[TombSong]

Alot of good stuff here.

I dont know what the current EA Dev Team is shooting for but we all gotta remember in the end this is a game emulating a game.

War games let you setup your defenses how you want and go on the offensive how you want. Its up to you on how much you spend on defensive/offensive equipment and its up to you how you use it to determine the outcome. A well balanced game requires no cheating up of the AI controlled team mates of the human controlled team.

It seems to be the Tiburon mantra to NOT balance and fix the problems but rather cheat up the AI to hide the flaws, which leads to alot of crazy behaviors by the AI and the humans to counter it all.

I would like to think this is all changing with this years Madden. The AI blog concerns me because it seems to be a co-sign to taking the responsibility of you being the coach/coordinator of your squad and is passing it on to the cpu.

This "game" is suppose to be about letting you coach/coordinate/play owner of your team. Thats the challenge.
What decides the outcome of success and failure in the real world should be emulated in the game. If x defensive line stunts defeat y offensive line blocking then thats what we should see 90% of the time.

If I am calling run plays that require guards to pull and i dont have good pulling guards in real life on that team, then I should struggle when calling run plays that require pulling guards.

I the ultimate AI, should take all this info and call plays based on the personel on my team, my opponents team, and as the game is played adjust according to what my opponent is doing. Like the war games, the football game should only provide instruments of war and make sure they work as advertised, and make sure the game is balanced by no one entity being god like in its function. Everything should have counters.

If this is done RIGHT I should not have to concern myself with how my AI is playing but rather what tool(counter) am I gonna select to adjust to whats happening to me on the field.