Madden NFL 10 Blog: Customization

[countryboy]

* Fatigue Slider
* Injury Slider
* Accelerated Clock

Equals me...

Probably one of the most exciting non-video/picture/gameplay blogs that we'll ever see. Reading those three things raised my anticipation for this game to the next level.

[TheWatcher]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

The whole point of this blog was that they don't want to force people to play the game a certain way. Not everyone wants to play sim-style, in fact I'll bet most long-time Madden folks don't.

Yeah, I agree, I think that's a sure bet. I wish we represented the majority, but I know we don't. Even though a minority, I think our feedback for improvements is far more impactful though.

[TWeezy]

I feel like i waited an entire week, for something that really didn't matter. This is not anything innovative, or interesting. All you did what put everthing on one screen. I think we deserve another update this week.

[Guillotine 1]

Quote: Originally Posted by TWeezy

I feel like i waited an entire week, for something that really didn't matter. This is not anything innovative, or interesting. All you did what put everthing on one screen. I think we deserve another update this week.

I'll go ahead and place you on ignore now in order to save you from the flamming of your life down the road. No need to thank me.

[countryboy]

Quote: Originally Posted by TWeezy

I feel like i waited an entire week, for something that really didn't matter. This is not anything innovative, or interesting. All you did what put everthing on one screen. I think we deserve another update this week.

may not have mattered to you, but it did to a lot of us.

[coogrfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Megatron2k7

I think some of you are missing my point a little about the speed differential slider. It looks like it would work just fine the way Ian showed it in this blog section (below) from March 9th. In that blog it looks like we would have "realistic speed" at the All Pro and All Madden levels. In this new blog the speed differential slider says as follows... - Full 0-100 slider that compresses the range of speeds between players - Skill levels will change this value by default The problem I'm having here is that what if now all of a sudden we won't have realistic speeds anymore at All Pro, and All Madden levels of difficulty. It says "0-100 range of compression".......does this mean when we play online that we won't be playing at sim speeds because we will probably be playing on All Pro...??? Where on the slider is "sim speed"...??? Why would anyone want to compress the speed differential beyond what is real...??? If the slider worked like it sounded like it would on March 9th, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Playing at sim speeds on All Pro and All Madden is fine. It's the new 0-100 range that is bothering me. I think the game could work just fine without any speed differential slider at all. IMO the speed differential needs to come only in the form of player ratings.... not a slider. It's only my opinion, but I think the differential should remain constant in the game, no matter the diff. level. I don't know why so many of you accept this. Why would you want a player who should run 40 yds in 4.9 sec. run it in 5.6 sec. instead, just to give you an advantage with your speedy players........???.......It's fake. Young players playing on low difficulty levels will all be playing with the Titans, and running Chris Johnson on Pitch Left / Pitch Right, all day. It's going to make those young players rely on speed more than ever. I thought we were headed in the other direction by making speed not be such a dominating attribute....??? I copied the section from that March 9th blog for you to look at below. Sorry this post took up so much space. -- Ratings Changes -- After Donny re-rated every player in the speed rating, and we had tuned our speed curves to truly make our game showcase the differences between the players, we were feeling pretty damn good. Being that speed was our biggest concern though, we wanted to check our sanity and tested some different player ratings and how fast each player (in a specific rating range) ran 40 yards in our game. These results will probably surprise you...they sure did us: D'oh! Looks like we went a little too far! I think we can all agree that we won't be seeing too many folks running a 7.8 second 40 yard dash (video game developers might have those times, but not NFL athletes). This immediately brings to light the very real clash that can exist between fun and realism in sports games. We thought we were dead on - we thought the game felt great, was fun to play, and was really showcasing the differences between players. But when you look at the numbers, it is obvious that doing something that you feel makes the game more fun to play can differ quite greatly from a full realistic simulation. So what do we do? Well, first, we can't break our mantra...again, we're all for realism and authenticity in Madden NFL 10. But also we realize that we're making a game for millions of people, most of which are focused on a fun yet competitive experience, and many of them could probably care less about realistic 40 times. So what's our solution? Read on... Within minutes of seeing these results, we knew right away that we needed to be able to tune the "speed difference" independently, and tune it per skill level. So our engineers built a nice system for us where we can compress this range however much we see fit, and also set the defaults for each skill level as well. You will see below that a good way to make Pro and Rookie difficulties a little easier is to spreads the ranges of speeds out, while on All-Pro / All-Madden we want to emulate real life as much as possible. We want you to boot up and say hello to Sundays in the NFL. These numbers are very subject to change, but here's an example of the speed ranges based on the skill level: NOTE: To be ultra clear, this is NOT the scale we use to determine the speed rating of a player! This showcases how fast a player runs 40 yards currently in our game based on the rating that he is given. Donny determines the actual speed ratings of the players based on many different factors...not just the 40 time of a player. We also realized that you, the loyal Madden gamer, may not agree with these numbers. Many may believe that speeds should always be a constant, and difficulty should be handled in other ways (I sort of straddle that line myself). But to address everyone's concerns, we just went ahead and exposed our tuning values into a "speed differential" slider into gameplay settings. If you want to play on Pro mode but want all of the players to have more realistic speeds, you can do so. If you want to play on All-Madden but want the really fast players to truly feel faster than everyone else, you can do that as well. That way hopefully everyone can be happy. How Realistic Player Speeds Affect Gameplay: Overall Gameplay + 10

*whew*

Another guy who doesn't seem to understand what "customization" means. I keed, I keeeed...

Not everyone wants a "sim experience" (in fact, I would venture a guess that most Madden fans don't). Given that fact, the only way were going to get a sim-type game from Madden is if it's something the user can opt out of if they so choose.

That's where the speed differential slider comes in. It will allow the individual user to tailor the game experience according to their own tastes. If some people want arcade football with lots of big plays, they can just crank that baby up. If others might prefer a grind it out type game with an emphasis on strategy...turn it down. If someone wants something in between, leave it on the default setting for the difficulty level you prefer.

I'm really not seeing a problem here, in fact I think this is one of the better ideas EA has implemented in a long time. It make's it possible for the game to be all things to all people in a way that difficulty settings alone can not.

[joet6683]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ian_Cummings_EA

PS - Accelerated clock (as of right now) doesn't accelerate in the final 2 minutes of each half. I know this has been hotly debated, so if you guys want to bring back that thread again I'd be happy to discuss the decision.

It's a sad day. While giving options for accelerated clock threshold, why not at for having it on under 2 minutes? If I pin a team deep with 1 min left and they need a touchdown, I should feel pretty safe as long as I don't give up big plays. But with no acc clock that 1 minute is equivalent to 3 minutes or so of real clock. More than enough time without any big plays. Boooooooooo.

Edit: So why would anyone want to use no huddle? Why is it in the game? You can call from the playcall screen and get to the line faster than if you no huddle and call an audible (not to mention you can call any play/formation.)

[TDKing]

I didn't feel like reading this whole thread, so do we know if all these sliders will be available for online games ? Online seasons ? and if in this year ONLINE Franchise ?