Simulation scores need work

[The Duke]

same deal as madden 11. the better team doesnt win nearly often enough. teams very rarely do better than 11-5 no matter how good they are. after a few years of franchise, 10-6 will probably win you any division. even when i play God and stack a team full of talent, theyre still lucky to finish 10-6. anybody else notice this?

[The Duke]

39 views and not a single comment? pretty straight-forward question. surely other people have noticed this? it happened in my madden 11 franchises, too. along with highly rated players not playing up to their ratings in simulations.

[Shinywalrus]

There are pretty fundamental problems with the simulation system that are driving the end results. On balance I'd say that this year's simulation engine is as bad as any since Madden 04. It looks and plays as though it were completely untested.

A few obvious little tests (that apparently didn't seem to obvious to the devs): simulate a full season and go to look at QB stats. Look at the completion percentages. In dozens of years of simulations, I had a great deal of difficulty, even with quality quarterbacks and receivers, producing consistent completion percentages above 60%. I would say that, in the aggregate, completion rates are between 5-10% too low. This is...in terms of scoring and differentiating quarterbacks, a huge number.

Beyond that, tipped passes continue to occur at rates in single games that exceed actual totals over the course of an entire season, which has been a problem only for the last 2 years or so, if I recall correctly.

The simulation engine is completely incapable of handling 34 playbooks as well, even in 2011. Take a look at the total tackles from a Harrison or Ware - they tend to run at 2x actual tackle totals for those players.

It's hard to say what specifically is causing what you've described, but it could be any number of things. The integrity of the simulation engine is as bad as it has ever been.

[The Duke]

Its a sick joke that i have to spend hours and hours before and after each season controlling all 32 teams to get them to behave realistically and then when i sim the games, the teams and players dont perform to their ratings. completely defeats the purpose of even playing the game.

[twimstaxs]

Do you think the Cowboys finished the NFL season last year based on their ratings?

[The Duke]

did the entire league struggle to do better than 8-8 last season?
and cool, tiburon can just totally randomise the regular season results so ratings dont matter at all. thatll be fun.

[T5063]

If you look at the team overall ratings in Franchise Mode (not Play Now), you'll see that they're all between 80-87 (IIRC Cincy is 80 and Pats are 86). Based on the ratings it makes sense that there will be a lot of .500 teams since according to the game they're all within a few points of each other overall.

The way the CPU calculates the overalls is a little wacked I think since I woudn't imagine a team like Cincy in only 6/100 pts worse than a team like the Patriots.

[haloofduty]

Low completion percentage sucks. They went from every QB passing for 70% to 2000 yard rushers every season to almost every QB completion percentage under 60%. Will I ever enjoy franchise EA???