Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

[aholbert32]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Just a long winded excuse.

This is tantamount to "EA is scared". Let me get my violin...

You still havent answered why countless other videogames have customization tools and the developers dont get sued constantly because users create characters or rosters that have likenesses to real life people.



Maybe you should actually figure out what Im saying since I never made that claim ONCE.

You tell me Im not making sense when you dont even seem to understand the case being made. Mmmkay....



Well, the bolded is the first issue with Madden.

Really? Because, I know a good amount of people who still play Madden 12 just because of that. Hell, there are alot of people that still play PS2 Maddens and Madden 08 PC because of that.

Im not saying the majority do that, but acting like it doesnt appeal to alot of people is silly.



And? Not even sure what youre debating since I never claimed people wouldnt buy the newer games.

My case has everything to do with sim guys who play multiple seasons of franchise and want real college classes.



Because then you have to rely on them for more. You have to play the game the way they want you to....which is why they have regularly removed features for the last decade.

Explain that. Explain what the point is of removing create a player from franchise? Explain what the point is of removing customization of teams, players and stadiums? Explain why games 10 years older are more customizable than Madden is today? Explain why other sports titles allow you to customize rosters, players and even draft classes, but Madden gets a pass.

Explain that...without the same excuses that dont seem to hold anyone else back.



This is such a laughable argument.

Its the same reason they havent implemented a ton of features that would improve the game.

They cater to casual fans.....they ones they can trick into believing its a good football game.

And you really need to figure out what you are arguing here. I never claimed implementing that one feature would make them boatloads of more money, but it would absolutely improve the experience for a large group of their gamers.






Ill go with my theory being the real reason....with your theory being the cover excuse they use....just like their beloved "short development cycles" excuse.



EA is scared....got it.

As I said, just another excuse for them to cut corners.



The fact that they have been removing customization and popular features for the last decade, perhaps? Long before any of the NCAA stuff even happened.

For that reason alone, my theory holds up alot better than yours.

Other game companies havent been sued related to customization options...EA has. EA lost 100 of millions defending against those suits. Its that simple.

I dont know how familar you are with corporate america and how corporations typically respond to lawsuits. They typically dont respond with nuance. Its Board of Directors and shareholders dont look at a 100 million plus out the door for legal costs and respond "Sure we lost 100 million but lets keep aspects of the claim that caused this lawsuit in our games because technically no one has been sued yet."

The response is "lets make sure nothing like this happens again so lets take out those aspects from all of our games".

I'm not talking about nor do I give a **** about other customization options that have been removed for other reasons. I'm talking specifically about custom draft classes.

I actually confused you for SolidSquid (the person I originally responded to and who made the people wont by future games argument) but to your point....what do you consider a "large group of gamers"? Is it more than the number of casual fans? 20% of the buying public? 30%?

I'd argue that there are a small number of gamers who demand customizable draft classes. Why?

- Most people dont have the time or inclination to edit the names, likenesses and attributes for a pool of players.

- After the whole NCAA debacle, even if EA added the option to edit draft classes, they likely wouldnt add a share function. So it wont be like NBA2k where you can download draft classes with ease.

- The next gen systems make it extremely difficult to share files outside of the game so its not like someone could upload the file to a site like OS and have people download it.

Finally, how does it benefit EA to "control" how you play the game? There has to be a benefit, right? EA isnt just removing features for laughs. Thats why your theory doesnt make sense. Its based on the premise that big bad EA just wants to control the way you play.

The reasons for the other missing features imo is that they implemented things like CFM that are very limited in what can be added to them. Adding features like formation subs and editing ratings in CFM probably causes some bugs or glitches. It was bad planning and priorities by EA but not some quest for more control over how people play.

[aholbert32]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Yeah man but that's arguing reality vs what EA claims or is speculated to base their decisions on. What I mean is, custom draft classes may not hinder sales, they may increase them or whatever but that doesn't mean EA sees it that way for Madden. We have a whole decade of EA, other businesses as well but this a EA Madden forum, doing whatever with Madden for reasons that seem to defy common wisdom and what other games/companies have done.

Im old so forgive me for this question but didnt Madden 12 have custom draft classes? The reason I ask is Madden 13 was the first year of CFM and that is when custom draft classes disappeared.

In my opinion, its more likely that Looman when he designed CFM didnt see it as a priority (a mistake but one of many he made when creating this) and didnt implement it in the first version of CFM. Then the NCAA lawsuits happen and the whole company starts to move away from customizing likenesses especially college players.

[Big FN Deal]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Im old so forgive me for this question but didnt Madden 12 have custom draft classes? The reason I ask is Madden 13 was the first year of CFM and that is when custom draft classes disappeared.

In my opinion, its more likely that Looman when he designed CFM didnt see it as a priority (a mistake but one of many he made when creating this) and didnt implement it in the first version of CFM. Then the NCAA lawsuits happen and the whole company starts to move away from customizing likenesses especially college players.

It's my understanding that M12 had imported draft classes from NCAA, not custom draft classes like in NBA2k.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Im old so forgive me for this question but didnt Madden 12 have custom draft classes? The reason I ask is Madden 13 was the first year of CFM and that is when custom draft classes disappeared.

Madden NFL has never had custom draft classes in the same vain as NBA 2K currently has.

On the previous two generations of console hardware, it had the draft class import feature leveraging NCAA Football, and people used that to roughly make custom draft classes, but it wasn't 1:1 editing and it required both games to effectively use.

[aholbert32]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

It's my understanding that M12 had imported draft classes from NCAA, not custom draft classes like in NBA2k.

Thanks. Have we ever been able to customize draft classes in Madden? This isnt a feature I've ever used so I dont know.

[l8knight1]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Im old so forgive me for this question but didnt Madden 12 have custom draft classes? The reason I ask is Madden 13 was the first year of CFM and that is when custom draft classes disappeared.

In my opinion, its more likely that Looman when he designed CFM didnt see it as a priority (a mistake but one of many he made when creating this) and didnt implement it in the first version of CFM. Then the NCAA lawsuits happen and the whole company starts to move away from customizing likenesses especially college players.

It might be coincidental, but it likely had disappeared completely in 13 because they were in the middle of their NCAA lawsuit at that time. Did NCAA 13/14 have editable rosters/draft classes?

[roadman]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

It might be coincidental, but it likely had disappeared completely in 13 because they were in the middle of their NCAA lawsuit at that time.

Also, I heard from Josh at the time that they tried to add customization draft classes from the old system, but it broke things coming over into CFM.

[l8knight1]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Also, I heard from Josh at the time that they tried to add customization draft classes from the old system, but it broke things coming over into CFM.

If that's true I'm optimistic for the future, but Ea has been sued by former NFL players for using likenesses too. That suit came from the releases of the game that included 'classic teams', because even though EA didn't use names or jersey numbers, they did use almost every other virtual likeness they could, height, weight, attributes, etc. I think there are still many legal questions with regards to 'likenesses' used in the game that are very grey. Right now, the only work around is create-a-player, and there is a limit as to how many players you can have in the entire player pool of the game.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

It might be coincidental, but it likely had disappeared completely in 13 because they were in the middle of their NCAA lawsuit at that time. Did NCAA 13/14 have editable rosters/draft classes?

NCAA Football 14 did have draft class export into Madden NFL 25.

Draft class export/import was not present in NCAA Football 13 and Madden NFL 13, however, due to the introduction of Connected Careers Mode.

[SolidSquid]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

LOTS of talk about catering to the casual gamer for CFM.



Ugh

C

Terrible news imo. Coming from a guy who worked on the show wich does a good job catering to casual and sim players with options, I thought that would be the road we would be heading down. An authentic NFL franchise experience but it seems like the EA corporate culture has claimed another victim.

[mestevo]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

Terrible news imo. Coming from a guy who worked on the show wich does a good job catering to casual and sim players with options, I thought that would be the road we would be heading down. An authentic NFL franchise experience but it seems like the EA corporate culture has claimed another victim.

He has to start somewhere.

[SolidSquid]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

He has to start somewhere.

I just fear that EA can bring in all the great Devs that we as gamers love and want developing our games, but then they are handcuffed by the suits and forced to implement what they see fit.

Look at mike wang leaving NBA 2k and working on Live for 2 years before jumping back to 2k.

[mestevo]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

I just fear that EA can bring in all the great Devs that we as gamers love and want developing our games, but then they are handcuffed by the suits and forced to implement what they see fit.

Look at mike wang leaving NBA 2k and working on Live for 2 years before jumping back to 2k.

The 6 or so months they have to work on the game is likely much more restricting than executive interference. Looks like they got a ton done on the UX side, and being a tools administrator myself it's much easier to build on a cleaner platform rather than start with complexity and then wedge in usability.

[aholbert32]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

I just fear that EA can bring in all the great Devs that we as gamers love and want developing our games, but then they are handcuffed by the suits and forced to implement what they see fit.

Look at mike wang leaving NBA 2k and working on Live for 2 years before jumping back to 2k.

That seems to be more of an OS problem than a EA problem.

Take Mike Wang for example: When he left 2k, I heard EA herald him as step 1 in their quest to become more sim and more competitive. I rolled my eyes because I knew that wouldnt happen based on what I'd seen from the previous years, based on EA's primary goal (generate revenue) and based on their general preference to cater to casual fans.

Plenty of people at OS ignored that and expected Live to reach 2k levels of "sim". What happened? Mike did a lot of great things with Live 10 and EA immediately decided to unravel all of those things with NBA Elite.

My point is we cant have it both ways. We cant say "EA is all about marketing and they lie all the time. They say they want to be sim but they never take steps toward it" and then get mad at them when they do exactly what we expect.

The additions of Kolbe, Rex, Clint and others have (and I believe will) help this game. I enjoyed last year's game more than I have enjoyed Madden in years. But to expect this game to reach the levels of the Show just because they hired one man from the Show is a bit of a pipe dream.

Everything EA has showed us (not said) is that they are more interested in providing features for the casual fan. So believe them! Stop assuming that just because the make a staff addition or pledge to make this game sim that it will actually happen. Stop hoping for sim like improvements. Accept the game for what it is or move on.

Finally, I dont blame Kolbe or any of the staff for decisions they make because I get what happens in the corporate world. I work for a major cable company. If they asked me to work on a crappy show that I knew would fail...I would work on it because I have a wife and kid to support. No matter how bad the show was. So would most of you.

So I cant blame someone like Kolbe if the word from up above is "cater to the casual fans" and he does that to keep his job.

[tleev13]

Re: Madden NFL 16 Connected Franchise Details Revealed

I see a lot of people don't like the xp system I myself am not a fan of it but I think its an ugrade over the old system where they simply attached a letter grade to potential and that's as far as the player would progress regardless of how he performed on the field atleast with this system if you throw for 4500 yards and 40 tds and only 10 int's the player progresses accordingly now if you can think of a better system by all means im all ears but I simply want guys to progress based off of performance not some arbitrary letter grade that's handed out