Player Ratings: What Should they Add?

[lisinas]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gordy748

"If you want to build the perfect flight simulator, you'd end up with the plane". Same idea goes for sports simulators. If you really want the players to be human, then you'll need to get an NFL contract. For Madden player management, I think a clearer way of showing the attributes is needed more than new ones. They should be categorized into 3 areas, physical/mental/skills. Each category gets an overall score that is specific to player position, so in physical skills STR and ACC are weighted for DEs, while ACC, ELU is weighted for halfbacks. When you look at your team, you see the overall ratings but can go into the details if you want. It's a simple way to see quickly who's got the physical, mental, skills abilities that allows people who want details to get at them. For the skills set, I'd only include the ones most relevant to the position. Having to scroll past my OL's throwing capabilities to see how they run/ pass block is pointless. Of course, EA should work on the mental attributes. Awareness is one thing but playbook knowledge is more so. Players new to a team should make more errors than established ones, and those with higher awareness should learn quicker. There also needs to be coolness/ clutch/ whatever in make-or-break/ playoff situations. This could be simply modeled by degrading the players' skills with lower clutch ratings. Making these players captains could have a steadying influence on the rest of the team.

Nice ideas you got there.

[guaps]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gordy748

"If you want to build the perfect flight simulator, you'd end up with the plane". Same idea goes for sports simulators. If you really want the players to be human, then you'll need to get an NFL contract.

I can't agree with that statement.

First, the concept of simulation games are used very loosely and you have to distinguish between games that are viewed as simulations and games viewed as representations.

A flight simulator game is expected to simulate/model real-world processes, whereas sports games are representations that are expected to mimic, rather than model, real-world processes. When people play a sports game they expect to see a dynamic system that behaves like and has many characteristics of the sport.

Second, people are not claiming they want realism to the extent that, say, a racing game simulates the experience of the real driving so accurately that only a real professional race driver can play it well. They just want a proper representation of the sport - in this case football.

Quote: Originally Posted by Steven Poole

We are used to handling objects with mass, bounce and velocity in the real world, and we can predict their everyday interactions pretty well. [...] Appreciation of dynamic properties is hard-wired into the species—it’s essential for survival. This, then, is one of the most basic ways in which videogames speak to us as the real world does, directly to the visceral, animal brain

[Gordy748]

Guaps, we might be arguing over the opposite side of the same coin buddy. Madden's not a sports simulation (else we'd play 3 hour long games) but simulating more accurately what player X will do in situation Y is something a few people here would like to see, including me.

My point is that the more games mimic or simulate reality (in any game), the more exponentially complicated they become. For NFL, create too many variables and the amount of bugs we'd have to put up with would be intolerable.

Physical and observable skills sets are one thing, but mental skills are an intangible. Things like catastrophe theory that predict athletes' performance behavior (by predicting when they will or won't bottle) are far more complex than aerodynamics.

But hey, what do I care? I'm about to start the 2011 season... long as I get some good games I'll be happy.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Instead of a ratings Czsar, they need a tendancy cszar. The main problem with Madden and EA sports games in general is that when people start to whine about something, they tend to go overboard when they try to correct stuff.

Madden 08, Madden 09, NCAA 08, NCAA 09, QB scramble was damn near perfect by default. But what happen ??? Too many people who didn't know how to play good defense started to whine and complain about it. Came 2010 version of those games and they pretty much killed cpu QB scramble AI.

I mean yeah you see it in franchise mode games here and there, but RARELY compared to how it was in 08, 09.

Same thing with the offense and defense. In 08 people said defense was too hard, so in 09 they made offense over powering. Then people said there was no defense. In Madden 10 they over powered the defense with physic abilites, people spoke about it and now in Madden 11 we have shoot outs do to lack of defense.

It is even worse in NCAA. In 2010 when they introduced dual threat QB's, it completely nerfed the QB scramble AI. So instead of being a dual threat, they really were a NO threat because those QB's didn't run and they couldn't throw.

NCAA 11 was further made worse with the school offensive styles. Good concept in theory to have spread, pistol, run n shoot, air raid, pro, option, multiple. However the QB scramble AI is tied to the offensive style in that game.

Pretty much the only QB's that scramble in that game are the ones running the option playbook. It is as though when they added the code for defense contain logic it complete messed up the scramble code.

So when you playing against Pryor or Tyrod, if it wasn't for the names on their jersey you couldn't tell if it was them or Peyton Manning jr because they stand there like statues.

They need to mocap a mobile QB. Mobile QB's don't stand flat footed. They always have a bounce in their stance. Hopefully one day EA can find a happy medium and don't over correct stuff.

If anything else, give us tendancies, or something where the user can change stuff on their own. Kind of like NBA 2k did with their series. They got tired of people whining and bam, gave us DOZENS of tendancies, attributes for where we could control not only what the individual player do on the court, but what the team as a whole does as well.

[silence1206]

Personally, I think they need to break down their ratings a bit. Currently, a rating such as awareness really applies for too many things. There are different types of awareness in football.

Pre-play awareness--Knowing the formation and personnel groups of the opponent, allowing defenders to key in to what play is probably coming their way.

Tackle awareness--Knowing how to get into position to make a tackle

Ball-in-the-air awareness--Knowing how defend the pass or how to pursue once the ball is in the air

General coverage awareness--The ability of the defender to aniticipate & react to the route the receiver is running

Route-running awareness--The ability of the receiver, regardless of speed, to deceive the defender to create space.



I'm sure I'm glossing over some things. And I'm sure I'm not using proper football terminology. But my point remains. Ratings need to apply to as few football abilities as possible. The speed rating only applies to one thing (or should) -- how fast a runner is in top gear. It should be EA's goal to keep all ratings this simple, giving them singular attributes.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Quote: Originally Posted by silence1206

Personally, I think they need to break down their ratings a bit. Currently, a rating such as awareness really applies for too many things. There are different types of awareness in football. Pre-play awareness--Knowing the formation and personnel groups of the opponent, allowing defenders to key in to what play is probably coming their way. Tackle awareness--Knowing how to get into position to make a tackle Ball-in-the-air awareness--Knowing how defend the pass or how to pursue once the ball is in the air General coverage awareness--The ability of the defender to aniticipate & react to the route the receiver is running Route-running awareness--The ability of the receiver, regardless of speed, to deceive the defender to create space. I'm sure I'm glossing over some things. And I'm sure I'm not using proper football terminology. But my point remains. Ratings need to apply to as few football abilities as possible. The speed rating only applies to one thing (or should) -- how fast a runner is in top gear. It should be EA's goal to keep all ratings this simple, giving them singular attributes.

For the most part on the defensive side of the ball they already broke down awareness with Man coverage, zone coverage and play recognition. All 3 of those are awareness ratings.