Re-doing Ratings in EA Football - Phobia's Blog

Phobia's Blog

Re-doing Ratings in EA Football

Posted on January 7, 2013 at 04:49 PM.

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***This is a excerpt from a post I made in a thread on OS***

A decade of layered code on top of code has rendered the gameplay & rating connection to be by far the biggest head scratching debacle.

Instead what we see each year is a "section" of code rewritten or modified to get new intended results, like the passing changes of this year. Because of how much layered code has been compounded on top one another going in and simply fixing how the ratings interact with the gameplay is a massive undertaking.

Honestly how the ratings interact with one another need to be greatly simplified. It should not take a degree from MIT to breakdown the logic of the ratings. Plus the interactions with the ratings is so interwoven if makes for a mess of randomness.

A simple explanation of what I mean is this.

Strength should mean just that pure strength. So a 350 pound offensive lineman with a 90 strength should completely man handle a 160 pound CB play in and play out. Just powering him back. Where the CB can turn the tides is his speed to get around him before the lineman can get a hand on him. Instead what we get is a 350lb lineman standing up patty caking a 160lb CB as if they hand fighting.

Quit making our NFL players into girly man-women.

Now where things get really complicated for the user is when you got to assess all these ratings together. Ok so he is a 80 awareness, 75 pass block, ohhhh but he is a 93 run block so he is a run blocker, but wait he is only a 79 in strength so he is weak, oh but wait he is a 90 in impact block so he must do something good right??? Then you are not only comparing all these different intangibles to how they apply in the game yet you are trying to decipher this among hundreds of players and who to start, who to draft, etc.

Strength should be just that, speed should be just that, pass block skill should be just that, block shed skill should correlate against their block skill, and on and on. Yet even with all this comparison it should be in a easy form to look at and process. Showing a DT ratings then see everything from his throw power to his kick accuracy is just flat out DUMB and wasted time and space for the user to see how the player "SHOULD" perform.

I personally think ratings are hard to turn into "on-field" actions and it appear realistic. Real players are not rated, it is speed, power, agility, and mental ability against one another. Of course you have the specific abilities such as throw strength and accuracy but most players are not defined in this manner.

A 6'2" big CB such as Browner with the Seahawks naturally has a better time being physical and jamming WRs because of his physical size. Yet in madden this has to be accomplished by adjusting 6 or so ratings just to "appear" as if it will affect how he players like this. His natural WEIGHT and STRENGTH should dictate how he will battle a WR against their WEIGHT and STRENGTH. Then once the jam is finished his SPEED, AGILITY, ACCELERATION, and AWARENESS should dictate how well he can cover the corner versus his same physical and mental skill set.

My point is that all these ratings confuse things and do not reflect how players play naturally on the field. About the only rating I can see differently as a "subjective rating" would be something like "play maker" and have it give bonuses to the other abilities to mimic guys who are just naturally that superstar ability or that "IT factor" we hear about, someone like Polamalu, Suggs, Manning, etc. Isn't this how real players are challenged against one another?