Online Franchise

[CFTejada]

Is this the year Online Franchise is suppose to be improved?

[TDKing]

Re: Online Franchise

Is this the year Online Franchise is suppose to be improved?

You mean FINISHED as in completed and matching feature for feature to the offline mode. I sure hope so, this is the only news I'm waiting to hear about.
If its a finsished mode its an auto buy for me day one ! If not I'll skip again this year and stick with NCAA. I hope to hear something soon about it.

[TyghtWork]

Re: Online Franchise

You mean FINISHED as in completed and matching feature for feature to the offline mode. I sure hope so, this is the only news I'm waiting to hear about.
If its a finsished mode its an auto buy for me day one ! If not I'll skip again this year and stick with NCAA. I hope to hear something soon about it.

I'm with you 100%

[RogueHominid]

Re: Online Franchise

The travesty that is this mode has to be one of the most disappointing developments in Madden in the current generation. In M10 it was touted as a major breakthrough and was held up as a hallmark of the game's new direction. I was excited for that and was willing to overlook for one year the absence of a salary cap, the 100% disclosure of the rookie ratings, the terrible draft interface, and the lack of a free-agent bidding system. When the second year came and this feature received zero upgrades I was upset but still rolled with it.

For M12, I have to think that EA will do something with the mode simply for the sake of good conscience. The XFN site's stat-tracking ability needs to be implemented. A true salary cap needs to be there. And something major has to be done about the rookie draft classes. This mode will be borderline unplayable if the draft classes remain the same for 3 years straight.

On that score I'd suggest a couple of minor fixes:
1) Push the first 4 classes from this year to the back of the queue;
2) Randomize the potentials for each individual draft class in each individual OF;
3) Eliminate the ability to scout potential;
4) Hide all the ratings, save those that would be revealed in a combine-type workout and a select few that could be revealed through scouting;
5) Limit the ability to scout rookies to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it currently is in the offline mode.

The most important one to me is #2. It kills an OF for everyone to know who the A and B potential guys are and what each of their attributes is before each draft. Spreadsheets go up as soon as the game drops that take all the risk and lots of the fun out of the draft. If each draft class got a randomized set of potentials, such sheets couldn't exist, and each OF would have its own unique set of rookies and draft experiences.

I'm sure someone will tell me that this is too hard to do, as that's the typical response over here, but I have to believe there's a way that's not prohibitively difficult.

[GiantBlue76]

Re: Online Franchise

The travesty that is this mode has to be one of the most disappointing developments in Madden in the current generation. In M10 it was touted as a major breakthrough and was held up as a hallmark of the game's new direction. I was excited for that and was willing to overlook for one year the absence of a salary cap, the 100% disclosure of the rookie ratings, the terrible draft interface, and the lack of a free-agent bidding system. When the second year came and this feature received zero upgrades I was upset but still rolled with it.

For M12, I have to think that EA will do something with the mode simply for the sake of good conscience. The XFN site's stat-tracking ability needs to be implemented. A true salary cap needs to be there. And something major has to be done about the rookie draft classes. This mode will be borderline unplayable if the draft classes remain the same for 3 years straight.

On that score I'd suggest a couple of minor fixes:
1) Push the first 4 classes from this year to the back of the queue;
2) Randomize the potentials for each individual draft class in each individual OF;
3) Eliminate the ability to scout potential;
4) Hide all the ratings, save those that would be revealed in a combine-type workout and a select few that could be revealed through scouting;
5) Limit the ability to scout rookies to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it currently is in the offline mode.

The most important one to me is #2. It kills an OF for everyone to know who the A and B potential guys are and what each of their attributes is before each draft. Spreadsheets go up as soon as the game drops that take all the risk and lots of the fun out of the draft. If each draft class got a randomized set of potentials, such sheets couldn't exist, and each OF would have its own unique set of rookies and draft experiences.

I'm sure someone will tell me that this is too hard to do, as that's the typical response over here, but I have to believe there's a way that's not prohibitively difficult.

Right on the money TM. Something tells me though that there will probably be minimal if ANY changes made to the mode. I couldn't believe they came out and said, "no one really used this mode". Yeah, that's like producing a car that doesn't have wheels or a gas pedal and saying, "we stopped making it because no one drove it."

[SilverChaosVII]

Re: Online Franchise

The travesty that is this mode has to be one of the most disappointing developments in Madden in the current generation. In M10 it was touted as a major breakthrough and was held up as a hallmark of the game's new direction. I was excited for that and was willing to overlook for one year the absence of a salary cap, the 100% disclosure of the rookie ratings, the terrible draft interface, and the lack of a free-agent bidding system. When the second year came and this feature received zero upgrades I was upset but still rolled with it.

For M12, I have to think that EA will do something with the mode simply for the sake of good conscience. The XFN site's stat-tracking ability needs to be implemented. A true salary cap needs to be there. And something major has to be done about the rookie draft classes. This mode will be borderline unplayable if the draft classes remain the same for 3 years straight.

On that score I'd suggest a couple of minor fixes:
1) Push the first 4 classes from this year to the back of the queue;
2) Randomize the potentials for each individual draft class in each individual OF;
3) Eliminate the ability to scout potential;
4) Hide all the ratings, save those that would be revealed in a combine-type workout and a select few that could be revealed through scouting;
5) Limit the ability to scout rookies to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it currently is in the offline mode.

The most important one to me is #2. It kills an OF for everyone to know who the A and B potential guys are and what each of their attributes is before each draft. Spreadsheets go up as soon as the game drops that take all the risk and lots of the fun out of the draft. If each draft class got a randomized set of potentials, such sheets couldn't exist, and each OF would have its own unique set of rookies and draft experiences.

I'm sure someone will tell me that this is too hard to do, as that's the typical response over here, but I have to believe there's a way that's not prohibitively difficult.

Could have said it any better

LOL @ my signature. I guess I should update that.

[43M]

Re: Online Franchise

When they get the offline franchise where it needs to be, I imagine they will move on to making it better online. Until then (and rightfully so), offline franchise needs to continue to be the focal point.

[falconfansince81]

Re: Online Franchise

When they get the offline franchise where it needs to be, I imagine they will move on to making it better online. Until then (and rightfully so), offline franchise needs to continue to be the focal point.

i play strictly online franchise and i have to agree, even though i never play offline franchise, simply because if they took what currently exists in the offline mode and carried that over to online it'd be a drastic improvement.

although even some of the basic features like potential scouting and stat tracking would need reworked, i'd be happy just to see free agent bidding and salary caps as a much needed addition.

[RogueHominid]

Re: Online Franchise

Here's a question I'd like to have answered: from a technical perspective, how much harder is it to set up an online franchise with the cap and proper draft scouting than an offline one? I guess I'm wondering whether the incompleteness of M11's online franchise was the product of some kind of technical difficulty, or whether it was the product of the de-prioritization of that mode.

If the development crew cannot innovate in both the offline and online franchise modes within the same game cycle (which is an implication we might draw from the way M11 played out), would it be possible simply to give M12's online franchise the feature set M11's offline franchise had? At least that wouldn't be asking the developers to do anything new. From a gamer's perspective, this seems like the minimum EA could/should do for fans.

[TDKing]

Re: Online Franchise

When they get the offline franchise where it needs to be, I imagine they will move on to making it better online. Until then (and rightfully so), offline franchise needs to continue to be the focal point.

Well there really should not be 2 modes. There should just be a Franchise Mode (online) with a great web/iphone interface! You can play with yourself and still have web access to your franchise(that would be = to offline mode), or you could start a franchise with friends (that would = online multiplayer mode).
One Online Mode is the RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! Before you offline peeps get on your high horses make sure you understand what I said.

[ANDROMADA 1]

Re: Online Franchise

Right on the money TM. Something tells me though that there will probably be minimal if ANY changes made to the mode. I couldn't believe they came out and said, "no one really used this mode". Yeah, that's like producing a car that doesn't have wheels or a gas pedal and saying, "we stopped making it because no one drove it."

Sad but true.

[CFTejada]

Re: Online Franchise

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

[Hooe]

Re: Online Franchise

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

For whatever reason, when EA implemented online franchise in Madden 10, they chose to use a completely server-based approach, unlike what existed for NCAA Football (which only effectively does file hosting for dynasties).

My assumptions on the decision: the advantage of going this route was that EA could easily create cross-platform apps for the PC and iOS devices so that players could stay connected to their franchises away from the console; this turned out to be one of the advertised successes of the mode, and as far as I know this feature enjoyed great reception as well. The server-side approach also indeed would allow for dynamic updating of the online franchise mechanic with potential additions to the game mode (which outside of roster updates has unfortunately not happened). The disadvantage was that the mode had to be remade from the ground-up to work for the completely server-side infrastructure, thus why we haven't seen things like AI roster management or the concept of contracts.

There's no data to back this up that I have access to, but just going off the reception of online franchise and online dynasty in their separate games, I would like to think that EA has learned that the mode they've tried for online franchise starting with Madden 10 has failed, and that they should adopt a more NCAA-like approach, where all the game logic is performed client-side (i.e. on the console) and the server is only used for file storage.

[KOTC Wayne]

Re: Online Franchise

Why can't they import everything from the off-line chise to Online? how hard could that be? you already have everything

This is my biggest issue also, how hard could it be? I'm one of the few that have no love for playing the CPU ever again ( ever since online play for the Playstation came into existence in 03 ) , I want to compete against all different user controlled teams with people from all over the country.

[aksumite]

Re: Online Franchise

I'm with you 100%

I agree with this 100% as well

Me and my crew wait for as much info as possible then, as a unit, we choose which game we will play for the year based on ONLINE features (until the following year's versions are released).....choices are btwn NCAA Online Dynasty, Madden Online Franchise, and NBA 2k Online Association (still hoping for that lol)

We like to ALL buy the 1 game we choose and play 20 seasons MINIMUM together. Most of us dont buy or play any other games.

Right now we are 20+ years deep in our Online Dynasty in NCAA but we are dieing for Madden to tighten up.

Last year I was eager to play with the Jets for 20 years up until EA said Online Franchise was not getting any improvements.....so, NONE of us bought Madden. We all bought NCAA

This year we wanna return to the prof level and have a real option if Madden has ALL offline features in ONLINE Franchise