So I've played a full season with the Normal Sliders in Online CCM with the Vikings. I used GameFlow exclusively.
I was 6-10.
These sliders are probably the most frustrating and most fun madden experience I've had. Fun because it's challenging... frustrating because of the "unfairness" you have to force in order to make it challenging.
Some interesting stats for my season.
During my 16 games, CPU players that were not a QB fumbled 0 times.
(perhaps CPU fumble needs to go down further... me being stubborn I still hit stick and try to strip all the time and not once forced a fumble in 16 games)
After Week 6 I decided to keep track of holding penalties on kickoffs... In 72 kickoff returns by my team after Week 6, 43 had a holding penalty called. 59% of the time.
The user drops when not being hit by the defense were especially frustrating. I don't switch to the receiver, but I've noticed that it apparently tries to switch to them automatically, so that if you're holding the left stick in anticipation of the catch it will cause them to drop the catch. I find this to be incredibly frustrating that the game can decide that while not controlling the receiver I can cause him to drop the pass.
I had a nasty string of injuries and Adrian Peterson, Percy Harvin and Toby Gerhart missed significant time. I don't understand why you think average rushing yards for a starting RB should be 60-80 when teams average something closer to 100-120 per game in real life. It's not like you can have the sliders effectively make up the other yards with backup running backs. I had no trouble getting 100 yards per game when Adrian Peterson was healthy (I never had something ridiculous like 200+ yards) but getting 100 yards as a team (which 26 teams were able to do last year) was damn near impossible without AP.
Defense was pretty frustrating / challenging too. Over the course of the year I put most of my defensive players points into tackle since I was pretty tired of getting all the broken tackles. To almost no effect I might add. Really frustrating to never get stops because of the constant broken tackles. By the end of the season I had players like Brian Robison with 95 tackle and still was getting broken tackles by players like Matt Schaub.
The pass defense was mostly hard because unless I got a sack, which has always been easy to do with LE, the passes were completed easily... errant passes were always dropped by my defense. This is one of the most frustrating things about Madden and, imo, most games. In order to make the game challenging, you have to make the game unfair. You could make the game challenging and fair if EA just made the AI better... smarter. But instead we have to make the CPU defensive players make over the shoulder catches and make my defensive players drop multiple wide open passes.
Kicking is kinda broken. I have a crappy kicker... but I knew my range... anything in clear weather up to like 53 yards I could make with ease... anything farther is impossible so pointless to try. The computer rarely missed a FG. In 16 games, not a single FG, XP or Punt was blocked. I had a couple punt returns for TD, but it always felt like a fluke. I considered just stopping doing kickoff returns but decided to continue with my stats I was taking above. Starting drives off on the 10 yard line obviously does wonders for winning games.
Sorry if all this sounds bitchy, just felt like giving my thoughts. I don't know if I'll continue to use these sliders... Madden is so disappointing this year... I'm not even sure if I'll continue to play. No fantasy draft, no using rosters, no using playbooks, no position changes, no jersey number changes... so many limitations. Oh yeah, no CPU v CPU (sometimes I like to just manage a team and watch it) no Coach Mode. So many of the reasons I have to enjoy this game are gone. Anyways, enough of my disappointments... I appreciate the effort going into these sliders and it sounds like lots of people enjoy them. These sliders provided a very challenging experience and considering my general level of frustration with the real-life Vikings, a realistic one. I feel that most of my frustrations with the game are with the game engine itself and are not easy / possible to change with sliders.
Thanks, charter