Slider Philosophy for Madden 11.

[mjhyankees]

First off, I want to say that in years past (old gen) I was pretty good with sliders, as the old gen games played roughly the same and minor tweaking was all I needed. I only got next gen last year (M10) and have started with other peoples sliders and tweaked them.

I wanted to have a thread here to share your philosophy and discovery in your slider experiments. Not the numbers themselves, but how you arrived at those numbers. I'll post some thoughts in the next response. I though this would help all of us still fussing with sliders.

[mjhyankees]

I'm currently using the "Authentic Game sliders" by (I think) JDseven. What I noticed is that he has extremely high settings for the cpu (90's and 100's in many cases) and even the human is higher than I'm used to seeing, but it seems to play well.
In the past I had heard that when you raise the sliders you level off the playing field. In that Guys with 98 catch, let's say vs a guy with 58, by raising the catch slider, the 58 guy gets much better but the 98 guy really can't get much better by virtue of his high rating to start. Ergo, everyone basically starts playing about the same (in theory of course...also I'm aware of the thought out there that the ratings are meaningless at times - haven't decided myself yet).
An old gen slider guru had given my the philosophy of LOWERING the numbers for everyone (IE....too many broken tackles by cpu backs? Lower his BTK slider, don't raise your tackle slider). Not completing enough passes? Lower the pass defense slider, not raise your qB acc etc.
I don't know if that applies anymore but I do notice a wide range in slider settings.
In the past I'd start with all madden and tweak from there (as you start with lower slider numbers). But now on all madden you can't adjust the human sliders (unless you do custom settings) and there are simply too many drops.
At the moment I'm content with JDseven's sliders but was wondering how the rest of you set up your sliders.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by mjhyankees

I'm currently using the "Authentic Game sliders" by (I think) JDseven. What I noticed is that he has extremely high settings for the cpu (90's and 100's in many cases) and even the human is higher than I'm used to seeing, but it seems to play well. In the past I had heard that when you raise the sliders you level off the playing field. In that Guys with 98 catch, let's say vs a guy with 58, by raising the catch slider, the 58 guy gets much better but the 98 guy really can't get much better by virtue of his high rating to start. Ergo, everyone basically starts playing about the same (in theory of course...also I'm aware of the thought out there that the ratings are meaningless at times - haven't decided myself yet). An old gen slider guru had given my the philosophy of LOWERING the numbers for everyone (IE....too many broken tackles by cpu backs? Lower his BTK slider, don't raise your tackle slider). Not completing enough passes? Lower the pass defense slider, not raise your qB acc etc. I don't know if that applies anymore but I do notice a wide range in slider settings. In the past I'd start with all madden and tweak from there (as you start with lower slider numbers). But now on all madden you can't adjust the human sliders (unless you do custom settings) and there are simply too many drops. At the moment I'm content with JDseven's sliders but was wondering how the rest of you set up your sliders.

I have always been in the camp of lowering sliders rather than raising them. If you lower sliders, you still keep the gap between good and bad players. When you raise the sliders, everyone becomes roughly the same IMO.

[Foxtrot2873]

Quote: Originally Posted by fistofrage

I have always been in the camp of lowering sliders rather than raising them. If you lower sliders, you still keep the gap between good and bad players. When you raise the sliders, everyone becomes roughly the same IMO.

I've definitely noticed this after playing with JD_Seven's. I really got pretty good play out of the whole thing, except that difference between players was virtually gone. Such as a 3-4 defensive end capable of rushing the passer just as well as someone like Jared Allen, or Demarcus Ware. The same could be said for Champ Bailey covering someone like Seattle's Mike Williams and having the same results as if he was covering Larry Fitzgerald or Andre Johnson.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by Foxtrot2873

I've definitely noticed this after playing with JD_Seven's. I really got pretty good play out of the whole thing, except that difference between players was virtually gone. Such as a 3-4 defensive end capable of rushing the passer just as well as someone like Jared Allen, or Demarcus Ware. The same could be said for Champ Bailey covering someone like Seattle's Mike Williams and having the same results as if he was covering Larry Fitzgerald or Andre Johnson.

I play NCAA extensively, and just bought Madden. So I am going to get some sliders down here soon. In NCAA I was forced to move some sliders up. This was because alot of College players have low awareness rating and other ratings, there aren't too many elite players in the 95 to 99 range. Thety weren't performing as they should at 50. So even cranking up the AI sliders didn't kill the gap between the players. The Elite - Mark Ingram's, etc, still felt elite.

But with my limited Madden experience, it appears that moving the sliders up even just a bit can make alot of running backs and corners Elite. It used to be back in the day, I was fairly confident that every 5 ticks you moved a slider, = 1 point. So if you moved Running Back Ability form 50 to 75, a 92 speed RB would now be 97 speed. The elite players were capped at 100 so the gap narrowed. Conversely if you moved down slider to 25, the 92 back is now 87 and the 97 is now 92, actually even more elite by % of variance.

I am not even sure what Attribute the Break tackle slider affects now, but I guess it would be speed as well, probably everything but ball carrying which is controlled by the fumble slider.