Can Free Agency be made better and how?

[stinkubus]

Free agency would be better if it were ever necessary to resort to it. With smart drafting and development it was never necessary in M18, and I can't recall too many big time players (high 80s and up OVR, give or take) ever being available.

[jfsolo]

Quote: Originally Posted by stinkubus

Free agency would be better if it were ever necessary to resort to it. With smart drafting and development it was never necessary in M18, and I can't recall too many big time players (high 80s and up OVR, give or take) ever being available.

I saw what I would consider to be a reasonable amount of 85-90(like 10) OVR players available each off season during my CFM last year(15 plus seasons), but I agree that it wasn't necessary to sign them because of the ease of drafting and developing. I think that the development aspect will be harder this year, so that will provide some incentive to be a bit more active in free agency, IMO.

[GiantBlue76]

Quote: Originally Posted by BreakingBad2013

Every team management system in madden is dull and a poor representation of what NFL fans love. There’s no human element. You can see which teams and what other teams have offered. You can see all ratings, and scheme hasn’t and still won’t matter. There’s no bust potential. Players are too similar to FEEL a huge difference. Almost every player is good enough to be on the field full time. Holes can all be filled in one season, and you’ll know exactly what you’re getting before the step foot on your practice field. Injury history isn’t a factor, ever. Player development isn’t difficult, or realistic. Roles and/or Badges aren’t in the game, which would add some depth. Players have no morale, no brain, no shortcoming other than their ratings. Team chemistry isn’t a thing, you can add 40+ new players and no miss a beat. No coordinators to add to the scheme fits and other things. There’s literally just looking at a list of ratings and making a decision solely based on those ratings. Doesn’t matter if they’re a 2 gap DL, doesn’t matter if he’s a zone running back, or a QB who needs simple reads. And gameplay isn’t at a high enough level to make any of this matter when it’s time to hit the gridiron. How could it be made better? Reverse everything I just said. And add live off season for online leagues. Instead of advances, have everything live for a specified amount of hours. Wether it be 1 or 72 hours, players can send in offers and players can sign randomly at any time. Wether it be a perfect scheme, team, location, coach fit for a NCAA style “insta-commit” or in the last hour for a guy looking for the highest payday. It could be completely random, or based on priorities which differ by each player. Get rid of the scouting system, completely, rebuild that, so players aren’t drafted 5 rounds early because they’re “all B’s and run a 4.3” so you have players who will really bust in the draft. I’ve always loved the idea of hiding ratings, and feeling players on the field. Making practice and pre-season useful. Maybe unlocking them as the season goes on, or being fluid week to week. The biggest thing in being in the NFL is consistency and improvement. Having fluid ratings would set apart a Tom Brady and a Jameis Winston.

Great post but not rocket science. You're simply taking what's done in real life and modeling it to the game. That is the approach that is absent with development of this title. Instead, some sort of bastardized version of the real life element is "invented" and does not resonate at all with the user because it's completely disconnected from what happens in real life.

[scoot4nat]

One secret bid on top end players.

Ability to structure contracts so that money doesn't gradually escalate.

[CM Hooe]

Here's how I'd propose to improve offseason free agency, and I'll try to keep this to stuff that might be doable in a single dev cycle:

0 - remove maximum salary restrictions. My league saw the fate of free agent OVR 99 Aaron Donald determined by a random dice roll because no team could offer him more than 7yr / $240M. There were several user teams in my league with enough cap room to make that offer, and many did. Never mind that that offer value is stupid and unrealistic, I don't care about that in the slightest; my league was basically no-holds-barred. I do care, however, about users feeling like there is literally no gameplay lever they could pull to increase their chance to win a free agent bid on a great player, then feeling gipped when Donald chooses to sign with any one of those teams for no discernible reason.

1 - implement more mechanisms to minimize the value of bid sniping in multiplayer leagues. I define bid sniping as a user - commonly the commissioner - checking all the bids other users have made before advancing the week so he may increase his bid amounts to MAX + $1 on any player he wants. The random noise in player decision making between close bids introduced in M18 helps this a bit, but I'd like to see more done here. One thing I'd consider using to do this is porting over the concept of promises from NCAA Football and using promises made as a first-level tiebreaker rather than the random noise. Users could promise things such as stats, awards, starts, and championships. Coach integrity would affect the value of each promise, and integrity would go up and down based on promises achieved or failed.

2 - some amount of player personality in bid resolution. I'd begin by introducing the idea of players having a "career phase" concept: a young player is growing to try and earn a big contract later, the end-of-rookie-contract player and/or talented player looks for a big-money contract, and a declining veteran player below some OVR threshold (let's arbitrarily say OVR 85 or lower for now) is looking to win a championship. Growing players would favor offers from teams with strong coaches for his position (based on player development traits owned) and available playing time, cash-in players would favor total money above all else (basically the current bid resolution logic), and late-career veterans would favor teams with talented rosters above money and playing time. I would not want to immediately overcomplicate personalities with various percentages for a bunch of fluff stuff like the older Madden games used to do. Rather I want to communicate clearly where a player is at in his career and immediately establish his top career priority at that time.

A change I would not make: I would not hide team bids. Madden multiplayer franchises are social creatures, I don't want anyone's bids hidden. I want to see who my friends and peers are bidding on and banter with them about how they are building their teams.

[khaliib]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

2 - some amount of player personality in bid resolution. I'd begin by introducing the idea of players having a "career phase" concept:.

What’s crazy is that each player already has a “Career Phase” designation within their profile make up.

Here's the List: All Fields are found in "Player" tab
-enum name="CareerPhase"-
-attribute name="Incline" value="0"
-attribute name="Plateau" value="1"
-attribute name="Decline" value="2"
-attribute name="Retired" value="3"
-enum-

There’s also a Trade/No Trade clause...
-enum name="TradeStatus"-
-attribute name="None" value="0"
-attribute name="Tradable" value="1"
-attribute name="TradableLocked" value="2"
-attribute name="Untradable" value="3"
-attribute name="UntradableLocked" value="4"
-attribute name="Reserved" value="5"
-enum-

PC folks are going to have access to so many aspects that are already being used, but hidden from front end access on console versions.

[DoTheSankeyLeg]

I know a lot of people would hate this but it would be really cool if some players just refused to sign with you. If you already have a star player at RB, Le'veon Bell isn't even gonna listen to your offer. If you're a small market team with very little recent success, like Buffalo, Cleveland, or Tampa Bay, you need to seriously overpay to sign a star. Someone else in here had the idea of not being able to see the other team's bids, I love that idea too. This feature needs to be more challenging.

[triplechin]

The most important thing is that players must play differently. Ratings must truly matter. There must be a distinct difference between differently rated players.

XP needs to go. Get rid of the guaranteed aspect of progression and that will open up a lot more variety.

Specific desires from players, whether it be gametime, money, location, etc.

Custom contract values.

Players should have a market value, determined mostly by their in-game rating as well as a production rating that I think should be added. (DE with 99 fmv and 58 sacks but 80 overall would ask for a higher contract than a DE with 85 fmv and 10 sacks but 85 overall).

I've laid out more details of how I think everything should tie together in my franchise post but that's the essence of it.