Madden's future of CFM is alarming

[timhere1970]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hassan Darkside

Just some thoughts after reading through this thread... First off, I don't think it's fair to diss EA devs and question their talent or ability. Afterall, this is EA and there's no shortage of talented devs for them to choose from. Having EA on your resume could make your career. It's been spoken to, in the past, about poor coding practices and turnover exacerbating issues and bugs. These are likely top-down decisions being made to prioritize certain parts of the game. The way it sounds to me is that they're using the same devs on both Live and Madden's CFM which has disaster written all over it, especially considering one's franchise mode is a logically flawed, feature lacking disgrace with a broken simulation engine that exists only for the sake of existing and the other is NBA Live. I'd hate to see their priority list. Secondly, I think this is one of the rare areas where competition is overstated. Making a comparison to 2k in this regard is unfair because realistically, 2k hasn't had legitimate competition in almost a decade. They surely aren't competing with anyone when it comes to franchise modes. IMO, the big difference here is how 2k went about improving their Franchise mode (MyLeague/MyGM). They actually hired passionate members of the community to work as devs which isn't common in the gaming as far as I know. Leftos didn't necessarily have a ton of experience going in, but that man had a vision, dedication, and damn near unparalleled work ethic. If you listened to him on any of the interviews or podcasts, he talks about his long nights spent working on the mode and his commitment and passion bled through everything he said. From what I've seen, EA won't go further than bringing in community guys as "game changers" (irony) or to visit and offer feedback. What DeuceDouglas did with his write-up and blueprint probably would have had 2k trying to figure out how to get him on their team if roles were reversed. Instead, we'll have to live with the retweet he got and take solace in knowing devs is watching, even if that's all they're doing. 2k's MyLeague isn't without its flaws and bugs, but they've given us enough control over things as users that we can work around them. There was a nasty regression bug last year, but since we had regression/progression sliders we could stimy it. There are always issues with generated draft classes, but since they allow custom draft classes we can work around those. There are issues with 6th men overtaking starters because of the logic managing rosters according to OVR, but 2k goes and adds an option to override that on the player edit screen. Beyond that are dozens of sliders and options regarding the mode that can be tuned, enabled, disabled, or automated. Rather than making a realistic representation/simulation of franchise management, they give us a diluted caricature of a mode that they refuse to overcomplicate out of fear of losing the people who don't even play it. If part of their justification is that people aren't playing the mode, they should consider how much they've alienated gamers from this mode. I'm actually one of those people that's gravitated to MUT because no other game mode has replayability in this game. I just wish they would make an attempt at an actual franchise mode with a foundation mirroring NFL cap rules, decisions, and negotiations. If it's too much in the weeds, allow options to automate part of it. It's a joke that they've been adding things to the game to speed up Franchise mode when there's hardly anything to do anyway for gamers who want the full GM experience. The house rules that people have to come up with to enjoy this mode or come up with realistic results (creating and retiring coaches before each game?? Seriously???) are laughable. I'm not sure how much lower my expectations can get.

I am in a good mood. Went out on my kayak this morning and caught a 27" redfish. Got a couple good games of madden in. I have been stuffing the run lately but today i had a 61 overall 3rd string half back starting because of injuries put up 111 on me. The non playing part of cfm is so drab though.

[Armor and Sword]

Quote: Originally Posted by timhere1970

I am in a good mood. Went out on my kayak this morning and caught a 27" redfish. Got a couple good games of madden in. I have been stuffing the run lately but today i had a 61 overall 3rd string half back starting because of injuries put up 111 on me. The non playing part of cfm is so drab though.

That's a hell of storyline.

I had Damien Williams have a career game (because Ajayi was hurt) putting up 190 total yards of offense and score 4 TD's.

He has not even sniffed 50 yards total offense since.

But the fact we have to use so many house rules and workarounds to get the mode to function semi realistically is troubling. I am able to get a decent franchise out of it.

But I am at the end of settling for decent with Madden. It needs to be "wow" on the scale of NBA 2K18 (and The Show) for me to even consider ever purchasing this game again.

Madden 18 very well may be my last dance if they can't get Franchise (and CPU AI more importantly as I feel they go hand in hand) upgraded a lot from where it is right now.

Problem is.....this may be what we got and it won't get that much better.

We shall see......but simply based on conversations I have with gamers that are far younger than me (and this is EA's target audience), franchise mode is something they simply do not touch.

It really is all about MUT modes on sports games today.


But the difference (and we have discussed this over and over and all agree) is other sports games are making far better franchise modes and far better CPU AI.

When will Madden hear our cries??? And take real action and make significant AI improvements?

I am done waiting. Now it is all about show.....don't tell me. I feel like I was totally hoodwinked by the whole "simulation" mode.

[Sphinx]

Quote: Originally Posted by Armor and Sword

That's a hell of storyline. I had Damien Williams have a career game (because Ajayi was hurt) putting up 190 total yards of offense and score 4 TD's. He has not even sniffed 50 yards total offense since. But the fact we have to use so many house rules and workarounds to get the mode to function semi realistically is troubling. I am able to get a decent franchise out of it. But I am at the end of settling for decent with Madden. It needs to be "wow" on the scale of NBA 2K18 (and The Show) for me to even consider ever purchasing this game again. Madden 18 very well may be my last dance if they can't get Franchise (and CPU AI more importantly as I feel they go hand in hand) upgraded a lot from where it is right now. Problem is.....this may be what we got and it won't get that much better. We shall see......but simply based on conversations I have with gamers that are far younger than me (and this is EA's target audience), franchise mode is something they simply do not touch. It really is all about MUT modes on sports games today. But the difference (and we have discussed this over and over and all agree) is other sports games are making far better franchise modes and far better CPU AI. When will Madden hear our cries??? And take real action and make significant AI improvements? I am done waiting. Now it is all about show.....don't tell me. I feel like I was totally hoodwinked by the whole "simulation" mode.

I echo these statements. I am starting to get fed up with trying to police everything in this games cfm mode with house rules. I have even found myself going in and editing cpu players/positions because they still are unwilling to start a great young player over an average veteran that has a slightly better overall because their awareness is higher. I've seen the cpu move clowney to the same position as Watt and bench Clowney. Some of the moves make no sense and I find that I am spending large amounts of time fixing all of this to try and maintain a balance in the game.

Add in that regression might be the worst it's ever been and cfm becomes almost unplayable 3-4 years in. I routinely see running backs in their mid 30's still at 90 overall. I saw a corner at age 36 still rated as the number 1 corner in the league. I now make it a point to go through and manually regress players to try and keep things somewhat realistic. It's a giant pain in the butt and a big big problem with this game.

[SteelD34KC]

Quote: Originally Posted by Armor and Sword

I am done waiting. Now it is all about show.....don't tell me. I feel like I was totally hoodwinked by the whole "simulation" mode.

This. And also the comment above about what we have to do now to get the computer to play even just OK.

Its absolutely redicilous this whole make a player, change playbooks, setup there training, start game, move 2nd controller over to be on other team, start game, then retire player. Rinse repeat for 16 freaking games?!? Are you kidding me!!

We have the ability to change there uni's, why not a button to change there playbooks? Where is our control?

Why are there not sliders like there are in other sports games? I mean, why not a QB accuracy slider for short, medium and long?

There is something deeply wrong with this game. And EA just does not care about us the consumer.

Especially because all the kiddos will continue to pay the microtransactions to have there amazing MUT team.

If EA actually watched any of there "Competitive Money Matches" they would know the same 3 to 4 defenses and offensive plays are called. Thats not football, thats not fun to watch, and not even remotely sim.

[Toupal]

I was watching this video the other day, and I feel it is pretty applicable to the state of Madden today.

Sales and Marketing runs the show, not product people. Not the ones that deal with this game at the creation level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Toupal

Sales and Marketing runs the show, not product people. Not the ones that deal with this game at the creation level.

Nope. Sales and marketing have literally no involvement with the creative direction of the game whatsoever. The creative director(s) / designers / developers / etc. inform sales and marketing about what new features got into the game in a given year and then sales and marketing build a marketing plan around those features and changes.

There are people up top of Electronic Arts and EA Sports who influence the high-level direction of all the games in their division's portfolio over the course of several cycles, but those people have more important things to do than meddle in the day-to-day operations of each individual game studio. They set high-level vague and generic goals and the game designers and engineers build specific features to meet those goals however they choose.

[bigd51]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Nope. Sales and marketing have literally no involvement with the creative direction of the game whatsoever. The creative director(s) / designers / developers / etc. inform sales and marketing about what new features got into the game in a given year and then sales and marketing build a marketing plan around those features and changes. There are people up top of Electronic Arts and EA Sports who influence the high-level direction of all the games in their division's portfolio over the course of several cycles, but those people have more important things to do than meddle in the day-to-day operations of each individual game studio. They set high-level vague and generic goals and the game designers and engineers build specific features to meet those goals however they choose.

This is simply not true at all.

In this interview last year from Rex, at the 31:30 mark, he's asked about Nano blitz recognition and the possibility of O-line play evolving to include blocking schemes, and he specifically states that when he pitches these advanced ideas, the high level execs base their resource allocation on how easily marketable the feature will be, thus directly influencing the creative direction of the game. "Why are you pitching me something that you need to fix or clean... that's not something I can go out and sell." His exact words.

Sales and marketing have everything to do w/ the creative direction of the game and the resources allocated.

[El_Toro50]

Quote: Originally Posted by bigd51

This is simply not true at all. In {web.link} last year from Rex, at the 31:30 mark, he's asked about Nano blitz recognition and the possibility of O-line play evolving to include blocking schemes, and he specifically states that when he pitches these advanced ideas, the high level execs base their resource allocation on how easily marketable the feature will be, thus directly influencing the creative direction of the game. "Why are you pitching me something that you need to fix or clean... that's not something I can go out and sell." His exact words. Sales and marketing have everything to do w/ the creative direction of the game and the resources allocated.

I agree. Sales and Marketing are one of the largest driving factors in feature implementation in software. I'm a Data Scientist for IBM as my day job, and I collect, clean, and analyze millions of lines of data for our Sales and Marketing team. This includes not only usage data, but client requests also. This is one of the largest, if not largest driving factors in our teams decision making when considering revising, or implementing features in our products.

While it is possible that it differs for EA, it is highly improbable that they are not following this business model, or a derivative of such.