Madden: What to Look for Out of the NFL Offseason

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs

VC was a terrible idea and should be killed. I'm not an online player as far as sports games go. So I can't really comment on it as far as that. I do know one thing though. The gameplay, animations, presentation, and graphics were great in NBA. Those are the most important areas of a sports game and those are the areas Madden always lacks in. I think that's why it's much a better game than Madden.

I would agree with you, but after two months of an unplayable game on my end, I lost all patience.

I couldn't enjoy what you mentioned above.

No doubt Madden lacks in those areas.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs

I don't think the disc space argument with last-gen products is a good route to go. This is a new and much bigger generation of games.

Minecraft is scheduled to release on PS4 and XBOX One this year, and when it drops it's still going to be a great game, and it's still going to have a disc footprint less than half a gigabyte.

On XBOX One, FIFA 14 is the highest-rated game by Metacritic score, and its install size is 8.7 GB.

On PS4, the two highest rated games by Metacritic score are Flower, coming in at 1.8 GB, and Rayman Legends, weighing in at 9 GB (it will most assuredly get a high score on XBOX One as well, and it's only 4.3 GB on that platform for reasons unbeknownst to me).

Point once again being that you don't need a massive amount of content to make a great game, even in this generation of consoles. There's absolutely no correlation. Game design and game mechanics matter foremost.

[TheBuddyHobbs]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Minecraft is scheduled to release on PS4 and XBOX One this year, and when it drops it's still going to be a great game, and it's still going to have a disc footprint less than half a gigabyte. On XBOX One, FIFA 14 is the highest-rated game by Metacritic score, and its install size is 8.7 GB. On PS4, the two highest rated games by Metacritic score are Flower, coming in at 1.8 GB, and Rayman Legends, weighing in at 9 GB (it will most assuredly get a high score on XBOX One as well, and it's only 4.3 GB on that platform for reasons unbeknownst to me). Point once again being that you don't need a massive amount of content to make a great game, even in this generation of consoles. There's absolutely no correlation. Game design and game mechanics matter foremost.

But we are talking sports games here. You can't really compare games of completely different genres to sports. It just doesn't make sense. The difference between Fifa, Madden, and NBA are the consensuses is that Fifa and NBA are good games. Madden well is Madden. Of the sports games with low disc usage the only highly regarded one is Fifa. Does disc space mean better game? That will be personal opinions.

One thing we can look at are the bigger games different than last gen versions? Yes there's much more content. Are the smaller games much different than their last gen versions? Not really. That's the difference. I think fans want to see effort. They see the size differences and play both versions and just don't feel a lot different.

[piffbernd]

Quote: Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10

Madden needs to be torn apart and rebuilt for next gen. However, I doubt they will do much more than in the past due to everyone will still be buying it. If you look at install sizes: NBA2k 41.8 GB, BF4 33.9 GB, AC4 21.2 GB, Killzone 38.5 GB... then there's the EA games with Madden at 13.1 GB and FIFA at 9 GB. You can't tell me they were trying their hardest or pushed last gen's hardware to the max when they, on average, had a game size less than half of everyone else this time around. All they care about, and rightfully so, is maximizing shareholder profits. Until the bottom line is hit, I wouldn't expect the game for the next few years to look much different than today or for them to pay attention to the details like NBA2K has or MLB The Show has.

Wow nba 2k has 41.8 G. Soon your xbox one or playstation 4 will be full with only 500 G. I don' t understand EA they have so many feature they could put in without removing and later selling as new feature. There is many things the could use what nhl or fifa has.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs

But we are talking sports games here. You can't really compare games of completely different genres to sports. It just doesn't make sense.

The original assertion from the first reply in this thread was that quality games, regardless of genre, were ones with larger install sizes. That's what I have been responding to. That's absolutely not true and I've provided a large number of counterexamples to that end. There's simply no correlation.

Madden absolutely would not be a better game, for example, if the game was 10 GB and then EA Tiburon added 40 GB of NFL Films footage accessible via some hypothetical digital recreation of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, accessible only after you achieve a certain Legacy score with a player in Connected Franchise mode. This hypothetical version of Madden would still be a 50 GB game, but it'd play no better than last year's version.

To repeat myself from earlier, the thing that changes by adding more content with specific regard to a sports game is atmosphere and presentation. More content adds more player faces, more player-specific animations, more stadiums, more lines of commentary, etc. These things are nice and can make a good game great, but they cannot make a bad game good. A good game must stand up foremost solely on the gameplay itself. With respect to Madden, the offensive line play, WR-DB interaction, defensive play calling AI, defensive run fits, and what not don't magically improve because the game has a bigger disc footprint. Seeing those gameplay mechanics addressed are the things that everyone in the simulation sports community wants, and those things are almost entirely code implementation and refactoring (admittedly with some supporting animation additions will be needed, yes, but that's a difference on a scale of megabytes, not gigabytes).

[Ovie832]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

The original assertion from the first reply in this thread was that quality games, regardless of genre, were ones with larger install sizes. That's what I have been responding to. That's absolutely not true and I've provided a large number of counterexamples to that end. There's simply no correlation. Madden absolutely would not be a better game, for example, if the game was 10 GB and then EA Tiburon added 40 GB of NFL Films footage accessible via some hypothetical digital recreation of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, accessible only after you achieve a certain Legacy score with a player in Connected Franchise mode. This hypothetical version of Madden would still be a 50 GB game, but it'd play no better than last year's version. To repeat myself from earlier, the thing that changes by adding more content with specific regard to a sports game is atmosphere and presentation. More content adds more player faces, more player-specific animations, more stadiums, more lines of commentary, etc. These things are nice and can make a good game great, but they cannot make a bad game good. A good game must stand up foremost solely on the gameplay itself. With respect to Madden, the offensive line play, WR-DB interaction, defensive play calling AI, defensive run fits, and what not don't magically improve because the game has a bigger disc footprint. Seeing those gameplay mechanics addressed are the things that everyone in the simulation sports community wants, and those things are almost entirely code implementation and refactoring (admittedly with some supporting animation additions will be needed, yes, but that's a difference on a scale of megabytes, not gigabytes).

I understand what you are saying.. but would not adding more animations add to the disk size? take wr-db interaction for example... say they have 3 jamming animations at the line of scrimmage for each pairing of players (idk if they even have that much)... if they extended that animation to 15 or 20.. would data not go up? .... now imagine if each player and position was added animations by 10-20..etc. I am pretty sure disk size would increase.

I guess it just frustrates people to see 50 gb in one game.. but under 10 for an ea sports game. What would make madden a more quality game is more animations and fluidity. They can no longer use disk space as a crutch.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ovie832

I understand what you are saying.. but would not adding more animations add to the disk size? take wr-db interaction for example... say they have 3 jamming animations at the line of scrimmage for each pairing of players (idk if they even have that much)... if they extended that animation to 15 or 20.. would data not go up? .... now imagine if each player and position was added animations by 10-20..etc. I am pretty sure disk size would increase. I guess it just frustrates people to see 50 gb in one game.. but under 10 for an ea sports game. What would make madden a more quality game is more animations and fluidity. They can no longer use disk space as a crutch.

For keyframed animations, it'd be dependent on the number of bones and keyframes in the animations, but there's not a whole lot of information being stored in a keyframed animation beyond the positions of joints between bones at given points in time (each keyframe). You're talking maybe kilobytes of additional information for each additional quick and repeatable animation that would be useful for Madden, assuming that all of this ultimately gets compressed before getting stamped to the disc, to be decompressed by the software when the animation is needed by the game (i.e. during the "Loading" screen after team select and before a game starts).

The character geometry, the textures for the character, the texture mapping information which correctly places the textures on the geometry, and materials defining lighting and shading properties used by different pieces of the geometry are going to have much more impact on the size of the game than any keyframed animations.

You're more likely to see an impact on the game size if Tiburon decided on a whim to add 1000 arbitrary lines of commentary to the game, or if the NFL decided tomorrow to put a team in London and Tiburon had to add their home, road, and alternate uniform textures along with the stadium mesh and textures required for rendering that stadium.

[BizDevConglomerate]

If the "One Company" is Visual Concepts & 2k then you probably thought Robb Stark would take the Iron throne. Be real. The only company I want to see making sports games is the one making OOTPB, & BTSF. If not them, then the company who made backbreaker. Period. 2k hired an EA guy. And no offence, but we need Americans making American sports titles, with advisors being gamers and pro's if not we're not really getting 60$ worth. This joint needs to be unpredictable like it truly is.