TheDelta's Custom All-Madden Sliders

[TheDelta]

Following Jarodd's advice, I decided to open another thread for my own sliders set I'm using in my current franchise playing as the Cardinals (soon to be the Los Angeles Black Knights), I will adapt these sliders during my play to keep it challenging so those numbers are definitely not set in stone.

As I think some introductory words about my playstyle seem to be in order, I'm a firm believer in the short passing and running game and I love using fullbacks in the running game, I've found that these sliders make it very tough to run without a lead blocker to open up the way, but as always, YMMV. I'm not very adept at directional throwing and only use it when trying to throw to a receiver in coverage, usually I'll try to have someone open and simply hit him.

In general, my sliders aim to be a "middle road" between realism and challenge, I embrace Jarodd's philosophy that rather than using house rules like limit your playcalling, just make the game challenging enough that you have to give it your best shot to win, but I still like the CPU to make mistakes on its own like dropping a possible pick every now and then.

So, on to my current slider set... (newest patch should be installed as always)

Human Sliders

Passing

QB Accuracy - 12
Pass Blocking - 18 (I'll put whatever is left here to fill the sliders up to 75)
WR Catching - 45 (any less and I start seeing too many drops)

Rushing

Broken Tackles - 48 (again, whatever is left to add up to 75 for the category)
Run Blocking - 2 (start from 5-10 if this is too tough for you, it takes a while to get used to it and you need to read your blocking assignments presnap)
Fumbles - 25

Pass Defense

Reaction Time - 35
Interceptions - 30
Pass Rushing - 10

Rush Defense

Reaction Time - 0 (anything more makes stopping the run too easy)
Block Shedding - 0
Tackling - 70

Important fact for USER Sliders: Do NOT put more than 75 points into a single USER slider category, if there's even a single point more in only one category, you will play on All-Pro difficulty and notice HUGE changes in CPU gameplay.

CPU Sliders

Passing

QB Accuracy - 60
Pass Blocking - 0
WR Catching - 50

Rushing

Broken Tackles - 75 (might seem high but with the USER Tackling at 75 it works just fine)
Run Blocking - 60
Fumbles - 65

Pass Defense

Reaction Time - 100 (start lower if you feel this is too tough (50-65 might be a good start), good receivers running the right routes will still get open but you will have to go through your progressions and sometimes make tough decisions)
Interceptions - 35 (you still get picked if you make bad throws, but defenders also swat and drop balls. one of the most likely sliders to change soon)
Pass Rushing - 50

Rush Defense

Reaction Time - 100 (see above, 65-75 gives you a little bit more room to run. But you have to read your blocks and look for double blocks on key defenders, otherwise you will get stuffed)
Block Shedding - 0
Tackling - 48 (IMPORTANT! Always keep this at the same number as USER Break Tackles)

Special Teams (doesn't really matter too much, just use what you like here)

FG Power - 35
FG Accuracy - 70
Punt Power - 50
Punt Accuracy - 75
Kickoff Power - 40

Quarter Length - 12 Minutes (just use whatever gives you realistic numbers per game)
Clock Runoff - 15 Seconds
Auto Strafe - On
Auto Sprint - On
Injuries - 26
Fatigue - 47 (again, just use what you feel fine with)
Game Speed - Very Slow (see above)
Speed Threshold - 0 (you will have big plays, yes, but with the CPU D cranked up like this it actually works fine)

With these sliders, you will get smashed often when playing with a bad team like the Cardinals (I tossed 36 picks with Skeletor in my first season... guess that's probably some NFL record?) but it will give you a fighting chance if you perform well and yes, you will need a little bit of luck as well. Player ratings matter a LOT with these sliders, if your DBs and LBs are slow or bad at coverage, expect to get burned a lot on the pass.

I always love to get feeback for these sliders and I will post a lot of games from my franchise in this thread so you can follow my own experiences with these sliders and see my reasoning when I make a change.

So, onwards to my latest game:

Arizona 24
Carolina 16

Passing

M. Galvin (drafted Rookie QB) 18/27, 176 Yards, 1 TD, 0 INT
J. Clausen 11/19, 176 Yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT

Rushing

B. Wells 25 ATTs, 146 Yards, 1 TD
R. Bush (signed him as a FA) 5 ATTs, 19 Yards
L. Stephens-Howling 1 ATT, 12 Yards, 1 TD

D. Williams 14 ATTs, 27 Yards

Almost the comeback of the year for the Panthers. This game was all but done at halftime, I actually lead 24-0 back then, had over 100 yards rushing with Wells alone and had kept the Panthers and Clawful (who had 1 completion for 9 yards...) to a mere 35 yards of offense, so naturally I expected this not to be much more than a wrap-up in the second half.

But the Panthers had other plans, somehow they managed to have Clawful remain in the locker room and Clawesome took the field, he threw a couple of deep bombs on blown man coverages and suddenly completed all those short throws he couldn't make in the first half, but differently from my experiences last season, it never really felt "wrong" here, he was still missing receivers often enough.

I still could've easily put this game away if my offense got anything going, but their defense really cranked it up a notch, while Wells had run over them for 10 YPC in the first half, they stuffed him pretty good now, the real momentum changer was a fumble by Bush on my own 30 that the Panthers recovered to score a TD two plays later so they were down only one score coming into the 4th quarter. It was a hard-fought defensive battle then, neither offense managed to do much, but in the end I got the ball back with 2:10 on the clock, they had to spend their timeouts and I finally managed to hit a quick slant to Fitzgerald for 5 yards on 3rd & 5, chain gang came out and handed me the 1st down and the win.

All in all it was a great game and much more of a challenge than I expected after the first half, it still feels a lot easier with the better team this year (like it's supposed to be, I guess), I'm playing the Giants next so I'm waiting for that one until I decide whether to drop down run blocking any further.

[Jarodd21]

Looks good..

[geetarguy]

Not going to lie...this is the first and ONLY slider set I have seen and used that made running an all around offense possible. The run-blocking at 7 worried me at first but when break tackles is that high its not so bad. Plus I love how the CPU doesn't always seems to make miracle last second drives in dier situations. EA should REALLY consider adding a "clutch situation" rating for players

[steelcityjames]

Looks good.... hope some others try your sliders out. post some stats from your games so we can check them out

[TheDelta]

Quote: Originally Posted by geetarguy

Not going to lie...this is the first and ONLY slider set I have seen and used that made running an all around offense possible. The run-blocking at 7 worried me at first but when break tackles is that high its not so bad. Plus I love how the CPU doesn't always seems to make miracle last second drives in dier situations. EA should REALLY consider adding a "clutch situation" rating for players

Well, thank you a lot for the compliment Most of the running sliders is pretty much based on Jarrod's, with some few tweaks of my own, and don't count on the CPU not making ridiculous last quarter performances sometime, unfortunately it did happen to me, but fortunately not all the time. Not much you can do against that with sliders, it just seems to be hardcoded into the game that the CPU can get an extreme performance bonus late in the game.

Would love to see some stats from you if you'd like to share it sometimes.

[mjhyankees]

Welcome to the world of sliders! You seem to have grasped the ideas of slider use really well and will of course adjust over time. i find them intriguing in that, they look like mine in some areas...not that you copied but that i think we've discovered the same things. Your passing looks like where I'm going to try to take mine. Interesting because I pass the same way., I like short west coast style passing, try to get the open guy and only directional throw when everyone is covered and I'm trying to slip one in there. I'm curious as to your completion %.....this is a big issue with me. RB ypc is too. Other stats seem to fall into place but those two can be tough to get right. On passing i tried 12-18-45 and found my QB was just missing too much. And I'm not into directional passing on every play. Yours are 13-17-45 which begs the question did you find what I did? On the above settings (12 etc) I through a crossing route that ended up in the arms of my receiver running a streak...and he had to come back to the ball!!! Cant have that.
Things that I found which are interesting is that the reaction sliders seem not to do what I thought. On run defense the reaction seems to affect the D line more than anyone. have you found that? The Tackling slider seems to make the biggest difference in defending the run. You sliders show that. Same with pass d. I've not noticed who is affected by the reaction but int.s seem to affect pass coverage far more.

Do keep posting game stats...at least 8-10 games so that we and you can see how they are working and make adjustments. We all learn from each other, even if our slider sets are not all the same. I found it helpful to create a 32 team chise because sliders that work for one team can have glaring issues show up with another. I've tried to balance that. But if you're not into that just keep posting stats from your chise. Thanks and good luck.

[TheDelta]

Oh well it's not like I didn't "copy" you, in a way, your sliders were the first ones I started with when I went to All-Madden difficulty, so it's obvious that there is still some resemblance (especially in those areas where I found Jarrod's sliders too challenging I reverted back closer to my older settings)

So I got the first loss of the season, and that was a tough one.

Arizona - 31
New York - 33

Passing

M. Galvin 18/32, 253 Yards, 2 TDs, 1 INTs
E. Manning 13/24, 219 Yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs

Rushing

B. Wells 10 ATTs, 45 Yards, 1 TDs
R. Bush 9 ATTs, 32 Yards

A. Bradshaw 27 ATTs, 156 Yards, 1 TDs
B. Jacobs 3 ATTs, 5 Yards

A close battle throughout the whole game, and a fumble fest to boot (there were 7 fumbles in the game, 4 of which were lost), in the end I couldn't stop Eli and Bradshaw on their last drive but managed to hold them to a FG, got the ball back down by 6 without timeouts and 1:10 to go so there was still a chance to do it, but unfortunately Galvin overthrew Bush on a streak by about half a yard on a 50+ yard bomb, that might've been my game winner. Next play I toss an interception on a bad throw to Fitzgerald (Galvin's very first NFL interception) so it's a done deal and I Supersim the last couple plays, funny thing that the CPU is actually too stupid to just run out the clock so they kicked another FG to go up by 9, the simmed KO was actually returned for a meaningless TD as time runned out.

As you can see, Bradshaw really killed me, but it wasn't like he was breaking tackles left and right, most of the time, when I had the right plays called, I stopped him for little gain or even a loss, but when he got out in the open, he's a weapon and hard to get down.

I decided to go back to Auto Sprint on for my next game, not only were there a ton of fumbles, I found my return game completely gutted with it off and I felt it was actually easier to run the ball that way. Maybe I'll experiment more with that in the future, other than that, my sliders feel fine for the moment.

Concerning your questions, yes I found 13 to be pretty low and Galvin still misses the occasional throw he should make but then he's a rookie QB and his SAC is only 80 (DAC is actually his highest accuracy rating... I guess I should go deep more often) so I'm not complaining here. He's got a 61% completion rating which I consider to be top of the line for a rookie, 8.6 YPA is of course way too high and almost Manning-esque but that's just Madden, I think it's close to impossible to get YPA to a realistic level while still having a decent completion percentage.

I'll bump up Interceptions to 20 for my next couple games and see how that feels.

[TheDelta]

Don't get fooled by the score, this was hardly a contest I just played it very conservatively in the end and let them have easy completions, they actually managed to score two TDs in garbage time, last one as the time expired so there was never any danger of me losing late in the game.

San Francisco 20
Arizona 26

Passing

M. Flynn 17/31, 239 Yards, 1 TD, 0 INT (about a 100 yards came in garbage time when I played quarters coverage so no he did not look too good)
F. Gore 1/2, 7 Yards, 0 TD, 0 INT (they no-huddled after a wildcat play, he almost scored a deep TD but Crabtree dropped the ball, his only completion was a short throw to Flynn of all people)
M Galvin 14/22, 125 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT (ridiculous interception, he threw a deep ball completely without pressure about 10 yards wide directly into the arms of the safety...)

Rushing

F. Gore 14 ATTs, 33 Yards
M. Flynn 3 ATTs, 20 Yards, 1 TD
A. Dixon 2 ATTs, 19 Yards

B. Wells 15 ATTs, 67 Yards, 1 TD
R. Bush 6 ATTs, 62 Yards, 1 TD (scored a huge 57 yard TD run)

Flynn was awful. He got happy feet all game, scrambled right into my defenders arms a couple of times, when he actually got the ball off usually my coverage was right there to bat it away. I got him for 7 sacks in this game which is too high if it happened consistently of course, but it didn't look like his line wasn't holding, he just held on to the ball forever and left the pocket too soon often just to get tackled again and again. Will do something about that if I encounter that again, but for now I'll just wait and see.