Madden NFL 12 Blog - No Additions This Year For Online Franchise Mode

[WDOgF0reL1fe]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

As someone who's either owned or played every Madden since 1992 and never even played Online Franchise or NCAA's Online Dynasty, and with all the improvements made in Gameplay and Offline Franchise I don't understand this statement.

Maybe he is like me and doesnt like playing a CPU opponent?
This is 2011.
People play games online now and a CPU will NEVER be able to replicate a human.

[CRMosier_LM]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Even though I didnt have my hopes up It still a sick feeling that they did nothing

Leaguemanager is awesome and definitely a league saver but one thing that concerns me is reading "LM exclusive rights to EA content"

My league last year used both LM content and XFN content. So does that mean XFN is useless for madden 12?

XFN had some features like being able to pull info onto our own website, build our look ect that LM didnt.

LM had features like GM managent, cap structures ect that XFN didnt.

Using both worked good Im just worried were losing options making online franchise even worse this year.

Will LM charge? Its gonna get alot more users if its exclusive.
I hope not, you would think EA could at least cover server costs considering all the work LM doing for their game.

Those are great questions! Derek has covered each of those questions you asked on his latest blog. I don't want to link it here without Steve Noah giving me permission but by all means feel free to look for yourself. One thing I will say is that it is a site designed by a Madden fan and Derek is not receiving any monetary compensation from EA Sports.

[statum71]

Oh well. Can't have everything.

Not enough to change my mind. Still waiting for Aug. 30th

[Broncos86]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Maybe he is like me and doesnt like playing a CPU opponent?
This is 2011.
People play games online now and a CPU will NEVER be able to replicate a human.

Until Online Franchise overtakes offline franchise in terms of most played, that doesn't hold water when discussing Madden.

[at23steelers]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Can we get an answer on why EA said it's easy to add things to OF server, yet now are saying it's so difficult??

[ebugaloo]

As someone who's either owned or played every Madden since 1992 and never even played Online Franchise or NCAA's Online Dynasty, and with all the improvements made in Gameplay and Offline Franchise I don't understand this statement.

I enjoyed M11, and I appreciate the gameplay improvements of this year's iteration. But being a primarily online franchise guy, the lack of any improvements to online franchise to M11 really affected how much I was actually playing. I found myself playing more NCAA because the online dynasty, since I could play out a season with my brother and some friends. I tried to play some M11, because I enjoyed it, but ended up only completing half a season in offline franchise. If I can only get that much play out of a game, it doesn't warrant a $60 purchase.

[CRMosier_LM]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Many have made very good points in those recent posts in criticism of EA, and they're justified/valid points. Another point is -- EA deciding to just delegate (fob off) what they should've/could've done to LM instead, EA wanting to fry other fish, couldn't be bothered.

The silver lining is LM, them getting exclusive access etc, and the features LM will be adding to make it all 'pop' even more. And I duly applauded/acknowledged that.

I really don't see it as pushing it off on Derek, I see it more as they realized they did not have time to get it this cycle and recognized all the hours and hard work Derek has put in and it may have made it easier for them knowing that the fans would be able to use his site. If they didn't care then they wouldn't have provided him with the access to the extras that you will see this year.

[ebugaloo]

Until Online Franchise overtakes offline franchise in terms of most played, that doesn't hold water when discussing Madden.

Online Franchise will never overtake offline franchise as long as the mode sucks.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Can we get an answer on why EA said it's easy to add things to OF server, yet now are saying it's so difficult??

I think they were wanting to competely overhaul OF or something close to that based on what JDewiel said at the beginning of this thread.

[jergrah]

I really don't see it as pushing it off on Derek, I see it more as they realized they did not have time to get it this cycle and recognized all the hours and hard work Derek has put in and it may have made it easier for them knowing that the fans would be able to use his site. If they didn't care then they wouldn't have provided him with the access to the extras that you will see this year.

But.......how is that possible? How is it possible that 1 guy as a hobby has more time to develop a thorough web interface than a massive development staff that is run by a gigantic organization? You cant convince me that the EA Sports division of EA cannot spare a handful of web developers to do the same work that 1 fan is doing. Even if their sports division was so strapped for spare bodies/web devs, they could have easily pulled some from another division of EA. And in the remote chance they couldnt do that, they could have outsourced the web dev work to a contract company for 30-60 days. Hell, I work for a sub 300 person software development company, and when we have deadlines we can find spare bodies from other groups to temp help or we bring in a contractor temporarily to help us get pieces knocked out in time for a deadline.

The Madden team saying "We didnt have time to build a site like LeagueManager" is complete BS as far as Im concerned. No way a company that large could not get a website updated and equal to the value of LeagueManager fairly quickly.

[TimsGiants]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

I really don't see it as pushing it off on Derek, I see it more as they realized they did not have time to get it this cycle and recognized all the hours and hard work Derek has put in and it may have made it easier for them knowing that the fans would be able to use his site. If they didn't care then they wouldn't have provided him with the access to the extras that you will see this year.

I just hope they cover Dereks expenses server wise so online franchisers wont have to pay more for features you would think EA should have in by now. I dont see anywhere in his blog about charging for LM which is good. But I hope he is compenated somehow for his work.

[PowerPitcher]

Unbelievable.

Three years have passed now, and they haven't even made a single touch-up to what should be the best mode the game has to offer.

Totally disagree, offline is still the most important mode in Madden

[CRMosier_LM]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

I just hope they cover Dereks expenses server wise so online franchisers wont have to pay more for features you would think EA should have in by now. I dont see anywhere in his blog about charging for LM which is good. But I hope he is compenated somehow for his work.

I know I have been pushing the compensation idea pretty hard. Dude has put over a year into his site and a woke lot of nights with zero sleeping. He has advertising right now and is working getting bigger companies to advertise. Between that and donations from site members... That's how it is currently funded.

[heurelho]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

Until Online Franchise overtakes offline franchise in terms of most played, that doesn't hold water when discussing Madden.

Completely flawed logic

They've only released one version of online franchise and have NEVER updated it. It would blow Offline Franchise out of the water if it had the features offline did

[GGEden]

Re: Madden NFL 12 Mini Blog - Online Franchise Update

My suggestion to EA would be this...

With new consoles to release in late 2012 to early 2013. Don't make a Madden 13, especially not the typical annual development/release cycle, where they maintain and slap on more bandaids on a tired old engine, update rosters, take some features out, put some ones in, slap it with a new coat of paint.

Instead, come August 2012, just release a patch for M12, with updated rosters, tweak a few things, and let M12 continue to sale. Do this so as to spend the next two years devoted to developing a new Madden for August 2013 for the new consoles. Totally rebuild. Use a new next-gen engine, dynamic/unscripted, real-time physics, and glean every single good suggestion from these OS boards. Just totally re-invent Madden, re-invigorate/innovate. Take that two years time to devote for finally that truly "next-gen" standard game, that's jam-packed with features and game-play focused. Once you have foundation in place with the release of M14 for PS4/720/WiiU, then for M15 focus can be turned towards the leap in graphics/ram/direct-x.

Then EA will get that breakthru, selling 15 million to 20 million games in a year globally. Instead of the 5-6 million.