Online Franchise

[RogueHominid]

Here's a question I'd like to have answered: from a technical perspective, how much harder is it to set up an online franchise with the cap and proper draft scouting than an offline one? I guess I'm wondering whether the incompleteness of M11's online franchise was the product of some kind of technical difficulty, or whether it was the product of the de-prioritization of that mode.

If the development crew cannot innovate in both the offline and online franchise modes within the same game cycle (which is an implication we might draw from the way M11 played out), would it be possible simply to give M12's online franchise the feature set M11's offline franchise had? At least that wouldn't be asking the developers to do anything new. From a gamer's perspective, this seems like the minimum EA could/should do for fans.

[TDKing]

Quote: Originally Posted by 43M

When they get the offline franchise where it needs to be, I imagine they will move on to making it better online. Until then (and rightfully so), offline franchise needs to continue to be the focal point.

Well there really should not be 2 modes. There should just be a Franchise Mode (online) with a great web/iphone interface! You can play with yourself and still have web access to your franchise(that would be = to offline mode), or you could start a franchise with friends (that would = online multiplayer mode).
One Online Mode is the RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! Before you offline peeps get on your high horses make sure you understand what I said.

[ANDROMADA 1]

Quote: Originally Posted by tazdevil20

Right on the money TM. Something tells me though that there will probably be minimal if ANY changes made to the mode. I couldn't believe they came out and said, "no one really used this mode". Yeah, that's like producing a car that doesn't have wheels or a gas pedal and saying, "we stopped making it because no one drove it."

Sad but true.

[CFTejada]

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by CFTejada

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

For whatever reason, when EA implemented online franchise in Madden 10, they chose to use a completely server-based approach, unlike what existed for NCAA Football (which only effectively does file hosting for dynasties).

My assumptions on the decision: the advantage of going this route was that EA could easily create cross-platform apps for the PC and iOS devices so that players could stay connected to their franchises away from the console; this turned out to be one of the advertised successes of the mode, and as far as I know this feature enjoyed great reception as well. The server-side approach also indeed would allow for dynamic updating of the online franchise mechanic with potential additions to the game mode (which outside of roster updates has unfortunately not happened). The disadvantage was that the mode had to be remade from the ground-up to work for the completely server-side infrastructure, thus why we haven't seen things like AI roster management or the concept of contracts.

There's no data to back this up that I have access to, but just going off the reception of online franchise and online dynasty in their separate games, I would like to think that EA has learned that the mode they've tried for online franchise starting with Madden 10 has failed, and that they should adopt a more NCAA-like approach, where all the game logic is performed client-side (i.e. on the console) and the server is only used for file storage.

[KOTC Wayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by CFTejada

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

This is my biggest issue also, how hard could it be? I'm one of the few that have no love for playing the CPU ever again ( ever since online play for the Playstation came into existence in 03 ) , I want to compete against all different user controlled teams with people from all over the country.

[aksumite]

Quote: Originally Posted by TyghtWork

I'm with you 100%

I agree with this 100% as well

Me and my crew wait for as much info as possible then, as a unit, we choose which game we will play for the year based on ONLINE features (until the following year's versions are released).....choices are btwn NCAA Online Dynasty, Madden Online Franchise, and NBA 2k Online Association (still hoping for that lol)

We like to ALL buy the 1 game we choose and play 20 seasons MINIMUM together. Most of us dont buy or play any other games.

Right now we are 20+ years deep in our Online Dynasty in NCAA but we are dieing for Madden to tighten up.

Last year I was eager to play with the Jets for 20 years up until EA said Online Franchise was not getting any improvements.....so, NONE of us bought Madden. We all bought NCAA

This year we wanna return to the prof level and have a real option if Madden has ALL offline features in ONLINE Franchise

[GiantBlue76]

Quote: Originally Posted by TDKing

Well there really should not be 2 modes. There should just be a Franchise Mode (online) with a great web/iphone interface! You can play with yourself and still have web access to your franchise(that would be = to offline mode), or you could start a franchise with friends (that would = online multiplayer mode). One Online Mode is the RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! Before you offline peeps get on your high horses make sure you understand what I said.

Wow, someone who actually gets it here. Excellent post. There should not be online franchise and offline franchise. There should just be franchise mode. You can simply play by yourself and all of the same code should be re-used.

I also love how the offline guys always say, "offline franchise should be the continued focus." Yeah, simply because YOU don't play in an online franchise. I have no issue with offline franchise being amazing, but like TD says here, there should simply be one franchise mode in Madden with the option to add users.

One of the better posts I've seen on here. Like he said, make sure you understand it before you respond to it.