Adding Replayability to Franchise

[Hova57]

Immersion especially for specific teams..RB bout to break team rookie rushing record and so on. Carrying team through next Madden and the new draft class can be added to be drafted stuff like that would be cool to me

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[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by OhMrHanky

I swear, it never gets old. And, I mean this in a positive ‘madden should do this’ way. The trophy room was the bomb in that game. And, it was something completely unexpected, actually. But, for that time period, was very well done. Forget the hockey game (although, I have to admit, I played it quite a bit. Lol), just the trophies, alone, were solid. Just looking at your numerous Super Bowl trophies, and mvps, and whatnot. In terms of Rex’s idea of earning stuff throughout the lifespan of CFM? Different/better trophies? And, to the OP, I like your ideas, in general, and I was thinking of a ‘player card’ type system that could be MUT or Non-MUT related, so I think you’re hitting that well. From the most simplistic POV of just getting ‘cooler’ looking cards as your player gets better. U know like the special football cards in real life? Superstar card. Rookie card. High draft pick card. They may do this all in MUT, already. But, again, I think it would make madden happy if u could incorporate MUT into CFM. Lol. Which, in general, I’m against. But, as a cfm’er, I wouldn’t mind collecting cards of my top players, especially players I drafted and made Hall of Famers or something. So, madden should be able to incorporate a card based type system. I think they could give out celebrations as well. And, if so, they need to change to u controlling your celebration like fifa. This would be huge to be able to select your own celebration. And, by leveling up through CFM, u continuously get newer celebrations. As Rex says, himself, ‘it’s like fitting square pegs in round holes.’ Lol. And, that kills me. I’m a Destiny grinder. I get the destiny video game model, and I understand game companies wanting to model after it. But, not every game can or should use that model. Not every game mode needs to use that model, either. Madden already has MUT. They have their game mode that is an everyday thing with ‘compulsion’ or whatnot. CFM doesn’t need to have that. CFM just needs to be ‘better’. Lol. More realistic. More immersion. That’s what should be most important for that mode. And, if they made it that way, more players would play it for longer periods of time. If it felt more realistic, it would ‘force’ people to want to play it. THAT is where the compulsion comes from for CFM. Simply making it more realistic. Feel like you’re ‘inside’ the ‘world of the nfl’. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I could not agree with you more.

The best way to get players "immersed" is by adding depth and personality to the game.

Similarly to "myCrib" madden not only needs to have a trophy room that saves those moments, but they also need to remember the past in a franchise. The biggest turn-off for me is when you jump from one season to the next, you lose EVERYTHING from the season before. It was almost like it never happened.

The biggest additions that would add immersion that people have been begging for are:

History Tracking- Let us go through season passed, whether it be the 1970 season, or just to check on the season before. Keep a list of who won what award each year, and let us see previous game scores from seasons past (specifically Super Bowls.)

Custom/ Sharable/ Randomizing Draft Classes- This feature alone from NBA 2k brought me to play that game. The idea of getting real draft classes that can be randomized gives you a little bit of what went missing when NCAA died. Fake players ruin immersion for me, especially when every white quarterback has blonde dreadlocks.

More Customization- Madden has a different definition of customize than 99% of the world. When we think customize we think editing stadiums, uniforms (not happening with the NFL), location, indepth create a coach, face scanning, draft classes, and anything you can imagine. To madden, customization means whether you want to play on all-pro or all-madden.

Uniqueness- As stated above, people want teams and players to play differently. There is a reason the Patriots are so good. They have perfected Bill's offense, and no one has been able to replicate it. What separates a Matt Ryan from Mike Glennon? We want to see it.

Personalities- I will be honest, besides celebrations and tweets, I don't know how this would be exposed. However I see people desperately asking for it, so clearly this is something they want.

[OhMrHanky]

Quote: Originally Posted by Toupal

I could not agree with you more. The best way to get players "immersed" is by adding depth and personality to the game. Similarly to "myCrib" madden not only needs to have a trophy room that saves those moments, but they also need to remember the past in a franchise. The biggest turn-off for me is when you jump from one season to the next, you lose EVERYTHING from the season before. It was almost like it never happened. The biggest additions that would add immersion that people have been begging for are: History Tracking- Let us go through season passed, whether it be the 1970 season, or just to check on the season before. Keep a list of who won what award each year, and let us see previous game scores from seasons past (specifically Super Bowls.) Custom/ Sharable/ Randomizing Draft Classes- This feature alone from NBA 2k brought me to play that game. The idea of getting real draft classes that can be randomized gives you a little bit of what went missing when NCAA died. Fake players ruin immersion for me, especially when every white quarterback has blonde dreadlocks. More Customization- Madden has a different definition of customize than 99% of the world. When we think customize we think editing stadiums, uniforms (not happening with the NFL), location, indepth create a coach, face scanning, draft classes, and anything you can imagine. To madden, customization means whether you want to play on all-pro or all-madden. Uniqueness- As stated above, people want teams and players to play differently. There is a reason the Patriots are so good. They have perfected Bill's offense, and no one has been able to replicate it. What separates a Matt Ryan from Mike Glennon? We want to see it. Personalities- I will be honest, besides celebrations and tweets, I don't know how this would be exposed. However I see people desperately asking for it, so clearly this is something they want.

Yeah, personalities are tough. They could probably add quite a few normal ones. But, the nfl won’t allow them to add, ‘spouse abuser’ personality or something. Maybe, they could generalize personality types. Like, nice, tough, angry, Spartan, warrior, beast, religious. Lol. I laugh at that last one, cause they wouldn’t add that, I don’t think, but obviously thinking about Tebow, there. Lol.

But, in all seriousness, the ‘tough’ personality might play hard (high motor), play dirty (more penalties), but also cause more turnovers. But, he comes with the caveat of possible nfl suspension for something. Again, I know the nfl doesn’t want to do specifics, here. But, I wonder if they would allow, ‘player X was suspended for 4 games due to breaking AN nfl policy.’ Lol. U know? Just keep it completely neutral. But, the beauty in allowing something like that is imagine having an ENTIRE team of roughhouses. Lol. Big hits every play. Crazy turnovers, penalties. I mean, honestly, if done well, u could easily still win/lose any game. In fact, u might lose because of penalties and whatnot.

But, that’s one example of adding personality. And, again, legit, u gotta think about that from a coach and owner perspective. Does that draw more fans? How many ‘tough’ players can u have on your team and succeed without too many penalties and getting enough turnovers to balance it out?

Or, u get a team full of ‘mr nice guys’. Lol. Never get a turnover, never commit a penalty, but solid, consistent play. Never suspended, etc.

So, I mean, honestly, that all just came off the top of my head right now and I like it. . They could easily creat those types of characters and balance their ‘high motor’ and other traits. If they did this, they would need to lock the traits for that personality type, but that’s just fine tuning the idea if they went with it.

History tracking. Yeah, 100%. This doesn’t make any sense to not be in any franchise of any sports game. So, obviously, that would go a long way.

And, uniqueness of the teams based on coach/playbook. Yep, this would go a long way. And, again, have to bring up 2k with their VIP system. Whether that worked well or not, madden needs to invest in this. And, truthfully, just let gamechangers or some side team simply play the game and generate the VIP data over multiple games. That doesn’t need to be done by devs. Just get some competent football individuals who know specific team’s tendencies fairly well, and then just play the game to generated the VIP data and then attach it to specific coaches, coach types, or playbooks.

I recall playing the VIP thing against myself back in the day, and I think it did play a better game simply because it was mimicking my playcalls based on down and distance, I would imagine. And, I think Rex mentioned they’ve sort of worked on this in the background, maybe? But, it’s never been good enough, he thought? I could be wrong about that. But, I believe he mentioned that in an interview over the past few years. So, that would be great. And, maybe, they can do it with the Xbox one X and pro plus, or whatever? Maybe, they need some more memory to compute this stuff? Lol.

Another random one I’ve mentioned before, I think, but what about actual game footage of draft picks? Before u draft them, u know? How cool would that be? I’m sure it would be labor intensive, but I mean, if they want suggestions on these things, this is another immersion factor. Have like 10 clips per player and be somewhat obvious about it, actually. Like, if a CB is a stud, show him intercepting 3-4 passes. But, then, show him missing a tackle or something. For safeties, show some hard hits if he’s a big hitter. Or, show conservative tackles if he’s not. Again, if done well, this could really make the draft more interesting, by getting an actual ‘look’ at the players.

So, it’s just so tough and infuriating, I know we all feel it as cfm’ers, there’s actually SO MUCH they could do to improve it. But, seems like until they get that one vision, will we see any improvements? U know?


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[itsmb8]

A major thing needed is the implementation of coordinators and possibly position coaches, complete with a coaching carousel. Not exactly the same style as NCAA, because there you couldn't compare job offers, but maybe the same style as free agency.

Other things needed would be
-customizable draft classes (ala NBA 2K)
-create a team w/ stadiums, fields, uniforms, (ala NBA 2K)
-better CAP options (ala WWE 2K facescan)
-more presentation options (playoffs, thursday night, sunday, night, monday night)
-pregame/postgame shows etc.
-better draft presentation
-better use of preseason


theres a lot more too but these are mostly the top things that would make CFM more enticing to play.

[SyncereBlackout]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Suspensions won't happen with the NFL badge in place. Just make CFM deep with a lot of different options available.

But a different flavor of suspensions could be coached benching players following poor performances which could motivate or deject the player based on personality traits (passive/balanced/aggressive?)

Which could impact player happiness, role and resign ability


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[SyncereBlackout]

Quote: Originally Posted by Datninja619

Players need a personality. Sent from my SM-G950U using Operation Sports mobile app

They have it, but it means little to nothing financially in owner mode or otherwise.

I like the idea of an internal (to my CFM) and online legacy. What would be great (nudge nudge) is if top online or CFM hall of players came back as coaches with traits in whatever attribute they had over 90 for example.

If my coach(es), scout or trainer could improve or regress based on performance that would be nice too. Also if my coach decided he was tired of winning super bowls and retired and took his xp game prep bonuses with him) would make consecutively winning the super bowl more difficult.

Since there are times my online CFM slows down significantly (holidays where guys need more family time or when work picks up) the ability to focus 5 players (two offense, two defense, and one special teams) in daily or weekly challenges which can come from longshot, skills trainer or MUT would be nice.

Speaking of development and xp(I acknowledge this is is unpopular but until we move from xp grin and bear) ... if there could be a tiered level or bonus for performing well in the daily events I would like that:

X 1 for gold
X2 if you have the highest score of all CFM members
X 2.5 if you have the highest score of all friends who play madden
X3 if you are in the top 5% of all online players

These kinds of features would significantly increase replay ability of CFM. But there’s one underlying assumption I’m making... it’s all for nothing if we don’t have adequate roster management tools:

RFA
Compensatory picks
Tender offers
A black box multi variable re-sign system
And overhauled cpu roster management so trading and other cpu moves make sense


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[tubaSimulator]

I appreciate the work you've put into the OP, Toupal, and even though I wouldn't oppose implementing some of the things you mention, and I definitely think they could add something to the game, to me those things are not about replayability. Maybe its just me, but any time a sports title is asking me to do certain things or play the game a certain way to add to a points total that ultimately is pointless, I cringe because it leads me to believe that maybe the gameplay which leads to said rewards isn't very good or enjoyable in itself. So, the game injects an end goal which you must grind towards only to discover at the end that the pointless reward wasn't really worth grinding for.

I say 'pointless' because... I don't see the point of them. If I play 5 different careers in Football Manager, all lasting 20 seasons, the only thing that matters to me in the end is whether I enjoyed those 20 seasons or not. A score telling me I've scored more points than myself or someone else doesn't matter. It doesn't matter after the 20 seasons are done and it certainly doesn't matter while playing those 20 seasons. If I get a news article when I retire that says I've been put in the hall of fame, don't get me wrong; that would be a great thing. But it's only a small addition at the end of a several months long (IRL) career. It's kind of like that summary screen at the end of Civ V. It's nice to have but I'm not gonna play another 8 hour campaign because I want different numbers on the end screen which I spend 5 minutes looking at.

The other thing I don't like about those points systems is that they give clear guidelines for what success is even though success depends on the teams, the players and the goals they set. A 9-7 season and just barely missing the playoffs would be terrible for the Patriots but considered a successful season for the Browns. Success in itself is meaningless unless you have goals (the famous quote being "A millionaire is successful at being a millionaire and a donkey is successful at being a donkey"). Goals are dynamic and change depending on the team, how the season goes, players performing or not performing, injuries etc. If you have a healthy roster but miss the playoffs as the Falcons, that might be reason enough to fire you. But if you lost several of your key players to injuries early in the season, missing the playoffs wouldn't be a disaster because the goals would change. And so, having guidelines dictating the same criteria for success independent of all these different factors would ruin my immersion rather than enhance it.

Which brings me to my point/claim about replayability;

A good sports game provides immersion and enjoyment no matter what kind of career you choose. It doesn't focus on the final destination, but the journey itself (which is probably a quote straight out of a romantic b movie I'm sure).

Let's use examples from the console sports titles rather than a PC manager game which of course is very different from Madden. Last autumn I had EA Access and played the full version of FIFA 17 for about 2 hours. After 2 hours I was bored with the gameplay and never played the game again. I didn't even start a career mode since the vast majority of playing time is spent playing the games. Which was a very boring experience. After uninstalling FIFA17 I tried out the Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 demo. I hadn't played a PES game since 2010 or 2011 I think and this was just a demo with a limited number of teams and with short games, so I certainly didn't have high hopes.. I ended up playing the demo for about 6-7 hours that day and continued to play it on a daily basis until I got my hands on a copy.

Now, I'm not saying PES 2017 was a fantastic, flawless game but to me at least, a limited demo where the only thing you could do was play short games with the same teams over and over added replayability where as a full version of FIFA 2017 did not. How?

1. Even though you only had a few opponents to choose from, you noticed that you were playing different opponents. They obviously had different players with different abilities which obviously should make a noticable difference, but they also had different tactics, different approaches to the game and you had to adapt. No two teams looked the same (although in the full version some of this was lost as you played a lot more teams, but I still experienced a good variation and never felt like two opponents played exactly the same) and even when I played with Arsenal against Atlético Madrid 9 or 10 games in a row, each individual game felt different.

2. Each game and opponent being different also meant my tactical approach changed depending on my opponent. And here's where PES2017 stood out for me; I've played so much FIFA over the years that I'm just used to tactical changes not making any difference what so ever so it actually took me an hour or so playing PES before I noticed that tactical changes had a noticeable impact on the game, mainly because I didn't make any tactical changes until then assuming it wouldn't make a difference. This realization is actually what caused me to play Arsenal - Atlético over and over again; I got so immersed in the tactical aspect of the game I just wanted to replay the same game and try out different things. The game forced me to be a manager by telling me that my tactical inputs actually made a difference, sometimes for the better, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

The result? A gameplay that rewarded you for being a good manager through 90 minutes and punished you for making tactical errors, either on the tactics screen or making bad decisions on the field itself. And that's what replayability is to me. It's well-known that the career/franchise mode in PES is not ... great and it doesn't offer awesome rewards for achieving certain things (although marching onto the field to the Champions League hymn for the first time can be considered one!). But it's very easy to ignore all that when all you want to do is get to the next game.

A sports title is a game where you spend 80%+ of your time playing an actual game and if 80%+ of your time is spent just grinding through the exact same game only with different colored jerseys over and over again, I'm not gonna play that game for very long, no matter how great everything else around it is.

As I said, PES 2017 is by no means the perfect game, but it did a lot of great things that made me WANT to play the next game while in FIFA I just wanted to get the next game over with.

And all this leads me back to my initial claim about replayability (and let me try to link this to Madden);

It shouldn't matter what team you choose to play with and it shouldn't matter what your results are as long as the games themselves immerses you instead of bores you and makes you want to play the next game. In the NFL there's a lot of focus on who's gonna make the playoffs, free agent signings, injuries and so on, but we all watch the NFL because of the games themselves. And any game, whether it's the two best or the two worst teams facing each other, can be highly entertaining and memorable (which is why I still remember the Browns @ Lions game that was played 8 YEARS AGO!). What makes us sit hours and hours in front of our TV every Sunday is because of the games themselves, not everything surrounding them. So, THAT'S where I as the head coach needs to see an impact, MY impact on the team, not in free agency or the draft.

I would much rather go 0-16 and see how my decisions make a difference on the field (i.e. being rewarded with a great play for putting a certain player with a certain skill-set in the right position to make a play or come up with a good game plan for our next opponent) than go 16-0 with a feeling of not having any impact on what's going on on the field at all. The former immerses me in the tactical side of the game and has me scouting for certain player abilities that could fit on a certain play in a certain situation or taking plays out of the play book because I don't have the right players to run it. The latter creates a desire to just get to the end of the season so I can be done with the season already and do something else. A game shouldn't make me feel excited about simulating the rest of the games and getting to the offseason, even though the offseason should be exciting in itself; it should make me excited about the game plan I have for my next opponent and playing the next game. If a game provides THAT, I'm gonna come back and play it over and over again with multiple different teams of different qualities and with different goals, creating unique stories every time.

No two teams are the same; they have different players at different positions with different abilities fitting different play books in different systems, so how come they all look exactly the same? Every team should look different, play on different strengths and demand of you, the head coach, a different approach to each game. When you lose, you should know why you lost, why your game plan failed and the blame should be on you, not the game itself. And when you win, you should feel rewarded for coming up with a good game plan with the right plays and players in the right situations. A game that can do that can give you just as good a feeling over a single play you planned to perfection as winning the Super Bowl (maybe not as intense but still).

That's what a good sports game should do and that in itself adds all the replayability you need.

Apologies for the long rant but I just wanted to make my point clear because I think this is an important discussion. When Rex is talking about replayability I can't help thinking he's completely lost the plot and has no idea what makes gamers play a certain game for more than just a few hours or a few days. I've had lots of fun careers in multiple editions of Football Manager and I'm one of those guys who always start at the very bottom of the league system with a terrible team where our only goal is to survive and with no goal of winning promotion, winning the top division or winning the Champions League. Success isn't predicated on winning the biggest trophies; it depends on the team you're managing and your goals. In fact, I've never won the Champions League or Europa League or any big international tournament in any of my careers, but I still keep coming back to the game to have another go. That good feeling you get from achieving something in a game doesn't come from the big tournament wins but it comes from all the little things like seeing your tactical philosophies actually working and winning you games. My career, or my story, is always unique and my goals change along the way as the story develops.

That to me is what adds immersion and, more importantly, adds replayability.