Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

Let me just start this off by saying that I have never been a Madden flamer. It's dumb that I need to say that but whatever.

Roddy White said that today in the paper.

I have a franchise and I noticed that there is far to little difference between playing at home or on the road in Madden. In the NFL it is very difficult, especially for young players, to come out and perform well on the road. At the same time, teams seem to get a boost from playing in their home stadium/dome. This can be evidenced by the fact that the NFC south had only ONE home loss combined all of last year.

I would really like to see that translate well into madden. The way that I do it in my franchise is that I never sprint on the road, among other things. I handicap myself because the game doesn't handicap my players the way that they should be.

I am not trying to make this a madden bashing thread, so I hope that anybody who does that will be ignored, but I would be interested to know if anybody agrees with me here? Also, is there anything that other posters here do when they are on the road to make it more realistic?

Thanks for any responses in advance. :)

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

I like it the way it is, or at least, dont dislike it. I think not sprinting is a bit too much.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

Personally, I try not to sprint ever. In my mind, sprint = "run faster than you're physically capable of running."

One of the main problems with playing on the road that doesn't really translate is that many problems for road teams (especially young players) stems from the noise of the crowd. Not being able to hear the calls and assignments (plus increased false starts) is hard to replicate in Madden since you naturally know what's going to be called. If Madden could somehow build in some random "if you're on the road, there's an X chance your CPU controlled lineman/WR will commit a penalty/run the wrong route, etc." then it might be more realistic.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

You said that there is far too little difference between playing at home and playing on the road, my question is this: is there any difference at all? I've never noticed any, also never really thought about it though to be fair. It would be cool if your team got more penalties due to crowd noise and younger players got more confused, would also make using somebody like The Seahawks more fun because their stadium is supposed to be one of the loudest, would really give you that 12th man feeling. Come to think of it, is this stuff already in the game? I've never really checked. Improved crowd noise would be huge though, and fairly simple I think.

I really like the idea of not sprinting actually, I may use that when I start a franchise. Or maybe bump up each of the 4 "Player Skill" sliders 2 notches.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

I thought the way that it was implemented into NCAA football a few years ago on the PS2 where on defense you would press a button to pump up the crowd and increase the intensity and that would confuse the offense was great.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

There is no difference in crowd noise or anything else when you play on the road in Madden.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

Yeah, it's really worked out for me. I tend to use MySkill, and not using sprint means I'm getting maybe 4 yards a carry, not 6, so it's not jacking up my fumbles rate.

Some people call it sprint, but I call it turbo. In real life, I just don't believe people have a turbo mode. I just feel like although someone like, say, Chris Johnson can "kick it into another gear," that's already accounted for in his Madden speed rating. Now, if there was a "cruising speed" and "max speed", maybe I wouldn't feel bad sprinting.

Re: Too Easy to Play on the Road?
 

Your on to something here. I've known for a while now that winning on the road is as easy as winning at home on this game. So why not try this when at home. Change your sliders:

-User QB Accuracy -5
-Broken Tackles-5
-WR Catching-5
-Both Defensive Reactions-5
-Tackling-5

This I think would make it more of a challenge. I still hope that they add a 12th man meter like CH2K8 did with the 6th man meter. That thing was awesome!