I must be missing something after hearing reviews from the closed beta

[BonesKnows85]

I want to get hyped for this year’s game because everyone keeps talking about how great it is and how franchise is improved.....but I’ve yet to hear one way in which franchise is actually better.

I listened to the testers and all of the major flaws are still there. No contract holdouts, bad AI logic, no historical stat tracking, and simmed stats are still broken and terrible. Dude said that Cam Newton led all QBs In rushing with 64 yards ON THE SEASON. And the top 10 wideouts in yards were all WR2s and 3s.

Guy also said the scenario engine gets repetitive after 1 year, which I was fully expecting that.

It just doesn’t make sense. I feel that historical stat tracking should be in the game no excuses. Instead they give us back the Pro Bowl, a PS2 feature, and feel that it’s good enough to ignore the major things that people have complained about the last decade.

I just cannot help but feel that EA is all about Ultimate Team now. Madden is geared for Ultimate Team. I want to be wrong but someone has to tell me something that will get me excited for this game.

[mtmetcalfe]

The improvements to franchise mostly come from outside the actual mode. The spreading of player ratings and and new zone and abilities is really the improvement to franchise. They did improve contracts and the ability to easily to re sign players and free agents is more difficult. It might not seem like a lot but from my time with the beta those improvements did go a long way.

As far as the actual franchise mode, it’s still as shallow as ever. Scouting sucks, drafting sucks, gameplanning sucks, limited stats, QB rushing stats are broken, etc. etc.

[DeuceDouglas]

I don't think you're really missing anything. I think the consensus is that gameplay has been significantly improved while franchise is pretty much staying the course with limited additions. Most of the "hype" around franchise has been from articles which aren't very reliable resources or at least should always be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Scenarios has a ton of potential but are going to be pretty lackluster, at least at launch, this year. Updated contracts to closely reflect real life is a great change but I have a feeling it's going to wreak havoc on the CPU since nothing's really changed for them to be able to handle such a huge shift. Pro Bowl is the Pro Bowl. Overall the franchise experience is going to be very much the same as it's been the last several years.

Madden has already been a H2H focused game and I think this year that's felt more than any other IMO. If you play H2H, this year is probably going to be a blast but if you play vs. the CPU, it's going to feel more like an improved version of 19 which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the AI for both franchise and gameplay both continue to lag behind the rest of the game and in a case of this year where the game feels so improved and so much better than M19, that sticks out even more.

[ODogg]

Quote: Originally Posted by BonesKnows85

I want to get hyped for this year’s game because everyone keeps talking about how great it is and how franchise is improved.....but I’ve yet to hear one way in which franchise is actually better. I listened to the testers and all of the major flaws are still there. No contract holdouts, bad AI logic, no historical stat tracking, and simmed stats are still broken and terrible. Dude said that Cam Newton led all QBs In rushing with 64 yards ON THE SEASON. And the top 10 wideouts in yards were all WR2s and 3s. Guy also said the scenario engine gets repetitive after 1 year, which I was fully expecting that. It just doesn’t make sense. I feel that historical stat tracking should be in the game no excuses. Instead they give us back the Pro Bowl, a PS2 feature, and feel that it’s good enough to ignore the major things that people have complained about the last decade. I just cannot help but feel that EA is all about Ultimate Team now. Madden is geared for Ultimate Team. I want to be wrong but someone has to tell me something that will get me excited for this game.

Ratings spread


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[Rhudey]

Depends on your interest I guess. I loved the beta gameplay, I am not a big fan of cfm. I like to play a lot of play now and I will play the season up to the Superbowl with accurate rosters, dont care about the rest. So the gameplay changes are more than enough for me. If a deep franchise is what you like then I would think it is a pretty big disappointment.

[prey2god]

Quote: Originally Posted by BonesKnows85

It just doesn’t make sense. I feel that historical stat tracking should be in the game no excuses. Instead they give us back the Pro Bowl, a PS2 feature, and feel that it’s good enough to ignore the major things that people have complained about the last decade. I just cannot help but feel that EA is all about Ultimate Team now. Madden is geared for Ultimate Team. I want to be wrong but someone has to tell me something that will get me excited for this game.

This all day everyday. Madden started out with Franchise and all of a sudden, Ultimate Team is the new Franchise. Franchise era is dying for the user.

I've been complaining about the lack of historical stat tracking for years if not decades. What's so weird is you can view players individual career stats i.e., teams they've played for, but you can't see this in Franchise Mode.

Also the game logs for each game played for each player is broken. They just put a bunch of numbers on there with no corresponding week or team they played against.

[CM Hooe]

To directly answer the topic question as even-handedly as possible: the vast majority of improvements to Franchise in Madden 20 are being delivered via changes and adjustments to components which are core to the gameplay experience of Franchise - player acquisition and development - and also changes which cut across the entirety of Madden 20:

- the player ratings are spread out to accentuate the unique abilities of each player to a greater degree
- player progression and regression has been tuned to account for the ratings spread
- rookie draft class generation has been greatly altered to account for the ratings spread and also produce more realistic and more interesting rookies to develop
- scheme bonus XP aim weekly training has been reduced somewhat as to penalize roster diversity less harshly
- more scheme configurations have been added to the game to enhance authenticity and increase roster construction flexibility
- existing player contracts and in-game contract demands have been tuned to better match the real-world NFL, per EA blogs
- the new and powerful Superstar and Zone abilities are unlockable to developing players based on player archetype, reaching OVR thresholds, reaching Development trait thresholds, and (in the case of drafted rookies) downs played thresholds, encouraging players to interact with all the existing systems to earn the abilities

Additionally, improvements to the core football gameplay benefit every mode. All else held equal, better football gameplay absolutely makes Franchise a more enjoyable experience to play. A lot of people who played the beta spoke very positively about the many additions and changes to football gameplay.

Speaking to franchise in the beta: there are several mechanics EA details in their blogs linked to a new feature called the Scenario Engine - breakout scenarios, boss battles, etc. - but those things were mostly not visible in the beta, with a few exceptions which were pretty repetitive. It’s currently believed that most of the Scenario Engine functionality is dependent on the new QB1 mode, which was not part of the beta. In the meantime, it is fair to keep expectations low about the impact of Scenario Engine in Madden 20 until we have the retail build in our hands.

It’s worth noting also that the player ratings spread was not immediately playable in the beta, as the roster was almost entirely carryover data from Madden 19. It was at least visible with draft class generation, but I’m going to guess most people didn’t get to experience a full league of rebalanced players.

[Shosum13]

The gameplay was improved a lot in the beta, I had a lot of fun with that aspect of it. But if franchise mode is your main deciding factor I would wait to see.

The scenario engine sounds like a promising addition but the version of it that was in the beta was very watered down. The ratings spread and more realistic contract demands of players will definitely make a huge difference. My only concern is how will the realistic contracts work with the cap inflation many years in to a franchise. It will be cool that teams hopefully won't be able to retain every star player but I also hope that when you get deep in to a franchise that there aren't a bunch of really good players sitting in free agency because no teams can afford them.

There are a lot of things that still need work in franchise mode. One of my top wants is for them to revamp the scouting system. Instead of just unveiling the top 3 traits it would be nice if as you scouted a player it gave you a range for all ratings. The accuracy of that range would all depend on the quality of your scouting staff, the better your scouts the smaller the range they give or the more accurate they are.

All in all madden 20 showed some promise on the field, but it's hard to get to excited if you're primarily a franchise player like me. I'm just hoping that what we saw in the beta was a very watered down version of both the scenario engine and franchise itself. If the scenario engine works closer to how they initially described it then it has the potential to bring a lot of fun factor to franchise mode.

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