

Too much Coaches retiring / getting fired - Being a head coach in NFL is not really secure, but it gets me that coaches who have been in the game for decades goes off to retire after a year or two and in steps mr nobody.
At least add more veteran coaches! And Coordinators! And yes, I know I can just turn off Coach firing. It is not what I am saying. One bad season and Jeff Fisher retires, Coach Arians Retires? no no no.. smh

Finally I want to say that I think this years CFM is pretty good.
Actually.. Im lying! It is the best it has been in years..

I hope they continue building on this foundation, and not reboot the entire gig next year because graphics or something else.