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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[CM Hooe]

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]

Quote: Originally Posted by PhillyPhanatic14

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]

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.