Madden Features through the Years

[SOU7GLO]

Would be great to see back of the box features including:

-Robust user profile stats

-Robust franchise stat tracking (incl. historical tracking and awards)

-Player fatigue/stamina impacting gameplay throughout the game

-Player awareness matters impacting reacting and shutting down plays that are spammed

-Realistic Replay Challenges

-Realistic field/uniform degradation

-Defensive holding penalties

-Dynamic weather including realistic wind, light to heavy rainstorms/snow showers, hot and cold days based on geographical climates

These features took 5min to think up and post...Many of these have been featured in the game before.

EA must have had a compelling presentation and plan to convince the NFL to extend the exclusive license. EA and the NFL used the word ‘innovation’ over the next 5 years. Many of us would love to see that. However, many of us also want replication dating back to Madden 05.

[jmurphy31]

Quote: Originally Posted by PhillyPhanatic14

Thanks for putting this together man! Cool to see them side by side. Would be cool to update this each year going forward too. The running game has been in there a ton recently (including 21) and this will be the 3rd straight year that celebrations is a part of their tag line. Such a weird thing to highlight for so many years in a row.

Thanks. I alomost ahd the ambition to go back as far as the original Xbox. I would of liked to make it a little easier to compare to see what actually has been touted as marketing features, how many times have things been focused on, what has been phased out after adding and what things thye promoised and missed completely

[jmurphy31]

Quote: Originally Posted by SolidSquid

They really haven’t added much football or strategy to their football sim

Nope. The more you look at it, the more it shows the focus is on Human and Human and the competitive scene. Most of the "improvements are stick skills" with very little on Football Knowledge, Human vs CPU (AI improvements and Franchise Additions).

When the focus in multiple years was simpliflying and shortening the game experience it is not a great thing.

[Shogunreaper]

there were a couple of early ps3/360 gen maddens that had a rewind feature that i thought was cool.

[jmurphy31]

Quote: Originally Posted by Shogunreaper

there were a couple of early ps3/360 gen maddens that had a rewind feature that i thought was cool.

I never liked the way it was used. I dont like a "do-over" while I am playing. But the way they showed the replay and broke down your mistake would of been ideal to actually use for a replay/highlight system for post play action. That would of been much better than the EA created highligts where they over zoom in on the football or a linemen and get no feel for the play that just occurred. I think they called it BEYOND BROADCAST or something like that

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by mtmetcalfe

For 5 years (Madden 10 - Madden 15) Franchise mode we basically completely ignored.

I'd disagree with this. I think Madden 12 was really the last year where franchise saw a huge focus and definitely didn't go ignored. It had a ton of features and laid the groundwork for a lot of really good things moving forward. Unfortunately the next year pretty much undid a large part of that and the following years had to be spent integrating a bunch of old features that didn't cross over as well as tuning XP.

[mtmetcalfe]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

I'd disagree with this. I think Madden 12 was really the last year where franchise saw a huge focus and definitely didn't go ignored. It had a ton of features and laid the groundwork for a lot of really good things moving forward. Unfortunately the next year pretty much undid a large part of that and the following years had to be spent integrating a bunch of old features that didn't cross over as well as tuning XP.

So would you say that 13 was the year things really went down hill? For some reason I remember 10 being the year but maybe I misremember. I thought that was the year they tore everything up for connected franchise.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by mtmetcalfe

So would you say that 13 was the year things really went down hill? For some reason I remember 10 being the year but maybe I misremember. I thought that was the year they tore everything up for connected franchise.

Definitely. Madden 13 was the first year of Connected Careers and what became CFM and I liken it to the Madden 06/07 transition, speaking specifically to franchise mode, where it basically felt like a reset button was hit. Madden 12 did all these really good things with expanded rosters, hidden rookie ratings, dynamic player performance, etc. Even things like changing how free agency worked and it finally felt like franchise was getting back towards the level it was at before the transition to 360/PS3 and it was in a really good place.

Then came CCM and a ton of that stuff was gone along with a bunch of other standard features. A lot of people forget that you couldn't edit players or even use a custom roster and had to use a specific CCM roster file as well. Sliders didn't work at all for the first few months it was out. It was terrible. Then the next couple years were spent adding a bunch of "community requests" which were basically just a bunch of features that had been taken out and returning (editing players, import draft class, etc.). It did some good things with the news feed as well and things like retired players coming back and there definitely was some promise but then it got into a bunch of UI changes and repackaging what was already there while barely adding anything new or built upon and it's pretty much still in that stage now.