EA Sports Season Opener: Football Titles

[Joeyland]

If ever a product needed boycotting....

[JayMizzle]

Dang that screenshot looks so lifelike. I still want my 2K back tho

[Radioactiveman]

Another crappy year for football. Bummer. Hey EA, try fixing the game play...it blows.

[rsoxguy12]

I'm kind of bummed out by this whole percentage thing. You can't generalize and say ALL running backs will stiff arm the defender 25% of the time. Maybe this is why all of the topics regarding whether rating really matter pop up so often.....

[TombSong]

There are some fundamental things EA needs to address with the community and make clear on what their intent is.

1. How much of what a user does determines the outcome of an event and how much the game engine plays into that same event ?

2. They need to make CLEAR how what ratings effect on each side of the ball (offense/defense) and what are the counter ratings for each ability.

Example: 99 rated stiff arm HB charging towards a LB. What ratings do the LB need to be high in order to counter this HB's high stiff arm ? Is it tackling alone ? tackling plus the LBs weight ? Is it a counter move to the stiff arm thats initiated by the user ?(Dive tackle)

There is TOO much guessing and speculation surrounding stuff like this. Which leads to the confusion, frustration, misinterpretation of how the game behaves.

If I made a game I would want above all else for the people that play it to understand whats going on and how things work so that there is no mistaking the game as being broken or badly implemented tech.

I think this is also what leads to the yearly tourney champs being guys that can quickly identify the exploitable things in the game and figure out how to counter it, if there is indeed a counter.

This will be my 2nd year screaming from the mountain tops. Dont make the game so the "sim" guys dont have to learn to counter whats happening to them during a game. Bring them up to the level of the game so they KNOW what to do when they see events x, y, z happening during a game. Give the tools to play the Offense and Defense thats played in the NFL and show the community how these tools work and prove that they DO indeed work.

[seriousluboy83]

plain and simple...remove these %'s add them to the qb's only and find a good progression scale for everyone...this game can't get anymore unrealistic so just drop the %'s and let us go at it...all these %'s are doing is locking player up and that's why speed is still numero uno...that's why top reciever's are getting locked up by guys with 58 press ratings...plain and simple...drop these %...let the ratings determine the success and failure rate not you...EA...no wonder breaking outta pro-tak was so easy when it first came out...once everyone started to complain y'all decided to tune it done some huh???

[NoFear]

I don't see what these "stats" are going to do to improve the game. So what if Favre threw all those picks, does that mean that they're going to make it so Favre is more accurate or something? I don't get it nor do I care really.

When are we going to see new info for this game? Last year there was a lot more info at this time if I'm not mistaken. AND whatever they do as far as giving us new info, I really don't want to see a bunch of lies. Remember the blogs on offensive and defensive line being fixed, and so much more life-like, etc.? Well o-line is terrible, and d-line is just as bad IMO. Although I'm sure some were satisfied with d-line play.

[KBLover]

IMO, the problem isn't the percentages, it's that EA's formulas are screwed and/or their game engine isn't even looking at the ratings, but is more oriented on what animation triggers.

If a 58 PRS corner is winning too much vs a 80 RLS WR, that's not the fault of percentages, that's the fault of EA not using the RLS rating to make it play out more realistically. Instead it's just the CB being "checked" and if the CB wins, then the animation plays and then WR is like WTF? and can't move.

Of course, if the PRS rating isn't being checked either - well that's another problem. Again, that's not the fault of the game being percentage driven, it's the fault that the game engine isn't using ratings to calculate the percentages.

At the minimum there should be 2 checks (CB success, then WR release success), or better it should be PRS vs RLS = % chances of success by the CB. If failed, the CB is off balanced (trigger stumble animation), and the WR runs his route like no one was there for while the CB is stumbling (which could then be determined by AGI to see which animation plays - the just a little off balance one, or the fall on his face one).

That's the problem in my view.

As far as EA's mentioning these percentages - that's actually a GOOD thing they are looking at them, imo.

Why? Because maybe, just maybe they are looking at how the game is playing out and seeing their formulas are not working right.

If there were X% of successful stiff arms in the NFL, and Madden is way off of that, then that should be a sign that something isn't working right. Perhaps their formulas are too heavy in favor of the HB. Perhaps the TAK rating isn't being used (if the rating works like the slider then all it does is increase suction tackle distance). Perhaps it's the fact there's an ELU + SFA rating for the ball carrier but only, at best, the TAK rating for the defender (if all are equal weight, the ball carrier is getting 2:1 even if all ratings are the exact same)

So I'm looking at it as a potential positive. What they DO about it, that's what I'd like to hear. I also agree with the person who said EA needs to be forth coming with how it works - what ratings do what and work in what situations.