Madden NFL 11 Interview with Ian Cummings (GameShark)

[Flamehead]

Two observations:

1) "At E3 we spoke briefly about the new GameFlow feature. This seems to be a fairly hot-button issue with a lot of Madden fans. Can you describe the idea behind it and why you guys thought it important to add to the design of Madden NFL 11?

It’s definitely a vocal minority."

LOL, way to spin. It's got a bit of "Baghdad Bob" flavor to it, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

2) I'm disheartened that much of the discussion regarding franchise was about online. If EA was shocked to see its low usage but sees multiple posts in the "community" about the desire for offline franchise enhancements, why is 2+2 not equaling 4? Of course, I ask this half-rhetorically because we know they acknowledge it to some extent (see Phil's blog), but I almost get the sense that if they could just do away with it altogether, they would--no additional revenue stream.

[frankrizzo380]

Quote: Originally Posted by ryan36

ONLINE franchise man. And the thing is, unless you're part of a sports message board, can you imagine how hard it is logistically to get 31 of your closest classmates together to schedule an ONLINE franchise. The CPU would take over for any teams not user controlled, but still. And those same 31 people would have to have madden. I can't believe Ian didn't know it wasn't going to be used by most of his install base. Unless they move SINGLE PLAYER franchises online...he won't see more use. People are way too busy in many cases.

NCAA has this and along with the extra web based stuff like recruiting and managing depth, this makes my life a whole lot easier AND it makes online very appealing to hordcore/sim/familymen lol

[mr_president]

the link won't load for me....but did they discuss tackling??... and if there are any improvements between the demo and the final version??

thanks guys

[rooney8]

Quote: Originally Posted by frankrizzo380

NCAA has this and along with the extra web based stuff like recruiting and managing depth, this makes my life a whole lot easier AND it makes online very appealing to hordcore/sim/familymen lol

Yeah and if this is successfull they might do the same in Madden. It seems Madden looks at what Nhl, Fifa and Ncaa does and tries to copy what they do well. I honestly doubt any of those games looks at Madden for anything other than what not to do. It seems every interview with Ian he mentions how he is sim and that's where he's taking the game but then the game screams otherwise. This interview pretty much killed my hope for Madden12.

[rooney8]

Quote: Originally Posted by mr_president

the link won't load for me....but did they discuss tackling??... and if there are any improvements between the demo and the final version?? thanks guys

Try it again, didn't work for me first time. No nothing about tackling mainly gameflow and bits of other stuff.

[frankrizzo380]

well u have to have hope in m12, there isnt any other nfl videogame out to play lol, but i love the feel of the demo, AND i love the new strategy pad controls(ps3) so im pretty hyped for this game's future (with my fingers crossed of course)

[BlueNGold]

The online franchise comments really piss me off. You don't just add a feature that isn't fully fleshed out and then abandon it after a year because not enough people use said half-baked feature.

I also seem to find it hard to believe that there was a shocking amount of people not playing OF. I was in 3 multi season OF's with 32 owners and barely any of us knew each other.

What I think contributed to some of those surprising numbers of people not playing OF is that Madden is probably 60-40 non-sim to sim players (maybe more). From my experiences, the sim players were the ones that were very dedicated to OF and basically played from last August till this August. The non -sim players were the ones that were not dedicated to OF and getting booted out of the ones they did join.

Quote: Originally Posted by Danimal

Totally disagree. I ran a franchise and we got through 3 seasons. Had plenty of owners, the biggest issues besides the obvious having to make house rules for player movement was the lack of CPU sliders and that the CPU didn't fill it's roster correctly between seasons. Imagine as commish having to develop rules for free agency to stimulate player movement (today's NFL is all about FA and player movement) and then having to go and fix every CPU team post draft to make sure they were carrying enough QB's, CB's etc just to make them competent. You can't expect people to fill up a 32 team franchise, but you also gave the guys running OF with 10-15 people no incentive with no sliders and an incompetent cpu off season. I'm really disappointed in the logic as well. They launch it, tell everyone it isn't complete and that they will patch things in on the server. We have tons of people here who won't start their offline franchise to patches and roster are final. So to use the logic that most didn't complete a season is a bit skewed because they eluded to fixes that never came. Regardless I've finally realized there is nothing I can do about this, initially my group was really upset but when thinking about the fun we had last year we're going to give it a go with M11 and jump through all the same hoops. I don't agree with their logic, but it is their logic.

Good post and I agree. My franchise is in the same boat as yours.

It really sucks that no changes have been made to a feature that did need to make some additions, but at the same time OF was one of the best experiences I've ever had so it's worth it to deal with what we have.

The good news is most of the gameplay issues we had were addressed and we have a good cap system and all those things in place.

[showbo1971]

Quote: Originally Posted by Danimal

Totally disagree. I ran a franchise and we got through 3 seasons. Had plenty of owners, the biggest issues besides the obvious having to make house rules for player movement was the lack of CPU sliders and that the CPU didn't fill it's roster correctly between seasons. Imagine as commish having to develop rules for free agency to stimulate player movement (today's NFL is all about FA and player movement) and then having to go and fix every CPU team post draft to make sure they were carrying enough QB's, CB's etc just to make them competent. You can't expect people to fill up a 32 team franchise, but you also gave the guys running OF with 10-15 people no incentive with no sliders and an incompetent cpu off season. I'm really disappointed in the logic as well. They launch it, tell everyone it isn't complete and that they will patch things in on the server. We have tons of people here who won't start their offline franchise to patches and roster are final. So to use the logic that most didn't complete a season is a bit skewed because they eluded to fixes that never came. Regardless I've finally realized there is nothing I can do about this, initially my group was really upset but when thinking about the fun we had last year we're going to give it a go with M11 and jump through all the same hoops. I don't agree with their logic, but it is their logic.

I totally agree, after playing Online Dynasty with 2 of my friends in NCAA 09 and NCAA 10 we were really looking forward to the Online Franchise in Madden 10. Obviously we were VERY disappointed to find out there was no free agency and other missing features. We still played 1 season of the Online Franchise but ended up quitting during the off season as it just seemed to be to much work and knowing we had to go through that same scenario after every season made it very unappealing. We heard rumors of a possible patch which never came so we decided to just go back to playing NCAA 10's Online Dynasty. We ended up playing 10 seasons and once again was looking forward to Madden 11 believing they included those missing features. I know Online Franchise may not be for everyone but it's the number 1 feature my friends and I wanted for the last couple years and it's very frustrating this feature is still not complete and for a lot of people, unplayable....Given the fact a lot of us don't have time to put in the off season work needed to continue from season to season.

Even though Ian mentioned they haven't abandoned Online Franchise I still disagree with his belief that the low usage count wasn't a result of the mode being incomplete. We quit last season because of that and won't play it this season for the same reason. If EA bases what direction they take with this mode on the amount of usage they get from people does that force me to play a mode that isn't complete so I'm included in that statistic?