Madden NFL 22 Home Field Advantage Post-Mortem

[CM Hooe]

It's been six months. How do you all feel about this feature, one of the main back-of-box bullet points of Madden 22?

I'm going to add my thoughts in a subsequent post following this as to separate them from the topic question.

[CM Hooe]

Personally, I think Home Field Advantage in Madden 22 leaves a lot to be desired.

Let me start with the positives, though:

I enjoy the Gameday Condition mutators - the neutral modifiers which aren't attached to the momentum bar. Those modifiers do meaningfully impact the game-day experience in an interesting way, especially the environmental modifiers which slow the kick meter speed in dome stadiums, increase player fatigue rates during warmer games, increase kick and punt distance in high altitude stadiums, and so on. These modifiers are well executed; for the most part I can not only read how they are changing the game but also feel their impact.

I similarly enjoy, to a lesser extent, some the team-specific home-field modifiers. Specifically, I enjoy the ones which confer a bonus not tied to the momentum meter. Some notable ones I like are:
- 49ers / Washington Football Team: "Unstable Ground" (away team has decreased agility / change of direction)
- Bears "Bear Down" (away team kick meter moves quicker)
- Bills: "Downwind" (away team kicking arc moves erratically)
- Broncos: "Mile High" (away team has less per-play stamina)
- Chiefs "Home of the Chiefs" (away team offensive audibles can fail)
- Cowboys "Deflected" (away team has reduced punt distance from beyond midfield)
- Dolphins: "Made In The Shade" (home team fatigues slower)
- Steelers: "Terribly Distracting" (away team hot routes can fail)

You might notice a theme to the ones I like - they are obvious and tangible.


What I don't like:

I like no part of the momentum bar. I do not like the UI element - it is too prominent, it is distracting, and it takes up valuable screen real estate. I do not like many of the bonuses conferred by the momentum bar (which tend to be static rating increases such as improved run blocking, improved catching, etc.). I do not like that the game stacks on a bonus for teams that are performing well; it is literally quantified power creep, or whatever the opposite of rubber-banding is. This last one might be an anecdotal me-thing and not actually true, but I also feel like the momentum bar favors the CPU on All Madden.

I do not like any stadium abilities which merely offer changes to momentum gains and losses on the momentum bar. Those feel outright lazy, and I don't like the momentum bar anyway.

Arugably most damning, I do not like how poorly the effects of the various stadium abilities and environment modifiers are communicated to the user during gameplay. There's an adage in cinema of "show, don't tell"; this also applies to video games, but the designers of home-field advantage in Madden 22 just didn't get the memo. Many of the stadium abilities and environment factors are so reliant on just text for communicating information to the player, and because that's the only way information is delivered, the entire feature set is not paid off nearly as strongly as it could have been otherwise.

Some examples of the missing visual payoff: you never see players with hands on hips as a sign they are fatiguing faster in Denver or Miami. You don't see players stumble more in San Francisco or Washington as they struggle to keep their footing on the long grass. You don't see any unique kicking / punting / place-holding animations in stadiums where there are environment modifiers which affect special teams (Bears / Bills / Cowboys). You don't ever see the CPU quarterback attempt to call an audible in Arrowhead Stadium only for that audible to fail. The CPU quarterback never calls hot routes, so the CPU offense can't possibly fail that check when you are playing a home game as the Steelers. The CPU has no need to view its play art, so the Seahawks' "Home of the 12s" ability (distorted coach cam play art) has literally zero effect against them. Similarly the Colts' "Hat Count" ability gives the CPU no advantage because the CPU never uses the Hat Count UI, and the CPU never uses Playmaker to flip its run play. Heck, I don't even recall there beyond dynamic crowd volume to pay off any part of the momentum bar, or any commentary triggers for the stadium M-Factors.


I am obviously not in charge at Tiburon, but if I were in charge, some changes I would want to make to momentum in a future iteration of Madden:

- Get rid of the momentum UI and all stadium factors tied to it. Get rid of the power creep for winning teams and snowballing outcomes caused by the momentum bar. Reclaim that screen real estate for literally anything else; ideally nothing else, I would like to have clean screen to show off the game's visuals.
- Change each stadium M-Factor unique for each environment to a Gameday Condition mutator and make it always-on, even for neutral site games.
- Replace all stadium M-Factor abilities which modify the momentum bar with something more tangible that does not require a momentum bar. Since I just dumped out the momentum bar, those previously-authored abilities are no longer relevant.
- Ensure that CPU teams are affected by any and every modifier that exists; if there's a modifier which isn't applicable to the CPU team, either replace it with something which does affect the CPU or add a secondary effect which only applies for CPU-controlled teams.
- Add lots of on-field animation visual payoff, along with crowd and commentary audio payoff, for each modifier and M-Factor so the user may more obviously see, hear, and feel the effects of any modifier they have to overcome.

In conclusion, I think Home-Field Advantage in Madden 22 has some value, but it has a very half-baked feel. It feels like a barebones minimum-viable-product version of a better home-field advantage feature. Going forward, I hope to see Tiburon keep and refine the parts of the system that work and replace the parts which don't.

[NYJin2011tm]

I like it but can't really explain in detail why I like it. Simply I just like gaining momentum and trying to keep it or if I don't have it trying to get it back. Sort of like a game within a game. But I think there should be an option to turn it off all together or just turn off the display of it for those that don't like it.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

I'll be honest, I play H2H exclusively and I could never quite separate the effects of the momentum meter from those of the gameplanning feature. But I routinely found my defensive calls being totally bungled by the AI and receivers running wide open the whole game. Similarly, the momentum to me seemed to favor the team which scored first, so a number of my games felt like I would give up an opening drive score and then spend the rest of the game with leg weights on trying to catch up.


FWIW, I found the College Superstar KO mode to play a much better game, and that had Momentum but no Gameplanning, so its possible my complaints are misplaced - but still.


Home Field Advantage was far and away my favorite feature from the NCAA franchise so to see it (IMO) bungled so badly was very disheartening.

[jbd345]

I enjoyed it. Only thing I didn’t like was that it seemed a little unbalanced. CPU got more momentum than I did at times for the same type of plays (td’s, interceptions etc.) could definitely be expanded on.

[lilrosati56]

I'm a big fan, it adds much needed spice and it add an extra layer of strategy. There's a real fear in losing the momentum that can affect your play calling and I really like that.

[Iteachpercussion]

Overall I enjoyed the momentum system. I think it helped to replicate some of the flow of a real game and how good teams can keep control of a game. It was not overpowered and the momentum could certainly shift.

From a graphic/presentation standpoint, I was not happy about that. The meter at the top of the screen was ok, but I would rather see it less often. The graphic explaining the effects at the bottom right of the screen needs to only be shown when momentum changes and creates one of the effects. It certainly does not need to be there all of the time. The explanation for the icons should be in a menu if you pause the game. I do not want to try to read the description while also trying to call plays and make adjustments.

So again, I think the system itself is good, but needs tweaked a bit, especially in how the information is presented.

The full home field advantage system is one I think is good also, but I am not a fan of all of the advantages. Some seem to make little sense and seem to "gamey" and not based on real football. I think they should also be dynamic in franchise mode. Years of poor performance should, at the very least, affect the degree to which the HFA works. Also, building a new stadium, or moving a team should change or at least have the chance to change what HFA there is for that team.

[Grey_Osprey]

It's another poorly tuned and implemented feature, especially if you play one side of the ball and sim the other. And some of the perks are just silly and unrealistic.

I've had instances where trailing by 10 pts AT HOME, my receivers/team can't hear audiables/hot routes. On the road, ok (to an extent) but at home, when every team uses hand signals to communicate, little gimmicky and unrealistic.

And there gave been times late in games when I'm up by multiple scores, and the cpu manages to get a late score....and full momentum bar with 2:00 left and still down by multiple scores. I've even ran the ball down the field, up by 10 or more, and with less than 10 sec on the clock, inside the cpu 10 yard line, they still had almost a full momentum bar. Again, poorly tuned; a franchise norm.

I liked it in NCAA, but don't care for it in Madden. There needs to be an option to turn it off like the superhero abilities.

Sent from my SM-S205DL using Operation Sports mobile app