Am I the only one that doesn't care about online franchise?

[FadeEmAll]

@Watcher

You make some good and reasonable statements and I tend to agree with you on many of the issues but I think you are minimizing the role franchise and other side novelties play in the game. I'm also not sure if Madden sales are continuing to go up as you state or are actually remaining at a consistent level or even decreasing, we would have to look at numbers on that issue. Now that I also see aren't a "offline franchise" person either I understand I'm dealing with an unbiased person.

With respect to side novelties, I think these are the issues which contribute to shift in positive or negative sales for the game. A game with better on and off line franchise will sell more due to the people interested in only that aspect of the game. The "play-now" crowd will continue to buy the game no matter what is released, which is why Madden continues to be successful to this day. in truth very few changes are needed each year to make Madden successful, for the simple fact that people will buy the only football game out. I hate to say it but it's obvious the game-play crowd is really not that big of an influence either, because people have been screaming for years, and to me the game has gotten no better as far as that is concerned. In all truth the only thing Madden improves on each year is graphics and animations, because that is all 95% of crowd cares about, graphics and updated rosters. anything else is secondary.

[TheWatcher]

Quote: Originally Posted by FadeEmAll

@Watcher You make some good and reasonable statements and I tend to agree with you on many of the issues but I think you are minimizing the role franchise and other side novelties play in the game. I'm also not sure if Madden sales are continuing to go up as you state or are actually remaining at a consistent level or even decreasing, we would have to look at numbers on that issue.

I take a peek at these numbers every now and then when it's possible through NPD. There have been increases each year since the 06 game on 360, and since 07 with PS3. Have they been huge? Nope, but they've been there.

I think we can all agree that when a critical/indispensible part of a product is defective it pretty much always kills sales. Is Madden an anamoly in this regard? Is the brand so bulletproof that an element that actually matters in a make-or-break capacity to many millions can be totally defective and it not drop sales? Is that possible? Possible, yes. But in reality, can we really reason that? I mean, franchise has been so messed up yet I've seen so few explosions over it from the communities I've been monitoring which I would think would explode the most and that's the hardcore group. I've actually been keeping a close watch on this since the 08 disasters, and I gotta tell ya, it's pretty thin. I see overwhelmingly more complaints about other things than franchise problems, even though it's agreed that it's been broken just as badly as anything else.

Quote: Originally Posted by FadeEmAll

@With respect to side novelties, I think these are the issues which contribute to shift in positive or negative sales for the game. A game with better on and off line franchise will sell more due to the people interested in only that aspect of the game. The "play-now" crowd will continue to buy the game no matter what is released, which is why Madden continues to be successful to this day. in truth very few changes are needed each year to make Madden successful, for the simple fact that people will buy the only football game out. I hate to say it but it's obvious the game-play crowd is really not that big of an influence either, because people have been screaming for years, and to me the game has gotten no better as far as that is concerned. In all truth the only thing Madden improves on each year is graphics and animations, because that is all 95% of crowd cares about, graphics and updated rosters. anything else is secondary.

Well said.

I'm not saying that I don't want to see new innovations in different places. If they could do online franchise without it being a major time-hit to things that are readily out in the open for all to see, I'd say go for it. But at the point where the game is now, I'm so hellbent on wanting the 3 essentials becoming homeruns (Gameplay, Presentation, Graphics), that I'd hate to see anything stretched away from it.

Now the reality is, if they're going to add online franchise then they've probably been working on this for a cycle or two already and it's been decided on. These things can be spread out, I realize that. I'm just not giving any slack until the big 3 are flame hot

[Boucher]

You guys see what phil said, he said we wont be talking about online till E3 which is the biggest gaming conference in the world, i think its something big

[CapnKill]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWatcher

That's just not true at all. It takes every bit as much effort as I described and then some. In fact, putting a program like that online and having it run across a server and run on just a few machines let alone thousands (lol) is terribly complicated and difficult with lots of spots for errors and failures, and it employs a ton of resources to make it all work. I've been working long enough with Server based software that runs across multiple channels to know that, and that's been with software that's far less sophisticated and complex as what you get in a video game.

They can easily do the PS2 system.

1. Franchise is off-line
2. You spawn a file off-line
3. You share the file with your opponent off-line
4. You launch your game from the file and so does he on-line
5. You play the game on-line
6. You save a "results" file to your HD
7. You go back to your off-line franchise nad import the results file.

That is a very basic vanilla implementation, and you can't honestly tell me with a straight face that the above proposal would take a lot of work to accomplish.

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWatcher

On a related note, I would like to see EA's usage numbers for Franchise Live Opponent from Madden 07. I think it would be interesting to see just how many people actually used this. Of course, I bet it was very few since it disappeared and there was pretty much no outcry from the public about it. Most people I read on it never knew it ever existed.

What is Franchise Live Opponent ... are you referring to the ability to do an on-line franchise on the PS2 from that was introduced in Madden 06? If so, that feature never disappeared, and the way it was implemented would also make it impossible for EA to track... but maybe you are referring to something else?

And what is a "hard core" madden player now vs a "casual" madden player?

When I think hard core... I think of tourneys and people that practice 5 days a week for the madden challenge or money games. It doesn't get any more hard core then that.

Calling me "hard core" because I enjoy on-line madden franchise is a bit of a stretch.

[CapnKill]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

I'll just add my experiences with HH baseball. The year was 2003 and HH baseball was released on PC. This was the last HH baseball game made. 3DO took out online play and there was a smattering of people who were upset because online play was available in previous builds. The remark from 3DO was that they did market studies and a small percentage of their buying market played online. They did say most of the players played offline. I don't know if this still holds true 6 years later, but I thought I would give some insight as to something similar to another sports game.

This makes sense 6 years ago... but now everyone has broadband, on-line is expected and no longer just a "bonus" feature.

[g2thecore]

I think they should include online franchise just so FadEmAll doesn't lose his mind....lol..Poor guy's been asking for that feature for months now.

[CapnKill]

Quote: Originally Posted by mgc201

I never had a desire to play franchise mode offline, but I loved online leagues with full stat tracking on NFL2k5. Is online franchise totally different than online leagues like 2k football had? If they are the same, I'm all for it. 99% of my gaming is online. The computer is way too easy to beat and to predict.

There is no on-line franchise in Madden NG right now.... but what 2k was able to accomplish 5 years ago is what we're hoping Madden will be able to accomplish now.

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWatcher

Absolutely not. There are a number of things in a football game that are indispensible. Online franchise is not indispensible to the success of the game, and neither is offline regardless of the little bit of rhetoric we get on message boards about it. As it's been stated many times, Madden's franchise has been totally broken for years and sales have continued to go up. Up...

Sales go up every year no matter what. It's the only football game in town. People that love off-line franchise go and buy the game hoping its fixed. It's not like it says on the box "Off-line franchise is still fcked!!!".

What I'd like to see, and I doubt you can, is figures for how many Madden copies are returned or sold back within the first 2 months of purchase.

I can tell you that for people that love franchise, off-line or on-line the replay value of the game is 1 month tops.

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWatcher

You know what's indispensible? Gameplay and all its components, because no matter what, that has to be solid. The indispensible parts aren't even 100% yet. Offline franchise isn't right yet. Let's get those things right first before we tackle a major task like online franchise.

When will gameplay ever be 100%? What are you basing 100% on? Who's judging the gameplay? Is there a panel of players that determine when gameplay will be 100%? Maybe 100% to you is not 100% to me... there will ALWAYS be room for improvement. To use this excuse as a reason for not implementing on-line franchise is silly.

Quote: Originally Posted by x

You have to create a product with the concept of quality-first and advancement in all important phases, not just side novelties. I think Tiburon lost sight of that somewhere between the PS1 days and now and I could point out tons of examples of how the products are not what they could be because that very principle has been ignored for so long.

I disagree, I think the Ps2 series was very solid starting from Madden 05 and made great improvements every year. The breakdown came with Madden NG.

But once again, Madden will never be perfect, gameplay will never be what everyone wants it to be, so when do you decide that its time to actually implement On-line franchise... when we move to the PS4?!

[TheWatcher]

Quote: Originally Posted by CapnKill

They can easily do the PS2 system. 1. Franchise is off-line 2. You spawn a file off-line 3. You share the file with your opponent off-line 4. You launch your game from the file and so does he on-line 5. You play the game on-line 6. You save a "results" file to your HD 7. You go back to your off-line franchise nad import the results file. That is a very basic vanilla implementation, and you can't honestly tell me with a straight face that the above proposal would take a lot of work to accomplish.

Aside from the unpredictability/reliability/stability factors of running this over a server connecting to thousands of machines, feeding information back and forth... there is also the issue of having to write this program probably from scratch or something close to it to run comparable to the PS2 version.

The other thing is (and I'm guilty of not keeping this in mind myself) as generations pass, demands of development increase as technology becomes more complex. Not saying it was easy for those working the PS2 game to make it happen because they certainly had to have a lot of challenges, but it certainly will be harder now to pull off the same type of task. If you have multiple cycles to work it, it's not as big of a deal because you can chop away at it slowly. Even so, it's still going to be tougher.

Quote: Originally Posted by CapnKill

What is Franchise Live Opponent ... are you referring to the ability to do an on-line franchise on the PS2 from that was introduced in Madden 06? If so, that feature never disappeared, and the way it was implemented would also make it impossible for EA to track... but maybe you are referring to something else?

Aha! This was exactly my point. I would've thought that anybody today clamoring for online franchise would've been all over a feature like Franchise Live Opponent. In Madden 07 for 360 (and probably PS3 but I don't know about all that version offered) You could take your franchise, connect online, and then bring in a live opponent to play you in your franchise. It also allowed you to use custom rosters, so this could be considered a sort of bare skeleton/test pilot of online franchise. Madden 07 sold about 2 Million copies on 360, and yet to be honest I've never actually seen much discussion about this feature outside of some passing mentions here and there.

Quote: Originally Posted by CapnKill

And what is a "hard core" madden player now vs a "casual" madden player? When I think hard core... I think of tourneys and people that practice 5 days a week for the madden challenge or money games. It doesn't get any more hard core then that.

When I think hardcore, I think of people like the OS crowd who come here to discuss and dissect every minute detail of the game. These people play the game looking for deep value in modes, functions and options, and authenticity of experience that stacks up to its real world counterpart. This group is small compared to the casual.

When I think casual, I think of people who don't come to places like these to discuss Madden. They don't care about the minute details of the game, nor do they care to discuss them. They aren't looking for deep value as much as they're looking for quick gratification, and finding the newest wrinkle (glitch) to beat their buddies, and by association to that, aren't concerned with authenticity of experience.

Now to me, the tourney guys (and this is probably not entirely fair, but Madden Nation just ruined it for me) are just hardcore cheesers, lol. They carry all the attributes of the casual, except the play the game a lot more.

Quote: Originally Posted by CapnKill

Calling me "hard core" because I enjoy on-line madden franchise is a bit of a stretch.

I think you fall into the hardcore group because that's the type of player who would be most interested in this. A franchise going online and hammering it out with multiple people over a concrete 17+ week schedule just doesn't fit the mindset and behaviors of a casual player. There is too much obligation there for a casual to stay connected with this. Making trades, doing drafts, signing free agents, keeping a full season schedule and sticking to it... these aren't casual behaviors.

Remember Capn, the first step is admitting you're hardcore