Madden NFL 12 Blog - No Additions This Year For Online Franchise Mode

[CRMosier_LM]

Quote: Originally Posted by TimsGiants

I just hope they cover Dereks expenses server wise so online franchisers wont have to pay more for features you would think EA should have in by now. I dont see anywhere in his blog about charging for LM which is good. But I hope he is compenated somehow for his work.

I know I have been pushing the compensation idea pretty hard. Dude has put over a year into his site and a woke lot of nights with zero sleeping. He has advertising right now and is working getting bigger companies to advertise. Between that and donations from site members... That's how it is currently funded.

[heurelho]

Quote: Originally Posted by Broncos86

Until Online Franchise overtakes offline franchise in terms of most played, that doesn't hold water when discussing Madden.

Completely flawed logic

They've only released one version of online franchise and have NEVER updated it. It would blow Offline Franchise out of the water if it had the features offline did

[GGEden]

My suggestion to EA would be this...

With new consoles to release in late 2012 to early 2013. Don't make a Madden 13, especially not the typical annual development/release cycle, where they maintain and slap on more bandaids on a tired old engine, update rosters, take some features out, put some ones in, slap it with a new coat of paint.

Instead, come August 2012, just release a patch for M12, with updated rosters, tweak a few things, and let M12 continue to sale. Do this so as to spend the next two years devoted to developing a new Madden for August 2013 for the new consoles. Totally rebuild. Use a new next-gen engine, dynamic/unscripted, real-time physics, and glean every single good suggestion from these OS boards. Just totally re-invent Madden, re-invigorate/innovate. Take that two years time to devote for finally that truly "next-gen" standard game, that's jam-packed with features and game-play focused. Once you have foundation in place with the release of M14 for PS4/720/WiiU, then for M15 focus can be turned towards the leap in graphics/ram/direct-x.

Then EA will get that breakthru, selling 15 million to 20 million games in a year globally. Instead of the 5-6 million.

[Danimal]

ONLY WARNING

This is not going to turn into a debate thread on why one mode is better then others.

You want to post and react to the news and state your opinion that is fine. You will not start telling other people they are wrong for theirs.

Hopefully that is understood.

[StL_RamZ]

Smh no wonder why they have released info on online franchise last....and I still cant understand why can't they just use the same franchise as offline...appears I will be passing on madden this year...

[canes21]

Well, I probably won't be buying Madden until it goes on sale or drops in price. Three years ago we were told that Online Franchise would be pretty generic, but they would be able to add our most wanted features to the mode because they built it on a server. We were told they would be able to add salary caps, trade logic, etc. throughout the real NFL season and it should match the offline franchise quickly. Well, Madden 10 comes out, I buy it and start an online franchise and we get in a season, but it was so bland we didn't want to do a second one until they put in the updates we were promised. So we waited and waited and waited and there was never a single update outside of one roster update(that was still wrong).

Madden 11 roles around and it has no updates either, but there was still hope they could update it throughout the year like they previously said. Nothing happened to it either besides some roster updates. Now Madden 12 is here and we still have no updates. What is the deal?

If EA doesn't want to update it because no one really plays it, that's ridiculous. Who wants to play an online franchise that is pretty much 16 play now games with friends? The mode is never going to get much traffic until EA can deliver on the promises from 3 years ago. Look at NCAA. Online dynasty is probably played 10x as much as online franchise because it matches the offline dynasty in every single feature. Nothing is left out this year in the online dynasty.

This is disappointing news, but not all too surprising. Like I have already said, I'll be waiting to buy Madden later in the year because I just don't see a big enough draw to make me want it day one. Since the introduction of online dynasty in NCAA 09 I have probably played close to 50 seasons in OD's with 09, 10, and 11. I look to add another 10+ this season too with NCAA 12. In offline dynasty I have probably played 7-8 seasons since 09 because once I played in an online dynasty I couldn't really get into an offline dynasty.

Madden 12 looks to have a good franchise finally this gen, but I have gotten to the point where I don't really care much about the offline franchise, but I do the online franchise because that is what most interests me in all sports games.

[PacMan3000]

Quote: Originally Posted by GGEden

Notice what the EA guy said in defense initially, talking up all the cosmetic stuff, the million cameras for cut-scenes that people will just skip thru anyway, 3D grass etc etc. If there's one thing I personally criticize EA the most for is their utter focus on cosmetics/graphics over game-play/features/engine. Game-play > graphics, always. I still can look at the graphics of Madden 04 on, or 2k5, or APF, or NFL Gameday, etc, and it's still "good enough". It would still be good enough if the actual Madden 12 game had a ton more features, innovations, a new engine, more dynamic unscripted-like, new pre-snap adjustment and passing mechanisms, create a play, revolutionizing/streamlining packages etc etc....all the great suggestions people on OS have been posting for months and years.

Sorry man, but Madden on the old gen was horrible visually. I played it and had a ball until I transitioned to NFL 2K, but it looked really bad. Not to mention some of the ridiculous tackle animations, most notably the Ack-I've-Been-Shot-In-The-Back tackle.

Don't knock graphics and presentation. That stuff matters along with gameplay, and is a big reason why people adore The Show and NBA 2K.

[IndyColts2]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dewiel

Obviously we wished we could have gotten to the Online Franchise portion of the game this year,but we needed to first make sure the offline experience was where it needed to be and after 100 new additions/improvements along with the numerous gameplay improvements, presentation upgrades, and the HUGE online announcement that we have coming on July 25th, we ran out of time. Some of wondered why we didn't mention this with our offline franchise and that's because we were still hard at work in the development process and did not want to to make this announcement until we knew for sure what we'd be able to get into the game this year. As I stated earlier, we are dedicated to improving the online franchise experience and I think the addition of Roy Harvey as the new Executive Producer of Madden should make you guys feel the same way. Just take a look at the work that has been done with Online Dynasty under his watch over the years and you'll start to get a sense of the dedication that the new leadership team has.

100 new improvements is what the FIFA team does with 3 features (exaggeration for those who don't comprehend well). FIFA year in and year out tries to improve the game and it shows. They might not have the most amazing presentation as of yet, but the gameplay, career mode, online modes, and pretty much every mode you can play is well-done. I am pretty tired of hearing the excuses that you guys make no offense. Honestly speaking right now, the gameplay improvements that you guys have been making the past 5 years, are not improvements. I haven't seen the gameplay change once yet. I have been playing football, Madden, and NCAA for the past 10 years of my life and I can assure you that these games should not even be advertised because of how bad they are. The fundamentals of the game are not there at all. You guys bring in one big feature every year and the next year it's taken out.

Physics. Not just tackling physics, but the way a player moves, the way a player plants his feet while running and changing directions, the way a player reacts to contact, not just a tackle, but a block or a body part being hit in any spot at any angle. The physics of the ball being thrown, the ball being tipped, the ball in the air with wind blowing strong enough to affect it, the ball rolling on the ground in normal or inclement weather. These things are not implemented in the game the right way, if they are in the game at all.

But this would lead to a whole different wishlist that will never be fulfilled. What I am saying is that if we were to post a thread here saying, "Why hasn't EA put more work into gameplay then they did for presentation this year?" The answer by you, or your co-workers, or any other person on these boards would be, "EA has different people assigned to different jobs to work on Madden, the people who work on gameplay do not affect what happens in the presentation aspect." So, if that is true, then that would mean that EA would have a different team working on each mode or each major aspect of the game, right? If this is the case, you would have a team for the physics side of the game, actual gameplay, presentation, offline franchise/season, online franchise, online play, superstar mode, etc. Right? If so, that would mean that those who work on the online franchise did what the past 3 years? Nothing? So you mean to tell me that the people who worked on Online Franchise have had 3 years off? That doesn't sound right.

Now I do understand, and while you, EA or any other company would ever say it, that you do have to keep things out of your product in order to keep the game going every year to get the most profit. But, even if you worked as hard as possible to make the best game in all sections of the game, and you did, you still wouldn't have a perfect game. Nothing is perfect. So if you did decide to do this you would think, people are going to buy this and skip the next season! Wrong. Even if you made the best game ever, there would still be things to improve on, which would mean the next year, you would have the best game ever again because you made the game better then last year. Which is what you guys are trying to make it look like is happening now, except the fact that you guys don't see that the game is broken and nowhere near the best yet. All I am saying is that EA has got it all wrong right now and is just giving us excuses to push things off to a later date to keep us buying the game. But if they would just make a legitimate attempt at making the best game they could make. It would work out for the better. Then the next cycle you simply improve on things, you don't have to add anything. Just improve on what you have got, it would be better for us and EA.