Madden 2006 Had Perfect Progression

[Madden Head]

Quote: Originally Posted by jip4

Matt Cassel probably started last season with his Madden rating at ~70. He probably finished it at ~85. Now let's think about what happened. Did he really get 15 points better over the course of the season? Or was he really an 85 all along, and we just didn't know it (this one)?

This is the problem with progression. It's all a matter of opinion. It's subjective. I would say that Matt Cassel did start the season as a "70." You can't tell me that he played "like an 85" in week 1 after Brady went down. Cassel got better week after week, and he got better pretty quickly. One honest question is if NE is or isn't cheating, but that is another topic I don't want to talk about here.

Steve Young is a better question/example for progression. Some want to say that Young was already a 90+ player all along. I would argue that if that were the case, why did he play so poorly for so long in the begining. It wasn't until "the run" against the Vikings that 49ers fans really started to believe in Young.

The same is true for Wess Welker. You can't possibly tell me that Wess entered the leauge as a 93, or what ever he is, WR. He was undrafted, cut by the Chargers and traded by the Dolphins. Now, to be fair, when Bill was asked why he traded for Welker, Bill said "When we played the Dolphins we couldn't cover him, not even with two guys. I figured if we couldn't beat him we had better try and et him." Now this isn't the exact quote but the best I remember it from a post game interview on ESPN. I would say that there is a combination of legit progression combined with perception of how well they play.

On the flip side, some players just fit a system and can excell in that system well beyond thier true abilities. If Ruben Droughns [spelling] can run for over 1,000 yards as a Bronco doesn't make him a good back, it was a case of a great Broncos line and system. Was he a 90-ish player, or was he a 70/80-ish player playing above his true skill level? I would say the latter.

This all was talked about months and months ago in a very good thread and the general idea was that we should have a system similar to wht we have right now. Potential and production should both play a factor. However, in my opinion, we should also have to look at our coaching staff and have to do a true weekly prep in franchise mode. How good your coaching staff is should alter how well all your players progress/regress in a big way. There is a reason that Ray Lewis is a gret linebacker and so is Patrick Willis. that reason: Mike Singletary. Singletary took great raw talent and helped mold it into great NFL hall of fame talent. Who helped shape Singletary? Buddy Ryan, who's two sons Rex and Rob Ryan are also very good defensive coaches.

If you have bad coaches on your roster, your players shouldn't improve very well. If you have great coaches they should improve to the best of their ability. Right now in Madden you can't honestly sit a rookie QB and have/expect him to progress. You need to put him out there. In real life though many people talk about how rarely do Rookie QBs start and do well. This is why Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, and Big Ben have been such big stories. They are the exception not the rule.

Where would Rich Gannon and Steve Young and Matt Cassel be in Madden with a production based only system? This is why potential is important as well.

In summery, Progression should have 4 equal parts. Coaching staff, weekly/off season preperation set by the user/computer, potential to set the cap/range, and production. This is also why we need to see the return of the "playing time" stat. When player gets playing time [games played/started, what ever] they get a chance to prove how good they are.

[Glorious Arc]

Quote: Originally Posted by TeamBuilder

In Madden I don't think you can say a player has an "actuality" because it's like trying to predict the future. That's where PBP should have an impact. I'm not saying it should all be PBP I'm just saying that it should factor in to the point where a player doesn't have a pre-determined "actuality".

That is were you are wrong. In madden everything is definitive to what his ratings are. No more, no less.

A player's stats in madden are the pre-determined actuality that everyone thinks they will be able to perform up to that season. Potential is simply saying "We know that not all players were created equal and therefore we need some system to stop any player from becoming great"

Without Potential myself, you, your 12 grade math teacher in madden could turn into the next HOF. How realistic is that? It is considered a fair compromise to "shaft" real life players potential with assumptions about how they may perform to create a fantasy world that reflects the real world as much as possible.

[TeamBuilder]

Quote: Originally Posted by jip4

Again, too egalitarian. Give me 5 stud offensive linemen and a crappy defense, and I could put up some decent stats. Doesn't make me better than Adrian Peterson.

See that's the thing though, I had J.J. Arrington as my RB back in Madden 06. He didn't increase in speed and trucking, but his awareness, his carry, his catch (I used him as a receiver well) would go up until he got to age 27/28 and he stopped progressing. He ended up at something like 87 OVR (mostly due to awareness) and he wasn't Adrian Peterson because how can you improve how fast you are? Adrian Peterson has ridiculous speed and trucking that gives him a huge boost to factor into his 97 OVR rating. But why can't a WR keep progressing his catch rating if he is catching the ball well? I'm not saying make him a 99 OVR.

[jip4]

Quote: Originally Posted by Madden Head

This is the problem with progression. It's all a matter of opinion. It's subjective. I would say that Matt Cassel did start the season as a "70." You can't tell me that he played "like an 85" in week 1 after Brady went down. Cassel got better week after week, and he got better pretty quickly. One honest question is if NE is or isn't cheating, but that is another topic I don't want to talk about here. Steve Young is a better question/example for progression. Some want to say that Young was already a 90+ player all along. I would argue that if that were the case, why did he play so poorly for so long in the begining. It wasn't until "the run" against the Vikings that 49ers fans really started to believe in Young. The same is true for Wess Welker. You can't possibly tell me that Wess entered the leauge as a 93, or what ever he is, WR. He was undrafted, cut by the Chargers and traded by the Dolphins. Now, to be fair, when Bill was asked why he traded for Welker, Bill said "When we played the Dolphins we couldn't cover him, not even with two guys. I figured if we couldn't beat him we had better try and et him." Now this isn't the exact quote but the best I remember it from a post game interview on ESPN. I would say that there is a combination of legit progression combined with perception of how well they play. On the flip side, some players just fit a system and can excell in that system well beyond thier true abilities. If Ruben Droughns [spelling] can run for over 1,000 yards as a Bronco doesn't make him a good back, it was a case of a great Broncos line and system. Was he a 90-ish player, or was he a 70/80-ish player playing above his true skill level? I would say the latter. This all was talked about months and months ago in a very good thread and the general idea was that we should have a system similar to wht we have right now. Potential and production should both play a factor. However, in my opinion, we should also have to look at our coaching staff and have to do a true weekly prep in franchise mode. How good your coaching staff is should alter how well all your players progress/regress in a big way. There is a reason that Ray Lewis is a gret linebacker and so is Patrick Willis. that reason: Mike Singletary. Singletary took great raw talent and helped mold it into great NFL hall of fame talent. Who helped shape Singletary? Buddy Ryan, who's two sons Rex and Rob Ryan are also very good defensive coaches. If you have bad coaches on your roster, your players shouldn't improve very well. If you have great coaches they should improve to the best of their ability. Right now in Madden you can't honestly sit a rookie QB and have/expect him to progress. You need to put him out there. In real life though many people talk about how rarely do Rookie QBs start and do well. This is why Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, and Big Ben have been such big stories. They are the exception not the rule. Where would Rich Gannon and Steve Young and Matt Cassel be in Madden with a production based only system? This is why potential is important as well. In summery, Progression should have 4 equal parts. Coaching staff, weekly/off season preperation set by the user/computer, potential to set the cap/range, and production. This is also why we need to see the return of the "playing time" stat. When player gets playing time [games played/started, what ever] they get a chance to prove how good they are.

I feel I have to clarify: I'm not saying players can't improve. They can. And do. And some improve by leaps and bounds.

But take a guy like Young. Under PBP if he did "play so poorly for so long in the beginning," he would have regressed into a 40 OVR, and that would be that. But if progression were based on potential, he could put up bad stats, but still be improving, and eventually if his potential were high enough turn himself into a very nice player (which he obviously did). Exact same situation with Welker.

One final point: players in Madden don't need to "prove how good they are." We know how good they are. It's right next to their name. Now I do think that OVR should be hidden, which would bring 'proving one's self' into play (as a player gets more PT, his OVR would not change, but it would be revealed).

[jip4]

Quote: Originally Posted by TeamBuilder

See that's the thing though, I had J.J. Arrington as my RB back in Madden 06. He didn't increase in speed and trucking, but his awareness, his carry, his catch (I used him as a receiver well) would go up until he got to age 27/28 and he stopped progressing. He ended up at something like 87 OVR (mostly due to awareness) and he wasn't Adrian Peterson because how can you improve how fast you are? Adrian Peterson has ridiculous speed and trucking that gives him a huge boost to factor into his 97 OVR rating. But why can't a WR keep progressing his catch rating if he is catching the ball well? I'm not saying make him a 99 OVR.

You keep flipping cause and effect.

[Glorious Arc]

Quote: Originally Posted by TeamBuilder

See that's the thing though, I had J.J. Arrington as my RB back in Madden 06. He didn't increase in speed and trucking, but his awareness, his carry, his catch (I used him as a receiver well) would go up until he got to age 27/28 and he stopped progressing. He ended up at something like 87 OVR (mostly due to awareness) and he wasn't Adrian Peterson because how can you improve how fast you are? Adrian Peterson has ridiculous speed and trucking that gives him a huge boost to factor into his 97 OVR rating. But why can't a WR keep progressing his catch rating if he is catching the ball well? I'm not saying make him a 99 OVR.

We are saying that players do not just keep progressing IRL. Like I said before if you allow even the non-physical skills to keep progressing just because your player is able to put up numbers then you are going to make a system where HOFers exist but IRL they would never turn out like that.

I know I have bad hands and I dont have the best awareness. But if I have Manning or Brady throwing the ball to me I could probably catch 40-60 passes a year. Under your system, I could develop hands and awareness like Jerry Rice just because I was catching 40-60 passes. How realistic is that?(again if I had the potential to get better hands/awareness IRL I would need a good coach and bust my butt every day to improve my skills) I would then see a probability that I could produce better numbers on the field in the same situation as I did the year before when I had worse stats.

[roolz]

Real life and Madden are getting mixed up a bit too much here... Madden is so far off being a realistic representation of the game, that its pointless.

So with that in mind... I have success with an F rated player - the Madden system has logic which tells me that, no this is not right he is not able to progress.. even though, this is a game and because I did well with him, he should be able to progress.

Its like not letting you complete Call of Duty 4 because in real life, 1 person cant take out a whole army of terrorists....

GAME, MADDEN IS A GAME - The ratings/potential system have to make sense to a gamer, at the minute they do not reward a gamer for being successful they reward a gamer for being able to sign an A rated potential player..... that is not a challenge.

If you want to harp back to real life, PLAYERS DO NOT HAVE A POTENTIAL CEILING. If I told a player that he would be no better than a scrub, yet he turns out to be a career player in the NFL or whatever sport... it happens, humans can over achieve, humans can learn, humans can become better in a team... im not saying they cannot regress, or do this all on their own - but Madden has to comphrehend that fact if it wants to take a Real Life stance to all this.

Progression has to be a risk/reward factor - that is what games are about... if progression is set in stone and what you do/dont do does not affect it, where is the fun?

[Glorious Arc]

Quote: Originally Posted by roolz

Real life and Madden are getting mixed up a bit too much here... Madden is so far off being a realistic representation of the game, that its pointless. So with that in mind... I have success with an F rated player - the Madden system has logic which tells me that, no this is not right he is not able to progress.. even though, this is a game and because I did well with him, he should be able to progress. Its like not letting you complete Call of Duty 4 because in real life, 1 person cant take out a whole army of terrorists.... GAME, MADDEN IS A GAME - The ratings/potential system have to make sense to a gamer, at the minute they do not reward a gamer for being successful they reward a gamer for being able to sign an A rated potential player..... that is not a challenge. If you want to harp back to real life, PLAYERS DO NOT HAVE A POTENTIAL CEILING. If I told a player that he would be no better than a scrub, yet he turns out to be a career player in the NFL or whatever sport... it happens, humans can over achieve, humans can learn, humans can become better in a team... im not saying they cannot regress, or do this all on their own - but Madden has to comphrehend that fact if it wants to take a Real Life stance to all this. Progression has to be a risk/reward factor - that is what games are about... if progression is set in stone and what you do/dont do does not affect it, where is the fun?

Can I be your agent when you become the next Tom Brady or Manning? By your logic then you can keep improving your skills no matter what and you will become a HOF....Wait...If that was true then why are there less then 6 billion people in the HOF itself...? When in fact there are less then 300 people because they are the only players who had the potential to become great and busted butt before games in practice to produce the stats they did.

People have a max potential to how good they can become otherwise everyone could become a HOF if they tried hard enough and if you cant realize that then I dont know what to say.