Career mode expansion?

[kingsofthevalley]

For all the work and updates the dev team has introduced this year, I think all they need now is to breath life into the career mode. At the moment, its just not dynamic enough. The career mode in fighting games needs to be as deep as franchise mode in Madden, or My Player (is that the career mode for NBA2k, I don't play it but I know its something like that) for example.

If these guys are doing in depth modes for games with teams that have multiple players on field, shouldn't it be a breeze and even MORE in depth for games that just deal with two avatars on screen at once, or two avatars needing to be simmed for wins and losses?

It pisses me off slightly to observe that everyone in a specific weight class has the same amount of available points for kicks, punches, etc. For example, regardless of style, every flyweight fighters punch power only goes to 65, as well as kick power. Its all static, and if you play long enough into a career, you can max out damn near everything. I mean, shouldn't there be a concern reference scouting your next fight that hey, you might want to watch out for this guys right hook, or his kicks are beast be careful. Once I got to the top, damn near all CPU fighters were 100 maxed out on everything, and if not maxed out, close enough.

I thought the max points available would change by what style of fighter you chose, but that wasn't the case. This is just one scenario out of many that I think needs to be fleshed out for their next release. Any thoughts?

[Morkle]

Re: Career mode expansion?

100% agree. I think the Devs of this game understand that fans like to see new fighters. I unfortunately download the fighters, do a few matches and touch the EA game again when the next download happens.

I'm solely a career mode guy, and I was so bored with it I could barely finish and retire one guy. Another frustrating thing I've found is that those guys stats don't translate to single player. Why spend all that time building a guy up if you can't even use them again in single player?

[zello144]

Re: Career mode expansion?

They should do something similar to what UFC Undisputed 2010 did with the career mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_iY4j20uHA There were a few cutscenes and press conferences after fights that really added to the experience.
Being able to disrespect your opponent during the weigh-in for a title fight made it even better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypf8ZUfmH_g

They even put in a hall of fame induction in the game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPfCMi2zNQ

EA could improve on what UFC Undisputed 2010 did since the UFC signed a deal with reebok we could do promotional events with them in the career mode, promoting a fight, endorsements and more.

One thing I don't like in EA sports UFC and all the older UFC games is the length of the career and the forced retirement if my fighter is old let me keep on fighting. In the game we can only get up to 40 something fights let me keep on going after that even if my skills go down and I start fighting like a bum I'll just fall down to the smaller fight nights and events instead of doing PPV's maybe we get kicked out of the UFC and we have to fight in the WFA , Pride, or Strikeforce and try to make a comeback. I know both are gone now but WFA was in Undisputed 2010 and both WFA and Pride were included in UFC undisputed 3

[Money99]

Re: Career mode expansion?

kingsofthevally, you're singing my song.

Career modes were MADE for fighting games like MMA and boxing.

This is what I would LOVE to see - a Managers Mode.
You own a gym and your rep starts at the bottom. You begin with 2 to 4 random fighters of which you have to try and steer towards stardom.
You have to hire staff, maintain your gym and put on local cards to earn money to upgrade your gym and trainers.

The more success you have, the more upscale, talented fighters will want to work with you. Maybe you eventually get to a stable of 10 fighters?

What I would really like to see is static ratings that rarely improve thru training.
Sure, things like stamina can go up. And guys can learn new moves, disciplines, etc.
But as far as power, speed, etc, those are skills that are pretty much God given.
There isn't an amount of training that can turn a Mayweather (sorry for boxing reference) into a one-punch KO artist. Just like Tyson was extremely fast and powerful from day one.

I've really grown tired of the "Start with 50 pts, fight, train, add points, repeat".
What's the point of that if you're always fighting guys at the same level? When you're a 60OV fighter, you're fighting other 60OV fighters, and so on.

Where the difficulty would lie is when you move up the ladder and instead of fighting guys with 1 or 2 skills, they have 4 or 5. So you have to adapt.
Maybe the first guy you fight is really good at wrestling but lacks speed and power.
The next guy might be a very fast, nimble fighter with a strong jab and chin, but has no power or stamina.
And so on.

I think it would be much more rewarding to take a welterweight, who has average skills across the board and make them a champion than slowly build a guy towards a 90OV and win.
And it's much more realistic this way.

I'd also like to see these fighters have different personalities. Maybe one guy hates to train so his stamina always sucks and he never learns anything new, while another fighter has to be told to go home. A fighter like that may have more injury issues.

There are so many intangibles that can be incorporated in a fighting simulation.
It's absolutely pathetic that Evander Holyfield boxing for the Genesis, a game that is nearly 30 years old, still has a career mode that is better than most fighting games today.
The only thing holding this back is the lack of creativity from producers.

Brian Hayes once told me at a Fight Night community that nobody wants to micromanage their fighters and have to deal with things like diet. But I disagree.
And you don't even have to make it complicated. Just hire Nutritionists to maintain the fighters weight. If your Nutritionist sucks, your fighters won't be able to make weight as well, or will have to cut more at weigh-in which would hurt their stamina.
This is another area where fighters personalities might come into play.

Sorry for the long reply, but I could talk about this sort of thing all day.
Up next, my ideas on local and national popularity...

[sportsfan8812]

Re: Career mode expansion?

100% agree. I think the Devs of this game understand that fans like to see new fighters. I unfortunately download the fighters, do a few matches and touch the EA game again when the next download happens.

I'm solely a career mode guy, and I was so bored with it I could barely finish and retire one guy. Another frustrating thing I've found is that those guys stats don't translate to single player. Why spend all that time building a guy up if you can't even use them again in single player?

That's exactly the problem I have. The lack of modes kills it for me. I play two or three matches with each new fighter added and then I stop because it just doesn't have that replay value. It's unfortunate, too, because I enjoy the game.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: Career mode expansion?

All I want is a random button during match making screen, and an event mode.

[Chef Matt]

Re: Career mode expansion?

All I want is a random button during match making screen, and an event mode.

This, so much. Been think the EXACT same things. Especially the random button.

[speedtrucker]

Re: Career mode expansion?

I really wish that there was a fight card like EA had with EA MMA. the Rivalry mode is nice but it'd be even better if my 5-6 buddies could get together in the Rivalry mode and have a full UFC "ppv" event with a fight card that we could all spectate.

throw in that your friends in Rivalry mode could have rankings along with the title holder so you could have a fight card where the #2 and #3 contenders are fighting for a shot at the title. a top 5 contender not available that night? well then the title belt isn't on the line if the title holder doesn't want to put it on the line.

be even better for the UFC "ppv" is if you could bring your user CAF into the mix and we could all see yours/mine/their entrance and/or introduction.

gotta say was really sad to see EA not bring over the EA MMA fightcard aspect to the UFC which has all the fighters, broadcast graphics and overlays, announcers and refs...

[Siorai56]

Re: Career mode expansion?

I think the focus of this offering was to get the gameplay right and mechanics, and to be perfectly honest the dev guys have gone above and beyond with their reception to feedback and tweaks to gameplay and additional fighters. They could have made each of these DLC's .99 cents and they probably would have gotten my money but they were free.

I'd be surprised if EA isn't cooking up a "Franchise" mode for UFC 2. I'd like to see "Promoter Mode" where you start out running your own fight league maybe exploit the fact UFC owns the rights to Strikeforce, Pride, WFA, WEC and maybe create a universe where you allocate fighters from the game, created fighters, and auto generated fighters across 4 or 5 promotions and then start at the least valuable league and get the experience of building the brand and hopefully getting promoted all the way to the UFC.

There's a lot of things that could be done to offer depth; bidding free agents against other brands, sponsors, building cards, cross promotion, injuries, PPV "buys", integrate Fox sports branding etc etc. You could also do something similar to "Ultimate Team" with creating a roster and doing challenges.

Here's to hoping the masses get behind the brand so EA has the financial support to get into the weeds with modes.

[threattonature]

Re: Career mode expansion?

There is so much that can be done to add to career mode. Establish rivalries. Maybe during The Ultimate Fighter portion have you clash or have issues with someone. Have the ability to call out fighters above you or for them to call you out. Give you an option or some semblance of who you want to fight. Give the ability to see a full breakdown of the fighter you are going up against (may be in the game but I haven't seen it). Have your manager or someone that provides a gameplan to follow that earns you extra XP or some reward for your fighter.

I love the idea of being able to have a camp. I'd really love it if you can start a camp from ground up and have to scout or recruit fighters to your camp and you can manage how much money you're spending for training and can have fighters in different weight classes and in some cases even conflicts among fighters in your camp.

[casey_horton]

Re: Career mode expansion?

I think all of the ideas going around are great. I think they can take away a good amount of the things even that UFC Undisputed had in their career mode as far as having weigh-ins, building rivalries etc. There are so many avenues to take this game and I have to say from a gameplay standpoint I've had a lot of fun. It's a good build for year 1 but it's time to expand.


I think adding camps is huge, but also there should be a cause and effect for training. If I don't have a good camp and may not excel in a specific training, I shouldn't be able to retry it as many times to ultimately get the max points. And also there should be diminishing skills. There gets to a point where the damage you have taken in your career and added with your age where it may be harder to train, thus not allowing you to always 'max' out.


My one major thing that I can't understand is always missing..is why can I never play as a REAL fighter in career mode??? I feel like a lot of games are starting to harp on playing as your created player and such. It just makes me mad because they've got so many real fighters whom I look up to and enjoy watching, but I can only play them in online modes or just a regular pick up fight. There was something for me when I could finish a career in the Fight Night Series as Manny Pacquiao, move up divisions, fight real rivalries etc. Then I would take on other challenges and maybe play as Roy Jones Jr. To me that miniscule option would come a long way for me.


Of course there are a lot more places for this game to go, just hope they make the right choices because it is a promising series.

[RumbleCard]

Re: Career mode expansion?

kingsofthevally, you're singing my song.

Career modes were MADE for fighting games like MMA and boxing.

This is what I would LOVE to see - a Managers Mode.
You own a gym and your rep starts at the bottom. You begin with 2 to 4 random fighters of which you have to try and steer towards stardom.
You have to hire staff, maintain your gym and put on local cards to earn money to upgrade your gym and trainers.

The more success you have, the more upscale, talented fighters will want to work with you. Maybe you eventually get to a stable of 10 fighters?

<snip>

This has to happen. In the last decade there's been minimal innovation in the single player arena.

A manager mode is easily the most logical path of progression. Even in real life the pack mentality and gym personality is just as engaging as the personalities of individual fighters.

Growing a brand and cultivating talent is far more engaging than taking a single player up a point oriented ladder.

Its time to come to terms with how antiquated the single fighter mode is and start looking at how much more enjoyable the experience could be as you train and grow a number of fighters over many disciplines.