Madden NFL 16 News Post

Madden NFL 16 CFM Impressions Part 2 - Scouting and Drafting (MyMaddenPad)

09:45 AM - June 12, 2015 by Steve_OS

Shopmaster has chimed in again this week with some more Madden NFL 16 CFM impressions. After talking about confidence, regression, dynamic drive goals, new hub and much more last week, he talks about scouting and drafting this week.

Quote:


	This year EA has overhauled the entire scouting process. No more are you going through the entire draft class unlocking the attributes of your choice for a letter grade and then unlocking them again to see what the actual overall for that attribute is. This year �Scouting Points� only unlock a player�s top 3 attributes, with the 3rd unlocked attribute revealing that player�s true draft value. When you first go into scouting you are presented with a list of players sorted by projected draft value. You can press a button to get more details about that player and unlock the attributes or you can unlock the attributes right from the list; which is very convenient for those who just want to spend their points before the week advances. Still no draft board, so while you�ve scouted all of these players, there is still no way to focus in on the guys you really want when the draft starts. This was extremely disappointing because it�s something the community has been wanting for a long time (ever since Madden 10). I understand that they want to get it right, to the point where you can set up your draft board and the CPU will be smart enough to draft for you, but I�d be happy with a band aid right now because sometimes that clock ticks down so fast and there was a reason why you wanted this 5�10 WR over the 6�3 one but you can�t remember what it was without looking at his combine stats and unlocked attributes again. Give us the ability to flag the guys we really want, like our top 10.

Game: Madden NFL 16Reader Score: 7/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / PS4 / Xbox 360 / Xbox OneVotes for game: 24 - View All

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Member Comments

# 81 howboutdat @ 06/12/15 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MajorSupreme


	That's not how it worked at all. Hell, even if you managed to save up all of your scouting points to the offseason, trying to completely scout one rating (number value) for one player takes almost all of your points. You wouldn't know all attributes prior to draft, that's silly. Was it perfect last year? No way, but it's probably one of the best we've had.

Exactly , heck i even bought the extra scouting points package for my coach, and still couldnt scout 85 % of any of the drafts. Sometimes some statement made , makes me wonder if some who make the even played CFM last year. If you actually scouted the letter grade and then number grade, you werent going to get to scout very many people at all . On the other hand ,you could scout more people by just looking up letter grades, however , as mentioned before, there was a large enough variance in the letter grades and the actual number that they = that it really left you sort of guessing still. It created a good opportunity to really have guys overlooked early on in drafts. All these "drafts against just cpu" are never anything like a draft with 31 other owners either. Owners are much much smarter than the CPU will ever be when it comes to drafting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpdavis82


	Look forward to seeing how people feel about scouting once they actually are able to do it for themselves.

No offense JP , i dont have to actually use it at this point to know how it will work, its already been broken down pretty clearly. Also , i know how it works in a league of 31 other players.With a system that only shows top 3 attributes , and showing true draft value, and guys being able to scout 85% of each draft, its pretty simple that it will become hard to find gems in later rounds. I know, cause ive played in a league with others for over 4 years. Its not really rocket science .I hate being punished for having a life outside of madden as well, and if i dont take time to scout every week, i get punished by losing scouting points. Thats just so bogus really, People have lives, offseason they have more time to scout since they arent already setting aside an hour to get a game in, in our busy lives we live.Just a total disconnect between EA and its consumers of CFM really.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas


	Shop said: So does that mean they reveal the actual attributes or is it just the times that are revealed and you don't find out a players true SPD, STR, ACC, AGI, and JMP until they're drafted? And then also: Is the grade purely cosmetic or does it mean anything? And if so, what exactly does the grade represent? Is it just a grade on those physical attributes?

Let me explain how this will end up. Feel free to come back to this post in Sept and just check out if im right, im willing to bet ya money i am. After this game has been out alittle while, someone ( those peps who used to make the cheat sheets) will have spent enough time simming thru drafts, they will have a scale system set up and it will go alittle something like this :

Players 40 yard dash :

4.70 = 92 speed
4.60= 93 speed
etc.etc.etc.

There will be a new style of cheat sheet out . No it may not tell their dev rating, but you will have a pretty dang close,if not right on idea, of the exact number grade for all those attributes mentioned above that are going to be "showcased" thru combine. I liked it alot better in madden 15 , where you got the letter grade , and it was still a pretty good distance in numbers each letter stood for.Because as we know, speed and str kills in madden ,for certain positions. So be ready for a new style of cheat sheet.

# 82 Primo80 @ 06/12/15 11:51 PM

I read the article. Im glad they worked on the draft, which is what it is. Not exciting, actually it's pretty unsurprising. They are just pounding those player ratings into the ground, piling more and more systems and interfaces and code on top, making player ratings more and more important. Throwing confidence and consistency on ratings to simulate week to week development and performance. Ratings tied to goals.

So as far as drafting, there's more risk and more instant satisfaction. The process of finding ratings is still the focus of scouting. Is it overhauled? I suppose you could say that. I mean, its a Madden overhaul.

Hopefully there is something innovative, a departure from the normal method of handling rookies, waiting for us to find out. Because why do you keep a rookie who doesnt have a decent overall, or a good development trait? Every scouting and drafting decision one makes, all culminate in a personnel decision that has already subconsciously been made. Speaking for myself, i already know where each rookie i draft fits on my team before the first preseason game. And thats because of his rating and nothing else.

# 83 StefJoeHalt @ 06/13/15 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by howboutdat


	Players 40 yard dash : 4.70 = 92 speed 4.60= 93 speed etc.etc.etc. There will be a new style of cheat sheet out . No it may not tell their dev rating, but you will have a pretty dang close,if not right on idea, of the exact number grade for all those attributes mentioned above that are going to be "showcased" thru combine. I liked it alot better in madden 15 , where you got the letter grade , and it was still a pretty good distance in numbers each letter stood for.Because as we know, speed and str kills in madden ,for certain positions. So be ready for a new style of cheat sheet.

No need..Madden release an article with this information already in it..the rating czar provided this info with a scale pre-built..ugh

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# 84 StefJoeHalt @ 06/13/15 12:06 AM

JP I have a question..is anyone..and I mean anyone testing this in "one player only mode" not hum vs. hum..to check and see how the cpu drafts? Cause over the past several years it has appeared the game as a whole and its sub sections are only tested for hum vs hum playing..which is why 15 was given such good grades cause it was great to play with a friend or in a full 32 team league..but single player CFM gameplay and CPU logic/coaching/and GM skills were...how u say...lacking

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# 85 Skyboxer @ 06/13/15 12:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas


	This was actually in the game not that long ago. I remember you didn't get the actual attributes, you only got letter grades certain attributes of your rookies until the season started. EDIT: It was Madden 12.

Yeah but what would be better is have the system slowly give attribute updates as the player get's more play time. The more play time the more we "see" how the player really is.

# 86 Skyboxer @ 06/13/15 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StefJoeHalt


	JP I have a question..is anyone..and I mean anyone testing this in "one player only mode" not hum vs. hum..to check and see how the cpu drafts? Cause over the past several years it has appeared the game as a whole and its sub sections are only tested for hum vs hum playing..which is why 15 was given such good grades cause it was great to play with a friend or in a full 32 team league..but single player CFM gameplay and CPU logic/coaching/and GM skills were...how u say...lacking Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Unless things have changed this year EA is primarily focused on Player vs player aspects and not a whole lot on Player vs CPU for the majority of things.

# 87 StefJoeHalt @ 06/13/15 12:21 AM

Skyboxer ur on point..getting rid or hiding rating system all together is best..@CM ur a game designer..is that hard to implement?

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# 88 StefJoeHalt @ 06/13/15 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyboxer


	Unless things have changed this year EA is primarily focused on Player vs player aspects and not a whole lot on Player vs CPU for the majority of things.

And this is a downfall of not only offline CFM but also online leagues..not every league has all 32 teams...hell I hate playing some humans because by nature they will exploit the system to win..(see HGH, etc)..edit: (by testing I mean for gaming not HGH..lol) that type of testing and development needs to stop...if they create a great-good CPU CFM..by default it will be great-good head to head

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# 89 jsteele14 @ 06/13/15 12:42 AM

Not sure why nobody commented on my badass solution to all our issues. You must have missed it.

"You have a scouting department, Maybe 2 people. Each member has positional strengths and weaknesses. As the coach or owner, I am able to direct each member which area I would like them to focus on. By focus I mean spend twice as much time on that position than other positions. Later in the season I can designate individual players I want them to focus on. That way I have some input. I can change the focus at any time. The scouts do their work each week and information on each player starts arriving. Alongside each player is a "Time Spent Scouting" indicator. As the scout spends more time with the player, the more reliable the information provided. That way I will have information on most players but some information I can be more confident in than other info. Scouts are graded based on their accuracy. Given the different amount of time for players, there would be a big negative rating for being wrong on a player heavily scouted and much less negative for being wrong on a lightly scouted player and vice versa.

You can hire and fire scouts after the draft with the accuracy rating determining the level of pay. That seems like a pretty good way to solve all our issues."

Love it or hate it?

# 90 Skyboxer @ 06/13/15 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StefJoeHalt


	And this is a downfall of not only offline CFM but also online leagues..not every league has all 32 teams...hell I hate playing some humans because by nature they will exploit the system to win..(see HGH, etc)..edit: (by testing I mean for gaming not HGH..lol) that type of testing and development needs to stop...if they create a great-good CPU CFM..by default it will be great-good head to head Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep as a primarily a SP gamer this continues to be a major bummer.
I play in CFM Leagues to get the better experience and luckily have been in a few really nicely run leagues.

# 91 DeuceDouglas @ 06/13/15 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsteele14


	Not sure why nobody commented on my badass solution to all our issues. You must have missed it.

Ideas like that have been thrown around here for a while now. I had an idea in my thread a year or so ago where you had five team scouts that all gave you different reports on the players as well as "experts" (Mel Kiper, McShay, Mayock) reports on the same players so you have just an array of data when it came to players. But that's just not where it's headed because it's not "accessible" or "fun". It's hard for me to say because I don't exactly remember how scouting worked in the early 360-PS3 Madden's, but IMO this seems like the worst scouting has ever been.

# 92 Step2001 @ 06/13/15 01:20 AM

So IF scouting is not tweaked/toned down, the House Rules would then be to just Draft based on the players combine Numbers I guess.

# 93 DeuceDouglas @ 06/13/15 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Step2001


	So IF scouting is not tweaked/toned down, the House Rules would then be to just Draft based on the players combine Numbers I guess.

You could scout the first two attributes and have a very minimal idea of what the player is. The third one is where you get the true value.

One tweak I think that needs to be made is to make the process of getting the attributes random. Don't make the first one always be the highest or the lowest. Make it be random so you can't scout a player, get C- for an attribute and know that the player is no longer worth scouting. That would create at least some risk/reward in moving forward scouting a guy. I think another decent tweak would be making the true value a very expensive fourth step so you can maybe do it on five or ten guys at the most but still get all three attributes for a lot of players.

# 94 charter04 @ 06/13/15 02:12 AM

Basically they nailed all this in the NFL head coach 09 system. That game had it all. Things could be tweaked but, the foundation was there.

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# 95 DCEBB2001 @ 06/13/15 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big FN Deal


	Exactly, same thing I was saying in the draft board thread, scouts are apparently a specific part of each teams staff so it makes no sense to be inventing some other way of doing it in Madden. Why implement scouts in Owner Mode as a modifier vs taking that same time to implement them in a realistic manner? http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/3/6...cess-big-board Each teams scouts in-game could prepare a draft board and/or ranking for players in the draft, as well as all applicable player data(combine, collegiate stats, injury history, DPP, etc), NOT actual ratings, being already available/unlocked for everyone, to allow any User the ability to search for their own gems and make preferential changes to their draft board. JP, if you could man, whenever anyone affiliated with creating Madden brings up anything about the game for you to offer your two cent about, consider WWFD (What Would Football Do), meaning before thinking about it in a video game or Madden context, consider the real football context first, then go from there. Of course everything can't be 1:1 for realism to video game implementation but please start from that baseline, when applicable, then work from there. Just to clarify, this is on topic, imo, because this is the slippery slope we end up on in so many areas. We're reminded that Madden has limited resources and they can't address everything at once, so we have to wait for whatever to be addressed, then when they actual address something real football based, if they do so in a drastically unrealistic and/or gamey manner, we're right back where we started, rinse, repeat. Hence where we are now with scouting and drafting, wasting, imo, resources on creating some unrealistic tedious mini-game, that the "casuals" they claim to be targeting, likely won't bother much with anyway. Instead provide a streamlined football based automated scouting/drafting process, with a UI where those that want manual influence, can do so. Heck this concept probably applies to most things in Madden but I digress, the point is you're not going to get people that are mainly interested in just playing the games interested in most elements of weekly management by turning them into mini-games. I say "most" because I think the exceptions, off the top of my head, are practice, drills, etc, any option that allows gamers to actual take the virtual field with players and play but not for routine menu tasks. Reason being, doing so still doesn't negate the fact that most weekly management is still repetitive and tedious, which is the reason they only want to play the games in the first place. So all you end up doing is diminishing the experience of most weekly management for those that find that stuff enjoyable in its' purest form.

I was originally going to quote Step2001's comment from page 2, but you did it already.

I want to pull back the curtain and make a major point:

27 of the 32 teams either subscribe to BLESTO or NATIONAL for their scouting services. These entities compile data for the teams in a report that is compiled every spring. The teams pay hefty dues (in excess of 100k) every year to get the information. NATIONAL runs the combine. All the timing with the P3DX is NATIONAL. All but 2 teams pay for the combine results. The Pats and Raiders still get the official results released a week after the combine via other scouts from other teams - if you think for one second that these scouts do NOT share information with one another, you are ignorant. Information sharing is rampant amongst scouts from different teams. I have it on good authority, that the Pats don't subscribe to National, but yet, they always find a way to get those combine numbers year in and year out. Interesting...

What I am getting at is these teams have more similar information that what you may think. If 27 teams are getting baseline data from 2 primary sources, there is going to be overlap. Where real in-house scouting comes into play is determining if the players, broadly scoped by National and BLESTO, will fit into each team's system. Most coaches have very little say in this regard. Believe me, they have far more important things to do with their offseasons than review tape on college kids. NFL team scouts do most of their legwork on the road to interview these kids during their respective college seasons. It's rare you find one with a stopwatch in hand on a trip to a practice. After all, why bother if National or BLESTO are going to do this for you when it matters in the spring anyway?

So you see, it actually isn't far off to have every team have accessible information. What Madden needs to do is allow you to pick a scouting service (like National or BLESTO) or use your in-house scouts for rookie scouting. Then, the quality of your in-house scouts are used to tell you how well a player will fit within your scheme. If you have a good scouting team, they will be correct most of the time on the advice they give you. If you have a poor scouting team, they will be more likely to recommend to you a player that won't fit your scheme. Make sense?

This then allows you to stack your draft board based on three assumptions:

1. The data you get from the scouting service telling you what your prospect is or isn't.

2. The opinion from your team scouts telling you if your prospect is a good fit for your team or not.

3. Your own opinion as a user to either accept or reject 1 and/or 2 in any combination or weight you see fit.

THAT would make Madden's scouting system realistic.

# 96 Ueauvan @ 06/13/15 05:07 AM

so from what ive read hear and other bits about 16, they want casual or mut or non franchise customers
everything it seems is being dumbed down and obvious elements that should be in for the only franchise that can carry the nfl logo is putting nothing in that actually makes the nfl the nfl
way to go ea sports, but then again you dont care what i think. like a lot of others ill probably end up buying it if for nothing else its got more up to date rosters and i wonder how my 9ers will handle a 3-4 without Pat
JP this is another reason why most of us offline chise or coach mode think ea are blowing smoke every year, every year they promise lots (which in reality means bring back from prior versions) and deliver less than currently available
for some reason the Einstein quote comes to mind
"Repeating an action expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity"
thats us and expectations on madden each year, and im more miffed at the nfl for taking the money and running and not caring

# 97 Mr.Papercut @ 06/13/15 05:40 AM

Madden 15's scouting wasn't the most realistic, but it sure as hell was the best we've had. You couldn't scout everyone nor every attribute of few players because you would've had a very small draft board. Draft results were realistic. You could have per draft maybe 1-2 guys in 75-85 rating scale, and everybody else was below that. By average my draft's best player's ovr was 77, which I think is somewhat realistic. I would have guys from 80 ovr to 60 ovr every draft.

Draft combine results along with the top 3 attributes is a good idea, but the "talent rating" kills it. Most likely we'll end up with projected 5th rounders going in the first 3 rounds, which isn't realistic at all.

# 98 jpdavis82 @ 06/13/15 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Step2001


	So IF scouting is not tweaked/toned down, the House Rules would then be to just Draft based on the players combine Numbers I guess.

Scouting is still being tuned and none of these are final numbers when it comes to CFM, just keep that in mind.

# 99 Step2001 @ 06/13/15 09:39 AM

How's the trade logic during the Draft? Did you try and maneuver up or down the board before selecting a player, If so how was that?

When a trade happens during (any round) is a pop-up shown with more in-depth info on the trade or is this still listed in the Twitter Feed?

JP, how about giving us your impressions of the New Scouting & Drafting? What you liked and didn't like & any advice you gave the Dev's on Scouting & Drafting based on your impressions.

# 100 Reejer @ 06/13/15 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oneamongthefence


	Were there more rookie portraits that you noticed? There was still a bunch of repeats in the same draft. Its annoying when you have multiple same portraits on your team.

I agree, and they could fix this easily. All they have to do is just have an open call, or just walk down the street with a camera and ask guys if they want to be in the next Madden. I am pretty sure that they could get thousands of faces in a few hours, and I would bet that they would do it for free.

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