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Re: Madden NFL 21 The Yard Trailer & Plenty of Details About The New Mode
Personally, I think it matches up with what has been most successful with both their NHL and NBA Live series. Obviously, Live 19 flopped, but it's MyPlayer mode, The One, was perfect.
The issue is, once players are locked into a MyPlayer mode, I think it is harder to lure them back to the other game. These modes rely on mass use to be fun.
EA should be pushing for crossplay for all their sports titles. It creates the largest base of players, and it makes competing with them that much more difficult.
But this has been my argument for the last few years. What has propelled NBA2K to the monster it is, it's MyPlayer and MyPark or whatever it is called. It is the destination for pick-up basketball. No one cares if it is better or worse than any other game. That's where the players are.
If you can make a sport work with 3-6 players on a side, you can make a mode like this work. But football is different than those other sports. Extraordinarily more power is given to one position over the others, and fewer players on the field means more missed tackles will be TDs. Is it actually fun to run a route, but maybe never get the ball because some dude has turned himself into Lamar Jackson?
At this point, they really are just throwing stuff out and seeing how it works, what parts work, and what parts don't. Face of the Franchise was pretty terrible, but it did get them some data.
KO Superstar was the first Madden mode where I just couldn't shut it off. It needs to be more than it is, but I loved its take on Draft Champions, creating a great way to play quick 20 minute games that were fun, with teams that felt personal.
I could see The Yard still being more interesting to me as a 1v1 game than a 6v6 or 7v7 game. What makes The One and World of Chel work is that there is a lot of solo content. You don't have to play online. But the mode does prep you for what to do if you want to try it out.
I would love an NFL version of Court Battles from Live 19. That is a single player mode in which your avatar plays along side whatever stars you "acquire" in various game modes. Play to 21. Play two halves. Play to a 15 point lead. Change threes to 1, but dunks to 3. And then build your team to exploit that. Further, you can force your opponent to use certain types of players, or restrict certain types of players, and inflict other disadvantages that you can build your team to take advantage of.
But then you don't play as that team. That is your AI defender of your court. Instead, you take another team and play on someone else's court, trying to build a team that can deal with the obstacles you are given. The longer you go with no one beating your home court, the more points ranking you higher or whatever.
The entire mode is single player. You never play anyone online directly. You can absolutely target and challenge your friends, though. You can go to their court and beat their team, forcing them to beat yours to to get their court back.
Further, this is not a player lock version. Even though your player is on the team with the other stars, you control it like a normal Play Now game of basketball, controlling the man with the ball.
But it introduces you to creating a player for yourself. You earn XP and such to improve your player. And if you want a look further than court battles, the game has The One paths that are 100% single player.
And while I always suspected, and still do, that this will change, these modes are all free. There are no boosts to buy. There is no way to use cash to buy more of whatever. Ultimate Team remains revenue driven, but for now, EA is not attaching microtransactions to these modes. While that could change with any release, for now, it is also a super player friendly mode, if you like this kind of sports gaming.
And The Yard absolutely looks like it could do what Court Battles did for Live 19, but with football instead.
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08-14-2020, 09:17 AM
