Will there Ever Be a Real Halftime Show during the Season in Madden?

[jmurphy31]

Quote: Originally Posted by illwill10

Agree 100% As an offline only player, the lack of immersion is a turn off. One of main themes about a Franchise mode is to make you feel like you're apart of a living season where everything around the league matters. Things like Game Breaks from NCAA would go a long way. A lot of little things would help you feel like what other teams are doing also affects you. I do agree with the EA dropping a feature after 2-3 years definitely has to stop. It's one thing if it is something like Longshot or hopefully Face of the Franchise that isn't well received. But a lot of times EA will drop a feature that actually has potential to be a main staple of the game. It's like they don't want to put resources into something that they can no longer market. Yeah, you can imagine where Madden would be if the dropped features were fully fleshed out. Even something like the Scenario Engine. They touted SE like it was going to be a main staple of Franchise going forward then did nothing Year 2. Something like Traits could have been a staple for Gameplay. When you don't have good AI or a tendency system, having something that differentiates how a player reacts could've been big for Gameplay. There's so much more that they could've done with that. And it's harder to follow what's happening around the league with the current News tab. I don't know we're stuck with that scrambled mess of a Twitter news tab. It still ends up having tweets about the previous season mixed in. They should've stayed with the cleaner simple news tab from Madden 15-16

Good point on the marketing aspect. Really does feel like EA says an improvement/upgrade/ or addition to a current feature isn’t flashy enough to promote so they put resources back into it.

And yes the Twitter feed is a mess. Just give me a fake website with a headline like “Newton’s 2 TDs enough for Patriots win over the Bills”. You click it and the box score comes up. Granted I would have something like a recap video (it is 2021). But I will take anything

Back to pregame. Why not feature in the montage a player or two, with their season stats or last games stats, to watch and show fake highlights of them vs someone else besides the current opponent (which except for divisional games probably wouldn’t exist in real life).

[illwill10]

Quote: Originally Posted by jmurphy31

Good point on the marketing aspect. Really does feel like EA says an improvement/upgrade/ or addition to a current feature isn’t flashy enough to promote so they put resources back into it. And yes the Twitter feed is a mess. Just give me a fake website with a headline like “Newton’s 2 TDs enough for Patriots win over the Bills”. You click it and the box score comes up. Granted I would have something like a recap video (it is 2021). But I will take anything Back to pregame. Why not feature in the montage a player or two, with their season stats or last games stats, to watch and show fake highlights of them vs someone else besides the current opponent (which except for divisional games probably wouldn’t exist in real life).

That's something Rex Dickson said. Marketing plays a huge part in direction for Madden. He wanted to overhaul Gameplay, but marketing felt that you couldn't market gameplay fixes because it says there was an issue in the first place. I do feel like Madden focuses on "back of box" features. I do agree that you can market something after 2-3 years. But that shouldn't mean that you abandon it. It's not wrong to focus on "back of box " features. Casuals are always going to want to know "what's new". You can't market improvements unless it was something that was very bad. But at the same time, the Devs need more creative freedom to make the game as good as possible.

They had the ESPN license for so long. I wouldn't had minded a ESPN-esque website for news. The license expired, but something like that is better. Even a NFL.com style website for news would be nice. But, I fully expect a new Franchise UI. I would be shocked if we see the same thing again with the repetitive lockers sequences and menus.

Even something like going over team records, keys to the game, what happened in the previous game would be nice. They are due for another commentary team.

[4thQtrStre5S]

I agree marketing is huge. The Pet Rock proved that great marketing could sell anything. EA just needs to fix gameplay and learn how to step up their marketing. Pretend gameplay is your Pet Rock, and market the heck out of it.

This probably will not happen because most people are too afraid of losing their jobs; which is a valid concern. So people would rather follow the status quo than to risk making big changes. If something fails while using a so-called proven method, then the employee can defend themselves; "Hey, I was just following the status quo." If the employee fails while trying something risky, they have increased their risk of losing their job.