OS Roundtable: #FixMaddenFranchise and Reaction to Face of Franchise Improvements in Madden 21

[IIIPercent]

I've seen many members get banned over the years for these types of comments. Good to see OS finally criticizing Madden and discussing, at least in the shallow end, EA's broken promises and failures.*

[Devaster]

Quote: Originally Posted by ChaseB

I do want to call something out here. I don't want people to get lost in the weeds here by making this some sort of "modes war" thing. It's infighting that does no one any good. Franchise mode peeps have bad blood towards MUT fans etc. and it's always been sort of misplaced. Instead, the idea should be more that EA does clearly understand the importance of "live updates" and "live content" but just these companies seem to forget the idea of "live" thus matters for everything now. If you have a mode in your game that's stagnant and not improving, then it's dying. The conceit of creating new content during the year was to keep people engaged all year. If you're not going to support a mode then remove it because you're doing it no favors. This is why I sort of don't mind when companies remove an online franchise mode if almost no one plays it and they're not supporting it. Don't introduce something if you don't have plans to support it etc. Every game company now gets the importance of adding to things, it's been a nice part about content updates. But the point is make sure companies also understand consumers expect that sort of support across the spectrum. This means for something like franchise mode, giving it meaningful updates every cycle, especially if you're not going to focus on it as much during the year itself.

Great insight and completely agree.

[IIIPercent]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoshC1977

Frankly speaking, it's clear that EA's marketing folks have the same issue that also plagues many gamers; a distinct and palpable lack of patience. Longshot flops, oh wait, let's focus more on franchise, oh wait, let's focus on player career modes again. It's a pure lack of confidence in their brand and this constant wavering back and forth in lieu of really embracing Madden for what it is and building upon it. To use a sports analogy, they're trying too hard to smack a HR every at-bat and they are striking out a LOT. I can only imagine how obnoxious that has to be for the development team to be given new marching orders every time out. (We've seen similar paradigm shifts in gameplay and graphical engines) You buy 2k, you know exactly what you're getting, MyPlayer, MyTeam, and MyLeague (with MyGM for good measure). Those modes are constant and (for better and worse) don't change all that much aside from the real details. To continue that analogy, 2k is hitting a lot of singles, which is helping "the team" score more runs - just at a slow pace. I'm not a particular fan of that series (particularly of their franchise offerings), but can fully acknowledge that they have been much more consistent. If Madden marketing folks were more patient and built year after year on what they have - we'd be in a much better spot.

Hitting a home run out of the park and missing? I disagree. They are actually the Madden CPU on their game winning drive throwing a checkdown with 12 seconds left and no timeouts running to the LoS as time runs out.

I've never worked for a gaming dev but I've been a computer engineer for years in massive organizations. Everywhere I've been, certain implementations get all the resources and money - the ones that actually generate revenue. The other stuff? Those staff members are underpaid, lacking resources, and no one cares about their work - they simply keep their environments afloat. That's how I feel about Madden.

We live in a world driven by instant gratification and a mixture of mom and dad's credit card and poor financial decisions spending absorbent amounts of money on in-game purchases. EA really has no use for us plebs.

It's time to accept that there is not and likely won't ever be competition in this market and we will never get a truly quality product. Either quit buying the game or embrace the suck.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by IIIPercent

I've seen many members get banned over the years for these types of comments. Good to see OS finally criticizing Madden and discussing, at least in the shallow end, EA's broken promises and failures.*

Well, there's a way to properly criticize and critique something. Even if you feel like the modding team is overbearing at times, generally speaking bans occur due to incessant drilling on points or just not being able to moderate one's own negativity to fit into something worth reading that's not just venting.

There's still a difference between "EA sucks, fire everyone" and what these discussions have been. There's a way to be negative and actually meaningfully do it, and that's the part people struggle with at times.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoshC1977

Frankly speaking, it's clear that EA's marketing folks have the same issue that also plagues many gamers; a distinct and palpable lack of patience. Longshot flops, oh wait, let's focus more on franchise, oh wait, let's focus on player career modes again. It's a pure lack of confidence in their brand and this constant wavering back and forth in lieu of really embracing Madden for what it is and building upon it. To use a sports analogy, they're trying too hard to smack a HR every at-bat and they are striking out a LOT. I can only imagine how obnoxious that has to be for the development team to be given new marching orders every time out. (We've seen similar paradigm shifts in gameplay and graphical engines) You buy 2k, you know exactly what you're getting, MyPlayer, MyTeam, and MyLeague (with MyGM for good measure). Those modes are constant and (for better and worse) don't change all that much aside from the real details. To continue that analogy, 2k is hitting a lot of singles, which is helping "the team" score more runs - just at a slow pace. I'm not a particular fan of that series (particularly of their franchise offerings), but can fully acknowledge that they have been much more consistent. If Madden marketing folks were more patient and built year after year on what they have - we'd be in a much better spot.

Agree on the whole, but 2K goofed up MyGM pretty bad this year so I think that one did not remain a constant.

[ForUntoOblivionSoar∞]

Quote: Originally Posted by IIIPercent

Hitting a home run out of the park and missing? I disagree. They are actually the Madden CPU on their game winning drive throwing a checkdown with 12 seconds left and no timeouts running to the LoS as time runs out. I've never worked for a gaming dev but I've been a computer engineer for years in massive organizations. Everywhere I've been, certain implementations get all the resources and money - the ones that actually generate revenue. The other stuff? Those staff members are underpaid, lacking resources, and no one cares about their work - they simply keep their environments afloat. That's how I feel about Madden. We live in a world driven by instant gratification and a mixture of mom and dad's credit card and poor financial decisions spending absorbent amounts of money on in-game purchases. EA really has no use for us plebs. It's time to accept that there is not and likely won't ever be competition in this market and we will never get a truly quality product. Either quit buying the game or embrace the suck.

Rex Dickson quit because EA refused to allow him to improve Franchise mode and other sim football stuff. I think he might have deleted the tweet by now, but basically someone attacked him for Franchise mode sucking a while ago, and he responded that it wasn't his fault that not being able to improve it because of pressure from management in part drove his resignation.


As for numbers of people who played it, there is this:


https://twitter.com/Rex_Dickson_/sta...68910882947072


"I may have dropped a hint or two," he says after being shown a "franchise blueprint" created by users with respect to why he no longer works at EA. He quotes the following with that comment:

[ForUntoOblivionSoar∞]

^^ More elaboration:


https://twitter.com/Rex_Dickson_/sta...76262339055617

[Jkpress]

I like many others have played Madden since the very first one. My support for the game has decreased over the years only buying it when it's on sale only to find out that the improvements aren't even worth the sale price.(Play your previous year Madden to compare imrovements. Is it patches or a true upgrade?) Maybe classic franchise mode players they want to weed out by not improving it at all or very little. I don't have anything against the other modes and I have played them but I still prefer franchise mode. As long as Madden makes EA money they could care less about classic franchise mode. I hope to read reviews from other players when they review the game to give me a reason to buy it other than MUT. For me the cycle with Madden ends. I'm tired of the hype machine every year, or hoping for a "much improved gameplay, modes, etc." Sounds like a wash, rinse, repeat cycle every year with Madden. Madden won't miss my yearly donation, time to look elsewhere.