Difficulty vs Sliders... What's actually happening?

[Maitreya]

So I've really been enjoying the potential of CCM. I've always been a dynasty guy versus a gameplay guy so this is the big allure of M13 to me.

I always like to start out with out of the box settings and go from there. I'm not particularly awesome at stick skills. For example, I never user catch with my WR's or switch defenders on defense.

So out of the box, I've tweaked the sliders pretty hard to get realistic results. I traded for my all Texas Tech team and passing seems realistic (through week 12, Graham Harrell has 2500 yards, 15 TD, 17 int) but Baron Batch has over 1000 yards. Not realistic.

Are the sliders just toned down versions of the difficulty settings? I don't want the game to be unplayable. I want to grind out wins if possible while my players develop.

My WR's are awesome (AJ Green, Crabtree, Amendola) so that is my team strength.

My question is: What mathematically are sliders/difficulty doing? Does anyone know? Have the devs ever discussed this in detail?

I don't want to ruin other aspects of the game by negating a rating. For example, I don't want to decrease my run blocking so much (due to Batch's overperformance) that it negates the $$$ I spend on a good, run blocking OL.

I guess I need to see what the math is doing in order to decided how to proceed. Thanks OS.

Sorry for the ramble.

[Sausage]

The sliders, penalties, fatigue, threshold, ratings are all a big mystery that is slowly unraveling with the number of slider gurus that are sorting all of the possibilities.

Read all of the different theories and findings in the Madden Slider forum.

[Maitreya]

Thanks Sausage. Why is it such a mystery? Anyone at EA care to chime in?

Mods, could you move this to the sliders area? Thank you!

[RLaguna]

I dont think its such a mystery at all...and I dont know why there are so many posts about what the sliders are doing and how they work.

They are same this year as they are every year (well at least in theory...functionality may be a whole nother story)


All these sliders are doing is providing a global (broad) increase or decrease to the player rating(s) that affect that particular area of gameplay

For example:

If you Increase RUN BLOCKING to 55 (assuming that its at 50 by default)
Your basically adding a 5 point rating modifier to all the offensive linemen's run blocking abilities. Now which one's specifically, Im not sure nor am I sure of what 5 points on the slider scale equates to on the player's ratings scale, However, its not really important as long as you take note of the increases in the run blocking performances when making your adjustments.

What alot of people do is make the mistake of making changes from game to game and team to team when they are not satisfied and this is simply the worst, most least effective approach to nail down something that fits realistically into your skill of playing because there are just too many changing variables at play to make accurate comparisons.

Best way to test is go into practice mode with a team of equally skilled run blocking linemen and pit them against equally skilled run stopping defensive linemen. That would be most ideal to make the most accurate tweaks. However, its the most fool proof way...and simply run a good sampling test size of the same exact run plays over and over before you adjust slider settings

[MoleDude]

Quote: Originally Posted by RLaguna

I dont think its such a mystery at all...and I dont know why there are so many posts about what the sliders are doing and how they work. They are same this year as they are every year (well at least in theory...functionality may be a whole nother story)

Didn't you just contradict yourself there? If function does not follow theory, then there is a mystery as to how they function.

[RLaguna]

perhaps I did!!...lol

I guess my point was to say that these are the way EA's SLIDERS have always worked, but if they arent working as designed (this year) then that could be a separate issue that most likely needs to be fixed (rather than explained)