Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

[ryan36]

This game plays short. Valdarez caught this in the demo, saying player strides were too long (by several feet, I can't remember), and I flipped him crap about it. I asked him (apparently so did Ian) if it made the game less fun...but it DOES!!

Let me see if I can explain this: Imagine you were a designer and you had all the player models running around "ground" in your test software and this ground was just blue space. No yard lines, so you wouldn't know the distance gained on the play.

In that scenario, pick any given play. In your minds eye, the pass feels like it covered a distance of 7 yards (based on total length/time of the throw, and total time of the play), say a slant route...but when you put the football field under it, you see that the game thinks that's a 12 yard play. This is what Madden feels like. In my view, there'd be a much more sim feeling if the space between the yard lines was lengthened.

To me the field feels like it's too short by about a third. Drives are ending with scores much too quickly, 8 play 80 yard drives have been the norm so far , and they should be IMO 12 to 15 play drives. I just don't have that "fight for every yard" feeling from last year, and it's something the game is sorely lacking.

[MikaV]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

Yeah, also, YPC is WAY too high, at least from the games i've played. This is a pretty big thing.

[bkrich83]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I think the strides are fine. To me the field is disproportionate to the size of the players.

[Afrikan]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I think the strides are fine. To me the field is disproportionate to the size of the players.

actually I think its the players who are disproportionate to the field....after Madden 08, it always seemed like the players shrunk alittle....(and I'm not talking about the steroid arms from Madden 07)...but just the size of the player models.

I think the same happened with the football and the fields staying the same, but with the players getting shorter and thinner.

[Afrikan]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I first noticed this stride issue in one of the first Madden 11 videos we came across... I believe it was the one with the Bucs players playing the game...and someone returned a TD or something...but you could see the stride looked off.....

back then I just felt like the players and the fields were not designed well together....like different artist working on the same painting.

[ryan36]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

Well BK , that's another way to say it, but the net of it is we're not getting enough plays on drives...at least I'm not. Lot's of people are loving this game, but so far not me...
Also somehow or another the players strike me as disproportionate...it's something that I'd have thought would be obvious , but maybe I'm just weird. I usually don't notice details about games

[treee]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

You're right and if you look at APF2k8 they seem to get the field, players down I feel like. You get that overwhelming feeling of despair when you are pinned inside you own ten because the other endzone looks so far away, as it should, like in real life. See what I'm getting at? It(madden) makes the field position feel strange, which, if you ask me, screws up the whole feel of the game

[TombSong]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

The strides look better this year but I think the players cover a lot of distance quickly. Making the field seem even shorter. Also I think people are still adjusting to the defensive movement which is leading to a lot of big plays, making drives shorter.

[PGaither84]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

this is really simple to test/look at.

Go into practice mode, leave the ball where it is at and run a pass play. don't use bump and run coverage. One or more of your receivers should have their lead foot on the 32 yard line. With their first step they most often land on the 30. that is two yards [3 feet in a yard,] so 6 feet he traveled in his initial step. now, I was using Josh morgan of the 49ers and his route takes him over 5 yards. With his first official step right on the 30 yard line, he takes his second step just past the 32 yard line and his third step takes him pas 5 yards. he was able to travel 21 feet in three steps, which averages out to 7 feet per step.

Now, I don't have a problem with the strides the players are taking in proportion to their bodies, in fact my understanding is that these are all motion captured anyway, so they, in theory are the correct strides for a real person, because a real person made these strides. I have to agree that the field is about 1/3 too small.

I had the feeling in the past, but I thought it was just me, that gaining 3 or 4 yards in Madden felt quicker and easier than it does in a 2k game. Also, while still in practice mode, I ran some run plays to frank gore and tried to get him tackled near the hash marks and as lined up as i could. often enough, and this isn't an exact measurement obviously, but he pretty much took up 9 yards from head to toe. He was just inside a 9 yard stretch, but he was also in a bit of a fetal position. Again, this is just rough, but Gore, by the looks on the field, appeared to be nearly 9 feet tall. At the very least, he sure didn't look like he was going to fit inside two hash marks, which he should if fully extended head to toe seeing how he is under 6 feet tall in real life. Again, these aren't official numbers or measurements, just my perception, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't look right.

Now, does this kill game play for me? No, not really. Would I like to see it change? OH YES I WOULD! It would make gaining yards that much tougher if the field was 1/3 larger. it would make gaining 3-4 yards more difficult and more rewarding on run plays. I agree that a field 2/3s of it's normal size is much easier to get 1st downs on, and to score on. Why wouldn't it be? If the field is about 2/3s of the size it should be, then every first down is really only just over 6 and 1/2 yards away [6.66repeating,] and not 10. So, effectively, a "10 yard gain" in madden is more like a a 6 and half yard run. That is far less damaging. This also explains why the drag routes are so effective in the game. It isn't just a coverage issue, it's more a matter of you giving up more yards than that route would really gain. If you call three 4 yard drags you'll get a 1st down in madden 11, if the field was larger that same ground would cause you to punt instead. this adds up over time, and on the scoreboard.

Sorry to get carried away, but I was kind of typing as I was thinking out loud. I love defense and I felt that yards were easy enough to gain in madden, now I know that part of that reason is the field is too small, so you give up more than you should. Interesting, very interesting.

[JordanC]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

i've definitely noticed this too, especially in inside running plays.

plays that get blown up are short gains, and plays that appear to only gain a yard get 5.

[huskerwr38]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I think so too. This was brought up a long time ago when we first saw the locomotion blog and video. Valdarez was the first person to bring up the fact that we are getting a brand new locomotion engine in that thread.

http://www.operationsports.com/vBulletin/madden-nfl-football/414466-running-animation.html

http://maddennfl.easports.com/blog.a...gId=locomotion <-locomotion blog

Anyways, I also brought up in that thread that the 40 times are actually realistic. However, the stride lengths are incredibly off. In the locomotion video, showing off the two guys racing, the guy on the bottom runs 40 yards in about 13 steps and runs 20 yards in 7 steps!!!!

Here is an quote from Strength Coach Mike Boyle on running the 40 yard dash.
"Think about this. The forty-yard dash should be run in approximately seventeen steps. Simple. An athlete with a normal stride length will measure out at about 7.5 feet. This means that a reasonably good sprinter will cover 15 feet, or five yards, every two steps. Why seventeen? The first five-yard segment should take three steps; the remaining seven segments would take two steps each for a total of seventeen steps. Is seventeen the magic number? No. We try to get our athletes to master three steps for five yards and five steps for ten yards....A good sprinter will run the 10 in 5-6 steps and the 20 in 9-10 steps."

As you can see, elite speed guys in Madden are running 20 yards over the same amount of steps it would take a real human being to cover in 10 yards or so. Something needs to be adjusted for Madden next year.

[JordanC]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I don't know much about how this all works, but I'm pretty sure if they make an effort to put out a real patch (not just a serverside update) this can be fixed.

[joec63]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

I'm not so sure, if the scale is off then the field, players, stadium, all have to be corrected. This doesn't sound like an easy patch fix.

I can't imagine the scale being off though, this would be one of the items you made sure were correct when the fiield/staduim were designed. I'm guessing just an animation issue.

[BezO]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

Strides too long, field too short, either way it's the same affect. You can tell something is wrong by how slow everyone's stride is. Everyone looks like their jogging. Watching Chris Johnson sprint up the field is comical.

This game plays short. Valdarez caught this in the demo, saying player strides were too long (by several feet, I can't remember)...

It's been like this at least since this generation of systems. It's not a new problem. Some of us have been complaining about it for years. It's just one of those things that some don't care about, so it's lumped with sock length and other "nit picky" complaints. I'm glad to see more folks noticing a problem.

..and I flipped him crap about it. I asked him (apparently so did Ian) if it made the game less fun...but it DOES!!

Of course it does. And I'm surprised Ian would ask him that. As much time as they put into graphics & animations, why is it a question if inaccurate animations make the game less fun? Some are asking for signiture running styles, so of course we want at least an accurate general running animation. And it wasn't too long ago Ian was working on the running animation & posting clips, asking for our input.

[K_GUN]

Re: Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

the easy fix is do what i do

play the game on VERY SLOW speed....then getting 3-4 yards is monumental


i'm serious