Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

[ab2c4]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

They should just forget about adding new features for next year and worry about perfecting the AI. Make the game play perfectly when you are playing against the cpu in our offline Franchise games. Once they get the gameplay and AI as good as possible, then worry about adding a new feature or two.

I feel so burned by EA there is no way I am pre ordering another Madden or NCAA game. I will let everybody else beta test and hear their impressions/complaints/compliments on future games before I buy a copy myself. I refuse to buy any other EA games, even shooters, after what just happened with Madden and NCAA this year. Fortunately, EA doesn't have an exclusive contract deal with the military and therefore other companies can continue putting out shooters that I can buy.

[Tyrant8RDFL]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Thxs for the Patch Ian and other involved we appreciate it. This has never really happened in the past and having it happen now is a nice thing to see.

I dont know if anyone has mentioned this and maybe it can be adjusted in 2010 or maybe in a 3rd patch I dont know, but the players momentum is to much in this game. NFL athletes have great agility all around and in every position, and if everyone has it then it will be a even playing field. Also the sideline catch from the Wr's or anyone catching the ball. NCAA has this down nicely and I only saw it once in madden , can this be corrected to happen alot more frequent?

Thxs Take care

[kt-od]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Great news unless your a hardcore franchise guy like me. Im sorry but unless the freezing in the menus of franchise is fixed i.e. while trying to save and when simulating games during the week then all these other things don't do jack for me.

Agreed. I like to play franchise. If I can't get past the third year, then this patch is pointless for me.

But I am glad to see that they are responding to the community with this patch. It just shows you that they do read these forums. Good job EA for responding to some major concerns.

[jhawkmike]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

They should just forget about adding new features for next year and worry about perfecting the AI. Make the game play perfectly when you are playing against the cpu in our offline Franchise games. Once they get the gameplay and AI as good as possible, then worry about adding a new feature or two.

I feel so burned by EA there is no way I am pre ordering another Madden or NCAA game. I will let everybody else beta test and hear their impressions/complaints/compliments on future games before I buy a copy myself. I refuse to buy any EA games, even shooters, after what just happened with Madden and NCAA this year.

I hear you. I won't be buying Madden or NCAA on Launch day next year either. I feel let down by the game review websites too. None of them did a very thorough job with these games.

[ab2c4]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

I hear you. I won't be buying Madden or NCAA on Launch day next year either. I feel let down by the game review websites too. None of them did a very thorough job with these games.

I normally like IGN but I feel very mislead by their reviews. There is no way they played Madden or NCAA very much if they didn't see the problems and all of the left out features in the games this year. If they did they should have lowered the review scores A LOT.

[prince_dog]

Great patch information! Thanks Ian and EA.

Is there any plan to bring back the Fair Play option online in a patch, or for 2010? That definitely made the online experience better and more realistic.

[Tomba]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Thanks for opening the communication lined with your customers Ian. that much is very appreciated!!

but.. I kind of have a problem with your statement below



so, what would you like us as consumers who buy your product to do here? Just accept an incomplete game, and move on to hoping next year is better?
How about hiring some more people maybe and get it right the first time?

Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled that we are even able to directly communicate with EA now, but to suggest that we are holding you back from working on Madden 2010 because you are trying to fix a broken Madden 09 just does not work for me.

This is not the consumer's problem, and you should not be making a statement like this.

thats all and many thanks again for the open line of communication! we really needed this, as successful patch #2 is proof

In don't beleive he was the lead for 09 so what he's doing now is constructive towards 10....

[dafilthymofo]

Re: Two weeks of Madden 09, and OFFICIAL patch news!

Thanks for the update. I appreciate it.

Thoughts..

Rushing issue:

The running game issue was not addressed. Madden IQ works great but you can not run at all when set on myskill. It works great with the other three sliders. I still get competitive games but I end up only passing. My rushing yards end up in the negative numbers. Maybe patch 3 can fix this.

I know many people can't run either and if you go to custom sliders you end up running for 200 yards everygame. No middle ground for this. You just end up with a pass only offense or running all over the place.

In-Game Saves:

If you could patch in in-game saves it would be great. Sometimes you need to quit and you don't want to leave your system on all day.

[boooey]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

i guess the Challenge bug didn't make it into this patch either.. that sux

[nookiebear]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

1. Defensive Preplay Mis-cue: We found and fixed an issue where defenders would leave their man wide open in a Cover 3.

I'm wondering if a few other Cover plays have this issue? Might explain some ROBO QB stuff?

[RAZRr1275]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Awesome! So you said that your working on DLC for 360. Is it coming for ps3 too?

[brendanrfoley]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

This is fantastic news!

The patch and the DLC (as long as Sony and Microsoft allow it) reaffrim my belief that this Madden development team is the best the game has had in years.

[mastershake88]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Well as I post this it’s officially been exactly two weeks since Madden officially launched, and wow it sure has been a busy time for us. I truly hope everyone is enjoying the game, and I wanted to drop an update on some things we’ve been working on for our 2nd patch. We feel that without a doubt this encapsulates the top issues we’re hearing from the forums and community leaders, and hope that this list truly makes Madden NFL 09 the ultimate sports game for you.

1. Kicking play disconnect: If two opponents play a game with two different camera angles, in any situation where a game winning or tying kick was to be made, a disconnect could occur. “ActionCam” forces the game to go into slow-motion to add drama to these late kicks, but unfortunately the Classic camera does not, thus forcing the “disconnect”. This has been fixed…and FYI all cameras will still be able to be used after the patch.
   Workaround until the patch: If possible, ensure that you and your opponent have the same camera type chosen before starting an online game.
2. Stability issues in the play call / halftime highlights / postgame highlights screens (especially in Franchise mode after training games): This was a hard one to track down as not everyone was seeing it , we did find the issue however with some Instant Replay / cache corruption, and have a fix ready for patch 2.
   Workaround until the patch: Save and re-boot after any point where you have entered the game. We learned that the likelihood of this issue appearing is magnified after multiple loads into and out of the game engine. From what we’ve seen so far, people that have tried playing only one game at a time (or even one Franchise training session at a time), and saving/rebooting afterwards, have had zero crashes.
3. Stability issues with Madden IQ end of game popup: This has been fixed.
   Workaround until the patch: Always choose “No” at the Madden IQ end of game popup.
4. “WR direct snap” exploit: Cheesers found an exploit to direct snap to a WR for easy short yardage gain. Not only are we fixing this play (i.e. we aren’t removing it), we are also going to be re-setting records for anyone with a winning record that has been found to be using this play.
5. Franchise Progression / Regression (or lack thereof): The lack of higher numbers was a tuning value that I think everyone agreed was just too low. This has been juiced up so you should see more realistic progression now.
6. Edited players don’t progress: Players were not progressing after their jersey number (or pretty much any other attribute) was edited. This has been fixed.
7. Stability issue when exiting Madden ’93 in CE version: This has been fixed.
8. Deep ball glitch: Some enterprising gamers found a way to throw a deep ball while crossing the LOS and hit a receiver wide open at a decent rate. We addressed this by making sure the DB will no longer break on the ball when the QB crosses the line while throwing.
9. CPU running out of bounds: This bug appears when the CPU tries to switch hands while running to the sidelines. This is fixed for patch 2.
10. Penalty sliders ineffective: A common complaint from the hardcore community was the lack of effect from the penalty sliders. We increased these substantially for patch 2.
11. Field degradation: Another common complaint was the lack of field degradation. Our effect was very subtle, which was also getting overshadowed by our lighting and post effects, so we increased this effect for the patch.
12. Stability issue with the Eagles and a full ring meter: We found and fixed a rare issue where the gamer could run into stability issues while using the Eagles in mini-games with a ring meter that was completely full.
13. Play call screen hitch: We found and fixed a bug that was causing a noticeable hitch when exiting the play call screen
14. Prevent Defense issue: We found and fixed an issue where defenders sharing a deep zone/prevent assignment would loosen their coverage (because they thought the other guy was covering for them), which allowed the receiver to get behind them even though they were in Prevent.
15. Brett Favre stats: With the late addition of Brett Favre, we were not able to get his Career and Season statistics into the game for the roster update. This has now been added for patch 2.
16. Defensive Preplay Mis-cue: We found and fixed an issue where defenders would leave their man wide open in a Cover 3.
17. CPU quick-snap: A very common complaint on the forums was the speed at which the CPU snapped the ball. We added a random length of time (no less than 5 seconds) for the CPU to wait and even make pre-play adjustments.
18. Online playbook switch: We fixed a small annoying little issue where playbooks were re-setting to the defaults after the playbook select popup was closed.

I hope this makes everyone quite happy. :-)

The patch is being tested as I write this and will be sent off for verification in the morning, so we are targeting less than a 3 week turnaround from today for this to hit the general public. (Woohoo!) We will also make sure to provide updates as the patch progresses through the 3rd party approval process. As a side note, as of this moment there have been no changes to database schema, so you won’t have to re-start your Franchise or delete any files.

It makes us very stoked to be able to make this many changes for a patch, and do them based directly on community feedback. There are always going to be folks that are upset if what they felt was a top issue wasn’t addressed, but I’ll state again (as I have before) that we have to keep balancing this work against Madden NFL 2010. The longer we keep going on patches, the less we can add to the following year’s product. On a side note, there is also a Franchise stability issue that we have been investigating, and we are working feverishly to get this figured out. We will update on that issue as soon as we can. As for the items above, I personally feel that we have hit a very good balance of top items because many of these issues can actually detract from an enjoyable experience, which is obviously the last thing we want.

And now that this patch is nearly out the door, I figured I’d drop some more good news… We have officially started building the TOTALLY FREE “Sim Madden Gamer” DLC pack, which includes Accelerated Clock, a “Classic” Controller Configuration, CPU Sliders, and Community Gamerpics for 360. I’ll state again that there’s no promise that this goes through, but we have nearly every one of these features actually ‘done’ internally, so now we have to figure out how to get Microsoft and Sony to allow us to release them.

Thanks everyone – keep the feedback coming, and let's keep this train a-rollin'!

Ian Cummings
Senior Designer, Madden NFL 2010

Ian is MOLLLLLLNEYYYYY

[mercalnd]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Awesome! So you said that your working on DLC for 360. Is it coming for ps3 too?

And now that this patch is nearly out the door, I figured I’d drop some more good news… We have officially started building the TOTALLY FREE “Sim Madden Gamer” DLC pack, which includes Accelerated Clock, a “Classic” Controller Configuration, CPU Sliders, and Community Gamerpics for 360. I’ll state again that there’s no promise that this goes through, but we have nearly every one of these features actually ‘done’ internally, so now we have to figure out how to get Microsoft and Sony to allow us to release them.

It's kind of confusing because the list of features of the DLC ends with "and Community Gamerpics for 360" but the part I bolded tends to confirm that they want to do the DLC for both systems. My guess is the "for 360" part referred only to the gamerpics, which as far as I know do not exist on PS3.

[coachpars]

Re: Two Weeks of Madden 09, and Official Patch News!

Very impressive list! Now that is what communities and developers working together to fix a very good football game is all about. Kudos!!!!!!