Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

[Only1LT]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

I am a little concerned or maybe misunderstand the defensive "Breakdown" for tackles....I like what is being said, but will it mean that all tacklers will breakdown all the time, thus eliminating the ability to hit a player full speed? As obviously, players do hit at full speed at times as well as breaking down all based on situation at the time...I just hope Breakdown allows for full speed hits too...

From what I gathered(?) "Breaking Down" will be activated via the left trigger. I would assume that if you didn't use the button, that you would still run full speed to the tackle and would risk how successful it would be...

[Danimal]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Now that is an honest assement of where things stand.

Nice find.

People are entitled to read and listen to anyone's opinions they wish and I don't know Corey at all so this isn't directed at him.

I didn't even know about this site existed until last week but considering who the founder is and how he behaved here last year. I'll personally have a hard time considering information posted their unbiased.

[Smoke6]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

This. Overall, very good read. EA has their feedback, let's see how this turns out ...

Buckeye: Ball Hawk is still in the game which is horrible news for every realism based player. Being able to hold a single button and have a defender (yes even a defensive tackle) run into position and make an over the shoulder interception is a very bad thing. The probability boost of getting an interception by using Ball Hawk is crazy, from my personal experience its nearly 100%. We cannot have a realistic football game as long as things like this are there. At best we can hope for an “On/Off” toggle in CCM and other modes. Hopefully they can get it in there since I bring it up every time I talk to the dev team. Honestly MANY of us have brought this to them as an issue. we all need to FIGHT to have these things eliminated. At the very least make them be lower skill level only. Once you get to All-Pro or All-Madden they are unable to be used. I will say it now, if you use Ball Hawk… you are a chump.

I am not pleased about the part I bolded, it doesnt make sense to basically have a "focus group" of guys give their honest feedback only to see them get shunned while trying to help improve the game and check off one more complaint on the list for good reason. I wish Tiburon would understand that know one catches every pass thrown to them on either side of the ball and ballhawk is a feature that really has to go along with a few other things but this mind frame so far doesnt bode well for me.

But good read fellas and some enlighten stuff for me to think about these next few months. Game goes gold soon and im actually tired of "patch city" out of the gates with this game.

[Smoke6]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Madden has always been behind in animations to it's competitors.

It had worse animations than Joe Montana. Worse animations than Gameday. Worse than 2K. Worse than... well there isn't anything for it to be worse than now, but if there was, I can assure you it would be. The same goes for it's basketball games, tennis games, Baseball games.. let's just put it out there, EA Sports in general has a very bad track record for animation tech. And player models, but's that's a whole other can of worms. I have no idea how, because none of the others have anywhere near the resources put into Mo-Cap that EA does.

Last gen animations at the very least did not suffer the OBVIOUS hitching in rendering that the current gen does, but that, in and of itself, doesn't make them realistic.

It's just bizarre. They use state of the art motion capture to capture movement. What exactly is their technology and or process that it comes out looking the way that it does? I seriously can't see how it would be possible for a mo-cap actor to run hunched over like that without falling over unless he was in a wire harness...

Maybe I'm onto something lol.

Not buying into this mo-cap stuff at all, EA just needs to suck it up and grab that natural motion engine and run from their. Its something that shoulda been done along time ago and since the Madden name holds soo much more weight, that engine and game gets lil to no shine and thats sad.

I dont care how early in production this game footage was in at the time, I still have a hard time understanding why they're not building on existing code with tweaks and updates to its features but instead goes full on re-write every cycle?

[roadman]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

People are entitled to read and listen to anyone's opinions they wish and I don't know Corey at all so this isn't directed at him.

I didn't even know about this site existed until last week but considering who the founder is and how he behaved here last year. I'll personally have a hard time considering information posted their unbiased.

I understand what you are saying and I agree with that.

There are some out of those listed that I will pay more attention to.

[Only1LT]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Not buying into this mo-cap stuff at all, EA just needs to suck it up and grab that natural motion engine and run from their. Its something that shoulda been done along time ago and since the Madden name holds soo much more weight, that engine and game gets lil to no shine and thats sad.

I would have loved to have seen this happen.

Not to get too far into comparing the two, but I think that Euphoria in BackBreaker had a ton of more potential than the Infinity Engine. And before anyone gives me the obligatory post about how buggy BB was, I agree, it was. IE was buggy too though. The difference is that everyone, for some reason, is OK with giving Tiburon as much time as they need to get IE perfected, but Natural Motion had to get it right the very first time and they didn't even have any kind of budget.

I can only imagine the kind of Football game that could have been produced from all that potential of Euphoria, if it were handled by a team that actually knew the first thing about American Football.

/rant.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Madden has always been behind in animations to it's competitors.

Predictably, I disagree with this statement as a blanket fact.

In particular, anyone I ever played football games with on Gen-6 consoles (PS2/XBOX) preferred Madden to other football games from an animation perspective because it was perceived as more fluid and less jerky, notably when the ballcarrier was running. The technology before that point wasn't good enough for any game to have "good" animation or for there to be any useful comparison, IMO.

[Only1LT]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Predictably, I disagree with this statement as a blanket fact.

In particular, anyone I ever played football games with on Gen-6 consoles (PS2/XBOX) preferred Madden to other football games from an animation perspective because it was perceived as more fluid and less jerky, notably when the ballcarrier was running. The technology before that point wasn't good enough for any game to have "good" animation or for there to be any useful comparison, IMO.

Not sure why you said "predictably", but maybe there is some background to this that I'm not aware of.

In any case, not sure how anyone can look at PS2/XBOX Madden and say that it animated well, let alone animated better than that of it's NFL 2K counterpart, so I guess all I can say is, ok lol.

As for the point that past generations can't be judged because they were too primitive? I don't get that. 8bit graphics are terrible in retrospect, but that doesn't mean that there aren't 8bit games that look better than others.

Graphics and animations can be, and should be, up for comparisons to games from that same era, regardless of when they were made. I can't see any circumstance where this would not be the case.

[Trick13]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

In any case, not sure how anyone can look at PS2/XBOX Madden and say that it animated well...

In terms of "moves" most of the PS2 era games were bad, but as far as running animations - just running straight - PS2 Madden05-07 are still far and away smoother and more anatomically correct - guys on those games don't look like they are trying to race to the port-a-potty - all hunched over like Quasimodo and such.

I don't remember which Madden for sure but a PS2 Madden had a pretty good realistic body lean when turning - only problem was no foot-planting.
You can disagree all you want but the running animations for every game we have seen this gen are terrible, especially when you look back at 05-07 Madden on PS2.

[Only1LT]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

In terms of "moves" most of the PS2 era games were bad, but as far as running animations - just running straight - PS2 Madden05-07 are still far and away smoother and more anatomically correct - guys on those games don't look like they are trying to race to the port-a-potty - all hunched over like Quasimodo and such.

I don't remember which Madden for sure but a PS2 Madden had a pretty good realistic body lean when turning - only problem was no foot-planting.
You can disagree all you want but the running animations for every game we have seen this gen are terrible, especially when you look back at 05-07 Madden on PS2.

I think you are missing what I am saying completely. I am in NO WAY defending the animations on the current gen. I am under NO circumstances saying that the current gen animations are better than last gen. What I am saying, and have always said, is that they are BOTH bad.

Maybe I am a harsher critic. Maybe the animations from this gen have traumatized people so much that they will accept anything remotely better. I don't know. All I know is that last gen animations are in NO WAY realistic. Better than this gen does not equate to realistic. That goes for special moves, turning, running in a straight line, whatever. All bad.

I want actual pseudo realistic animations on this gen as well as the next. I cringe everytime I see posts say "Just give us the same animations as PS2." All I can say is please, by all that is good, no.

[Trick13]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

...
I want actual pseudo realistic animations on this gen as well as the next. I cringe everytime I see posts say "Just give us the same animations as PS2." All I can say is please, by all that is good, no.

I agree fully that PS2 should not be the standard, but I would actually be happier w/ M25 if the straight run animation was the PS2 animation and not what we have suffered w/ this gen.

My point is they went backwards in a big way (fluidity, stride length, body lean) on this gen and maybe they should look at the animations they have in house - and use what they did well on PS2 as a launching point to get better. 360/PS3 run animation is so terrible, that they need to do something about it.

[Only1LT]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

I agree fully that PS2 should not be the standard, but I would actually be happier w/ M25 if the straight run animation was the PS2 animation and not what we have suffered w/ this gen.

My point is they went backwards in a big way (fluidity, stride length, body lean) on this gen and maybe they should look at the animations they have in house - and use what they did well on PS2 as a launching point to get better. 360/PS3 run animation is so terrible, that they need to do something about it.

We both agree that the current gen animations are unacceptable. Where we disagree is that I am not willing to settle for last gen animations, even as a base.

I've seen too many other games, outside of sports games even, with MUCH better animations than this gen or last gen, to think that they can't do much better than both.

Let the past go man lol. Those old animations were no watermark. Not by a longshot.

[Trick13]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

I've seen too many other games, outside of sports games even, with MUCH better animations than this gen or last gen, to think that they can't do much better than both.

Let the past go man lol. Those old animations were no watermark. Not by a longshot.

Examples of other games? I am curious because I don't play a lot of games - I am mostly a Madden gamer - occasionally will play GTA, Assassin's Creed, and a few others, but very sparingly. And none of the games I have played or seen really respect physics in terms of human movement, so i would like to know what games you are referencing so I can go check them out. Unless you are talking MLB/NHL/NBA or especially soccer in which case I will just take your word for it because well just because...

[carvis#15]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

Well first of all, from my perception, this game will be very very bad. That mixed with I hate EA sports guts says a lot. I don't care if you can't get everything in the game all at once. I'm tellin' ya if this game sucks I'll grab a clothes hanger and hang myself in the closet..LMBO man I'm just playin'. Overall this review makes me excited to see all of this stuff in action. What I really can't wait for is the next gen stuff. I'm really excited to see how much they will utilize the extra space on next gen.

[CoreySA]

Re: Madden NFL 25 Gameplay Roundtable (UTC)

People are entitled to read and listen to anyone's opinions they wish and I don't know Corey at all so this isn't directed at him.

I didn't even know about this site existed until last week but considering who the founder is and how he behaved here last year. I'll personally have a hard time considering information posted their unbiased.

First off, no offense taken. Secondly, we created the site two months ago so we are fairly new.

Lastly, realize that there are a few of us that founded and own the site, not just one. One of the hardest things we deal with is having multiple opinions and varied support for each title. That's why a lot of what we do is based on roundtables and multiple opinions because we don't want one guy coming off as biased based on the fact he went to a community day or what have you. That's why we try to stray away from reviews and personal opinions without a second voice.

While I understand your reservations in regards to some writers (personal opinion), all I ask is that you judge and base your feelings on the actual content and overall package. Not one guy. I think the writing itself proves we aren't throwing a bunch of positives out there with no real issues. I, in fact, think the issues are real and are a problem. I'll always try to support community regards, but I'm only one person.

By all means, ignore UTC if you wish but I can assure you we have a multitude of different voices and a vision that puts honesty and community first. But this was founded by a bunch, not one.