Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

I actually did not think to ask about the quarter length the penalties were tuned for. I'll be sure to ask one of the EA guys about that tomorrow.

[Cohle]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Hopefully the %'s are set by play, not time. That would keep penalties right no matter how you set the clock to get your 120 plays or so. If you play shorter games, getting closer to 60 plays a game, you would get half the penalties, but it would feel right.

[Danimal]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency.

This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one.

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

[DeuceDouglas]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one.

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

I could be wrong but he mentioned how there would be no penalties coming from CPU-controlled characters in H2H, MUT, or DC so I'd figure that those modes shouldn't play much of a role in any of those potential tunings just because the data is all coming from user input in terms of the penalties. Also possible that they have separate tuning for CFM, H2H, etc. since that is the case but, again, I could be way off on this, just speculating.

[jfsolo]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

I could be wrong but he mentioned how there would be no penalties coming from CPU-controlled characters in H2H, MUT, or DC so I'd figure that those modes shouldn't play much of a role in any of those potential tunings just because the data is all coming from user input in terms of the penalties. Also possible that they have separate tuning for CFM, H2H, etc. since that is the case but, again, I could be way off on this, just speculating.

Yes, this should be a case of Win-Win for all. It seems like they thought the implementation of this through pretty well.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

This part is concerning to me. In the past things have been implemented and tuned or patched out on user feedback. If the sliders work people who don't like penalties can get rid of them. If they react to the tournament crowd complaining and adjust the baselines people like me who want realistic penalties would be right back at square one.

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are saying but again if slider work there really should be no reason to adjust the baselines due to user feedback.

Penalties aren't in for the more casual modes so hopefully if they tune things it's more like we aren't seeing PI enough so they boost it.

[TD3322]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

I realy hope they've updated the penalty rules n how/when they're called... I lost a game after blocking a FG and being flagged for "Roughing the Kicker" when my hip/legs took out the holder... After BLOCKING the kick! Ive also been flagged for PI quite a few times after a high pass goes by the WR and theres still a Big Hit animation between my Saftey and the WR.... IDK if PI is automatically canceled when a ball is tipped on a pass either. It wasnt after tipping a kick in 15, that Im sure of....

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[TDKing]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Sounds good so far ... Till the first tuner update lol !!

[Danimal]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

I could be wrong but he mentioned how there would be no penalties coming from CPU-controlled characters in H2H, MUT, or DC so I'd figure that those modes shouldn't play much of a role in any of those potential tunings just because the data is all coming from user input in terms of the penalties. Also possible that they have separate tuning for CFM, H2H, etc. since that is the case but, again, I could be way off on this, just speculating.

You're right of course, I missed that. It's just an odd statement when the sliders work. If the baseline is on league averages then leave it that way.

[Josiphos]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff:

I played a half of a six-minute quarters game on All-Madden difficulty. Before starting this game, I maxed out every penalty slider.

At the end of this half of football, the two teams (Packers and Broncos) had combined for just over 400 yards of penalties. There was literally a penalty on every other play. It was excessive and insufferable.

Needless to say, the penalty sliders work. lol

I had opportunities to speak with Clint Oldenburg, Andrew Johnson (AJ), and Kolbe Launchbaugh (still not sure if I'm spelling his last name right, I need to check that) about penalties today, more info follows:

- Penalties are NEVER triggered by CPU-controlled characters in online head-to-head, Ultimate Team, and Draft Champions (this explains why I saw so few yesterday). A user controlling a player may still trigger a penalty in these modes, however. CPU-triggered penalties do occur in online head-to-head games in Connected Franchise, however; I specifically asked about that for clarity's sake.

- On the "caps" DeuceDouglas mentioned - at the default penalty level settings, the game keeps track of how many flags it has called, and at a certain point it will stop calling fouls which have occurred frequently. For example, if the game calls like ten defensive holding calls by the third quarter (assuming the cap is ten, I wasn't told a specific number), the game will no longer trigger defensive holding fouls and animations. This is a usability feature; mainstream players get easily frustrated when they get penalized for something they didn't do (understandably). Increasing a penalty slider's value above 50 will remove the caps for that foul altogether.

- On how penalties are tuned - Tiburon researched real-life penalty frequencies for the baseline values for how often penalties should occur. They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency.

- On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example.

- Play style influences what penalties will be called. For example, if you play a lot of 2-Man press coverage and have undisciplined cornerbacks, you are going to see more defensive holding penalties. I did a few drives on defense as the Packers (max penalty sliders game still) where I exclusively called Nickel 2-Man with press coverage, and Dmitri Goodson was effectively tackling the slot receiver he was guarding at times and getting flagged a ton. He was not very good.

- Penalties will always have an animation; there shouldn't be any situation where a penalty is called and the foul doesn't have a corresponding animation. These animations do not necessarily require contact. I saw one defensive pass interference penalty by Sam Shields where he was impeding the progress of Demaryius Thomas on a fly route; the animation was not initially triggered by contact between Shields and Thomas.

- The penalty I saw the most when the penalty sliders were maxed out was Illegal Block In The Back. Saw plenty of offensive and defensive holding, roughing the passer. I did see defensive pass interference. Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count. I do not recall seeing offensive pass interference. Strangely, offensive pass interference is an On/Off toggle, not a slider. Not sure if that's the final implementation.

If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer some, I'll be around on OS for a bit this evening.

Great info. I feel a little better about penalties now.

I hope this does not remove our ability to tune via sliders....as that's a great feature

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Follow-up: penalty frequency DOES scale to quarter length. So you shouldn't need to reduce penalty sliders if you play longer quarters.

[charter04]

Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Great to hear the penalty sliders have no affect on gameplay.


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[Potatoes002]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Great to hear the penalty sliders have no affect on gameplay.


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Only as long as the gameplay sliders matter more this year. In the past penalty sliders were more effective in certain aspects of the game than the actual gameplay ones.

Not a complaint, as penalty sliders shouldn't control anything other than penalties in the first place.

[charter04]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Only as long as the gameplay sliders matter more this year. In the past penalty sliders were more effective in certain aspects of the game than the actual gameplay ones.

Not a complaint, as penalty sliders shouldn't control anything other than penalties in the first place.

Yes I'm am for sure hoping regular sliders are work as good as the penalty sliders seems too. Hopefully they just reworked all of that.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

Only as long as the gameplay sliders matter more this year. In the past penalty sliders were more effective in certain aspects of the game than the actual gameplay ones.



Not a complaint, as penalty sliders shouldn't control anything other than penalties in the first place.

Clint Oldenburg told me repeatedly that gameplay sliders only affected gameplay, penalty sliders only affect penalties, and all sliders operate the same in every mode of the game. He specifically said there is "no difference" (his words, he invited me to quote him haha) in function of gameplay sliders in Play Now and Connected Franchise (I specifically asked about that).