Madden needs even more streched ratings.

[Antec]

I feel they need to make bad players actually play bad. A 60 OVR CB shouldn't be able to make an amazing play on the ball except for once in a blue moon. They should be beaten on double moves by WR's like Andre Johnson and Moss and etc.

If a LB has bad play recognition and awareness he should bite on a counter run or if he has low tackling he should try an arm tackle and not be able to bring the ball carrier down.

If a FB is rated lowly he should lead through the wrong hole sometimes but not all the time.

If your team is using lots of backup/bad O-line men(like the packers) they should give up pressure on the QB without the other team blitzing.

Bad WR should run wrong routes every once in a while, or just run them really poorly and not make crisp cuts.

Players play too perfectly even if they're low rated. Sometimes NFL players do make mistakes. Also not every defender should lay the same type of hitstick. A small cornerback who's 200 pounds with a strength rating of 35 shouldn't be able to lay out bone jarring hits.

[Boregard]

The double move plays don't work cuz EA makes them take forever to run (no matter how good the WR is) and yes the bad players are too effective but I feel it is cuz the highly rated players don't play well enough without you manually controlling them.

Actually all the routes take too friggin long to run and it ruins the timing of tons of plays in the game. A lot of routes that should be three step drop and throw routes take a five step drop to get off and even the highest rated WRs fail to get open against bad CBs, but I think it is more the higher players not playing up to their ratings than the other way around!

[Glorious Arc]

Quote: Originally Posted by CreatineKasey

Abilities rock because it is a more logical way to characterize people and give life to the game. If players are all a bunch of code and are compared as such, some of the immersiveness of the game is lost in my opinion. I always got really into APF because of abilities and looking at the game more like a sport and less like just some video game. It takes you into another mindset. Some aspects of APF, like the ability system, are what make it feel more alive than any sport game I've personally played.

Madden had weapons before and it obviously didnt do much. The real issue is the fact that ratings dont have enough animations to properly represent what they really are. Saying weapons adds more to the game is really just saying "I like my player to have a label on him that tells me what he is good at".

The way to add real tangible life to a player is to give personalities to them like in Head Coach 09 for example. Some guys would get upset about not enough playing time while others were ok with sharing time, some would demand ridiculous contracts while others would take pay cuts because they were team players, some would lose moral and get upset about losing/not having enough talent on the team. That adds something to the game besides "Look my CB is a Press King(or whatever 2k8 called it)" Weapons are a simplistic way to rate players and IMO is extremely lazy and would lead to players being too much alike in madden.

As the the OP, I am not exactly sure why you would need two different ratings for acceleration. If you mean explosiveness would be their ability to make big plays, then there isnt a need for it. If you want to take a WR with poor WR abilities and let him make plays, run screens, underneath routes, and wild cat to let him get the ball and run after the catch. His running ability(juke spin ect ect) will allow him to make big plays out of nothing.

If you think that CJ is to slow compared to other players, I have amazing news for you. There is a slider for that. It is call speed threshold. Simply move it down to 0 and watch CJ just glide by the defense. If you are an online only player then there isnt really anything you can do. I know it sucks but the game was tried to be made as balanced as it could.

[Boregard]

I have to agree that moving to a system where you scrap the numbers doesn't make me feel comfortable when i think about it!

And the "weapons" system sucked!!!

I do think that EA needs to take a long hard look at making the great players in the game play better - especially at WR because I have now spent countless hours playing with altered rosters where I have Brees and Fitz on the same team (as an experiment) and you don't see the types of plays out Fitz that you would expect even with a highly accurate QB tossing him the ball - I basically have been trying every route and pass lead combo I can think of and it is not much different than Romo to R. Williams and that should not be the case!!!!

[kcarr]

I agree they really need to separate the good players from the average players but there also needs to be a chance of average or worse players having huge games or making huge plays. Look at the tyree catch in the superbowl. He isn't a great player but he made a huge spectacular catch. I feel that the ratings range system is the best way to do this as then fitz's range could pretty much stay up near the top with a range of like 93-99 in spectacular catch meaning he can atleast try the best catches all the time and make them usually more often than most but a player like tyree may have like 65-80 or so for spectacular catch meaning that he usually wouldn't have any chance of making a huge play but on a rare occasion he could attempt and maybe even make that catch.

[Tito78]

Quote: Originally Posted by Boregard

I have to agree that moving to a system where you scrap the numbers doesn't make me feel comfortable when i think about it! And the "weapons" system sucked!!!

In Madden the weapons system co-existed with the numbers system. In 2k8 there were no numbers, just a collection of abilities.

[kcarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tito78

In Madden the weapons system co-existed with the numbers system. In 2k8 there were no numbers, just a collection of abilities.

With any game there has to be numbers. While 2k8 didn't show the numbers they were still there in the background although I would imagine they were more simplistic than madden's just from what I could tell playing the game. While more simplistic, however, they did a much better job of basing the game play off of them.

Madden's weapon system way mostly a failure due to it the ratings still not playing into to actual gameplay to any real extent.

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by kcarr

With any game there has to be numbers. While 2k8 didn't show the numbers they were still there in the background although I would imagine they were more simplistic than madden's just from what I could tell playing the game. While more simplistic, however, they did a much better job of basing the game play off of them. Madden's weapon system way mostly a failure due to it the ratings still not playing into to actual gameplay to any real extent.

Exactly, the players still had ratings. Not sure why people are saying it didn't just because they weren't shown.

Wasn't the weapons system just a way to "highlight" what players were good (or the best) at what abilities? Some of them, like Smart ______ were just the player's awareness ability. If it was a "weapon" though, you could do that pre-game training on them to help increase them.

That was the only real difference I noticed about "weapons". Did you notice anything else?