A plea to the DEVS

[TombSong]

Online Franchises are fun and competitive and breeds alot of "creativity" on offense and defense to get the extra edge needed to win.

With that said. I think some issues need to be nipped in the bud by you guys.

I think most of the crying for "rules" when playing online league games stims from balance issues created by the game and ignorance of how the game is suppose to work.

I think games should be played without the need for "rules" and everyone needs to man up and play their game and not expect their opponents to play inside a "sim" box. I am sure Mike Shananhan aint gonna call Wade Phillips the week before their game and say, "hey Wade, you can only run a toss play to Marion Barber 3 times and you can only drop 7 men into coverage"

The main culprits in Madden are screens, play action, and passes to the flats....oh and drags. There are also the other "madden" things you have to account for like "players warping", "pro tack runs","Ball trajectory issues", "pop fly int's", "press coverage" etc......

Everything needs a counter via play calling, play calling adjustments or personnel adjustments. No side of the ball should be held to having to resort to finding that 1 play that stops a certain play or having to use "non-football" tactics just to counter something thats happening on the field.

I am sure some of it is because of or our lack of knowledge on how to counter such and such, but when you see the top players online having to do crazy stuff or resort to crazy stuff to gain a advantage, that puts the ball back in yall's lap and yall have to do something to help the community out in this regard.

I thinkit would be cool in the coming months as you show off your new game that you will show in videos how these types of issues have been delt with and can be delt with by the user. I think it would go a long way in helping us understand your game and have a better playing experience and not mis judge things as being broke that may be set up that way by design.

[nuckles2k2]

You're essentially asking the devs to fix the gameplay and stamp out exploits. I think task number one is what the devs are making an attempt to do and task number two is impossible.

There's always gonna be people out there who explore every possible angle to gain an advantage over their opponent, and they'll go back to that over and over again to get a win. Hopefully they can sure up the gameplay to the point where certain exploits won't be useful anymore...but then 3 more will surface. You just have to be careful who you play online and who you allow in your OF (it shouldn't be that way and I'm not saying that I like it....but it is what it is.) I invited a friend of a friend to my online franchise last year and he had Detroit; after week number one the dude had Kevin Smith leading the league in receptions, reception yards, and yards per reception....since his first game was against the CPU, I can only assume he exploited the flats and screens. That was the end of my league right there.

So while I see where you're coming from...I don't think it's possible. There's always gonna be someone who doesn't mind winning in the most unrealistic fashion, as long as he get's that "W."

[Valdarez]

Until EA adds some type of play recognition to their game, there will never be balance. To date, I haven't seen Ian even fathom the idea.

[Crimsontide27]

I personally dont think its possible. Not taking a jab at EA on this one either, but I dont forsee a company being able to make others play fairly online. I have yet to play any game online that didnt result in some members taking advantage of every exploit and glitch to win.

With the ability to call hot routes, you can neutralize any defense you face with 1-2 hotroutes called. I hate online sports games for this reason. Even in something as simple and fun as Hot Shots golf you would run into people that would glitch the game to get 1000 yrd + drives every shot. Played NBA2k and they had that post glitch where you would get called for a foul and they could standing dunk 100% of the time...just not worth it.

[Boregard]

It seems to me that EA needs to get away from having plays programmed to be counters to certain plays and have the assignments be more fluid/fexible to a degree.

I am not sitting here saying it should work "this way" because I am not sure how to address some of it.

Some things like the pop fly DL ints should be tweaked certainly - one issue is QBs all have a B. Leftwhich release, which is soo long and slow it kills you to watch. Different QBs need different release quickness and all of them, except Leftwhich because his is about accurate now, need to be sped up.

[TombSong]

Quote: Originally Posted by nuckles2k2

You're essentially asking the devs to fix the gameplay and stamp out exploits. I think task number one is what the devs are making an attempt to do and task number two is impossible. There's always gonna be people out there who explore every possible angle to gain an advantage over their opponent, and they'll go back to that over and over again to get a win. Hopefully they can sure up the gameplay to the point where certain exploits won't be useful anymore...but then 3 more will surface. You just have to be careful who you play online and who you allow in your OF (it shouldn't be that way and I'm not saying that I like it....but it is what it is.) I invited a friend of a friend to my online franchise last year and he had Detroit; after week number one the dude had Kevin Smith leading the league in receptions, reception yards, and yards per reception....since his first game was against the CPU, I can only assume he exploited the flats and screens. That was the end of my league right there. So while I see where you're coming from...I don't think it's possible. There's always gonna be someone who doesn't mind winning in the most unrealistic fashion, as long as he get's that "W."

I think that the more the devs discuss the known exploits with the community and discuss how they are addressing them and how to combat them with the tools in the game(if they can be countered), you will see more competitve and dare I say "clean" games because the exploits will addressed or at the very least a dev supplied "heres what we know and what you can do to counter x, y z, exploit "

I know its very hard to make a game exploit free, but that does not mean take the attitude well lets not address it at all.

[WFColonel56]

Quote: Originally Posted by TombSong

I think that the more the devs discuss the known exploits with the community and discuss how they are addressing them and how to combat them with the tools in the game(if they can be countered), you will see more competitve and dare I say "clean" games because the exploits will addressed or at the very least a dev supplied "heres what we know and what you can do to counter x, y z, exploit " I know its very hard to make a game exploit free, but that does not mean take the attitude well lets not address it at all.

Thats why the Dev's have lets say hired 2 known tourny players to help get rid of some exploits. And those 2 people have a thread on 2 Big name Tourny sites. Where the people post known exploits to help EA get them out of the game.....You can say all you want but tourny guys want just as sim of a game as you do

[CreatineKasey]

I think there's a possibility that locomotion and OL improvements fix some of those exploits. It's hard to do unrealistic things when the players can't move unrealistically. APF does a great job of showing this off.

Changing OL logic to more area based (or whatever it needs to not allow garbage overloads to consistently work when adjusted to) and adding things like more acceleration and momentum to the game will help us gravitate towards more realistic experiences. For example, guys shouldn't be able to simply press deep zone players and expect the deep zone to never get attacked once acceleration matters. Warping should be eliminated with a new locomotion system I'd imagine?

I do agree that it'd be nice for EA to release some videos of direct changes they made to attack common "un-sim" tactics like nanos and rocket catches. Those things by no means break the game at this time, but it'd be nice to show more realistic results to when they happen in the game.

I also agree about the need for smart balance. I thought M10 was pretty darn close. Yeah, there's some stuff that is garbage, but overall it's freaking solid game. I'd like to see a blog on balancing for sure.