10 Things most needed for Madden’s Online Franchise - Danimal's Blog

Danimal's Blog

10 Things most needed for Madden’s Online Franchise

Posted on February 11, 2010 at 05:46 PM.

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I think to the hard core Madden fan the online franchise added in Madden 10 is something that is adding life to the game, even in it’s limited form. Even though it was hinted we would get feature upgrades because the system was “server based” those upgrades never came. While that certainly scares me a little, I can’t see EA removing this feature from the game. So how can we improve it?

Ask most Madden players and they are going to tell you we need contracts, cpu trades and better free agency. I won’t disagree with any of those, but you won’t find them in this list because there are many other items that need to be addressed before those in my opinion.

1. Commissioner Options – If you can do it in the game, you should be able to do it on the web. We also need more controls. You should be able to:
a. Advance the week
b. Sim and individual game.
c. Reset a game.
d. Heal injuries

2. Improve CPU Drafting – This really should be number one on the list. CPU teams are horrible at drafting and keeping their rosters in tact. In our second year we had 5 teams with one QB on the roster, I had 2 teams with only 3 CB’s. New Orleans used their first draft pick on the best QB in the Draft Pool

3. CPU Roster Management – I’ll admit without contracts, a proper free agency or cpu trades this is impossible to implement fully. However you could alert the commish when a team is below roster limits. In fact how does the CPU even play a game with 1 QB?

4. Coach Only Mode – Believe it or not there are a number of people who would like to have their league be determine by play calling and let the cpu run the plays. You have coach only mode in the game, why can’t an online franchise have it?

5. Custom Sliders and Options – Plain and simple, Madden 10 was about playing the game your way. They just forgot the part about “except in online franchise” I should be able to select game speed, turn off fight for the fumble and for the love of all that is holy use custom sliders.

6. Penalties – More then likely the result of no sliders, Madden has never been good in this area but with sliders this year it is decent. Total number of penalties for human vs human games year one in our franchise with 22 players. SIX

7. Website | Stats – I can’t believe this is not currently available. The information is there, a user wrote a script that pulls stats for leaders etc. There is no excuse for this other then no funds were devoted to the web interface. The iPhone interface is better then the web interface.

8. Website | Owners – The owners should be able to add and drop players via the web. It defeats the purpose if a league owner has to go into the game. I usually handle this for my players to save them the trouble.

9. Website | Functionality – Lets get what is there working. Depth Charts rarely save correctly and a failure can cause your actual roster in game to get fubared. The video highlights section is hit or miss. Like I said when your iPhone app is better then your site, you have not done a good job.

10. Website | Scouting: You should be able to have a wealth of information as a coach. What plays does a team run the most, how about on first down, 3rd and less then 3? I could spend a whole article on a proper scouting report, the point is you should be able to see that information.

11. Spectator Mode – Ok I agree this isn’t a must which is why it is #11. But I can’t believe I can be a spectator in an online shooter but can’t watch a Madden game being played. Imagine if you could watch your franchises playoff’s and Super bowl. Better yet imagine playing and hearing comments from league members.

Here is my biggest fear, EA will devote little resources to this mode. I base this on the constant discourse we heard before Madden 10’s release that “we can make the most requested changes because it is server based”. I can’t believe that was an outright lie, so obviously it is not a priority.

However if they do work on this mode, they can no longer use the crutch “we wanted to get something, instead of nothing”. Players are expecting a much more robust and a much better functioning online franchise in Madden 11, let’s just hope EA feels the same way.

Comments

# 1 CreatineKasey @ Feb 12

I personally think a big addition would be some kind of player value or salary cap system. Half the fun of franchise is the economy end of it, and outside of me creating one it really isn't present inherently in the game.