Head Coach v Madden Franchise Comparison

[matroska]

After spending countless hours on Head Coach 09, franchise mode seems tough to get back into for Madden 10. The new interface is nice but its the same ole, same ole under the hood.

Contracts-
Contract negotiations were on point in HC, CPU agents would make counter offers and depending on their answers to your offers you could judge if they would budge soon or not on their contract. In M10 its just the same canned responses over and over until you stumble upon the proper combination of years, salary and bonus. No incentives either which are present in HC 09. They help when signing a backup player without going to hell and back with salary and bonus when you know they will play <30% of the snaps.

Trades-
Trade negotiations in M10 are about the same as always. Trade negotiations werent the best in HC09 but they style in which its presented makes it hard to regress back into M10 franchise trade style. In M10 its just plugging in players until the CPU feels they are making out ahead by a considerable margin. In HC09 you would have a ton of packages listed to you depending which players were on the block, picks and future picks which was amazing. I only wish you could offer specific players in a trade situation instead of need to designate them "on the trading block" when its just one trade instance but its not that big of a deal.

Offseason ReSign + FA
Bit more of the same, offer more and more money blindly until they accept. FA's have interests (team need, great coach, market, etc.) which seem to effect negotiations some. It seems even really bad players want an arm and a leg to sign them.

Coach Signings
Unlike HC09, you can view the entire pool of available coaches and coaches in the NFL. Unlike HC09, coaches dont seem to have any attributes besides a modifier to certain positions (QB THA +5, WR RTR +5, even negative stuff, etc), no motivation, ethics, etc. Not a game killer because it keeps it simple and most of us dont know what all those att's did anyways. I like this but it would be nice if they brought over more from HC09 so you had incentive to develop staff instead of dump your current guys when someone with better modifiers comes along next offseason.

Ill add more once I get further into it. (Draft,etc.)

[lrarkman]

Thanks matroska.

Please keep us updated. Im still on the fence about buying Madden 10 and your info will help with my decision.

I haven't decided if the Madden 10 "on the field" eye candy is worth the investement yet.

[matroska]

Updated with some of the beginning off season processes. Ill do the draft after work.

[chickenhed]

Thank you for doing this. I am very interested in more comparisons. Thanks!

[Frog-Face-Frown]

Ok this is a dumb question but does this year's madden even have a coach mode?

I haven't seen any mention of it anywhere and I know EA hasn't had a coach mode option in madden since the 2008 PC version. I never played my 2008 PS-3 version because it had no coach mode so it ended up collecting dust until I sold it because the EA idiots didn't put in the coach mode option even though the PC version of madden '08 had it as an option.

I'm not a button masher so that's why I like HC 09 and don't want to get screwed by EA again by buying Madden 10 for my PS-3 if they didn't add a coach mode option this time....

Also, I don't consider spectator mode a viable alternative to coach mode as I want to create and call plays and watch my team execute them and my interest in buying Madden 10 would be to have a real coach mode and the ability to use all custom(fictional) teams in franchise mode, and of course, a 'create a player' feature would be nice to have in Madden 10 which HC '09 lacked....

Can you tell me if Madden 10 has all this stuff? Thanx....

[D0NTSH0OTME]

Yes there is a coach mode, but it is only for when you are playing a game. You simpily get to call the play and have the computer run it for you.

[FisherPrice]

I'm glad someone posted this. I have been playing along in my season. But I was kind of curious to see what options they had during the off season.

I was shocked, dissapointed etc etc. I really thought that there would be more elements of HC in this years Madden.

After playing HC everything in Madden just seems like its there to be there. That they didn't improve on anything.

It also feels like they worked on the backend so that later down the line they could possibly add DLC. Not saying they will do it this year but maybe in the future.

[bwalker]

I have to say I was hoping the Franchise mode would have some of the elements of HC '09 but other than seeing a couple of names I recognize from the "future 50" in the draft it's same ol' franchise mode.