Madden NFL 11 Blog: GameFlow and The Strategy Pad

[rooney8]

Quote: Originally Posted by Only1LT

I never play Franchise because to me, playing the CPU is boring as hell, but that doesn't mean that I can't see that there is a real possibility that the data that EA is collecting, and even the method by which they collect that data, could be flawed. They wouldn't be the first company to misunderstand its audience.

Yeah LT you got my point. I don't think EA fail to realise that the majority of there gamers are mostly offline but they want to focus on online so tell us that we are.

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Well, Phil did mention that 80% of the people that turn on the 360 are connected to xbox live. I guess that would mean the other 20% are not connected to xbox live when they turn on the the 360. 80%, to me, sounds like a good number to quantify stats.

I am sure that 80% is how many conected 1+ times. Didn't half a million play once online and never again. I doubt they just shelved the game so they likely were playing offline franchise after that. I very much doubt most offline gamers connect to the net to play offline. My problem isn't understanding the process but that just because only a small amount of offline games are recorded certainly doesn't mean only a small amount of people play offline. Of the 42m xbox 360's sold 23m are live members with around half those being gold. There's your minority.
And when polls like the one below are made people say well (the small minority) offline gamers are the ones who go online to talk about gaming where as (the majority) online gamers don't.WTF? That makes less than no sense. I've brought this way off topic and it's heading for online vs offline so lets leave it. There's a patch to fix this so great.

[St. Chaos]

It seems as if it has been forgotten that you don't actually have to have a gold account to "sign in" to xbox live. Xbox silver accounts also "sign in."

If you turn on your xbox and have access to the xbox live marketplace, then you are theoretically online, and your xbox is able to be polled by whomever wishes to access it.

All it takes is being connected to the internet. You don't actually have to play the online multiplayer portion of a game.

XBox Gold or Silver Account + Internet Access (Ethernet or WiFi) = "online." Assuming you havn't disabled auto sign in, of course even then your xbox could possibly be capable of being accessed because internet access is still enabled.

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Well, Phil did mention that 80% of the people that turn on the 360 are connected to xbox live. I guess that would mean the other 20% are not connected to xbox live when they turn on the the 360. 80%, to me, sounds like a good number to quantify stats.

You are making two mistakes here.

1- You can't know the context with which these stats are being taken. Ok. 80% of people that turn on their 360 are connected to Live. When??? Everyone gets a free trial of Live if I'm not mistaken. Are they saying that every single day that 80% of people that turn on their 360 are connected to Live, or that 80% of everyone that has at one point turned on their 360 in their lives has connected to Live? I don't know the answer, and without knowing, I can't make a determination of whether the stat is meaningful or meaningless. There are 41.7 million 360's in the wild. If like rooney says, only 23 million of them have accounts, that means almost half of them don't go online and that would seem to invalidate EA's stance that 80% are online. Now you could argue that the amount of people that own Madden would be split evenly among the have and have nots of internet, but that would just be guess work. It is possible that most of the Madden customers fall under the half that do not have Live. Madden has been around for over 20yrs. Many Madden customers have been around forever. LONG before Internet gaming. It is quite possible that the majority of Madden purchasers enjoy the game the old fashioned way that they have been doing for years. Namely playing offline, without a cable connected to their system against friends, family, and the CPU. Is this a fact? I have no way of knowing and neither does EA unless if they do surveys aside from online data. That still would not be the end all and be all either. The US has a census bureau. They send it out every so often. If I don't send it back, does that mean that I don't exist or that they don't know I exist? I guess they will just have to guess and fudge the stats to suit what ever plan they want to implement won't they?

2- The biggest mistake you are making is believing every stat that EA tells you. This isn't an anti-EA rant. This is just fact. Companies skew stats in their favor. ESPECIALLY when they want to justify a decision that is not well received by it's customer base. Look no further than Apple's spin on their "stats" on how every smart phone has attenuation problems to justify why they did not coat the antennae with a non conductive material like every other cell phone maker does. How did that go over? In case you didn't know how it went over, they ended up giving everyone cases to cover the antennae that their data suggested didn't need to be covered in the first place lol.

The bottom line is that stats are always flawed. They are usually the lesser of two evils when compared with just doing something blind, but stats must never, ever be looked at as the end all and be all reason to justify anything. Unless you can poll the entire World and can guarantee that everyone answers what ever question you are polling HONESTLY, stats will always ever be one factor with which to basis a decision, but certainly NEVER the only factor.

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by St. Chaos

It seems as if it has been forgotten that you don't actually have to have a gold account to "sign in" to xbox live. Xbox silver accounts also "sign in." If you turn on your xbox and have access to the xbox live marketplace, then you are theoretically online, and your xbox is able to be polled by whomever wishes to access it. All it takes is being connected to the internet. You don't actually have to play the online multiplayer portion of a game. XBox Gold or Silver Account + Internet Access (Ethernet or WiFi) = "online." Assuming you havn't disabled auto sign in, of course even then your xbox could possibly be capable of being accessed because internet access is still enabled.

I was just about to reply to you with this point, but you edited it in before I had the chance.

[jamaster14]

Thank you EA for giving us gamers an OPTION to choose which set of controls we want to use. It takes alot of humility to go ahead and agree to patch this before the game even drops, and i commend you guys for that...

going forward i hope that this is valuable for the devs and the community. i hope madden 11 is based around giving the users the option of how they want to play the game:

multiple controller configurations
multiple camera angles
the ability to turn any and everything off
sliders galore
game rooms and lobbies for all styles, along with custom game rooms online

glad the old system is back... maybe a second patch with PS2 controls? those were really the best and we could do stuff like shade WR's or bump 1 guy and play off the other

[SteelerSpartan]

Im probaby just going to wait to get Madden until the patch comes out with the new controls......hopefully they are exactly the same to a t....no glitches or anything



It'll probably come with other added improvements.....so Ill probably have a pretty good 1st impression of the game.....It helps that NCAA is a really decent game this year to me


Hope Madden has the Tuning Technology in there too......

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by Only1LT

I was just about to reply to you with this point, but you edited it in before I had the chance.

Well, that is where I was going with it. St. Choas said it better than I did.

EA is the only one that knows about their stats better than we do. Do they skew their stats for their benefit? Possible, without knowing.

There are some stats that don't lie, though, and are hard to debate. Stats like Prince Fielders OBP vs lefties, righties, etc....... imo.

[jamaster14]

Quote: Originally Posted by Outkizast

Personally I think it takes less time to memorize how to get out of an audible you "accidentally" got into than it does to memorize this new way to make audibles with the strategy pad.

Agreed. also, wouldnt an easy fix be to just put a "cancel" button/option in the menu after hitting A/X to get into the audible system? having say, select be "cancel" would fix the issue pretty sufficiently.

As far as strategy pad, i think new users will definetly still get "stuck" in it, since the casual gamer will pick up a ps3 controller... hit the dpad thinking they are going to be moving a player, and the strat pad menu will come up.

i think hitting the dpad and expecting movement is more likely then accidently hitting A/X