XP Slider Question

[canes21]

I have a bad habit of using way too many words, so I summarized my question at the very end of the post if you want to skip my short novel.

I know this is a sliders related topic, so it may potentially be better suited for the Slider sub-board, but I'm posting here as there is more traffic and the question also revolves around Franchise mode as a whole.

I know we have numerous good samaritans in this community that take their time to do many simulations so they can iron out XP sliders that lead to rosters within Franchise remaining consistent with ratings spread from year 1 to year 60. Those are great people and I'm appreciative of their work each year as I always use whatever set(s) pop up here so my Franchise can remain somewhat balanced.

My question is, if someone wanted to play with severely reduced XP sliders, what are the benefits and drawbacks to this?

In my head, taking a good XP slider set from here and then reducing the values by 50% or more sounds interesting to a degree because I like the idea of the XP system being a bit dialed back and in my head it seems it would make drafting and development traits even more important. However, a drawback I could see is it would really hurt draft logic because reduced values obviously means players aren't progressing as quickly which means a team that drafts a 75 overall QB and starts him immediately may only see him progress to a 79 overall in 4 years leading to them drafting another QB despite their current guy showing some promise under the reduced XP sliders.

Does lowering XP sliders introduce too much wonkiness to make it worth seeing any potential benefits? Has anyone here ever experimented with lowered XP sliders and simmed to see how league composition and draft logic behaved as the years went on?

Does it introduce more parity, but make Star and Supetstar players even more valuable allowing them to be real franchise players worth spending top dollar on? Right now, the XP system allows you to turn anyone into a star if they perform well enough and you focus on them in practice consistently. While that's fun for many people, I'm personally not a fan of that and much prefer the idea of a Development Trait being more of a Potential rating meaning someone with a Normal trait may never have the chance to be a top tier player unless they see their trait upgrade at some point. I also love the idea of making star players even more valuable and impactful and I feel lowered XP sliders would do that because a Superstar trait can still reach 90+ overall, but a Normal trait player wouldn't have much hope for it without a lot of luck, unlike the current system.

I realize this is a lot of word salad and I could have asked it in less words, so here's a tl;dr...

tl;dr: Does lowering XP sliders lead to more parity? Does it make Star and Superstar players much more important and impactful? Does it bring in too much wonkiness with draft logic and team building logic with the CPU?

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[JoshC1977]

It's a double-edged sword with lower XP sliders...

You get a lot fewer top end players (many positions will struggle to have anyone over 90 OVR depending on how far you go - this leads to difficulties in individual ratings hitting key thresholds, many of which are at or above 90). So, you get a huge muddled middle (again, depending on how low you go), which leads to the massive drawback, too much parity.

What I played with a little on '22 and am now using on '21 (since that will be my game for the next year+) is leaving XP sliders alone but adjusting the sliders for star/SS/XF.

I am actually dropping the number of Stars as far as I can go and maxing-out the superstars. It does a couple of things (based on a couple of sims I ran back on '22)...

1. More superstars = more players with interesting abilities. This is a great way to add more competitiveness to the game and to get some true powerhouse teams along with patsies. (Definitely suggest doing a yearly scrub of abilities to purge useless skills like hot route skills and so on)
2. A larger gap between high-end players and "filler".
3. it also seems to help in getting more high-end linemen, which is a usual sore spot with the game's progression.
4. Fewer star devs usually mean few older vets with star dev (as the game seems to favor handing out star dev to younger players first). In theory, this will cause more of the mediocre old farts to cycle out more quickly as more of them will be normal dev....probably more important early in franchises.

I don't know that this really answers your question or not; but just some thoughts.

[oneamongthefence]

One thing that's gonna happen is free agency is gonna be pretty barebones in terms of star talent. Since contract demands are based on overall and not how good a player is compared to his peers you're gonna see teams with plenty of cap space so teams will hold onto their best players which means roster turnover is gonna pretty low. You'll also see draft picks struggle to get on the field early on. The top players at each position will stay there until regression kicks in.

You could sim 5 or 10 years and then lower xp sliders. If you watch Hurricanes franchises he adjust xp sliders as the seasons go on based on how well players are progressing at certain positions.

I generally adjust them every few years in mine to get the results I like. If I see a bunch of 99 overall running backs, I'll lower it. If corners are weakness for all teams across the board I'll raise it.

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[canes21]

I appreciate the responses, fellas.

Some of the potential cons you all listed are some things I was worried may be potential issues. Your approach to changing the number of stars and superstars is interesting, Josh. It sounds like some real potential fun, especially seeing teams that become powerhouses for years.

The free agency thing is something I initially thought of, but I had though EA changed it to where contracts were now based on a player's ratings relative to the rest of the league at their position, e.g. if a guys is a 70 overall QB, but you adjusted ratings to where he is the top QB in the league, he will get top QB money. I may be wrong here.

I am in Madden 22 right now and took some XP sliders from here and made every value 75% of its original value. I am 6 or 7 years in now, I forget, but I saw some promising results.

First, I liked seeing the lower overalls. I personally enjoy seeing less players 90 or better. Second, I paid zero attention to free agency, I literally skipped it entirely each off-season as I was more focused on progression and draft logic, but I did notice in the draft recap screen many teams had limited cap space. When perusing through all the rosters it did seem like there was decent player movement throughout the league, but again, I never paid attention to contracts, but I did see a good amount of recognizable players moving between teams.

One thing I didn't pay enough attention to and I wish I had was seeing how many rookies ended up starting or playing meaningful snaps. I did see some really good generated rookies at times that definitely got playing time. I am talking 83 overall players with X-factor abilities. That is always fun to see. I enjoy seeing generated players more than I should for whatever reason.

I was pleased with how generated players were progressing. By the time many of them reached their mid to late 20's I was seeing their faces near the top of the league at their positions which was good. I was worried they may progress too slowly and the top 10 for each position would be filled with 30+ year olds that hadn't started regressing much yet, but I was pleasantly surprised to constantly see younger generated players reaching the top tier of their position groups. I maybe would have liked to see it happen slightly more frequently, but that is obviously adjustable by just going with an 80% value instead of 75% for example.

Another thing I noticed, and this may have been coincidental, was that there were about 4ish teams that stayed at the top of the league, and then there were another handful of teams that were fringe playoff teams annually, which I think is realistic. The Chiefs, Cowboys, 49ers were constantly the teams to beat. The Giants and Steelers were continuously bottom feeders because they were having bad drafts. Both teams failed at finding a QB that had anything but a Normal dev trait, so despite NY going through 3 rookie QB's, all fizzled out and never progressed past an aging Daniel Jones at 73 overall. I felt joy seeing their virtual misery.

The Cowboys angered me because they had all of the luck in the drafts it seemed. It was like every other pick was a superstar player. They had a freak safety, a freak TE, a freak OL, a freak LB. They just stacked talent and that talent started early and contributed big time when looking at the stats. I hate them, but it was cool to see a team have that success in the draft, and it was nice seeing generated players at these values progress into studs so young and be top tier players.

I think I will try a reduced XP system in Madden 23 if I get confirmation on the free agency system. If it is relative with regards to ratings and contracts, I will really lean towards going lower XP in 23. The only other concern I'd have is seeing how Player Tags are impacted with lower overall ratings throughout the league. If the Tags have hard ratings thresholds, then that definitely could be an issue, but if it is all done relative to the rest of the league, then the plan remains potentially viable.

[kingsofthevalley]

I play with XP sliders (besides any related to kicker/punter) at 15. Have no idea what its actually doing lol. I just imagine that its making everyone have to work extremely hard to progress, which I like. Gotta be a real workhorse in my franchises to upgrade!!

[Grey_Osprey]

Reduced XP sliders will give you lower OVR, which will help reign in the # of superhero abilities. It also makes the draft more relevant.

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[Momoney168]

I do my CFM with TFG rosters and XP on 80%. I play with dev scenarios off because the CPU doesn’t get them. In the past I did 32 team control and would click the scenario for each team but I found that to be too time consuming. However it also helped younger players on CPU teams develop and move older players off the rosters, so it may be something I look to do again in the future.
I also do some manual dev trait changes in the off-season with a few house rules such as all RBs 29 and over lose a trait level to start the season unless they were an award winner the previous year. I also do manual upgrades for OL and other younger players throughout the rosters. I have several other rules that I do as well to make the development/regression more realistic.
I’ve been debating how I’ll do my main CFM in 23 and working to refine my CFM processes. Things I’ve looked at are lower number of XF/SS players or lower XP. But In my testing that lowers context offers and in 3 years every team has 50M in cap room. I can always reconfigure contracts but that’s time consuming as well.


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[adembroski]

One thing I can tell you is that adjusting XP sliders by a flat amount will not effect all positions equally. There are nuances in each position that make them each unique in how the xp level expresses itself in the actual roster. That's why so much testing needs to be done in order to achieve something approaching roster integrity year-to-year.