The only thing I can equate it to is when you're getting ready to receive a punt, all of your defensive audibles are available, the secondary ones that allow you to press or play off, the defensive line ones that allow you to spread, crash, pinch, but they don't actually do anything. Logically, you'd think if they came up in the menu, they'd have some effect on the play, but they don't. I guess it's just one of those things they overlooked.
And I'm 100% right there with you -- simple stuff like this shouldn't be treated like trade secrets. My personal opinion, there would be a lot less frustration if we had a more insight into how these little things in this game were programmed, and what they were designed for and what they can and can't do, instead of having to guess on our own.
In another part of that email, I tried to get him to elaborate on how the front 7 was programmed to react since there are no gap assignments in the game, you know, to tighten up the way I do things on defense when it comes to run plays and such, but he thought that was too much of a trade secret to reveal, so I had to go back to observation and educated guesses on that one.