So after looking over all the 4 star rated sliders posted here at Operation Sports I took all the ratings and averaged them out and got some sliders I really liked. I haven’t played a game that played out so realistic all year and was really impressed with all the work that everyone here has put in to finding the solutions that fix the issues with increasing the difficulty in Madden. There are however some big things I noticed after reading up and looking into how people are trying to fix sliders, because in most video games when you increase the level of difficulty it increases the AI of the CPU.
I realize the biggest flaw EA has with Madden is that instead of increasing the skill level of the CPU AI it takes the AI of the Human element and dumbs it down. This was made apparent when you go into the skill ratings of the Player Skills and the CPU Skills. When playing on Rookie all the AI setting are set to 50, but as you increase the skill level the AI settings actually drop to 25 once you get to All-Madden. Most people just go into a game of Madden and increase the skill level based on how good they believe they are, but even if you feel that you are a really good player and set the difficulty to All-Madden should you have to deal with your players tackling level at 25 and the CPU breaking tackles level at 50?
It seems that maybe instead of sticking with sliders that fall into this category of dumbing down the AI for a Human player, maybe we should move to an idea of leaving the Human AI alone and just increasing the skill level of the CPU AI. If the CPU skill ratings stay at 50 across the board when increasing skill and the Human AI going down, I am going to keep the Human AI at 50 across the board and increase the CPU AI as we move up in skill level. Below I will list the Averages of the top 6 sliders that I have found, I feel comfortable with this because most of the sliders were not too far off from the next.
I realize the biggest flaw EA has with Madden is that instead of increasing the skill level of the CPU AI it takes the AI of the Human element and dumbs it down. This was made apparent when you go into the skill ratings of the Player Skills and the CPU Skills. When playing on Rookie all the AI setting are set to 50, but as you increase the skill level the AI settings actually drop to 25 once you get to All-Madden. Most people just go into a game of Madden and increase the skill level based on how good they believe they are, but even if you feel that you are a really good player and set the difficulty to All-Madden should you have to deal with your players tackling level at 25 and the CPU breaking tackles level at 50?
It seems that maybe instead of sticking with sliders that fall into this category of dumbing down the AI for a Human player, maybe we should move to an idea of leaving the Human AI alone and just increasing the skill level of the CPU AI. If the CPU skill ratings stay at 50 across the board when increasing skill and the Human AI going down, I am going to keep the Human AI at 50 across the board and increase the CPU AI as we move up in skill level. Below I will list the Averages of the top 6 sliders that I have found, I feel comfortable with this because most of the sliders were not too far off from the next.
QB Accuracy 20/67
Pass Blocking 38/24
WR Catching 38/64
Brocken Tackles 15/65
Run Blocking 39/46
Fumbles 43/56
Pass D Reaction 42/55
Interceptions 19/45
Pass Rushing 46/50
Rush D Reaction 17/35
Block Shedding 31/54
Tackling 55/59
These are really good sliders and fix a lot of the issues you have with the Difficulty settings and AI, but when I looked into it deeper I only found a few big discrepancies. Things that needed to be turned up, WR Catching, Run Blocking, Fumbles, Pass Defense Reaction Time, Pass Rushing, and Tackling. Things that needed to be turned down, Broken Tackles and Interceptions. Now you could easily go in a change each side of the Human and CPU sliders and move them up or down by 15. But I think that should be something EA should look at since most of Madden players can agree with these. I know the latest patch did tighten up the Defensive Reaction Time but overall the AI could be tuned up a little tighter. But if we take my approach and leave the Human AI alone and turn up the CPU AI as we increase difficulty we would end up with the following sliders (we could also leave the Human AI across the board to 50 but this is based off the average of the sliders above).
QB Accuracy 45/80
Pass Blocking 63/70
WR Catching 61/75
Brocken Tackles 40/60
Run Blocking 64/79
Fumbles 68/84
Pass D Reaction 67/92
Interceptions 44/49
Pass Rushing 71/89
Rush D Reaction 42/90
Block Shedding 56/71
Tackling 80/81
If this idea was set to the general All-Madden difficulty the sliders would be set to 50 across the board for all Player Skill AI and 75 across the board for all CPU Skill AI. Below are the rest of the settings that you need based on the average ratings of the top sliders here.
7-9 Minute Quarters 15 Second Run-Off
10-12 Minute Quarters 20 Second Run-Off
13-15 Minute Quarters 25 Second Run-Off
Fatigue 56
Injuries 45
Speed Difference 58
Game Speed Normal
FG Power 28
FG Accuracy 51
Punt Power 46
Punt Accuracy 73
Kickoff Power 30
Offsides 95
False Start 85
Holding 52
Facemask 53
Defensive PI 82
Offensive PI 86
KR/PR Interference 91
Clipping 50
Intentional Grounding 96
Roughing the Passer 84
Roughing the Kicker 84
QB Out/In 50/55
RB Out/In 79/83
WR Out/In 78/83
FB/TE Out/In 74/79
OL Out/In 35/39
DT Out/In 79/84
DE Out/In 79/84
LB Out/In 72/77
CB Out/In 67/72
S Out/In 58/63
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