[stinkubus]

EA finally has the franchise back on the right track (improving year over year) after it was nearly destroyed when the 360/PS3 debuted. M09-M15 were awful games and these lost 7 years are the main reason the game lags behind in so many elements. The gameplay was degraded to the point that shoring it up had to take precedence over anything else.

M17 and M18 have taken great strides. I'm very excited by what I've seen in the game play footage we've seen so far for M19. I know full well that it's going to take a patch or two, so the game won't really be finished until a few months after release, but RPM and the new match coverage concepts are going to be game changers, imo. Stock play calls are going to make coverage adjustments for us that were either impossible or required so many adjustments that they would be difficult to pull off consistently.

The match coverages are also going to add an enormous amount of realism to how the game plays. Cover 4 has always been portrayed in Madden as some sort of pseudo-prevent when in reality it's an incredibly flexible defense that you can build an entire scheme around.

One problem that has always been persistent in Madden is that deep zones who don't get threatened would just keep dropping back and take themselves out of the play. Your only remedy as a player when you are getting killed underneath is to take them out of that deep zone and risk giving up the big play. If the match coverages work as they should these players will now go looking for work on underneath routes based on the offensive concept, but they will still cover deep when they need to.

My biggest worry is how steep the learning curve is going to be steep for a lot of players who know Madden, but don't really know what Palms or Mabel coverage mean. I really hope the drills/tutorials are up to snuff.

I'm also optimistic that the new player development system will improve franchise by making it harder for the human player to progress their team. Custom draft classes can render moot any issues the game may have with the distribution of ability and archetypes in the draft, which will be the #1 determinant as to how well the feature plays, imo. If the human isn't forced into frequently drafting players who aren't perfect fits, and thus are hard to develop, then game will be too easy.

If it all works the way I'm hoping you're going to see more draft busts and/or players who are good enough to play only 1-2 seasons, but then a combination of poor fit and poor/mediocre performance lead to regression which necessitates the need to move on. This is pretty much how it works in the current NFL. Rosters have gotten much younger since the rookie wage scale was put in place as only very good players are now worth signing to a second contract because rookies are so cheap.

I'm sure the system won't be perfect, but anything has to be better than the status quo where your early picks always become good starters and you can cherry pick all the best players from the late rounds because you know who they are and can take them a round or two ahead of their projection.

If you expect perfection you will always be disappointed. If you expect picayune details to get lots of attention you will probably always be disappointed because those things aren't going to sell enough extra copies so you can't really justify the time or expense, even if it's modest. Since the game is being released on PC mods should offer an option to those who value the minor cosmetic stuff highly.

The game is on a good path, imo, and I don't want EA to take the risk of putting out another entire generation of worthless games because they decided to blow things up for no good reason.