As someone who has bought the Madden every year since 04, and mainly played it as a football sim, I'm probably going to return it for the first time and go back to 12.
After getting through the fact that there was no fantasy draft, I sucked it up and decided to be the coach of a mediocre team; Try to turn them around. I picked the Bills. The first thing I noticed was all the, "XP Boosts" and player progression, which seems to have a lot of flaws. If I pick a rookie, and he has average stats, how is he supposed to reach his full potential? He can't gain XP on the sidelines, even though he'd be getting better by listening and learning from coaches and players. If he plays, he'll probably do average and earn average XP. The previous game's progression system was more logical.
I simm'd practices, auto-progresed players after manually doing it for a couple weeks, and ended up making the wildcard. It was fun to read the tweets, but some of them started getting repetitive and scripted. I went to sign a FA, but couldn't see his past teams, which made me somewhat irritated (had to look them up online). I did enjoy the scouting system, but I still think it could be improved.
I played every playoff game, winning them all, including the Super Bowl. I liked the game-play, but the commentating was horrible. I don't know how anyone can say this commentating crew is the best when they make so many errors. On a clear drop in the end zone by my wide-open TE, I hear, "Great coverage on that play." Then, I run the ball, pick up the first (barely) and hear, "And now they'll have to punt." There are numerous others I could point out, but I'd have a page long list. I thought the crowd sounded more realistic though.
After winning the super bowl, I progressed through the off-season, only to experience how dumbed down it is. Every player wants more than the default offer, so you always have to raise your offer (even though my coach type is making people want to sign with me). On top of that, I couldn't bring up their statistics from the 're-sign' screen, making more work for myself. You also have to wait a week, which really serves no purpose. In FA, I never heard back from the players I made offers to, only to find one had signed with me while two others hadn't. I progressed to the draft, having to listen to Trey Wingo rant about generic info of players I simulated past to get to my pick. After 7 rounds, there were still loads of 4th and 5th round WR's/CB's/ and DT's for some reason. I would imagine some team needs those positions.
It then signed my rookies for me, all to 4 year contracts, even if I wanted to cut one instead of sign them. To cap it all off, at the start of the next season, I get greeted with a Tweet saying, "Bills didn't draft a QB, what are they thinking?!?!" and a news feed message with, "Bills bad performance of late can be related to the QB." That's great to hear, especially since I just won the Super Bowl with Ryan Fitzpatrick who was the Super Bowl MVP and made the pro-bowl the previous season; It's all scripted garbage.
After that, I don't have the motivation to continue my CC. They'll probably start letting you buy "XP" packages and DLC for money, and show their true reason for revamping everything. If this is the future for Madden, I'm not sure Madden will be in my future.
Edit: Didn't expect this thread to get this big, but one thing I've seen is the, "Don't bash it without offering advice for fixing" complaint, so I gladly did so. I put it in another thread since it's quite a bit:
After getting through the fact that there was no fantasy draft, I sucked it up and decided to be the coach of a mediocre team; Try to turn them around. I picked the Bills. The first thing I noticed was all the, "XP Boosts" and player progression, which seems to have a lot of flaws. If I pick a rookie, and he has average stats, how is he supposed to reach his full potential? He can't gain XP on the sidelines, even though he'd be getting better by listening and learning from coaches and players. If he plays, he'll probably do average and earn average XP. The previous game's progression system was more logical.
I simm'd practices, auto-progresed players after manually doing it for a couple weeks, and ended up making the wildcard. It was fun to read the tweets, but some of them started getting repetitive and scripted. I went to sign a FA, but couldn't see his past teams, which made me somewhat irritated (had to look them up online). I did enjoy the scouting system, but I still think it could be improved.
I played every playoff game, winning them all, including the Super Bowl. I liked the game-play, but the commentating was horrible. I don't know how anyone can say this commentating crew is the best when they make so many errors. On a clear drop in the end zone by my wide-open TE, I hear, "Great coverage on that play." Then, I run the ball, pick up the first (barely) and hear, "And now they'll have to punt." There are numerous others I could point out, but I'd have a page long list. I thought the crowd sounded more realistic though.
After winning the super bowl, I progressed through the off-season, only to experience how dumbed down it is. Every player wants more than the default offer, so you always have to raise your offer (even though my coach type is making people want to sign with me). On top of that, I couldn't bring up their statistics from the 're-sign' screen, making more work for myself. You also have to wait a week, which really serves no purpose. In FA, I never heard back from the players I made offers to, only to find one had signed with me while two others hadn't. I progressed to the draft, having to listen to Trey Wingo rant about generic info of players I simulated past to get to my pick. After 7 rounds, there were still loads of 4th and 5th round WR's/CB's/ and DT's for some reason. I would imagine some team needs those positions.
It then signed my rookies for me, all to 4 year contracts, even if I wanted to cut one instead of sign them. To cap it all off, at the start of the next season, I get greeted with a Tweet saying, "Bills didn't draft a QB, what are they thinking?!?!" and a news feed message with, "Bills bad performance of late can be related to the QB." That's great to hear, especially since I just won the Super Bowl with Ryan Fitzpatrick who was the Super Bowl MVP and made the pro-bowl the previous season; It's all scripted garbage.
After that, I don't have the motivation to continue my CC. They'll probably start letting you buy "XP" packages and DLC for money, and show their true reason for revamping everything. If this is the future for Madden, I'm not sure Madden will be in my future.
Edit: Didn't expect this thread to get this big, but one thing I've seen is the, "Don't bash it without offering advice for fixing" complaint, so I gladly did so. I put it in another thread since it's quite a bit:
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