Madden NFL 11 Interview with Ian Cummings (GameShark)

[Stikskillz]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

What I find funny about Ian's response is that if EA kept the EA Locker for spawning games (Old-Gen online franchise) no one would have to worry about the current state of online franchise. That system was close to perfect because each user could do everything offline for their franchise and then merge and share the franchise through the EA locker and play all of the games. The only flaw with it was that sometimes the EA Locker would not work, but that was rare. With that system me and a buddy completed 30 seasons multiple times. Sure we only played a few regular season games and all of the playoff games, but everything worked well because all of the features were included along with Owner Mode. It was great and we looked forward to it every year. Now, not so much.

I have posted on the EA Locker feature in the past as far as it making a return on the new consoles. However, it appears to be an illogical request.

[Flamehead]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

Two observations:

1) "At E3 we spoke briefly about the new GameFlow feature. This seems to be a fairly hot-button issue with a lot of Madden fans. Can you describe the idea behind it and why you guys thought it important to add to the design of Madden NFL 11?

It’s definitely a vocal minority."

LOL, way to spin. It's got a bit of "Baghdad Bob" flavor to it, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

2) I'm disheartened that much of the discussion regarding franchise was about online. If EA was shocked to see its low usage but sees multiple posts in the "community" about the desire for offline franchise enhancements, why is 2+2 not equaling 4? Of course, I ask this half-rhetorically because we know they acknowledge it to some extent (see Phil's blog), but I almost get the sense that if they could just do away with it altogether, they would--no additional revenue stream.

[frankrizzo380]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

ONLINE franchise man. And the thing is, unless you're part of a sports message board, can you imagine how hard it is logistically to get 31 of your closest classmates together to schedule an ONLINE franchise. The CPU would take over for any teams not user controlled, but still. And those same 31 people would have to have madden. I can't believe Ian didn't know it wasn't going to be used by most of his install base. Unless they move SINGLE PLAYER franchises online...he won't see more use. People are way too busy in many cases.

NCAA has this and along with the extra web based stuff like recruiting and managing depth, this makes my life a whole lot easier AND it makes online very appealing to hordcore/sim/familymen lol

[mr_president]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

the link won't load for me....but did they discuss tackling??... and if there are any improvements between the demo and the final version??

thanks guys

[rooney8]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

NCAA has this and along with the extra web based stuff like recruiting and managing depth, this makes my life a whole lot easier AND it makes online very appealing to hordcore/sim/familymen lol

Yeah and if this is successfull they might do the same in Madden. It seems Madden looks at what Nhl, Fifa and Ncaa does and tries to copy what they do well. I honestly doubt any of those games looks at Madden for anything other than what not to do. It seems every interview with Ian he mentions how he is sim and that's where he's taking the game but then the game screams otherwise. This interview pretty much killed my hope for Madden12.

[rooney8]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

the link won't load for me....but did they discuss tackling??... and if there are any improvements between the demo and the final version??

thanks guys

Try it again, didn't work for me first time. No nothing about tackling mainly gameflow and bits of other stuff.

[frankrizzo380]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

well u have to have hope in m12, there isnt any other nfl videogame out to play lol, but i love the feel of the demo, AND i love the new strategy pad controls(ps3) so im pretty hyped for this game's future (with my fingers crossed of course)

[BlueNGold]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

The online franchise comments really piss me off. You don't just add a feature that isn't fully fleshed out and then abandon it after a year because not enough people use said half-baked feature.

I also seem to find it hard to believe that there was a shocking amount of people not playing OF. I was in 3 multi season OF's with 32 owners and barely any of us knew each other.

What I think contributed to some of those surprising numbers of people not playing OF is that Madden is probably 60-40 non-sim to sim players (maybe more). From my experiences, the sim players were the ones that were very dedicated to OF and basically played from last August till this August. The non -sim players were the ones that were not dedicated to OF and getting booted out of the ones they did join.

Totally disagree.

I ran a franchise and we got through 3 seasons. Had plenty of owners, the biggest issues besides the obvious having to make house rules for player movement was the lack of CPU sliders and that the CPU didn't fill it's roster correctly between seasons.

Imagine as commish having to develop rules for free agency to stimulate player movement (today's NFL is all about FA and player movement) and then having to go and fix every CPU team post draft to make sure they were carrying enough QB's, CB's etc just to make them competent.

You can't expect people to fill up a 32 team franchise, but you also gave the guys running OF with 10-15 people no incentive with no sliders and an incompetent cpu off season.

I'm really disappointed in the logic as well. They launch it, tell everyone it isn't complete and that they will patch things in on the server. We have tons of people here who won't start their offline franchise to patches and roster are final. So to use the logic that most didn't complete a season is a bit skewed because they eluded to fixes that never came.

Regardless I've finally realized there is nothing I can do about this, initially my group was really upset but when thinking about the fun we had last year we're going to give it a go with M11 and jump through all the same hoops. I don't agree with their logic, but it is their logic.

Good post and I agree. My franchise is in the same boat as yours.

It really sucks that no changes have been made to a feature that did need to make some additions, but at the same time OF was one of the best experiences I've ever had so it's worth it to deal with what we have.

The good news is most of the gameplay issues we had were addressed and we have a good cap system and all those things in place.

[showbo1971]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

Totally disagree.

I ran a franchise and we got through 3 seasons. Had plenty of owners, the biggest issues besides the obvious having to make house rules for player movement was the lack of CPU sliders and that the CPU didn't fill it's roster correctly between seasons.

Imagine as commish having to develop rules for free agency to stimulate player movement (today's NFL is all about FA and player movement) and then having to go and fix every CPU team post draft to make sure they were carrying enough QB's, CB's etc just to make them competent.

You can't expect people to fill up a 32 team franchise, but you also gave the guys running OF with 10-15 people no incentive with no sliders and an incompetent cpu off season.

I'm really disappointed in the logic as well. They launch it, tell everyone it isn't complete and that they will patch things in on the server. We have tons of people here who won't start their offline franchise to patches and roster are final. So to use the logic that most didn't complete a season is a bit skewed because they eluded to fixes that never came.

Regardless I've finally realized there is nothing I can do about this, initially my group was really upset but when thinking about the fun we had last year we're going to give it a go with M11 and jump through all the same hoops. I don't agree with their logic, but it is their logic.

I totally agree, after playing Online Dynasty with 2 of my friends in NCAA 09 and NCAA 10 we were really looking forward to the Online Franchise in Madden 10. Obviously we were VERY disappointed to find out there was no free agency and other missing features. We still played 1 season of the Online Franchise but ended up quitting during the off season as it just seemed to be to much work and knowing we had to go through that same scenario after every season made it very unappealing. We heard rumors of a possible patch which never came so we decided to just go back to playing NCAA 10's Online Dynasty. We ended up playing 10 seasons and once again was looking forward to Madden 11 believing they included those missing features. I know Online Franchise may not be for everyone but it's the number 1 feature my friends and I wanted for the last couple years and it's very frustrating this feature is still not complete and for a lot of people, unplayable....Given the fact a lot of us don't have time to put in the off season work needed to continue from season to season.

Even though Ian mentioned they haven't abandoned Online Franchise I still disagree with his belief that the low usage count wasn't a result of the mode being incomplete. We quit last season because of that and won't play it this season for the same reason. If EA bases what direction they take with this mode on the amount of usage they get from people does that force me to play a mode that isn't complete so I'm included in that statistic?

[PantherBeast_OS]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

But I thought they were rebuilding franchise mode and it would be the same both online and offline like ncaa.
This is what Phil said in his franchise blog and it says something very different to Ian.

I don't actually care about online franchise but I just don't think they are gonna bother with offline franchise if they aren't touching online aswell.

What I'm getting from the franchise mode question is that online franchise mode is more of a focus then offline franchsie mode. Which to me is hogwash. What is this all of a sudden wanting to do everything for online use. Most fans want a offline franchise more then anything. Don't they get point of that. If they do very little for offline franchise mode and end up doing a whole deal for online franchise mode. Then EA is going to end up POing alot of fans off and loss a lot of customers in the process. Most madden fans want a completely new offline franchise mode and not online. I wish they would confirm wheather they are going to redo the whole offline franchise mode along with online are what. This is driving me nuts. I like offline franchise mode more them anything. It's very very hard to get even a handfull of people to stick with online franchise mode for even a short time. Offline franchise is where they really to need to focus it at to redo this coming year.

[jfsolo]

Re: Madden NFL 11 Interview with Ian Cummings (GameShark)

I think what it points to is that the majority of franchise players are offline guys.....myself included. I play nothing but franchise mode, and I absolutely despise playing online.....unless I know the other guy.

ONLINE franchise man. And the thing is, unless you're part of a sports message board, can you imagine how hard it is logistically to get 31 of your closest classmates together to schedule an ONLINE franchise. The CPU would take over for any teams not user controlled, but still. And those same 31 people would have to have madden. I can't believe Ian didn't know it wasn't going to be used by most of his install base. Unless they move SINGLE PLAYER franchises online...he won't see more use. People are way too busy in many cases.

This. Long term I think that by trying to get people like me online though, they see more recurring revenue streams, monthly subscription fees etc... but the problem is the online experience is still crap. It's just crap. I don't know if it's that users don't play like football, or the CPU doesn't play like football, but I hate the games.

You have a point...but look at Ian's comments about what percentage of the install base even TRIES to play a game online, vs. who downloads patches, etc....online games ranked/unranked/tournaments/against my dead mom/franchises, just aren't where the majority of games are played. My point really is simply that online franchise being left alone, doesn't mean that offline is being screwed , too. (although this year that's the case). The minute offline franchise gets limited , etc. I think they'll see a lot of people not buy the game. I think most people like playing through their team's schedule at will

I don't have any data to support this feeling, but I still believe that offline franchise is played by a large number of Madden players. I bet the next 5 years of online franchise players would still be less then the numbers that play offline franchise now. I don't feel like EA has the right methodology in place to accurately track these players.

Sadly I do feel like offline franchise players are going to suffer greatly because of the, for lack of a better word, failure of online franchise mode. Ryan speaks to it above, their desire to get people online, largely due to the possibility of inducing some sort of micro transaction purchase from them, has relegated offline only players to the role of "red headed stepchild"

[sois]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

What I'm getting from the franchise mode question is that online franchise mode is more of a focus then offline franchsie mode. Which to me is hogwash. What is this all of a sudden wanting to do everything for online use. Most fans want a offline franchise more then anything. Don't they get point of that. If they do very little for offline franchise mode and end up doing a whole deal for online franchise mode. Then EA is going to end up POing alot of fans off and loss a lot of customers in the process. Most madden fans want a completely new offline franchise mode and not online. I wish they would confirm wheather they are going to redo the whole offline franchise mode along with online are what. This is driving me nuts. I like offline franchise mode more them anything. It's very very hard to get even a handfull of people to stick with online franchise mode for even a short time. Offline franchise is where they really to need to focus it at to redo this coming year.

100% agree.

I really wish I had access to their research. If i was an online franchise fan, I would take this as a slap in the face. It would be like Apple putting out an iPhone that didn't make calls because of a design glitch and then issuing a press release that said "due to lack of usage, we will no longer dedicate resources to making phone calls with the iPhone."

Don't they see that their crippled product was the biggest influence in people deciding NOT to play it? I know my casually buddies really wanted to get one going but once I Debbie Downer'd them with the bad news, we lost all momentum and the online franchise stalled.

[thbends]

Re: Madden NFL 11 Interview with Ian Cummings (GameShark)

I run a successful online league. We are wrapping up season 3 now.

It only works because we all know each other and have played together since NFL 2k5. Though few of us have ever met in person.

We are all in agreement that others did not play Online Franchise because it was not complete. Did anyone even try to use the message board they made for the site? Complete crap. We ended up using our own forums away from the site to keep in touch. So if EA could not get the message boards right, something people have been doing correctly elsewhere since AOL came in to existence in the 90's, how can we expect them to get the franchise mode right? lol

Basic features were missing. Features needed to communicate with your owners easily. COMMUNICATION is key when it comes to running a good league. EA offered little to no support in this area.

[showbo1971]

Re: GameShark: Ian Cummings Interview

What I'm getting from the franchise mode question is that online franchise mode is more of a focus then offline franchsie mode. Which to me is hogwash. What is this all of a sudden wanting to do everything for online use. Most fans want a offline franchise more then anything. Don't they get point of that. If they do very little for offline franchise mode and end up doing a whole deal for online franchise mode. Then EA is going to end up POing alot of fans off and loss a lot of customers in the process. Most madden fans want a completely new offline franchise mode and not online. I wish they would confirm wheather they are going to redo the whole offline franchise mode along with online are what. This is driving me nuts. I like offline franchise mode more them anything. It's very very hard to get even a handfull of people to stick with online franchise mode for even a short time. Offline franchise is where they really to need to focus it at to redo this coming year.

Legend, I can understand what you are saying but I still believe they could have at least finished the online franchise. I think they should focus on getting the offline franchise perfected but just adding free agency/salary cap to online franchise this season would have been good enough to make the mode more playable.

[GiantBlue76]

Re: Madden NFL 11 Interview with Ian Cummings (GameShark)

I run a successful online league. We are wrapping up season 3 now.

It only works because we all know each other and have played together since NFL 2k5. Though few of us have ever met in person.

We are all in agreement that others did not play Online Franchise because it was not complete. Did anyone even try to use the message board they made for the site? Complete crap. We ended up using our own forums away from the site to keep in touch. So if EA could not get the message boards right, something people have been doing correctly elsewhere since AOL came in to existence in the 90's, how can we expect them to get the franchise mode right? lol

Basic features were missing. Features needed to communicate with your owners easily. COMMUNICATION is key when it comes to running a good league. EA offered little to no support in this area.

See my post earlier in the thread.