[CM Hooe]

Okay, I will clarify -

First, AWR has never mattered for a user-controlled player, that is known and I will readily concede.

Beyond that - personally, I immediately notice a difference when I throw passes with Tony Romo and Tim Tebow, Tebow can't hit the broad side of barn more often than not. I immediately notice a difference running as Roy Helu or Alfred Morris, Morris is more likely to advance the ball after contact. WRs with low catch ratings drop the ball more often, and CPU controlled players with low mental ratings I often find in the wrong positions and/or less likely to be paying attention to the ball at all. My cornerbacks with high MCV ratings are better able to keep up with receivers making their route cuts, and my cornerbacks with high ZCV ratings generally are more aware of their surroundings in zone coverage (that zone coverage AI in Madden has never really been great notwithstanding).

Moreover, we've been told plenty of times by developers and designers from Tiburon - both on this forums and via EA blogs - what the functions of each of the ratings are. At one point I put together a Google Doc full of all that information because I was interested in gathering it all (that information can be found on this forum if you search hard enough). Personally, I'm inclined to believe the people who made the game with respect to discussion about how the game operates. They made the game, they know how it works, they aren't so grossly incompetent as to not know how their own program functions, and they have no reason to lead their user base astray.

The blanket statement "ratings don't matter" isn't true and I've played plenty enough Madden to _know_ that's the case. Could how those ratings affect the game be changed to be better and more obvious? Certainly, just look at the changes to how throw accuracy has been determined over the years; there's always room for evolution of the system. But these numbers aren't just in the game for window dressing, that's just silly.