Breathing new life into Franchise Mode

[sbuxer]

I was thinking about the Progression system in Madden (we all know that, if it's not broken, it at least needs serious tweaking), and thought of a simple way to make each season of your franchise a bit more exciting.

Right now, Progression happens during the off-season, based on the previous year. Again, this could use some serious tweaking, but this is OK.

What I would love to see is a second progression, that happens between off-season and pre-season. If done properly, this would add a whole new dynamic to your franchise.

In the real world, players typically take one of 3 approaches to their off-season. They either keep themselves in shape and come to camp prepared. They work their *** off and come to camp a better player. Or they sit on a beach all summer long and come to camp weak and out of shape.

This should be worked into Madden. There are ways to do it to make it dynamic and awesome. Add storylines, give players some sort of "work habit" attributes, etc. I don't expect EA to do any of those things. But even if it was completely randomized, it would be tremendous. And since most players keep themselves in shape during the offseason, it wouldn't affect 20 players on your team. Maybe just 3-5 to keep it interesting but not ridiculous.

Let's use the Broncos as an example. You come into your second season debating on whether to ride out Orton or give Tebow the reigns. But over the off-season, Brady Quinn, realizing that his window of opportunity was closing, spent every waking moment perfecting his game. He comes into camp with a +5 ratings boost in arm strength and accuracy. Now your tough decision just got tougher.

Or the flip side, say you're the Giants and Manningham comes to camp overweight. His speed, agility and acceleration are down. His strength and jumping ability has taken a hit. Do you run him out there or do you maybe give Victor Cruz his chance to lineup as a 1 or 2?

This would not only make each off-season a little different and interesting, it could also make each franchise unique.

They would need to put in an equalizer to balance this out. So Manningham comes in overweight, but through practice or gameplay he could work his way back into shape. This is where Madden could make it awesome (and work to fix the current Progression system) by having you allocate practice time to players and positions to improve their ratings.

But even if they didn't do that, and juts put in a randomized progression system between off-season and pre-season, that would make Franchise infinitely more exciting. Seems like it would be a fairly simple implementation, too.

[Legionnaire]

I like the storylines idea.

I've been saying for years that sports games should just look at what the old SimCity games used to do. In that game, once you built up your city, there were different disaster scenarios the game would throw at you. It would breathe so much life into franchise mode for there to be different loosely-scripted scenarios thrown at you.

Something else I think people would enjoy: similar to what NBA 2k and EA's NHL series are doing now (bringing back old players for you to use), I think it would be cool to kick it up a notch and let fans jump into a time machine to start dynasties in the past.

Obviously, with the size of NFL rosters, it's impractical (or impossible) to get all the old players to actually sign on, so EA'd have to leave the actual rosters up to roster creators in the fan community. But EA could do their part by including way more retro uniforms, and allowing for more customization in franchise format (allowing you to choose the number of teams, the number of divisions, which teams are in which division, what the free agency rules are, etc... and letting you change it up at the beginning of each offseason if you feel like it). And add a tool on the Madden website that allows for hand-crafting your own draft class so fans can create their own draft classes to mirror the real-life ones. And a tool that lets you hand-craft rosters (not only naming players, but being able to load portrait photos and input their career stats up to that point). It'd be simple for EA to make those tools, and it'd lead to plenty of people spending hours and hours on their website as they put in the work to make rosters and draft classes (looking at their ads, and all that good stuff that are the whole reason companies like EA have websites).

Imagine you want to start a franchise in 1982. So you look around and download the 1982 rosters some fan has made. You start up the franchise, and the franchise has an option to select the starting date. You tell the game to make it 1982. You choose to remove the teams that weren't around in 1982, leaving you with 28 teams. You move the Seahawks back to the AFC. And whenever you play games, you slap the retro uniforms on instead of modern ones. Then, each offseason, you load up the appropriate year's draft class that were made by the fan community. So in 1983, you get to start branching off in history as guys like Dan Marino and Jim Kelly and John Elway end up with different teams than they went to in real life.

I feel like time-machine franchises are the next natural step from what people like NBA 2k12 and NHL 12 are doing this year with their old-school players and teams.

[Rhone]

I don't think this a necessarily bad idea, however I do think:

1) This is somewhat simulated by the existence of Potential (e.g. low potential can be seen as representing a lack of work ethic).
2) Adding this in presents another layer of complexity to Progression, and EA has shown that they can't design anything complex in Madden without screwing it up with bugs or things that just plain don't work how they should. And of course they don't bother fixing any of these things unless it becomes the focus of a future release of Madden 5 years later (and then they screw up parts of the new system).

Since EA won't give up on your yearly $60 by switching to a 2-year development cycle (which might leave time for, you know, quality control), I'd rather they just keep it simple but get it right.

[robert429]

Quote: Originally Posted by Legionnaire

I like the storylines idea. I've been saying for years that sports games should just look at what the old SimCity games used to do. In that game, once you built up your city, there were different disaster scenarios the game would throw at you. It would breathe so much life into franchise mode for there to be different loosely-scripted scenarios thrown at you. Something else I think people would enjoy: similar to what NBA 2k and EA's NHL series are doing now (bringing back old players for you to use), I think it would be cool to kick it up a notch and let fans jump into a time machine to start dynasties in the past. Obviously, with the size of NFL rosters, it's impractical (or impossible) to get all the old players to actually sign on, so EA'd have to leave the actual rosters up to roster creators in the fan community. But EA could do their part by including way more retro uniforms, and allowing for more customization in franchise format (allowing you to choose the number of teams, the number of divisions, which teams are in which division, what the free agency rules are, etc... and letting you change it up at the beginning of each offseason if you feel like it). And add a tool on the Madden website that allows for hand-crafting your own draft class so fans can create their own draft classes to mirror the real-life ones. And a tool that lets you hand-craft rosters (not only naming players, but being able to load portrait photos and input their career stats up to that point). It'd be simple for EA to make those tools, and it'd lead to plenty of people spending hours and hours on their website as they put in the work to make rosters and draft classes (looking at their ads, and all that good stuff that are the whole reason companies like EA have websites). Imagine you want to start a franchise in 1982. So you look around and download the 1982 rosters some fan has made. You start up the franchise, and the franchise has an option to select the starting date. You tell the game to make it 1982. You choose to remove the teams that weren't around in 1982, leaving you with 28 teams. You move the Seahawks back to the AFC. And whenever you play games, you slap the retro uniforms on instead of modern ones. Then, each offseason, you load up the appropriate year's draft class that were made by the fan community. So in 1983, you get to start branching off in history as guys like Dan Marino and Jim Kelly and John Elway end up with different teams than they went to in real life. I feel like time-machine franchises are the next natural step from what people like NBA 2k12 and NHL 12 are doing this year with their old-school players and teams.

This is a cool idea. The key to this feature and unlocking loads of potential is allowing for community involvement and creativity.

How sweet if we could load photos or do face scans like fight night or tiger woods to create players. Will never happen because madden wants to control rosters but it'd be sweet.

[shadia147]

I think with the popularity of NBA2K12's Legend Mode, It can only be a matter of time before the other game manufacturers will go that way too. I love the idea of the progressive historical teams. As well as the customizable Leagues and Divisions. But I think that could only work in a PC version, not console.

[shadia147]

BTW, I've always wanted to simulate the old NFL-AFL war years. Imagine an alternative history where the two leagues never merged. Colts, Browns, and Steelers back in the old NFL. And all the expansion teams would have been in the AFL.

[mjhyankees]

BTW old gen used to update the progression every 4 or 6 weeks. So you could see guys get better or worse during the season. Didn't seemed tied to stats though that I could recall. Just kind of random.

[Rhone]

Quote: Originally Posted by mjhyankees

BTW old gen used to update the progression every 4 or 6 weeks. So you could see guys get better or worse during the season. Didn't seemed tied to stats though that I could recall. Just kind of random.

Yeah, progression was initially yearly like it is now (with a possibility of a little bump for rookies after preseason), then they added in multiple chances for progression during the year, and then they went back to yearly when they added in potential ratings last year.

It's always been based on stats (with other factors influencing, like age). With multiple progressions during the year, you could turn your rookie skill position guys into 90+ OVR stars pretty quickly by feeding them the ball... MaddenRPG at its cheesiest. Stats just seem to have a little less influence since the introduction of Potential.