How to Make Madden Appealing to Text-Simmers

[Jono078]

This is my sort of article!

The biggest thing missing from a true sim game is having the little stories of pre season battles, players not performing during the season and being benched.

Id like to see the "coaches clipboard" thing be upgraded with a bit of graphics and more newspaper look than just a bunch of boxes with text.

For the first one id like there to be big stories and if it's and injury it displays picture of that player, and what happened. And then asking you what you want to do just like in game when someone gets injured, I believe head coach did this too.

You just want all the big things to jump out at you like Head Coach.

Also as mentioned in the article, You can't sim seasons and be satisfied when you see outrageous stats. They need to be pretty close to realistic give or take a bit, but not by as much as we see in;

QB YPA - All to low and probably even completion %
Rushing Yards and AVG - Way to high, for everyone.
Sacks - Again to high, if they were even halved it would look much better but maybe a bit low.

Then you want an entertaining draft which sucks you in so you know the players you are going for, NFL head coach did awesome job of that.

Biggest thing as I said though, is for those of us who just simulate endless seasons is we need some stories to see whats going on around the league and within our own team, we want to know if we should go with that young player, cut the players affecting team morale, time to get a new coach etc.

[Jump]

Surprisingly, all the things you mentioned would not alienate the casual base at all. Win for everyone.

[Trooper]

Thanks for that man!

[SHAKYR]

This is a great article you had written. I totally agree with you. You made me smile when I read this, I feel this way about all my sports games especially boxing(Fight Night series).

The text-sim players want to play Madden, Fight Night, and other games but they want gameplay, depth, customization, and many options

[GlennN]

I'd be happy just with two of your points, as they are my prime gripes - ratings need to matter, and stats need to be within reason.

[jWILL253]

Catch 22: They make a real sim in Head Coach, but it lacks graphically. On the other hand, they have great graphics in Madden 10, but the franchise mode is lackluster.

Look at it this way: MLB 09: The Show's SEASON MODE has features that most other FRANCHISE MODES don't have; then, you go to The Show's Franchise Mode, and you're overwhemed. The Show is a great model to use as an example for a good Franchise Mode.

PS: Operation Sports has to do a better job of identifying REAL sim gamers. I played someone in Madden online that was an OS member that claimed he was a "sim gamer". But, all he did was call I Formation runs on offense, and 44 Bear blitzes on defense. And, when I was killing him with the Saints, he said I was cheesing.

Rant over...

[Cryolemon]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jump

Surprisingly, all the things you mentioned would not alienate the casual base at all. Win for everyone.

Exactly. People (including some of the text simmers, just read some threads on the ootp boards) seem to think that text sims and games like Madden are mutually exclusive. They shouldn't be.

As I've said any number of times, a baseball game with OOTP's sim engine and MLB: The Show's graphics / gameplay would be the GOAT by far.

[SA1NT401]

Personally, ratings aside from a select 3 or 4 are MEANINGLESS...POINTLESS and literally a waste of time. OL/DL ratings are pointless as a 56 ovr DE (he had 12 sacks and 3 INTS in my chise) is just as effective as a 99 ovr (Allen had 36 sacks LMAO)...but his stats were inflated by the pathetic sim engine.

ratings really need to be straightend out....We all know 80% of them are just cosmetic and literally mean squat. Developer should admit the current 0-100 scale is flawed beyond repair due to the engine EA uses.