[stinkubus]

The "excuse" for CFM is that EA doesn't believe the sort of additions and changes advocated here will effect the bottom line enough to make it worth the time and expense, LDO. I don't contend that most of the features people ask for would be difficult to implement, they just won't increase the profitability of the game. If the people working at Tiburon, who's livelihood literally depends on how well Madden sells, thought they could get rid of another 500k units (to reach par with NBA2K) by beefing up franchise mode they would've done it a LOOOOOOOOOONG time ago.

The one feature I do believe would be difficult to implement in CFM is a balanced player progression system. I'm very hopeful that the archetype system when used in conjunction with custom draft classes (to ensure a good distribution of archetype and ability in the draft) will be able to limit the snowballing.

Right now the only limits in place are diminishing returns to XP which don't kick in until your player is already good enough that it doesn't much matter. If the draft is balanced enough that the player is put in the position of having to pick players (due to their superior starting ability) which they can't easily develop (wrong archetype) then we'll have ourselves a game.

What I don't expect is the AI to be good at any of this. The AI always has, and probably always will be, a pushover. This will probably remain true even once technology advances to the point that competent AI could run on a gaming console. Making the game too challenging, out of the box, would negatively effect sales. The best you'll ever get is the ability to customize to your liking.

If you want a challenge play against other humans. If you choose to play single player you know what you're getting (it's been the same for 30 years!) so don't act surprised or angered because you should've known better.