Crappy news that the PS3 patch was delayed, I've been holding off starting a new game for weeks now.

Yeah, I've been taking it very slow, I didn't want to start over so I'm basically waiting at the start of my first regular season to continue.

Not so quick guys, Josh posted this at 5:17pm (PST)


So, we will have to see what happens.

Here's the link: http://www.operationsports.com/forum...at-news-2.html

Maybe this has already been addressed, but what about the bug where you can only save on certain days of the week during a season?

That's the contract bug where scrubs would ask for tons of money.

I've been playing for like a week now and I'm enjoying the game. It would be nice to update the game but alas, no phone connected. Been able to take the niners to some level of respectability. Tho, Andre Woodsen threw for over 5600 yards in his walk year. I've noticed that OL are a dime a dozen in the game and no one wants a top talent via trade because you can get a slightly cheaper alternative in FA so there isn't a trade market.

Lack of trade market really doesn't bother me, there's usually only a couple trades a year IRL.

Is it possible to re-sign a player during the year if his contract is expiring?

I'd like to know this as well.

Yes, You get a couple of shots to resign them during the year. If you sim the season for whatever reason, you lose the shot to resign them

I'm not worried about that, but I was offering a 92 rated tackle in their last year of their deal and hoping to just get something, like a mid round pick, and no one is even interested

Yes it is possible to resign a player in the last year of his contract.

Around week 3 or 4 in the season, I forget when exactly, but it is before the trade deadline, players in the last year of their contract will start popping up on your clipboard for contract renegotiations. This will continue through the rest of the season, so if you fail to agree on terms during one week, usually in about two weeks there will be another item on your clipboard to renegotiate with that player.

Depending upon the player's personality, I think there is a point when they will no longer enter contract renegotiations with you, if you don't agree to their demands. I haven't encounter this yet.

I'm very glad to see that, trades of players in the last year of their deal are even more rare in the NFL than other trades.

I keep all my players marked as available for trade on my trade block. And, at least during the draft, I usually see several of my lineman listed in a trade negotiation when I select "trade up". As an example, I have a 93 LG, 91 C, 82 LG, all listed with draft picks in offers I can make to the Giants for their 1st round (30) pick in a 2009 draft. And at the moment the Giants have 3 LGs on their team, an 84, 81, and 81. They also have only one center (85) and only one RG (92).

Interesting enough my highest rated LT (91) and RT (80) are not listed anywhere in a trade offer to the Giants for their pick. The Giants have LTs of 90, 61, and 56. They have RTs of 84 and 77.

I will see if I can find a team that is interested in trading for my 91 rated LT.

Football has very little trades that don't happen leading up to or during the draft. It's not nearly like baseball is.

While looking for a team interested in my LT (91), I found teams that also wanted my backup C (81) and starting RG (84). I also finally found a team, the Jets, interested in my RT (80). The Jets have only one RT (79), though they do have 4 LTs with the highest rated (94).

Still haven't found anyone interested in my LT (91). He has 5 years remaining on his contract and will make $3.9 million this year. Also, during the draft while looking for someone interested in my LT, I noticed that at one point in the second round, two out of the three best available players were LTs rated 84 and 82. The third best player is rated 79 and has usually been the player getting picked. It looks like no one is interested in a LT, so what I am going to do is quickly advance the draft and see who picks those LTs, then I will reload my save and see if I can try and trade my LT with those two teams.

The Falcons were the first to draft the 84 rated LT late in the second round. The Eagles traded up to take the 82 rated LT in the third round. At the time they did this, the other top two rated players left in the draft were both RTs. And when they took the 82 LT off the board, the new third highest rated player left in the draft was another LT.

So, I reloaded my save to see if the Falcons or Eagles would show any interest in my rated 91 LT. Neither team had him listed on any of the offers I could make for one of their draft picks on my second run through the draft. At least in my game, it looks like all teams are very well stocked at the left tackle position or do not wish to trade for a LT.

I finally found two teams willing to trade for my 91 rated LT during another attempt.

After the end of the first day of the draft but before day two of the draft begins (between rounds 2 and 3). I was able to go to my roster select my LT and select trade and two teams were interested. The eagles had an initial offer of two 5th round picks for him. And the Texans offered a future 1st and a 3rd round pick for him. So, I guess you just got to be persistant in looking for a trading partner for your LT. Or, reload a saved game often enough.

Thanks for the information. I will keep an eye out for the chance to re-sign them.

Especially in this game where a player comes into your team with 0 knowledge of your playbook, I wouldn't want to trade for any player as a one year guy.

Good point as well.

My girlfriend just bought me this for my birthday, and I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.

FYI for PS3 owners, looks like the patch should only be delayed until sometime next week.

So is the 360 patch up then?

It is now.

Sweet - I'll be firing this one up tonight....

Same here. Can't wait to try this after work.

One thing I don't like. When I start a new career, I can't fire/replace any of my current assistants. So, I'm stuck with them until the 2nd year, correct?

I'll probably be getting this soon now that the patch is out..

I'm wondering how well these will work post-patch? Obviously, FG's will need to be toned back down since the developers fixed that, but also with the RB issues, I'm wondering running related sliders will need to be re-tuned? Any more thoughts about how these were playing pre-patch? I'm debating about trying this set or a set on OS as I start my first career now.

One of the reason that I put RB Ability up was because of the fumbling issue (I started seeing far fewer fumbles). I may need to tune it down some. I haven't played the game in awhile, so I'm going to do some practice games tonight and see what happens. I forget exactly how well my sliders were playing when I stopped, but I wasn't really happy with them overall. I know deep passes were still an issue and I think raising Def. Awareness is the only step left to help fix that.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm think I'm going to give this set on OS a shot, but I'll probably switch to yours if they don't play well.

I'm a bit overwhelmed with the number of choices in creating a coach. 165 different portraits to go through and now I'm having a tough time deciding on my coach's personality.

You're kidding? Why does it seem every game designer gets that wrong? What's the first thing a new head coach do? Hire His staff. It is one of the most important things a HC does.

I think they got DeSean's personality traits on the money (from what little we've seen):

- Driven: Tireless work ethic
- Calculating: Self promotes
- Competitive: Winnging is the goal at the forefront
- Dramatic Tends to overreact to situations
- Prefectionist: Expects everything to be perfect
- Self-focused: Cares about himself and feels the world revolves around him
- Expressive: Never shy about giving his opinion
- Impulsive: Makes decisions on the spur of the moment.


I'm surprised that the NFL allowed some of those negative connotations in one of their games to be assigned to players. I'm looking forward to seeing how those personality traits actually play out.

Just grabbed this off of ebay for $35. Can't wait to dig in. Keep us posted on those sliders if you don't mind, Eaglesfan.

I started playing a new coach dynasty today with the patch out. Love this game.

I can't decide if it is better for my long term success to just work on mastering a few plays in preseason or working on all of the plays to make sure they all stay learned.

Either way, I think Kolb is going to suck in this game for a few years and I think I made things more difficult by not keeping Reid and creating a rookie coach.

Edit to add: The number of stats the game keeps during a game is rather impressive, stuff like how many times the QB threw into coverage, percentage of throws into coverage, throws into double coverage, etc.

I'm not entirely sure how to take this first preseason game.

It's my first preseason game with the new patch, I took over the KC Chiefs for a challenge. I let the computer do some of the practices, and they practiced the Hail Mary play a couple times. I in no way played this game realistically (I relied on basically one play) and only called the offense.

Final Score Chiefs 82 - Bears - 76 in OT

Total offense combined for both teams 1919 yards. (1108 for KC, 811 for Chi)

1086 passing for KC, 618 for Chi, 22 rushing yards KC, 193 for Chi.

The game started off with a kick return for a TD for the Bears. I started off playing very basic, mixing in some run with play action. I had a fumble end both my first two drives, then a pick 6 and quickly found myself in a 24-0 hole. So I figured with nothing to lose after two failed runs, why not try a Hail Mary pass - 80+ yard td. Okay, that was easy - but maybe a fluke... Next drive another 30+ completion, followed by a 40+ TD. Rinse, repeat throughout the game, I think I was stopped maybe 3 times on Hail Mary passes, and eventually did not mix anything else in unless I was stuck within the 10 yard line.

Now, I expected my play to slow down once my second string got in by second quarter (it was 38-26 CHI by then) but they actually did even better.

Starter B.Croyle finished 13 for 19, 419 yards for 4 tds 1 int (the pick 6 in the beginning of the game) thru 2 quarters (all against the first team D)

Backup D.Huard 17 for 29 673 yards 7 tds 0 ints for 2 quarters and 1 play in OT.

The Bears QBs (Grossman/Orton) combined for 6 tds 4 ints.

--

Now again, this is preseason, eventually I was facing the 2nd string D, and it's probably considered 'cheese play' to rely so heavily on the hail mary pass (I didn't even have to switch formations, differential the play or anything) but I really didn't expect it to work to the tune of 82 pts (and more if I hadn't goofed around).

It's a small sample and I'll have to see how it plays out against other teams and during the regular season but I'd still say the passing game is off on default.

I tried some sliders that were similar to Sabotai's but slightly different from OS. They have QB accuracy at 3 and WR catching at 6. It was Philly against Pittsburgh and I think it produced much more realistic stats (than the game in the above post.) McNabb was 2 of 5 for 38 yards before he was injured and taken out of the game for good.

Kolb played the whole game and was 12 of 38 for 157 yards with 1 TD and 3 INT's.

The rushing sliders weren't as high on these sliders as Sabotai's (I think rush blocking is 72 and run ability is at around 60) and if anything I think the rushing numbers were too high for both teams. Both backup HB's had over 100 yards with Dayne getting 160 and Buckhalter getting 112 on just 11 carries. Still, that is easily fixable if it becomes a problem by going closer to default rushing sliders.

Very pleased with the game so far and looking forward to the weekend when I have more time to play.

Actually, I think it means he expects everything to be perfect before it even happens. ;)

I need sliders. Help?? :)

Did you change the defense's sliders at all? Break Block will have a pretty big impact on run defense and pass rush.

They said they weren't going to tune the game at all, but the defensive players on both teams are playing better than they did pre-patch (but this is just on a few games observation - 2 in Coach Now and 1 in Preseason Career). I'll probably take my defensive sliders down 10-15 points on all of them and see how that works.

Nice. Those look yummy. :)

I went with the set on OS. I'll look tomorrow for all of the numbers, but IIRC defensive awareness is at 25 and the comment was that was to help the run game. Knockdowns and interceptions were slightly raised from default (around 60.) Tackling and break block were at 50. However, that slider set was developed pre-patch. From reading about the insane passing numbers pre-patch, and trying those sliders today, I think they toned down the passing some and sliders will need to be reworked.

Should be a fun night tonight!

Yeah, don't even try my sliders, I've already tweaked them a lot from what I posted earlier. I think the devs said the problem with the RB fumbles was fatigue. Whatever they did to fatigue that made fumbles better probably effected every other player too and that may have changed how the game plays some.

I'm going to try an experiment with slider (using my Detroit dynasty). My idea is that since, at its core, it's still Madden's AI, physics, play design, etc. that the game will never really be balanced. All of the sliders I have tried, they have always either made the good players play worse than they should, or made the bad players play better than they should.

I'm going to try and make a system where I adjust the sliders every game based on the talent of the starters of the two teams. For instance, my defenisve line and linebackers is pretty bad, so they should be bad at tackling and breaking blocks, so I'll adjust those sliders down. If I play a team with a great defensive front 7, I'll push those sliders up for the CPU.

So what are the sliders people are using?

I have to ask...why are people using sliders? I have yet to find anything wrong with this game. I've rushed for 100+ yards 4 of 5 games, including two over 150.

You know...this is something that I've always considered. One of my biggest beefs with a lot of sports games is that I never feel like the talent level is that much different. I remember testing out sliders in NCAA and playing a crappy team felt way too similar to playing a USC or Ohio St.