Several things had bugged me all year with Madden:
- Stretch plays were a bit too overpowered as linemen were CONSISTENTLY in front of the defenders.
- Screen plays rarely worked well for CPU due to D-line catching up
- Very little back and forth push between lines
Those are all symptoms of thresh being too high and the reason why I commented last night that I had been pondering a lower thresh. With the patch "stretching" the values out a bit, I am hopeful that some of these issues are mitigated a bit.
My concern: did they go the other way and make it too "open"? Examples of things I will be looking for include:
- On stretch plays, if the o-linemen struggle to EVER get in front of the back to set up blocks (i.e. they consistently clump together instead of getting out in front), then the new default value is too low. Barring one having a really fast RB, he shouldn't be able to outrun everyone to the edge.
- Is line play too "loose" (i.e. is it too easy to shed blocks)?
- Is interior running too "easy" for both sides due to LB pursuit being nerfed?
You'll note that I really focus on the run game when making observations about thresh. What I have found (for me anyways) over the years is that it is much easier to hone-in on the thresh value looking at run game dynamics. There are just way too many ratings involved in the pass game to definitively say that thresh is a problem.
I toyed with the patch last night and pure default felt a bit weird. I did fire-up the OP (no assists on) and I thought it felt better (which is not surprising). Thresh is a super tricky setting to assess though, so I am going to proceed cautiously. I want to run some more tests at both default and with the OP. Once I have confirmed which base setup (i.e. which injury setup) we'll roll with, then we can really scrutinize the threshold (looking at some of those key markers I mentioned above) and see if any adjustments are needed. Note: I'm really not interested in going straight to 75 thresh and mimicking what we had previously; I think we can improve upon it.
I am going to be unpacking a lot this weekend as I finally moved into my new home yesterday. However, the PS4 IS set up so I will get some gameplay in this weekend for sure.
One final thing: I 100% understand the frustration with patches. But moving forward, I really want to keep things focused on how we adapt. If you want to vent about "patch frustration" (which, again, is 100% understandable), please utilize the patch thread in the main forum to do so.