Progression System that factors injuries

[gausec]

I think it has been well documented that users have a different idea for progression, but what I want to know is why EA doesn't factor injuries into progression. In my franchise mode, I had Devante Parker suffer a torn Achilles and was out for 41 games. However, his skills never negatively diminished.

Does anyone have thoughts on a system that I as a user can incorporate to reflect injuries? Obviously I could just edit the player and adjust his physical traits, but does anyone do this and have an idea of how much a hit they should take due to injury?

[Mattanite]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

It's only in very recent maddens that injuries have no effect on skills.

As recent as madden 18 an injury could result in instant drop of attributes, noteably injury rating. Also, taking too many sacks lowered injury. It was the pure xp system then too, so you had to make a choice between rehabilitating the injury attribute or progressing their skills.

Also they earn much less xp when injured so injuries do stunt growth. I've experimented with high xp slider but high injury slider cfms and it does create quite a dynamic league.

Madden 19 and 20 moved to the skill point based system and so it was no longer possible to rehab INJ with xp and players no longer took negative attribute hits. They removed dev regression and you can no longer purchase dev levels or traits. I like the skill point system for its random progression but the lack of regressions in multiple things hurts cfm.

Sent from my H3113 using Operation Sports mobile app

[PhillyPhanatic14]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

This is one of the most immersion breaking parts of Franchise right now. The whole NFL season is based on who is healthy, who is not, who is dealing with nagging injuries, who is coming back from a major injury, etc.


Yet in Madden, if you have a major injury then you just come back a few weeks later and you're 100% healthy.

[canes21]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

I'm very against the XP system. I absolutely hate it, but that's another topic. It would be nice to have a wear and tear system with injury histories that mattered like other sports games have.

It would also be nice to see these injuries matter in a sense that certain injuries lead to further injury concerns and they also lead to the player never being quite the same.

It would only add to the franchise experience to have your star WR go down with an injury and then you have to wait see if he ever comes back as the same player or if his career turns into a "what could have beem" type of career.

I'd much rather have that type of dynamic gameplay inside of franchise mode as compared to what we have now and knowing as long as player A plays he is going to progress and it will be the most static experience ever.

[crenk]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

So I use a bunch of my own systems to compensate for maddens shortcomings. I can’t play the game without them. For a more impactful injury system I utilize a randomized name wheel like this: https://wheelofnames.com/

For instance if a player years an ACL and is out for the season I have a spreadsheet with the possible ratings hit that an acl injury might induce. You can certainly cater it to your own desire but mine would include loss of speed, quickness etc. if it’s a torn pectoral it might impact strength, blocking etc. I think you can see where I’m going with that.

I will have a bunch of ratings drops in this spreadsheet so that the ratings hit is more randomized for instance... one option would be:
speed -1 acc -3 quickness-3
another option might include acc -4 quickness -4 short route running -3
This would be randomly applied when the player returns from injury.
I would then use a future date tracked on that same spreadsheet that uses the same random picker to determine if/when they return to normal. You could do it after 6 weeks, a full season, it’s up to you. If you keep all of your options listed on the spreadsheet it is easy to just cut and paste them into the wheel. It does take a little bit of effort to track injuries like this. I do it for all major injuries suffered by all 32 teams. I don’t bother with short duration injuries.
Not sure if I explained this well but hopefully you get the point.
I know a lot of players would balk at doing this because it seems like a waste of time and I hate that I have to do the job of these designers to implement a system that makes sense but it is what it is and it allows me to make madden a more organic world. This is one of many systems that I have in place to achieve this
Good luck

[Hooe]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

It's often said that "injuries aren't fun". I think Clint Oldenburg said exactly as much himself one time and people here got upset. Unfortunately for sim-minded people, he's right.

Regardless of video game genre, time and time again game designers have received feedback from users that they hate punishment, and they especially hate random punishment which they had no control over. Except where mechanically or thematically necessary (for example: health in a first person shooter, or a hard time limit on a mission where a bomb must be defused), harsh random punishment should be avoided because players always react negatively to it. For example, players of XCOM 2 (a turn-based strategy game) hated the harsh mission turn limits which penalized users with an immediate fail state for taking too long to plan and execute their actions.

Specific to Madden, injuries are and have always been entirely random occurrences. The player has very few levers to manage the dice rolls on those chances; as far as I know, the Bye Week scenario which adds +3 to all players Injury ratings at the expense of optional bonus XP is the only lever available for the user to pull. I certainly have no idea if user on-field actions such as spins and jukes affect injury chances. Stamina might? Maybe? I honestly don’t know.

Given how injuries have always at least had the appearance of being basically random, and how much users hate random punishments regardless of video game, I'm not surprised they haven't gotten any development attention from Tiburon. I'm also not surprised that in Franchise the ratings penalties due to critical injuries were removed; again, the user has no ability to influence the likelihood or severity of injury in Madden, so many people feel cheated when a star player suffers an injury and often rage quit. I've seen it happen way too many times.

That said: I do wonder if an injury system could work if the messaging were changed to something with more positively-messaged game mechanics around it. Why is it important to message that positively? Because psychologically, video game players are much more willing to accept negative mechanics if they are packaged positively. To go back to turn-based strategy games: Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle flips the turn time limit idea on its head by rewarding users who win a match in fewer turns than a designated "par time" with bonus coins and items. Importantly, slow play is not harshly penalized. This idea was much better received by its audience than XCOM 2’s turn limits were by its audience. The stealth-focused turn-based strategy game Invisible Inc. also applies time pressure differently with a Security system which slowly increases a level’s difficulty over time by incrementally adding guards and security cameras to the map, among other things. Importantly, the player doesn’t lose the game or have any abilities restricted as the Security level increases. Players also reacted positively to this mechanic.

It's not enough to just build a sports video game system that is "sim" and have more injuries happen with the same basically-random chances that they already have. We're all still playing an interactive video game, we want to win doing football things: we want to succeed with skill on the sticks and mastery of playcalling. Absolutely no one wants to be playing as the Chiefs in a multiplayer online franchise, have Pat Mahomes tear his Achilles on a routine handoff, and suffer his career being ended before the league ever gets going. That is technically "sim" - yes, it absolutely can and does happen, Jimmy Garropolo tore his ACL a couple years ago with a random off-ball injury - but most Madden users would rightly call bull**** and feel cheated by losing Mahomes to an event they had no influence over and rage quit the league.

The game designer must manage the human psychology of the person holding the controller. That responsibility is inescapable regardless of the genre of the game, and respecting the person holding the controller is more important than “sim”. If we can't agree on that, then we can't have a conversation about building a more robust and more interesting injury system in Madden.

[Find_the_Door]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

This is one of the most immersion breaking parts of Franchise right now. The whole NFL season is based on who is healthy, who is not, who is dealing with nagging injuries, who is coming back from a major injury, etc.


Yet in Madden, if you have a major injury then you just come back a few weeks later and you're 100% healthy.

Yeah kinda like Carson Wentz staying routinely upright in this game lol.

[Richie71]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

Agree on that it's "no fun" but those in serious franchises can enjoy it. Some changes needed though:


As per PhillyPhanatic14 there needs to be a lot more niggling injuries that drag out. Some of those aren't a significant risk for a player to play with, but do impact performance.

Then, the balance needs working on. Right now, it's very few sim injuries and in-game injuries very biassed towards ball carriers. I've had single games losing three halfbacks, and multiple seasons without anyone else other than a HB, QB and WR. Injuries should also happen in training. Maybe we can even have more control over training skills vs physical attributes vs health, type of balance.


The injury and toughness ratings don't matter as much as they should. The real NFL sees some players who are invincible, and others almost never complete a full season. That isn't in Madden.

[Executor]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

It's often said that "injuries aren't fun". I think Clint Oldenburg said exactly as much himself one time and people here got upset. Unfortunately for sim-minded people, he's right.

Regardless of video game genre, time and time again game designers have received feedback from users that they hate punishment, and they especially hate random punishment which they had no control over. Except where mechanically or thematically necessary (for example: health in a first person shooter, or a hard time limit on a mission where a bomb must be defused), harsh random punishment should be avoided because players always react negatively to it. For example, players of XCOM 2 (a turn-based strategy game) hated the harsh mission turn limits which penalized users with an immediate fail state for taking too long to plan and execute their actions.

Specific to Madden, injuries are and have always been entirely random occurrences. The player has very few levers to manage the dice rolls on those chances; as far as I know, the Bye Week scenario which adds +3 to all players Injury ratings at the expense of optional bonus XP is the only lever available for the user to pull. I certainly have no idea if user on-field actions such as spins and jukes affect injury chances. Stamina might? Maybe? I honestly don’t know.

Given how injuries have always at least had the appearance of being basically random, and how much users hate random punishments regardless of video game, I'm not surprised they haven't gotten any development attention from Tiburon. I'm also not surprised that in Franchise the ratings penalties due to critical injuries were removed; again, the user has no ability to influence the likelihood or severity of injury in Madden, so many people feel cheated when a star player suffers an injury and often rage quit. I've seen it happen way too many times.

That said: I do wonder if an injury system could work if the messaging were changed to something with more positively-messaged game mechanics around it. Why is it important to message that positively? Because psychologically, video game players are much more willing to accept negative mechanics if they are packaged positively. To go back to turn-based strategy games: Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle flips the turn time limit idea on its head by rewarding users who win a match in fewer turns than a designated "par time" with bonus coins and items. Importantly, slow play is not harshly penalized. This idea was much better received by its audience than XCOM 2’s turn limits were by its audience. The stealth-focused turn-based strategy game Invisible Inc. also applies time pressure differently with a Security system which slowly increases a level’s difficulty over time by incrementally adding guards and security cameras to the map, among other things. Importantly, the player doesn’t lose the game or have any abilities restricted as the Security level increases. Players also reacted positively to this mechanic.

It's not enough to just build a sports video game system that is "sim" and have more injuries happen with the same basically-random chances that they already have. We're all still playing an interactive video game, we want to win doing football things: we want to succeed with skill on the sticks and mastery of playcalling. Absolutely no one wants to be playing as the Chiefs in a multiplayer online franchise, have Pat Mahomes tear his Achilles on a routine handoff, and suffer his career being ended before the league ever gets going. That is technically "sim" - yes, it absolutely can and does happen, Jimmy Garropolo tore his ACL a couple years ago with a random off-ball injury - but most Madden users would rightly call bull**** and feel cheated by losing Mahomes to an event they had no influence over and rage quit the league.

The game designer must manage the human psychology of the person holding the controller. That responsibility is inescapable regardless of the genre of the game, and respecting the person holding the controller is more important than “sim”. If we can't agree on that, then we can't have a conversation about building a more robust and more interesting injury system in Madden.

Nice post and a lot of what you say and where you come from is probably true, but isn't this why we're supposed to be able to choose from 3 different modes in the game: arcade, competitive and sim? You don't want random injuries that you have no control over? Start / join a franchise that plays on arcade. You do? Start / join the sim one. Now if only that worked, right?

Madden 19 injuries system, while still simplistic in the context of what e.g. Canes, PhillyPhanatic (and others) are saying here, was the best of all Maddens I played. You could have, in any given season, been loosing players left and right and more importantly, at ALL damn positions. Talk about building for depth. And yes I was mad when an injury happened to a stud lineman for whom I had no worthy back up, but it was also fun. Madden 20, unfortunately, inexplicably, was a HUGE step back in that regard.

[Kanobi]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

The injury and toughness ratings don't matter as much as they should. The real NFL sees some players who are invincible, and others almost never complete a full season. That isn't in Madden.

Agreed. Though the attempt to capture a real-life player's susceptibility to injuries can be tricky, those with an extensive history of injury and incomplete seasons shouldnt be to difficult to set apart.

Also, I believe more could be done to give the user some control over player's recovery.

First, it would require a genuine effort by Tiburon to consult trainers and doctors on common football injuries; their frequency and varying degrees, what tangent injuries could arise (injuries caused by the body overcompensating for another), and of course recovery times and treatment options.

They could even gather data to dial in on which injuries are more common to certain position groups to make them less randomized across the board. With this information, they would also be able to assign a severity to how much the related attributes would be effected based on position, age, injury past, etc.

Visual Concepts attempted this with NFL2k5's Weekly Preparation where it gave you various options to treat injured players. There was even a risk to treatment that was too aggresive in attempting rush a player back to action. While the feature needed to be ironed out more, the idea behind it was
an innovative step in the right direction. Also it was optional as Weekly Prep could be turned on/off.

So there is definitely a way to implement a deeper, less random and more realistic injury system while giving the user some control over the player's treatment plan and recovery time. I believe most franchise mode players would welcome this.

[cch99]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

I don't really get why this is so hard. Many Injuries in the real NFL, especially first time injuries are random. Once a person gets hurt now they definitely seem more likely to get hurt so that's a bit different but I can give a couple examples even though there are a ton more.

Carson Wentz getting a concussion in the playoffs sucked as an Eagles fan and it was a pretty random injury. When I saw it in real time I was thinking what the hell happened. How many times have WR's torn an ACL running a route with no contact. It happens enough to be something we read about. Offensive Lineman having a guy fall on them seems pretty random. Now if the argument is there isn't a corresponding animation ok I guess I can understand but I'd rather have injuries without the animation then no injuries at all.

But really if you don't want injuries turn them off. Even make the base game have them off so people who want them have to do the work and turn them on. Make the sliders actually make a difference. Add more that cover injury rate to different positions. Do this for fatigue as well. Do it for FG's and XP's as well. Make different sliders that cover every 10 yards. At the end of the day take a page from NBA 2k and give options to let people play the game the way they want and make them work. Don't make a kicker start shanking kicks magically when the slider is changed from 33 to 32.

The biggest thing that drives me up the wall with the current leaders at Madden is this nonsense that they way they play the game is the way the game should be and that if you don't like it tough. I liked Rex but the new guy comes across as almost having disdain for anyone who likes gameplay differently then him. I don't know him so I maybe I'm worng but I am constantly seeing him explain reasoning being that it's not fun..."for him". I don't care if someone wants to rate everyone on his team a 99 and win every game 230-0 and break every NFL record. Who cares. I want to have my kicker and the CPU kicker miss a 15 yarder. I want to have my best offensive Lineman go down the first drive of the Playoffs and have to figure out how to handle Khalil Mack. Why can't that happen in my game but not someone else's. Obviously the systems are in place or the PC community wouldn't be able to make the changes they have. It shouldn't be all or nothing or some quasi middle ground where no one is happy.

That's why I say it's not that hard. Make the games probabilities adjustable so everyone can play it as they want. And make it so the more "sim" people have to do the work because I guarantee you they will.
Problem solved. It's not that difficult

[canes21]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

Well said. It's as if some people read our requests for revamped injury systems as us saying, "EA please give us an injury system that is more in-depth and allow us to see playmakers get taken out even in non-contact situations. Also, force everyone to play just like me!" That's not the case at all. Give me a wear and tear system that affects potentials and everything else, but also allow little Timmy to turn off injuries if he wants to, or allow him to edit his star QB to be back healthy if he wants to pick and choose who he allows to remain injured. No one is asking for EA to force all people to deal with injuries if they find them to not be fun.



Injuries are already in the game, they also user a slider to allow people to customize their games to match their preferences. All we are asking is that for those of us who find authenticity to be more fun, allow us to have a more robust injury system that does make roster management even more complex and engaging for. That's what we find fun. If little Timmy wants no injuries and that's his idea of fun, then cool. My idea of fun is losing my LT and having to figure out how to manage that injury and fight for a wild card spot. My idea if fun is having the best team in the league and then having my star QB miss the rest of the year and my team goes one and done or misses the playoffs completely. Shouldn't I be allowed to have fun like little Timmy?

[Hooe]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

Nice post and a lot of what you say and where you come from is probably true, but isn't this why we're supposed to be able to choose from 3 different modes in the game: arcade, competitive and sim? You don't want random injuries that you have no control over? Start / join a franchise that plays on arcade. You do? Start / join the sim one. Now if only that worked, right?

Three points:

1 - I believe Arcade and Competitive already turn injuries off? At least, playing online head-to-head or MUT head-to-head sets the game style to Competitive and there are no injuries.

2 - The arcade / competitive / sim settings are basically game balancing thresholds. Choosing Arcade doesn't radically change the game mechanics or controls, it just rebalances the ratings dice rolls to make big plays - spectacular catches, interceptions, running plays with multiple broken tackles - more likely to happen. Importantly, all the game mechanics are still the same between all three game modes, just balanced radically differently (Competitive weighs correct button input timings heavily, Simulation weighs ratings dice rolls heavily).

3 - What I'm arguing above is that, regardless of game mode, dice-roll injuries and mechanics governed exclusively by randomness with no player influence are bad for all game modes in Madden because of human psychology. Just saying "make random dice roll injuries happen on sim only" doesn't absolve the game designer from the criticism that random dice roll injuries which the player cannot influence are unfair and bad game design.

Authenticity matters, yes, and it should inspire new injury gameplay mechanics to replace what we have - I would be the first to tell you that the injury system we have in Madden right now is bad for the exact same reasons - but at the end of the day we're still playing a football video game, and sound and fair game mechanics which do not randomly punish the player are more important than "sim".

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not arguing that there should never be injuries or player health management mechanics in Madden. I am arguing that, however those things are rebuilt, they should (and given the mass appeal of the game, probably will) be built in a way which provides the user obvious agency over how often they happen and how challenging they are to overcome. A very simple example: maybe Tiburon adds a "training intensity" setting which lets you, per-player, affect their XP growth in weekly training; a higher intensity value means more XP and increased injury risk during that week's game. Maybe you could sit players out of training entirely (so he gets no training XP) to guarantee he wouldn't get injured during the game that week. The point being, the risk of injury is now assumed by the user rather than just the game deciding "you're injured now".

[Iteachpercussion]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

Three points:

1 - I believe Arcade and Competitive already turn injuries off? At least, playing online head-to-head or MUT head-to-head sets the game style to Competitive and there are no injuries.

2 - The arcade / competitive / sim settings are basically game balancing thresholds. Choosing Arcade doesn't radically change the game mechanics or controls, it just rebalances the ratings dice rolls to make big plays - spectacular catches, interceptions, running plays with multiple broken tackles - more likely to happen. Importantly, all the game mechanics are still the same between all three game modes, just balanced radically differently (Competitive weighs correct button input timings heavily, Simulation weighs ratings dice rolls heavily).

3 - What I'm arguing above is that, regardless of game mode, dice-roll injuries and mechanics governed exclusively by randomness with no player influence are bad for all game modes in Madden because of human psychology. Just saying "make random dice roll injuries happen on sim only" doesn't absolve the game designer from the criticism that random dice roll injuries which the player cannot influence are unfair and bad game design.

Authenticity matters, yes, and it should inspire new injury gameplay mechanics to replace what we have - I would be the first to tell you that the injury system we have in Madden right now is bad for the exact same reasons - but at the end of the day we're still playing a football video game, and sound and fair game mechanics which do not randomly punish the player are more important than "sim".

Your claim that "fair game mechanics which do not randomly punish the player are more important than "'sim'" might be true from EA's perspective. But, to sim players, it is that randomness that actually increases the playability and value of the game experience. The issue is that there are so few "sim" players in comparison to the number of players who just want to pick up the game and play or be in competitive settings.

I have a whole lot of "random" events like I would to see in Madden that would have nothing to do with my player input. Those types of events are commonplace in board games from way back, whether it be football games or military games. Part of the "sim" experience is being able to figure out how to deal with unexpected events that occur, that you have no control over.

You cannot create an injury system without randomness at least to some degree. I understand that EA is worried about alienating people who think injuries are not fun. That is why we do not have a true simulation football game, and likely never will. I understand that point and it is why I do not complain much about such things because I understand that the majority of Madden players and video gamers in general do not want a true sim experience.

[jfsolo]

Re: Progression System that factors injuries

Your claim that "fair game mechanics which do not randomly punish the player are more important than "'sim'" might be true from EA's perspective. But, to sim players, it is that randomness that actually increases the playability and value of the game experience. The issue is that there are so few "sim" players in comparison to the number of players who just want to pick up the game and play or be in competitive settings.

I have a whole lot of "random" events like I would to see in Madden that would have nothing to do with my player input. Those types of events are commonplace in board games from way back, whether it be football games or military games. Part of the "sim" experience is being able to figure out how to deal with unexpected events that occur, that you have no control over.

You cannot create an injury system without randomness at least to some degree. I understand that EA is worried about alienating people who think injuries are not fun. That is why we do not have a true simulation football game, and likely never will. I understand that point and it is why I do not complain much about such things because I understand that the majority of Madden players and video gamers in general do not want a true sim experience.

It won't happen because it would be even more a niche group than the sim crowd, but I've felt for a few years that they should have another game style for solo players called "NFL". It would eschew all conceits to User agency and have unforgiving randomness across all aspects of Franchise mode: gameplay, progression, injuries, drafting, FA, etc.

I could see people running multiple Franchises at once, in one their team has a Browns like arc and in another one like the Patriots. It wouldn't be able to be as authentic as it could be of course because of the NFL not allowing basically any negative behaviors in the game.