What Are Your Thoughts on Madden's Franchise Mode as We Head Towards Madden 24?

[Btj98]

After yesterday's breakdown from EA detailing the final "damage report" relating to users who were impacted...

Written By: Chase Becotte

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[PhillyPhanatic14]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

A few years ago we wanted them to innovate and make the mode better... Now i just wish i could play my franchise consistently without insane bugs, crashes, or the whole league disappearing.


They've done such an awful job with franchise that I have no more hopes and dreams for the mode. It's a total lost cause to think they'll ever meaningfully invest in the mode.

[JoeRodgers1175]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

Get what they have now to work without glitches. That shouldn’t be a high bar, but it is for this dev team.

[cch99]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

[QUOTE=PhillyPhanatic14;2050706864


They've done such an awful job with franchise that I have no more hopes and dreams for the mode. It's a total lost cause to think they'll ever meaningfully invest in the mode.[/QUOTE]

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/89efcdc...9-aa4a56ec8d95

I am an old idiot and don't have know how or time to have a gif just play but I get it. I have zero expectation that Franchise Mode will be much better any time soon. This is the first year ever that I have not started an Eagles franchise. I haven't played the game in at least a month. I started a 32 team franchise to get my sliders right and just haven't come back. I haven't had any desire to play this game .

[kingsofthevalley]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

It’s decent for what it is, pretty much just a hub to hold annual stats. That’s all it will be until they breath a life into it. All it really needs is an interactive news feed with actual sportscasters. They didn’t really need to remove the background with the coach sitting at the desk, just replace that with a news desk and some sportscasters that say random things from around the league. That would significantly increase immersion.

[MHammer113]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

Personally I think they need to start from scratch unfortuantely.

The user interface is pretty bad and sluggish and the franchise mode itself lacks depth. I would personally like to see the following done.

1. Scheduling is an absolute mess. Year two of my franchise I had FIVE straight homes games with my bye in the center. Also, the logic of when games occur is odd, but you have to walk before you run.

2. The draft and scouting needs a major glow up. These items should both have their own page with lots of analysis and variety but the scouting just feels weird and clunky. As for the draft, I literally cannot believe how poorly it is represented. 2 mins per pick, no cpu initiated trades, no drama, it’s just brutally basic. The nfl draft creates so much buzz in real life.

3. Free agency is actually better but I wish they’d take a page out of the NBA 2k playbook here.

4. Training, practices and how you manage your team should matter. I’d love to again see implementation like 2K where individual and team workouts could have more of an impact.

5. There needs to be more to the Owner mode where relocating a team or managing expenses mattered. Right now it’s really boring.

I know this is a lot but I know I’ve forgotten a ton of things. It’s sad when Madden 04-07 had more depth to its franchise mode than we do in Madden 23. Graphics and gameplay have improved IMO but part of these new systems is the CPU power and AI improvements around logic and being dynamic. EA, please put in some effort or I truly hope you lose your exclusive license

[jmch1990]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

Other than just getting rid of the various bugs, some things I would like to see:

-There should be different levels of franchise just like there are different modes of gameplay. Rookie mode should be easy to build a team, develop players build out your coaching skills etc, All-Madden should make trading, FA and player development much harder.

-Coaching skill trees need a major overhaul. There are two major problems with them as I see them: they are exactly the same for everyone, and the buffs they create are crazy OP. If you get the XP multiplier you can have a team of players at or near 99 in just a few years. The draft tree basically allows you to trade up for free. I intentionally stopped building the coaching trees to try to make the game a little harder.
Coaches should inherently be better and worse at certain things. I almost think it would be better like OOTP where there's some fog of war as to what impact you and your coaches actually have and you just sort of have to best guess it based on the coach's reputation and success.

-Scouting and drafting needs updating. I actually think it is much better than 2k is (2K's scouting/draft presentation is lowkey one of the worst things about it), it's just so slow and clunky. You can't sort by combine results or skills or anything like that. The menus jump around and are so glitchy. There's no actual in-game way to look at a player until you've drafted him. The draft presentation is totally non existent. Draft stories are not in the drafting/scouting tab.
IMO scouting should be a full-year experience; maybe you have pulse moments in certain weeks but you should learn more and more as the season goes on consistently. Maybe each week you can choose certain positions or players or regions to focus on to uncover more info. And you definitely shouldn't start at 0% like it does now, who knows 0% about the top prospects in the first week of the season?

-Get rid of the pre-loaded faces unless you have enough so that the entire league has unique faces. I have 5 identical guys in my starters. It's immersion breaking.

-I also think there should be more fog of war about your drafted players once you've drafted them. Maybe you don't see their actual rating but a range that their rating could be, like 73-81. Same with hidden dev maybe you see it's either normal/star, star/superstar, and superstar/xfactor. And over training camp and the season it becomes clearer and clearer what their actual skills are. That would be a cool and immersive way to figure out what you want to prioritize and make training camp (if they bring it back) or preseason fun.

-Free agency should be more conversational. Its too forced the way it is, you just make an offer, see if it's more appealing than the competition, and you can adjust until it is. That's not how it would really work. You should be able to make an offer and wait for a response: either accepted, or a counter, or to hear that another team is offering more that you can choose to match, beat more, or rescind your offer.

-Trades should have more than 3 slots per side.

-There should be a cap table page that helps you understand what your cap actually looks like and what certain moves would do to it. The NFL cap is so complicated and trades aren't clear about the actual stuff you're doing to your cap when you make trades.

-There should be more and easy ways to see historical stats. The "hall of fame" is just a list of players with their "legacy score" whatever that is. You should be able to jump in, see a player's stats & ratings across each season, specific trophies and specific awards they won, etc.

-Also it would be cool if players retired and became coaches like in 2K.

[malky]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

It’s decent for what it is, pretty much just a hub to hold annual stats. That’s all it will be until they breath a life into it. All it really needs is an interactive news feed with actual sportscasters. They didn’t really need to remove the background with the coach sitting at the desk, just replace that with a news desk and some sportscasters that say random things from around the league. That would significantly increase immersion.

So agree, on a personal level this is all I really need to enjoy franchise mode for a few years. IMMERSION, Active investment of what's going on IN YOUR FRANCHISE with stats, record breaking and playoff immersion, the last college football game had it, don't see why another EA football game can't do the same.

[Dazza1]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

PLAYBOOKS!!!

The ability to assign custom playbooks to CPU teams. This would be such a big plus, can’t stress enough how important this should be.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[Unlucky 13]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

For me, franchise mode is all that sports games are, and nothing else matters. I've been playing Madden for about 30 years now, and other more basic football video games before that.

I want a smooth, less glitchy, OFFLINE, single player experience. I don't know what is going on in the background that has made Madden run so painfully slow the last few years, but even on PS5 it takes forever and has so many hiccups. I have to presume that this is due to the online connections, and I'd love to be able to just turn all of that off.

On a broad level, I'd love to just go back to where we were at the end of the PS2 era and pick up from there, with better graphics. With most other games, I'd say better gameplay as well, but Madden's gameplay is now considerably worse than its been in ages.

I want coaches to MEAN something, and if they can't be unique, I at least want them to be different. I want to play as the GM, and hire a HC, OC, DC, and position coaches, and have a deep system where that all works together for playbooks, player progression, motivation, etc. I want that to be a DEEP game within the game.

I want to be able to offer players extensions on their contracts or even force them to accept a pay cut or be cut, like we once could. I want restricted free agency back, and to have undrafted rookies sign three year contracts like IRL.

I want the page where you look at individual players and change their gear to be so much better. How did we go from this being such a highly useful feature to the terrible angles that we have today?

[JoshC1977]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

Honestly - M23 will be the final Madden for me until they undo the damage that they caused to franchise mode in Madden 22. I was not going to buy '23 for the same reason, but NGL, I got a touch seduced by the gameplay at launch.

Anyways, specifically, they need to either remove, heavily re-work, or give a user option to turn off, the following:

- In-game momentum
- Coach skills
- game planning

The current design of the coach skills and game planning, in particular, completely kill the entire feel of the mode for me. They're not much more than re-dressed MUT coach and strategy cards (complete with a separate 'currency' for coaches in the form of skill points that you can "earn by completing solo challenges"). It's not just a vibe thing either - they detract from THE most important thing in franchise - player ratings. If player ratings don't matter, building your team doesn't either, so why play the mode? While I am absolutely not saying that player ratings don't matter, they clearly matter less because of the ham-fisted implementation of these modules. (Oh, and someone explain to me how a HC is supposed to decrease injury duration - like, really???!!! And you make THAT skill, the most ridiculous and overpowered in the mode, the first skill you can unlock - like, really???!!!)

Additionally, they really need to re-work the mode UI and menus. It's terrible to navigate, many of the fonts are way too small to read, and the responsiveness of the screens is far too slow (no...we don't need a locker-room shot of every player when you open their card). I might be alone in thinking this, but the menu screen design in M21 is far cleaner IMO.

They did good work in M23 in re-working free agency and the draft classes. But for my money, they laid a very poor foundation with the features added in M22 and that could have very definite impacts as we move forward in the series.

[MHammer113]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

I’m with you Josh C. I purchased because of game sharing with my brother and because the gameplay is actually pretty solid, but the only way the gameplay matters is if it sits within a good Franchise mode. One without the other is useless

[Caulfield]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

my thought is if Franchise isn't a good long-term experience, then I guess I'll accept it as a season mode and play one-and-done seasons with 1 team from every division.
that way I'll get at least 8 good seasons out of ''franchise'' proceeding that way

[rockbottom3]

Re: What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

For me, franchise mode is all that sports games are, and nothing else matters. I've been playing Madden for about 30 years now, and other more basic football video games before that.

I want a smooth, less glitchy, OFFLINE, single player experience. I don't know what is going on in the background that has made Madden run so painfully slow the last few years, but even on PS5 it takes forever and has so many hiccups. I have to presume that this is due to the online connections, and I'd love to be able to just turn all of that off.

On a broad level, I'd love to just go back to where we were at the end of the PS2 era and pick up from there, with better graphics. With most other games, I'd say better gameplay as well, but Madden's gameplay is now considerably worse than its been in ages.

I want coaches to MEAN something, and if they can't be unique, I at least want them to be different. I want to play as the GM, and hire a HC, OC, DC, and position coaches, and have a deep system where that all works together for playbooks, player progression, motivation, etc. I want that to be a DEEP game within the game.

I want to be able to offer players extensions on their contracts or even force them to accept a pay cut or be cut, like we once could. I want restricted free agency back, and to have undrafted rookies sign three year contracts like IRL.

I want the page where you look at individual players and change their gear to be so much better. How did we go from this being such a highly useful feature to the terrible angles that we have today?

Man do you remember when someone came back from an injury they would have their arm wrapped or ankle wrapped after the injury. Those little things were what made the game immersive

[Detroit Tigers]

What are your thoughts on franchise mode going into 2023?

It’s presentation for me. The game is way too rushed, and frankly I think this effects players (including their playcalling and general psychology while playing) way more than they realize.

Let guys stand back up after being tackled before jamming me back into to the playcall screen. Stop with constant EXTEME ZOOM camera angles. Like, relax. Let things breathe a little.

I find myself letting the defensive playcall timer thing run all the way down because it helps me stay composed. The game otherwise basically asks you call plays as fast as possible at all times. It’s obnoxious.