Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

[canes21]

Yea, it's not even released yet and we have a thread dedicated to issues, or negativity as some would put it.

BEFORE YOU POST IN THIS THREAD, PLEASE READ THE BELOW

This thread's sole purpose is to point out major issues with core parts of the game, to explain what the issue is and what areas of the game it is impacting, and then to also potentially propose realistic solutions to said issues.

This thread's purpose is to not be a safe place for you to come in and shout that EA is bad, they're lazy, X, Y, Z is a total game killer and you're going to cry, etc.

If you come into this thread and want to participate, I ask that you respect every other poster in the thread, you respect EA, and you try to provide feedback that is constructive and can be beneficial towards EA addressing the issues.

[Kid OS]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Dynamic Lighting from play to play or quarter to quarter should be activated. I'm pretty sure it's in the game, but there's a bug just like in recent Maddens.

[nickfa83]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

The biggest issue we've seen thus far from is by far the sim stats in dynasty mode of the RB's, sack numbers, and defensive TD's.

Be reminded that the sim was based on the beta and not the final product.

The issue could be the new wear and tear system that was put into place. Until we test out the sim stats with the wear and tear system on vs off, we won't know for sure.

This is something that we need not forget and need to monitor going forward into next week.

[canes21]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

With that out of the way, let me start with what many have likely already guessed.

Blue chip players not getting recruited.

Many people are getting caught up in the fact that KSU signed 5 and 4 star players and are arguing why or why not that is a bad thing. I'm not here to do that. I am here to look at the root of the issue and examine what is going on from what we've seen and what needs to be fixed with it.

The issue that we saw with multiple players NTE recruited was the fact that CPU teams were not pursuing these players. The #2 QB in the nation had Kentucky as the only CPU team going after him. The other 132 CPU controlled teams ignored him. And, after week 1, Kentucky also ignored him. This means all 133 CPU teams were not trying to sign the #2 QB in the entire class.

The #4 C had nobody going after him either. NTE also advanced a few weeks into his dynasty and checked the prospect listing again to look at 4 and 5 star players that nobody was actively recruiting. He said after doing multiple rebuild dynasties with the game already that he found this to be the meta. This means that it was happening in all his dynasties where blue chip recruits were being completely ignored by CPU teams.

That is the main issue that led to him getting top level players to KSU.

What needs to happen is the recruiting logic for CPU teams needs to be adjusted so that all blue chip players are getting hounded by 10+ teams from the start and teams only back off when they are locked out. The teams making the cuts to top 8, 5, and 3 should continue to recruit these players until they're shown the door.

We know this issue is making it too easy to recruit for the user and that's one major advantage, but we also have no idea if this is leading to any roster issues later on in the dynasty. We only saw him looking at recruits he wasn't already locked out of with deal breakers. We have no idea if the recruits that he was locked out were even being recruited.

The recruiting logic must be adjusted to where every blue chip player gets targeted by multiple schools. Even if it leads to over-signing and thus more kids hitting the portal, that's a much more balanced and realistic end result than 4 and 5 star players just being left in the void.

[Helios12787]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Sim stats could be attributed to wear and tear on the offensive side of the ball.

For Defense, only thing I could think is the sim engine logic has every team "Playing" as a 3-4 style defense. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause a 100% disappearance of d-line on the sack totals in the video we saw.

[lsufan05]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Not the expert just confirmed on reddit that sim stats are fine and it wasn't sorting correctly.
That's huge.

a dev told me it was glitching up in my video and not sorting properly. So more than 6 people scored a defensive TD for example. Game just didn’t sort through the whole list of players

[canes21]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Another issue that is not getting enough attention, but it is also something that's been an issue with Madden for a couple of years now is the fact that CPU QB's are throwing bullet passes far too often.

We saw this time and time again in QBJ's video which he said was on Heisman. Like what it does in Madden, it leads to many routes and concepts being run poorly by the CPU consistently. It leads to far more interceptions than the CPU would otherwise be throwing if their passes had variable levels of loft on them. And, overall, it makes the CPU offense noticeably weaker than it should be.

WR's can be open by a good margin on deep and intermediate routes and passes are getting knocked out of the air because they are coming in flat. A WR on a go can have his CB beat by 4 steps and the trajectory is so flat the burned corner can get a hand on it, even picking it off when wildly out of position as we saw in QBJ's video.

WR's running across the middle of the field are technically open, but the CPU lacks the ability to layer the ball, which is something EA said was of high importance this year, so they throw what should be a relatively easy touch pass to complete flat as can be right into the underneath LB. Post routes that split safeties are thrown so low the beat safeties are breaking up the play or even picking it off.

The strange thing is, every so often the CPU will throw a lob or a touch out of the blue showing they have the ability to do so. I don't know if it is a bug in the logic leading to this occurring or if EA by design is limiting certain routes to certain throw types, but it needs to be looked at.

The logic that determines the CPU throw type desperately needs attention so that this issue can be relieved and we can see the CPU play up to its potential.

It is one thing if the CPU on Varsity is doing this as a way to make the game easier on the user without messing with ratings on either side. However, on Heisman, the CPU should have every tool and mechanic at their disposal to challenge the user is an authentic manner. It was said this year the CPU has every single pre-play tool at their disposal just like the user and they'll use them. They need to have every trajectory at their disposal so that CPU teams can play up to their potential.

[nickfa83]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Not the expert just confirmed on reddit that sim stats are fine and it wasn't sorting correctly.
That's huge.

If true that would be incredible.

[KSUowls]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Team by team talent disparity, or lack thereof.

The top 25 teams looked like they had decent separation of talent when they were first unveiled, but the talent floor is much higher than it should be. Kennesaw State is a low 70's overall in the first year in the FBS, and considered by several outlets to be the worst team in FBS. We saw Not the Expert's video which had them sim to an 8-4 record. My guess is that this is driven by the fact that other teams in their conference are also in the 70's, and so when the sim engine runs it's closer to a coin flip matchup. This could easily be fixed by having a wider distribution of attribute points from the best players in the country to the worst. I doubt that he would have gone 8-4 if KSU was rated at like a 60 overall instead.



Recruiting Filters
There is no indication of what type of a player that a potential recruit is without scouting them. I like that you are encouraged to scout guys, I wish that there was even more FOW with regard to scouting than what we get. But by not having 40-time, bench press, etc as things that you sort and filter for, you have no indicator of who to target other than their star rating. If I want to build a team based on speed, or a pure power team, I can't. I can only throw scouting time at random players on the board and hope that a guy matches the player archetype that I'm looking for.

We need the 40-time range or squat weight, etc like past games. Or at least give us some kind of preliminary archetype within the recruiting board that you could filter for. Like WR-Speed or WR-Possession. Leave their wider skills in question and maybe even leave the archetype as not 100% accurate. At least give us an idea of who to target though, especially with the relatively small amount of recruiting points/time that we have available to us.

[nickfa83]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

The Proximity to Home dealbreaker is odd because unless you have a school in that state, region, pipeline to a certain area; the proximity to home is going to lock out most of the country.

Especially if the recruit is highly rated and located in a rural area of the country. If he’s a 5-star recruit, he only has a few schools to choose from based on his dealbreaker.

[offensive_junkie]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

My brother in Christ. The game hasn’t been played yet by us lol what in the world

[Haze88]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Not the expert just confirmed on reddit that sim stats are fine and it wasn't sorting correctly.
That's huge.

IIRC if a player was below a certain tackle number threshold in NCAA 14 they did not show up on the sim stats. I wonder if that's what was happening here

[mtoo22]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

Might be a bit preemptive on this since no one has played the final version of the game.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

[Dawgfan1]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

I'm going to hold off until I have the game in my hands and have tested some things to comment too much in this thread but I will provide some additional context to this:

With that out of the way, let me start with what many have likely already guessed.

Blue chip players not getting recruited.

The #2 QB that was under-recruited - he was located in Lousiville, KY and had a proximity to home dealbreaker. It seemed that out of all the teams he had interest in (included Ohio State, Tennessee), only Kentucky and Louisville had pipeline levels to Kentucky, and only UK and Florida offered him scholarships by week 1. Perhaps there is a logic issue relating to teams not heavily pursuing players that aren't in their pipelines.

The #4 C that was seemingly not recruited at all - he was located in Greenwood, SC (roughly between Greenville SC and Augusta GA) and had a proximity to home dealbreaker. Teams in his top 10 like Clemson, Tennessee, South Carolina, Coastal Carolina, and Marshall all had pipelines. NTE's footage of this prospect's recruitment is admittedly limited, but none of his top 10 offered him a scholarship after the pre-season. The CPU may never have either, but we don't know for sure cause the only footage we have after week 1 is NTE scheduling his visit. Not sure what could have caused this.

[canes21]

Re: Issues we've spotted, what they impact, and how can they be solved.

The Proximity to Home dealbreaker is odd because unless you have a school in that state or region or a pipeline to a certain area, the proximity to home is going to lock out most of the country.

Especially if the recruit is highly rated and located in a rural area of the country. If he’s a 5-star recruit, he only has a few schools to choose from based on his dealbreaker.

In NTE's video he was playing as KSU which is just outside of Atlanta. The recruit was in Lexington, Kentucky. He still had an A- rating in proximity to home.

This would indicate that any FBS school within this red circle would also have an A- or better rating.



That includes a lot of schools. And that's just the schools that are A- or better.