Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

I would like to see everyones thoughts on Patch 1 V. Patch 2. I am strongly considering playing my franchise from here on out w/ Patch 1. Especially after weighing the pros and cons of the 2 patches.
I'm a offline franchise player. So of course my opinons, which is duely noted, is biased towards offline mode.
Below you'll see all the info I dug up from both patches and would like your thoughts.

Madden Title Update 1 http://insideblog.easports.com/archi...fl-10-faq.aspx
1) What is in the first title update?

Online:
Added Super Bowl and Playoff Field conditions for Online Franchise
Fixed False Start Grieving issues with Online games
Fixed video player issue where video would hang on latent connections
Improved uploaded highlight quality
Switched ranked online games to 7 min Q's
Fixed random stability issues

Nothing to complain about here. This doesn't really apply to me anyway.



Gameplay Specific fixes:
Tuned slider effectiveness (Run blocking and broken tackles esp.) Changes run blocking slider to not effect special teams
Made fatigue effect ratings more
Fixed WR release to where receivers release to both sides
Fixed incorrect spotting on punts out of bounds
Reduced/removed holding on kicking plays
Improved toe drag catch logic
Improved pursuit angles for outside running plays
Fixed defenders in pursuit running away from O-Line
Better play recognition in man coverage
Fixed double pass online exploit
Added Broadcast Cam!

Imo, I can't complain about any of these gameplay fixes in Patch 1.
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http://insideblog.easports.com/archi...e-details.aspx


Title Update 2

1. Flat Zone assignments to cover the flats more effectively, we have also improved the pursuit all defenders take - especially during a catch animation. This will help them get in better position to make a tackle on the receiver after the catch has been made.

Imo, not an issue, sliders can fix this.

2. Throwing out of Sacks". We scaled back the height of which the ball is released when throwing out of a sack. By randomizing the trajectory of the ball to be lower, it helps cut down the number of interceptions thrown when trying to throw out of a sack.

Imo, not an issue b/c now more D-lineman get ints now during played games.

3. We have also added better arm tracking to determine if it should be an inaccurate or uncontrolled throw. For example, the further you are in your passing animation when you get hit, the more likely you will get an inaccurate pass versus an uncontrolled pass. Inaccurate passes are just like they sound and will more than likely be passes the go lower and right into the ground towards the receiver you are passing towards. However, uncontrolled passes are more likely to go higher in the air and have a better chance of being intercepted. The final part of our Throw out of Sack tuning focuses on the CPU QB. We have heard several people mention how difficult it is to sack the CPU QB, so we increased the chance of the CPU QB to hold the ball longer and actually take a sack instead of being able to get a throw out of sack pass off before he is brought to the ground.

Imo, not an issue b/c I was getting a realisitic amount of sacks per game and per season, pre-patch. Now getting 4-7 sacks is not a big game anymore, its just an average game.

4. We have also addressed some issues involving receivers in the passing game. The first one involved fixing some instances where a receiver would be ruled inbounds even if he only got one foot down on a catch. Another issue we resolved is a rare problem where under certain circumstances the ball would actually pass through a player when he dropped the pass.

Imo, they made it were now, toe tapping sideline catches rarely ever happen, so almost every pass toward the sidelines are ruled out of bounds.
Now, I see they did fix the ball passing through a player under certain circumstances, when he dropped the pass.
So thats 1 thing they did that didn't hurt. But the toe tapping is non-existent imo now.

5. The first one we made is adding an initial move to the RB on the HB direct snap plays so he can’t immediately take off after receiving the snap. We also forced a QB drop initial move to force him to set up for a pass on Shotgun play action plays when you canceled the play action by hot routing the running back. This will keep the QB from being able to take off running right after getting the snap.

Imo, they broke the Wildcat w/ this. Keep in mind I don't play online, just offline franchise. Since they added this post-patch 2, I can't even run the wildcat sweep out of the Cowboys PB anymore, the HB/Qb always keeps it, and seems to be stuck in the mud when I run it now.
I never canceled a PA call out of shotgun, so this wasn't an issue for me. I usually quick audible to either PA or Draw, never exploited cancelling the PA call by hot routing the hb to block. So another non-issue fix to add to my list.

6. Another change is not allowing the user to be able to move any front line players forward on kickoffs to keep them from being able to actually block the kickoff.

Imo, another non-issue fix. I never control the front liners. This seems like another online fix to me. I would never do this offline.

7. We also resolved the exploit of being able to motion a receiver after flipping the play which caused the defender to go the other way. This allowed the receiver to be wide open against man coverage. You will now have to wait until the receiver is set before you can motion him.

Imo, and now this is getting redundant lol, another non-issue for me. I play offline, mind you, with acc clock run-off set to 20(25 for road games, just for a tougher challenge). So I would never have enough time to flip the play, then motion a WR across. I would just get called for delay of game, lol.

8. And finally, we fixed the bug where the QB could drift through the center when you repeatedly hot routed with certain quarterbacks.

Non-issue. I don't have time to repeatedly hot-route w/ offline acc clock run off set to 20-25.

9. This update will also have a fix for the clock running at incorrect times after an incomplete pass went out of bounds. The clock will not stop correctly as it does on any other incomplete pass.

This is a fix, but nothing that hurt the gameplay imo. I got the correct amount of plays even w/ the clock running on some incomplete passes.

10. The uniform updates include updating the Seattle Seahawks' home uniform to default their home pants to be blue instead of white as well as adding in their new eye popping Neon Green uniforms that they wore in Week 3 against the Bears. We've also added tribute stickers to the Titans' helmets for Steve McNair and the Eagles' helmets for former Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson.

This isn't a fix to me. I never look at jersey patches or do I care about the Seahawks lime green jersey's lmao.

11. We've doubled the amount of time a replay could be recorded so longer plays, such as kick/punt returns or long interception/fumble returns would not have the beginning part of the play cut off. We have also increased the frequency of Auto Instant replays (especially after touchdowns), based on your feedback that told us they weren't appearing enough. Other updates include reducing the number of times the Chain Gang Measurement scene will trigger during the game and extending the time that we are in postplay by 2 seconds to give more time for the presentation of certain shots to finish before being cut off too early. The user will still of course be able to button through these if they want.

This is also a really a non-issue to me. I play off-line and I learned to save replays as they occur. So If I got a sack, I saved that replay asap. I didn't try and go back and save replays after the game. This also was nice b/c I didn't have to spend 30mins after a game searching for replays and not getting to save the best ones.

http://insideblog.easports.com/archi...ng-update.aspx
12. When you get these fixes, you may still be unhappy with a few of the results.
Increased rushing touchdowns to 15-18. After tuning this yesterday, I've got the league leaders at about 22, which is still too high for me yet.

Looks like they left this too high, b/c I see players like A.P. and Turner getting 20+ tds(barring injury) almost every year now. Again, imo, another case of them not having enough time to fine tune.

14. Passing touchdowns
I'm trying to decrease these slightly. After some tuning yesterday, I'm getting QBs with about 35 as the max for a season.

Obviously, when they increased Rb's tds, they decreased Passing tds. I was able to control these issues myself by controlling all 32 teams in franchise mode. I would rather see a few qbs w/ close to 40tds, rather than Rb's getting close to or breaking rushing tds almost every season.

15. Injuries
Since the stat engine also controls simmed injuries, I'm going to tune these down slightly and I mean slightly. I'm happy with the number of injuries we have in the sim right now, but I've seen a lot of complaints, so I'm going to decrease these a little bit.

I belive they missed the bus on this, Patch 2 has more sim injuries, not less. I don't think of this as an issue b/c I noticed the highest freqency of injuries and big injuries were during pre-season simmed games. So my solution was turn sim injuries off for pre-season games.

16. Rushing averages
I'm trying to increase these for backups. The problem is...if I increase them for backups, they go up for starters too.

This is whats killing my off-line franchise. I hate seeing A.P., Turner, Jacobs, etc. Getting almost 2,000 + yds a season(barring injury) and still averaging 6, 7, 8 yd per carry. Thats insane, especially since they carried the ball the most and they still average this.
This also leads to way too many backs eclipsing 1,000yds per season. Avg IRL is 6 per season, now w/ this patch its 20. WOW!

17. Tackles
Now for the 'game killer' that has caused numerous people to wait weeks to start franchise mode. After doing some digging, I figured out what the problem is.
The screens are mislabeled.
Here's what's going on...in-game, we display two columns on the stats screen for tackles; solo tackles and assisted tackles.
When you load back out of game and go into the season stats screen, you now see two columns as well, but they are labeled total tackles and assisted tackles.
The total tackle column is actually showing solo tackles and every other screen that displays total tackles is showing the solo tackle stat, even though we are adding them together in the back end.
When it comes to progression, it is using the combined tackle numbers, even though you don't see that value in a column when looking at the spreadsheet.

Its good that they figured out the screens and how they are mis-labeled.
However, when it comes to progression, it is using the combined tackle numbers(both solo and assisted), even though you don't see that value in a column when looking at the spreadsheet.
So this wasn't a big issue to me.

18. Sacks
I'm also looking into increasing sacks for outside linebackers in the 3-4. Our stat engine does a decent job of differentiating between 4-3 and 3-4 defenses, but as I mentioned before, it's touchy.
I worked for weeks just trying to get linebackers in general to get sacks instead of DTs. I'll see what I can do in this department, but this one will be much tougher than the rest of the categories above.

Another game killer for my off-line franchise, just on the defensive side. I can tell they just increased the total sacks. Yes, 3-4 olbs get more sacks now. On the same token, the whole league gets more sacks now. So you'll see way too many players w/ 10+ sacks per season now and too players w/ 20+ sacks, and too many teams w/ high number of total sacks by the end of the season.
I hate seeing all-time records getting equaled or surpassed every season.
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As you can tell, Patch 1 seems to be my favorite. I can do w/o almost everything they put into patch 2. With all the cons, I am really considering do so.

Now the question is, if I did, what are the steps to just playing w/ Patch 1? Is this even possible?

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

What does patch 1.03 do?

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

Eh - I don't see a lot of the issues you have with patch 2. I'm an offline only player as well.

I don't have DL getting more picks, I don't have 4-7 sacks per game (sliders can fix this anyway, can they not?). Flats coverage - probably better, certainly not worse, imo.

Toe tapping was non-existent in patch 1, imo. I haven't seen any of my WR, even Mason and his high Catching and AWR, make toe taps. The only time I saw anything close to this is when I had a WR stationary in the back corner of the endzone, threw it to him, and he caught it and kept his feet in place to make sure he'd stay in-bounds.

Wildcat has been broken in one way or another from day 1, imo. They just made a cheesy fix as EA is apt to do. They should have fixed defensive logic instead.

6,7,8 - I agree - non-issues for me. I play 25 sec accel clock so no time to do all that for me either.

12,13,14 - I wish for a better stat engine in general, but it never worried me that much - definitely not enough for me to control all the teams and whatnot. It's enough of a bear to test and play the skill sliders - much less every coaching and position slider? I'll pass - even for better stats.

15 - I've always turned sim injuries off during preseason. I don't notice any more/less one way or another. This sounds stupid, but I wish MY team got more out for some weeks injuries/there were more "week or more" injuries in played games.

16 - I don't worry about it. The sim engine is flawed so I just figure it's going to have bad stats. They were bad before, they are bad now. So them being bad now - no big surprise to me. I can't control it anyway, so I don't worry about what I can't control!

Personally, I'm sticking with patch 2. I really don't see much of what was hurt by patch 2 over patch 1.

I don't think it's possible anyway, at least not easily. Maybe, if you cleared all data off your PS3/X360 - then if it asked you to update one patch at a time, you could get patch 1, then disconnect before you play again, you might be able to stick with it - but it makes you update all the way to 1.03 - then I don't think it would be possible unless someone has posted the patch data up on the internet somewhere.

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

That enables the Ultimate Team stuff - and that's it I believe.

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

Not true, I didn't have to update to 1.03.

Everytime it prompts me to when I start Madden I hit cancel(circle on PS3) and it backs out of the download screen. So I still don't have ultimate team lol.

I bet I could do the same for Patch 2, and yes I bet I would have to clear out the saved data for Madden info or Profile, not sure if its profile based.

Just download patch 1, and do what I do now when it prompts me to download 1.03. Hit circle to back out of the download prompt screen. It works for not downloading Ultimate team, so it should work for not downloading Patch 2 also.


Has anyone done this already?

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

you guys haven't seen me around since i just got sick of everything and traded the game in. tough decision, but i was playing too many other games.

but yeah here's my opinion. the stats were killer for me. sideline toe-drag catches and logic? huh? i've seen maybe 1 animation EVER for a sideline catch? what the heck happened to these? WR jump balls are also terrible in the game and it doesn't matter if you have randy moss or sidney rice or wes welker.

why aren't sliders more effective? i had CPU run blocking at 100 but i could stull crush them. the passing game in general is terrible. the ability to throw the ball at a receiver's feet or out of bounds is a must. why is every incomplete pass a drop, pick, or pass defended? by drop i mean through the hands or the guy catches it briefly, gets hit, and loses it. it needs to be like the real NFL where receivers will just get a hand on the ball and it will go by.

one more thing as you guys know, the coach profile sliders are nice but they really need to let us change these in the roster section or something...not only in franchise mode. things like this really added up over time.

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

So at the end of season, how do you feel when Ray Rice(for those that don't know,hb for Baltimore Ravens), finishes the regular season.

In Madden
254 att. (ranked 9th)
1339 rushing yds. (ranked 18th)
5.3 avg (ranked 22nd, minimium 100 rushing atts.)
7 rushing tds. (ranked 23rd)

In Real Life
254 att. (ranked 9th)
1339 rushing yds. (ranked 6th)
5.3 avg (ranked 5th, minimum 100 rushing atts.)
7 rushing tds. (ranked tied for 9th best)

Now my point is, In Madden, Ray Rice is a below average back w/ these numbers(Post-Patch 2)!
I wouldn't be surprised to see him get worse, which is sad news for guys like me that look at these numbers and think they are pretty darn good.
And of course IRL, he is top 10, maybe higher.

I've seen my RB, C.P. get worse 2 seasons now, mind you he is getting about the same numbers Ray Rice is getting, actually better numbers my 1st season. Thats b/c he isn't competeing w/ the numbers the simmed runningbacks are getting(post-patch 2).
What erks me is, when I simmed 2 seasons w/o using the Redskins, C.P. actually got better, why. Because the simmed stats had him doing much better.

Pre-Patch 2 gave me results ranked closer to what you see IRL.

So whats your solution to seeing this?

This same scenario is happening w/ my DE's and LB's(post-patch 2). They can't compete w/ the simmed game sacks. And they aren't getting any better now.
The sliders I'm using are tuned to give realistic game played stats. Now I'm in a bit of quandry.

Re: Pro and Cons of Patch 1 vs. 2
 

Like I already said. I know the stat engine is flawed, and I can't control it. So I don't worry about it.

If I'm playing Baltimore, and I can get Rice to have that kind of season - I'm fine with it. My focus is on gameplay - I can manipulate that with sliders. So that's what I focus on.

Until I can impact the sim engine with the gameplay sliders (or some sliders that impact just the sim engine that do not involve me owning the entire league), then I just say "bad sim engine, moving on to what I can control."

Am I happy about it? No. Does it make me wish I never got patch 2? No.

If I let everything I can't control but don't like about this game get to me - I'd be (even more) crazy than I am now!