Madden Ultimate Team Alternate Take

[RaychelSnr]

Like many of the features added to current-gen Madden, Ultimate Team is a mode that performs much better in press clippings than it does on the playing field.

While the idea of building a fantasy team of your favorite NFL players is sound, Ultimate Team's execution is poor enough to make even JaMarcus "Mr. Indifferent" Russell blush.

Read More - Madden Ultimate Team Disappointing

[jsquigg]

Wow. This article seems to contradict the review on the same website.

[taqiyya]

I know right. Bottom line though there is much truth to the article. I thought it was a great Idea until I put a few hours into it and was like ok now what? I remember day 2 people had these killer teams already. Great idea but to many holes. I will not fork over my hard earned cash to rent out football players.

Nice try EA but Hells to the no on this . :-)

[JMD]

Re: Madden Ultimate Team Alternate Take

I like Ultimate team. Yes I bought a few card packs to build a fairly decent team. I had was given a 1600 MS point card as a gift and I had 400 MS Points left over from buying cars for Forza 3, so I figured what the heck, let's take some of these points and buy some card packs. Also my business is slow this time of year so I can literally spend all day playing games against the CPU, laying a beat down on it and cashing in on 670 points a game. After spending a few days playing the CPU, I took my pot of coins and headed for the Auction block. I have built a solid team rated a 92 over all with a chemistry of 57.

I am finding online to be ok. Yes I've had a few games against cheese ballers but for the most part my opponents have been good players and played like they do in the NFL.

Could this game mode be improved? Most definitely, but it can also be fun as is if you have the time to spend or a few extra MS point laying around.

[CreatineKasey]

Atta boy Jayson! You and I want very similar features and characteristics out of our football games. The first thing I looked for when I downloaded this feature was to play my friends. There's an option to buy coins at every single screen, but no options to simply play a friend... yet they can compile a friends only leaderboard? Why friends only? What if my friends hate the mode too because of it's ridiculous pitfalls?

This mode was made for spoiled 12 year olds to suck money from the pockets of their parents. Sad thing is, those legend cards burn out after around games....

Enjoy..... NOT!

[boxboy99]

Wurd! Good article. I would have some value out of this if I could play friends. Instead I am stuck to facing a 12 year old brat that plays like a donkey. This would of been a great mode for APF. Leagues where cards are divided between users with contracts would be brilliant fun.

[jyoung]

If they had just added the ability to play friends and put limits on how many high-tier players you can have (like All Pro Football does) then this game would have been pretty fun.

Instead it's just something you download once and delete after a game or two.

I just don't feel like much thought went into the design of this thing other than "How can we get more money out of the Madden fanbase?"

[boxboy99]

I think I am just facing the facts the gaming and sports gaming is a big business now. Corporate America has become too worried about cost-benefits. What software can I provide at the lowest cost to make the most money. The bottom line is at the end of the day the only thing the machine is worried about is meeting the bottom line and making shareholders happy. Too bad for the developers and programmers who are out there working their butt off everyday are probably undermanned but still trying to make the best games they can with the resources given under corporate guildlines. Gaming is Hollywood now, the good old days where a couple of geeks could slap together a great game on a shoe string budget for the fun of it are gone forever.

[Valdarez]

Re: Madden Ultimate Team Alternate Take

I played one game of it, but when I realized that you could use any settings to play game (effectively making coins / points unimportant) and I couldn't use my own created team uniforms, I never played it again (think I had Oakland by default...).

[JayhawkerStL]

I think this was a much more fair representation of what you actually get in MUT. That said, if the kids want to spend their money and play, EA can make plenty of money from those kids, and really shouldn't feel the need to cater to those of us that won't spend any cash on the game.

I would say that the basics are there for an amazingly cool game mode. But they need to monetize it differently. Either sell adds, and hope the MUT keeps us playing longer, or a subscription fee. Doing this allows the card game to become strategically fun as hell.

Then they have to add in, no just friend play, tournaments and other modes that allow us to show off our team in fresh ways.

But you can forget about the customization. This is an NFL game, and the NFL wants NFL teams represented. I can totally live with that. It may be silly, but the overall mode is more than enough fun to make up for it.

I love that I am learning about lower tier players, and I enjoy trying to find new uniforms, stadiums, playbooks, and coaches to spice up the game. MUT really does showcase what makes the NFL so great.

I was a hue APFB fan, so this mode scratches the same itches, and provides some advantages. I like knowing more about how my role players are, and having the ability to decide how many stars I want.

But like th author, I can't recommend the game in its current state. Playing cheesers and cash built teams online is bad enough. But being forced into completely blind random games, and then rewarding cheesers with larger payouts is nauseating.

OS kicks make sense i MUT, becasue Offense is where you really drive up the coin totals. So give your opponent a short field, and get the ball back quicker, and in poor enough field portion that you can rack up more yardage. I won't play this way, but I am sick to death of being forced to sit through a game becasue I want some points for the games I lose by playing.

All EA needs to do is find a better way to monetize the game, and introduce a much better way to match people up in a system that tracks the kind of ratings gamers have. APFB 2K8's system was not perfect, but it was far more reliable to find a decent game. And then let us play friends, and set up tournaments.

But I'm not holding my breath, becasue I am not certain that my ideas would generate more revenue that what EA is currently doing. So i may just have to realize that MUT really isn't for me.

[LingeringRegime]

I think it was a decent first effort. Online is very fun, if, and this is a big IF....

You find decent people to play. If not, it makes you want to throw the game in the backyard. I am honestly shocked at how many people online don't play realistic football. Disgraceful, really.

A franchise style mode with Ultimate would have been awesome. Oh well, maybe that will be a new feature new year.

[jyoung]

Re: Madden Ultimate Team Alternate Take

Yeah you're right on, Box.

Games have just become more difficult and more expensive to develop this generation, and the result is companies trying to maximize their profits while minimizing the costs and resources they have to put into their products.

We've seen this already with the purchasable equipment boosts EA added to NHL 10, the dynasty accelerators you can find in this year's Madden/NCAA, as well as the sub-par "arcade" games that EA's put out for the Madden and NHL series.

Quality and innovation are definitely lacking this generation in sports games across the board, and the challenges of developing for the 360/PS3 seem to be a big reason why.

I miss the days where a 10-man development team could sit down and create a game like Tecmo Bowl and not have their company's entire livelihood put into the development of that one game.

[KingV2k3]

I wish there was a franchise mode, where you could progress your players and have stats.

I guess that's just pretty much running a fantasy draft, but...

[pointNumberOne]

Re: Madden Ultimate Team Alternate Take

I'm having a lot of fun with Ultimate Team, but don't believe any final judgments can be made until after people realize you are not meant to have large #'s of legendary players on your team. Too many people threw money at this game mode (at least on xbox) and are now getting burned because they didn't think it through. Once the game economy settles down, and these flash-in-the-pan spenders get frustrated and leave, I believe this can have some serious long-term success.

[oneamongthefence]

Well with all the money they make hopefully they'll add more developers and a better game next year.