Online Vs. Offline

[marktg30]

Quote: Originally Posted by stux

This is been brought up a tons of time. I think I did a poll on it ages ago. From what I recall there were more people playing offline then online. But I think the age of the average poster on this site may not follow for the average Madden purchaser. I don't believe it is a dramatic difference across the board of offline to online. I think it is some where near even. I agree though, I never play online because it isn't anything like a real NFL game. People just use exploits to try and win the games. I only play offline and I have Madden pick my play so I avoid using high percentage plays to often. There really isn't anything EA can do that would interest me in playing Madden online. The funny thing is all other games I play are only online but sports games are just no fun due to lack of realism in how other people play online. If Madden ever went completely online I would have no interest in the game at all.

That sums up EVERYTHING quite nicely.

[cowboy_kmoney]

I feel like if they work to fix the offline needs they will have more sales this year because Its so many people that truly like to bulid their team up and like looking for that next great player for their team. So giving us a deeper fran-mode would be the best thing they could do to Madden this year in order to clean up what they missed on with last years game.

[GiantBlue76]

No offense to any of the posts in here, but I get frustrated reading these complaints about online. First off, those of you who complain about online because you think it prevents them from making additions to offline are not correct. Yes there is a network layer that is added for online support, but it isn't like they simply re-write ALL of the code for online components. Most of the stuff is the same code... at least it should be. The functionality is the same except you are doing it over a network connection. Secondly, I never understood the "problem with cheesers". People do this in every online game, not just sports games. The solution? Find people on your friends list that you know and play serious games! I have never had a problem in the 10 years I have been playing online sports games. For many people, sitting in a room and beating the crap out of the computer over and over again gets very repetitive. Nothing can give you a chess match like a human opponent, especially in a game like Madden where the AI is a pretty big mess right now. I started playing online leagues with NFL2k5 in 2004. We had a serious league with 30 guys. It was the most fun I have ever had playing games. Incredible. There is nothing like competing against another person. We had that league for a long time too.

For the guy posting about the age issue, it's not an age thing. I'm 34 and started playing sports games on an atari 2600. Playing against my friends in RealSports football while they were 10 miles away would have been a dream come true

I think you will find that most gamers in all genres play online. Especially with sports. Sports are all about competition. I assume most of you and the people on this site are still, or were at one time, athletes.

[Flamehead]

I respectfully disagree that "online is the future". Says who? Peter Moore? EA? Online is and will continue to be a feature of this franchise, but not the be all end all.

I could see the overarching "future" comment being valid in the context of casual gamers, which Moore and EA has made no secret about courting. Which in turn dovetails with another issue: focus, i.e., casual arcade, or sim?

IMHO, these will always be connected. To generalize (almost overly so), it seems to me that the casual arcade loving crowd are the ones that would be most interested in online as evidenced by the high occurence cheesing. Those people are more interested in winning a video game that happens to be football rather than a football sim.

So in that vein, EA's approach makes sense: 1) They want to court casual, 2) casuals love online, so 3) make the focus online--which in turn reinforces the perception that EA's not interested in sim football. A cycle.

[splff3000]

Quote: Originally Posted by Flamehead

I respectfully disagree that "online is the future". Says who? Peter Moore? EA? Online is and will continue to be a feature of this franchise, but not the be all end all. I could see the overarching "future" comment being valid in the context of casual gamers, which Moore and EA has made no secret about courting. Which in turn dovetails with another issue: focus, i.e., casual arcade, or sim? IMHO, these will always be connected. To generalize (almost overly so), it seems to me that the casual arcade loving crowd are the ones that would be most interested in online as evidenced by the high occurence cheesing. Those people are more interested in winning a video game that happens to be football rather than a football sim. So in that vein, EA's approach makes sense: 1) They want to court casual, 2) casuals love online, so 3) make the focus online--which in turn reinforces the perception that EA's not interested in sim football. A cycle.

Even though I play offline now, I have to disagree with you here. I stopped playing online because the speed was changed to slow, not because of cheese. Before I stopped playing online, I had plenty of games without cheese. Now don't get me wrong, there still was an occasional cheeser here and there, but for the most part it was all straight. It's definitely not as bad as you're making it out to be.

Having said that, I think offline is still EA's main focus. There are waaaay more games played offline than online so it wouldn't make any sense for them not to focus on offline play. I wouldn't say they gave up on offline, like some of you have said. I'd say they're trying to get online better, but that doesn't mean they gave up on offline play.

[roll2tide]

I have never understood why online and offline are even separate issues. Quite frankly, if they fixed the offline stuff (franchise, gameplay, presentation, depth) then they would, by default, fix most of the online stuff too. Just make sure that an online franchise is everythign that an offline franchise is. Simple.

The only thing exclusive to online play should be disconnects, latency, and the ranking system.

[marktg30]

Quote: Originally Posted by roll2tide

I have never understood why online and offline are even separate issues. Quite frankly, if they fixed the offline stuff (franchise, gameplay, presentation, depth) then they would, by default, fix most of the online stuff too. Just make sure that an online franchise is everythign that an offline franchise is. Simple. The only thing exclusive to online play should be disconnects, latency, and the ranking system.

I think there should be SIM lobbies. That would give me more faith in online play.

[lolfalconsbeatu]

I only play online because the truth is, playing a actual human is the most competitive way to play the game -- it brings out a real chess match, where I really feel like I have to outsmart the dude wherever he is in the world.

I guess playing the CPU on All-Madden and winning is cool too, and maybe brings out a little chess match...but for me, its just a win...and I like my wins to mean something (through rank) and hurt other peoples feelings while I'm doing it. Playing the computer and winning by 21 means absolutely nothing to the computer, its just a win in your franchise mode that you will probably start over anyways.

OS is full of offline gamers, with a few Online gamers sprinkled in here and there.