High Difficulty Sliders/An Open Letter to Valdarez

[Victor Fox]

Let me start this thread off by saying I'm a huge fan of Valdarez's sliders and set of Madden Challenges. The primary point of creating my own set of sliders is to help combine the difficulty of playing his NFL Simulation Sliders on his All-Madden/Legendary Challenge with the fun/strategy of calling your own plays.

I mentioned to Valdarez on another thread that I was easily going 16-0 on his sliders even while using the All-Madden Challenge. He suggested I try the Legendary Challenge and I still went 12-4 with little difficulty, my four losses mostly coming from Coach calling a HB Gut while down 14 and under 5 min left to play on a 3rd and long.

That said, let me preface my silders by saying that these have been made/adjusted by starting out with Valdarez's sliders and then tweaking until a running game became consistent with both Player and CPU, helping to simulate good drives on both sides of the ball. Passing has been made far more difficult on the Player side not by making the human QB play like a ritard, but by making the CPU defense a lot more aggressive.

That said, I hope you enjoy these sliders, any feedback/criticism would be greatly appreciated.

-Victor Fox

High Difficulty Sliders

Game Options
Game Clock: 13 min Quarters
Play Clock: 20 second runoff
Play Call Style: Advanced
Fatigue: 55
Game Speed: Normal
Speed Threshold: 30
Coach Mode: Off
Fight for the Fumble: OFF
I keep it on Advanced mostly because I like the replays. Remember to adjust your game clock and playclock runoff to suit your own play style. Whatever you need to get around 110-120 plays per game. I also took it off FFtF because I dislike button mashing and it didn't seem realistic. To each his own.

Sliders for Humans!

Passing
QB Acc: 30
Pass Block: 10
WR Catch: 40

Rushing
Broken Tackles: 35
Run Blocking: 45
Fumbles: 70

Pass Defense
Reaction Time: 50
Interceptions: 5
Pass Rushing: 70

Rush Defense
Reaction Time: 25
Block Shedding: 0
Tackling: 50

Sliders for Computers!

Passing
QB Acc: 40
Pass Block: 15
WR Catch: 40

Rushing
Broken Tackles: 50
Run Blocking: 70
Fumbles: 65

Pass Defense
Reaction Time: 70
Interceptions: 15
Pass Rushing: 85

Rush Defense
Reaction Time: 55
Block Shedding: 25
Tackling: 65

The basic idea here is to enable your offensive players to make great plays, to enable you to call fun/exciting plays, and to have a CPU defense that is able to consistently stall your drives and punish you for poor play calling. I hate having a slider set that either forces you to make bad playcalls or otherwise makes your top rated QB throw like a high school freshman.


Penalties
Offside: 100
False Start: 100
Holding: 60
Facemask: 60
Def. Pass Int.: 100
Off. Pass Int.: 100
KR/PR Interference: 72
Clipping: 65
Int. Grounding: 75
Roughing the Passer: 80
Roughing the Kicker: 80

Special Teams
FG Power: 50
FG Accuracy: 15
Punt Power: 55
Punt Accuracy: 70
Kickoff Power: 50
As a general rule, I only the right control stick while kicking: on FGs, punts, and kickoffs. By not adjusting the angle of the FG (high-arcing and line drive), this allows for a kicker with 91 Kick PWR to fall short on a 49 yrd FG, while a 99 KPW puts it through.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think.

[Tash]

I will try these when I get home and post stats. I think I will try this matchup: Dallas Cowboys (me) vs. Philadelphia Eagles

If you have tried them off then post the stats so I can see if they were good with you

[Valdarez]

Hey Victor, glad you took the challenge man. You sure played through a season fast. Looking at the sliders, it looks like you actually made the running game easier, and pumped up the INTs (15) for the CPU.

I've been working on a final set on the NFL Simulation Sliders, and one of the changes I have is making the running game a bit easier. I have a pretty good idea how to make the game easier and harder now, while keeping it fairly realistic. At least, as best as we can do without fixing the horrible play calling by the CPU (this is what's really broken IMHO).

Once I get the final set posted, I'll do a slightly harder one, followed by an easier one, and then followed by a even harder slider set. That will be 4 total. Think of it as Rookie, Pro (current slider settings), All-Pro, and All-Madden.

[Victor Fox]

That sounds awesome, Valdarez. And yeah, I'm a recent college graduate on the job hunt, which means i have time for around 5 games a day in my franchise. 1 season only takes about four days.

Definitely post your stats, Tash, I'll do the same with the next game I play.

The main reason for these sliders (besides simply making a set that I felt comfortable with) was to make the running game more palatable for me. A good RB can get 6 or 7 YPC while a decent RB can get 2 or 3. With past sliders, I was getting about 3.5 YPC with beasts like Steven Jackson or AP, and only 1 YPC with players like Marion Barber or Joseph Addai (har har, I know that's realistic for Addai).

The other reason for this slider set is to make scoring a lot harder. At the end of my most recent season, I averaged 42 pts per game, while giving up 32 pts per game. Both of these numbers are way too high for your average NFL team (especially for a team going 13-3).

With these sliders, I've been getting much more realistic scores (17-10, 22-17, etc) and feel a true sense of accomplishment when putting up more than 28 pts.

My current franchise (The Los Angeles Firebirds, formerly the Texans) is on a 4-3 start to the season--my worst ever--and I couldn't be happier.

[Tash]

Now I got the chance to play the game.

Eagles @ Cowboys (me) 31-36

Scoring summary:
1st quarter:
Felix Jones, 3 yard run

2nd quarter:
Jeremy Maclin, 46 yard pass from McNabb
LeSean McCoy, 1 yard run
Patrick Crayton, 26 yard pass from Romo
Shaun Suisham, 33 yard FG

3rd quarter:
Shaun Suisham, 40 yard FG
David Akers, 32 yard FG

4th quarter:
Miles Austin, 8 yard pass from Romo
LeSean McCoy, 48 yard pass from Kolb
Shaun Suisham, 40 yard FG
Marion Barber, 10 yard run
Cornelius Ingram, 61 yard pass from McNabb

Team stats:
Total yards: 445 / 485
Rushing yards: 38 / 196
Passing yards: 407 / 289
3rd down conv.: 1-8 (12%) / 4-11 (36%)
Total plays: 47 / 72 (119 plays)

Individual stats:

Passing:
Tony Romo: 24/36 (66%), 295 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INT
Donovan McNabb: 20/35 (57%), 359 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INT

Rushing:
Marion Barber: 25 att, 134 yards (5,3 avg), 1 TD
Felix Jones: 5 att, 42 yards (8,4 avg), 1 TD
LeSean McCoy: 8 att, 24 yards (3,0 avg), 1 TD

I don't think the receivers stats are that important - mostly the drops:

Roy Williams and Patrick Crayton had 2 drops each and Miles Austin had one. For the Eagles Jason Avant dropped 3 passes.

Sacks:
Trent Cole, 1 sack

If there is more that you need to know, let me know.

[robstar975]

Victor I just wanted to openly thank you for making Madden one of my favorite games again. I used your sliders and have found them to work awsome. I have never had more epic games and only joined this site to to send you my compliments. Keep up the great work.

[tgballin]

these sliders are awesome.
i upped the quarters to 14 and speed thresh to 35 and increased cpu pash rush +5 and -5 cpu int.
personal preference as i wasnt getting enough plays.

so, thanks to victor fox and valderez for providing the base slider set. good job guys.

[Mecca]

I started my next franchise season with these to see what kinda game I would get and in a preseason game with my starters only playing a half, I racked up 42 points and won 42-13.

I do think if you're team is put together a certain way there are no sliders or settings that will keep you from scoring. I have full boxes on everything on offense and my QB is a 93 overall so I pretty much just go up and down the field no matter what at this point.

I guess it makes sense though my teams rating is higher than all of my opponents now.