Why all the Tweaking?

[Cardot]

I think sliders are one of the best advances in video sports games in a long time. However, I have spent way too much time adjusting settings in the last couple games I have bought.

Lets start with the grand daddy of them all; NCAA. I love the series, and 2004 is fantastic. But out of the box, most of us agree that there were too many Interceptions and the CPU just didn't run the ball enough. Ints were easy to fix with sliders, the running game was more complicated.

My next purchase was ESPN NFL. Another great game that I am still enjoying. But only the most dedicated of Sega loyalists deny that RB's break way too many tackles.

The worst case has to be ESPN NHL. So many things to like about the game, but the lack of scoring that has plagued the series for a couple years is back. If you are not familiar with the game, you should check out the board to see the lengths that people including me are going through to get scoring for both the player and cpu.

I am trying to figure out why.

1. Now that we have so much customizing ability, are some of us getting a little too obsessed in setting up the perfect game? There is probably some truth to this, but if the games were designed for the masses, then we shouldn't see unanimous complanints. We should see people say that ESPN has too many broken tackles and just as many that say they're not enough broken tackles. I doubt that anyone has said that ESPN NHL has too much scoring on default settings.

2. Are the developers of these games getting lax with the default settings and relying upon us to adjust the sliders? I now these guys work hard and spend time testing, but the things I mentioned above are not exaclty obscure. They are obvious things that are apparant with very little playing time.

3. Is there something else?

I have to admit that when a new game comes out, and I am weighing the pros and cons of whether to update or not, one of my new criterias is "Do I want to go through the hastle of setting up sliders again?".

Sorry for rambling, but I would be interested in what some other people think.