As everyone stews over the blatant lack of Franchise Mode acknowledgement today, I was curious to look back at what was promised last year at this time.
When the news of the Scenario Engine came out last year, I was cautiously optimistic. How couldn't I be, with the way the Madden Dev team was selling it to us in its Gridiron Notes blog, and this article on Game Informer?
I've pasted a few quotes from that article below... and it's hard to re-read these without feeling a complete sense of betrayal from the Madden development team. We were sold a function that would add dynamism and storylines into our franchise mode, which would breath life into what has become such a stale environment.
Instead we got a glorified mechanism for stad-padding toward increased development and abilities. By Year 3 or 4 in a CFM, a user team's offense lights up like a Christmas tree given how easy it is to dev offensive skill players up to Superstar. Roster building is devalued, as drafting a player with Plus development means less when you can simply target that Normal receiver all game for one game and boost him up. And the CPU quickly falls behind, as they simply don't receive these breakout scenarios.
Instead of incorporating more variables throughout the year that would make the function more interesting, EA seemingly just made breakout scenarios more common, and included new scenarios to pad players up from SS to SS-X. Oh yes, I've heard that 5th-year options were added via a patch! But how would I know when my league plays as Owners, and it's only available to Coaches? And even so, apparently this is also not available for CPU-controlled teams.
In retrospect, I'm more offended by what was promised to us and not delivered on in Madden 20, than the lack of any new information today. At least EA was transparent today in it's complete disregard for it's Franchise base this morning.
When the news of the Scenario Engine came out last year, I was cautiously optimistic. How couldn't I be, with the way the Madden Dev team was selling it to us in its Gridiron Notes blog, and this article on Game Informer?
I've pasted a few quotes from that article below... and it's hard to re-read these without feeling a complete sense of betrayal from the Madden development team. We were sold a function that would add dynamism and storylines into our franchise mode, which would breath life into what has become such a stale environment.
Instead we got a glorified mechanism for stad-padding toward increased development and abilities. By Year 3 or 4 in a CFM, a user team's offense lights up like a Christmas tree given how easy it is to dev offensive skill players up to Superstar. Roster building is devalued, as drafting a player with Plus development means less when you can simply target that Normal receiver all game for one game and boost him up. And the CPU quickly falls behind, as they simply don't receive these breakout scenarios.
Instead of incorporating more variables throughout the year that would make the function more interesting, EA seemingly just made breakout scenarios more common, and included new scenarios to pad players up from SS to SS-X. Oh yes, I've heard that 5th-year options were added via a patch! But how would I know when my league plays as Owners, and it's only available to Coaches? And even so, apparently this is also not available for CPU-controlled teams.
In retrospect, I'm more offended by what was promised to us and not delivered on in Madden 20, than the lack of any new information today. At least EA was transparent today in it's complete disregard for it's Franchise base this morning.
“When we looked all year at storylines like Le'Veon Bell's holdout or Antonio Brown demanding a trade, we really didn't have anything in Madden right now to bring leadership and managing the locker room, and personalities, and cohesiveness that's needed on a football team either from a player perspective or a coaching perspective,” Young says. “The Scenario Engine is intended to create dynamic storylines week to week based on how you're playing, who you are, your record, your stats, and the personalities around you. It fires off stories that could be one-week stories, but there are also several storylines that are branching."
To achieve this goal, EA Tiburon essentially reverse engineered major and minor storylines from the last seven years, finding compelling scenarios that could challenge players and looking at the inputs that would be necessary to trigger these circumstances in a franchise playthrough. If a star player found out he was placed on the trade block, how would he react? If you cut ties with a future Hall of Famer in favor of a hotshot rookie, what would that do to the locker room?
The offseason presents dynamic obstacles to overcome as well. “If you franchise tag a guy, there should be a risk that he'll just retire or demand a trade,” Young says. “You should feel that weight when you are making these choices instead of sorting a spreadsheet and going, 'eh, he's not that good.' There's got to be a risk/reward to this stuff to really make you feel the immersion of it.” If you’re the type of GM who doesn’t like surprises, this may affect how you approach drafting. Maybe you’ll pass on a temperamental player with more potential upside just for the peace of mind knowing that your pick won’t lead a revolt against your leadership.
The Scenario Engine is flexible enough to incorporate more variables as Tiburon sees fit. “One thing we're really excited about is planning to add content throughout the year,” Young says. “This will be the first time we've ever done updates to franchise throughout the season.”
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