[JoshC1977]

I'm going to put a different spin on things. Regardless of whether Rex had stayed or not, there are two major issues facing the "sim franchise" community.

One is that other game modes will be diverting resources from Franchise. This is the MUT focus that everyone seems to grab onto when complaining about franchise mode improvements. This isn't incorrect; if more and more resources are poured into MUT (and to a lesser degree, Longshot), fewer may be spent on franchise. From a financial perspective, it makes total sense; we've already been run over by that train.

My MUCH bigger concern is the heavier focus on competitive gaming. While I applaud Madden for attempting to create different modes for sim vs comp, we learned in year 1 of that venture that it isn't enough due to how the game is built. Gameplay mechanics, animation packages and so on are shared among the modes (and from the sound of things, cannot be easily separated). My understanding is that aside from penalty/fatigue tuning, the only major difference is how player ratings play out under-the-hood (use of rating deltas for sim vs ratings thresholds for comp). The comp audience is incredibly vocal on social media and EA has invested a lot of financial resources to try to make this a growth industry for them; they are going to be listened to. Unless something changes this year, it means that comp players will beg and plead for things they want and because many of the game's modules are shared among the modes, it is going to directly impact sim players (the absence of defensive holding calls in M18 is a result of gameplay adjustments made for the comp audience). I'm very concerned that this will lead us down a path where player ratings will mean less and less in-game, and if that happens, the whole point of playing franchise (team building) will be lost.

I hope that Rex's replacement will understand this and not allow it to happen.