[Hassan Darkside]

Just some thoughts after reading through this thread...

First off, I don't think it's fair to diss EA devs and question their talent or ability. Afterall, this is EA and there's no shortage of talented devs for them to choose from. Having EA on your resume could make your career. It's been spoken to, in the past, about poor coding practices and turnover exacerbating issues and bugs. These are likely top-down decisions being made to prioritize certain parts of the game. The way it sounds to me is that they're using the same devs on both Live and Madden's CFM which has disaster written all over it, especially considering one's franchise mode is a logically flawed, feature lacking disgrace with a broken simulation engine that exists only for the sake of existing and the other is NBA Live. I'd hate to see their priority list.

Secondly, I think this is one of the rare areas where competition is overstated. Making a comparison to 2k in this regard is unfair because realistically, 2k hasn't had legitimate competition in almost a decade. They surely aren't competing with anyone when it comes to franchise modes.

IMO, the big difference here is how 2k went about improving their Franchise mode (MyLeague/MyGM). They actually hired passionate members of the community to work as devs which isn't common in the gaming as far as I know. Leftos didn't necessarily have a ton of experience going in, but that man had a vision, dedication, and damn near unparalleled work ethic. If you listened to him on any of the interviews or podcasts, he talks about his long nights spent working on the mode and his commitment and passion bled through everything he said.

From what I've seen, EA won't go further than bringing in community guys as "game changers" (irony) or to visit and offer feedback. What DeuceDouglas did with his write-up and blueprint probably would have had 2k trying to figure out how to get him on their team if roles were reversed. Instead, we'll have to live with the retweet he got and take solace in knowing devs is watching, even if that's all they're doing.

2k's MyLeague isn't without its flaws and bugs, but they've given us enough control over things as users that we can work around them. There was a nasty regression bug last year, but since we had regression/progression sliders we could stimy it. There are always issues with generated draft classes, but since they allow custom draft classes we can work around those. There are issues with 6th men overtaking starters because of the logic managing rosters according to OVR, but 2k goes and adds an option to override that on the player edit screen. Beyond that are dozens of sliders and options regarding the mode that can be tuned, enabled, disabled, or automated.

Rather than making a realistic representation/simulation of franchise management, they give us a diluted caricature of a mode that they refuse to overcomplicate out of fear of losing the people who don't even play it. If part of their justification is that people aren't playing the mode, they should consider how much they've alienated gamers from this mode. I'm actually one of those people that's gravitated to MUT because no other game mode has replayability in this game.

I just wish they would make an attempt at an actual franchise mode with a foundation mirroring NFL cap rules, decisions, and negotiations. If it's too much in the weeds, allow options to automate part of it. It's a joke that they've been adding things to the game to speed up Franchise mode when there's hardly anything to do anyway for gamers who want the full GM experience. The house rules that people have to come up with to enjoy this mode or come up with realistic results (creating and retiring coaches before each game?? Seriously???) are laughable. I'm not sure how much lower my expectations can get.