Madden: Editing Player Ratings in Franchise - Need Your Thoughts

[TheCreep]

Good afternoon Mr Cummings. I would probably go with allowing a 5 to 10 point stretch plus or minus. That way, game probably wont crash because you cant get too ridiculous.

In addition, would you guys be so kind as to go ahead and unlock body type editing? Same as NCAA. The editing of quad size, arms, etc.

Oh, and Ion schutt please. Good day.http://www.spinmarketsports.com/aspx...=7&subcatid=38

[proud2bawesome]

Quote: Originally Posted by huskerwr38

Maybe you shouldn't really link contracts to ratings. Maybe link contracts to season stats and career stats, because in real life if a running back rushes for 1500 yards for two straight seasons, even if he runs a 4.7 40 and only has a vertical leap of 25 inches, he's going to get a big contract. That way, even if you re-rate Peyton Manning to an overall of 10 and you want to re-sign him, you'll still owe him a big contract because of his stats. However, if he's a 10 and he goes through the season, he'll obviously not do good and he can be signed to a lower contract. Hope that make sense. As for rookies contracts can be link to a combination of their stats and combine performance.

This is a great idea. I also would like to appeal to you Ian to have the option to not be able to see ratings in franchise mode; that way so many more features would be relevant, like the idea above. If I drafted someone in the 1st round, signed him to a huge contract, then see he's a 54 OVR, I could just cut him before he even played a game. That never happens. Also, there is the ability in franchise to change LBs to DEs and an 80 OLB suddenly becomes a 99 DE. If you couldn't see the ratings in the first place (other than combine-style stats), then you wouldn't be as compelled to cheat the system in the first place. Imagine how awesome it would be to draft a running back, and then finding out how great or bad they are through performance. Preseason would suddenly mean something. People wouldn't just sim through seasons. You would be able to have emotional investments in the decisions you make in your franchise, all leading to better longevity within the series. Imagine finding out that your prized rookie RB was injury prone not by looking at a 60 INJ rating in the depth chart, but by him actually getting injured, and then all these factors come in to play with the way contracts are valued and furthermore affect the CPU's logic when making trades and draft decisions...It would be freaking sweet.

[jjsmitty34]

Do you guys think they will release it as a DLC?

[Simiantality]

* There are countless "cheesing" things that the user can do like dropping your player ratings right before the off-season, signing him to the cheapest deal possible, and then setting him back.

My suggestion would be to implement a holdout feature. At the beginning of each off-season, and again every time the user leaves the character edit screen, check the player(s) ratings and compare them to the current contract. If the OVR is +/- 10 (or so) from the expected contract, have them hold out for another deal. You could alternately have a small file that flags the players that have been edited, and only allow for holdouts from edited players.

* Your save file can easily be rendered non-functional if you change enough CPU team's player's ratings where they can't re-sign any players. At this point the mode typically crashes or hangs and won't be recoverable from.

This seems a non-issue. If someone is changing ratings enough to disable the CPU's ability to resign players, having the mode crash is a reasonable solution. I doubt there would be a sufficient loss of sales from this staying as it is.

* We also don't display that potential rating in the edit player screen now, and if you were to edit the actual player's overall rating to be higher than his potential rating, the game has a chance of crashing in many different spots. We'd have to add it in and always force it to be higher than the OVR I guess.

I would suggest redoing the way that potential functions entirely. Potentials should be a soft-cap, not a hard-cap, and should be lowered across the board. There seem to be many instances of players exceeding their "potential" due to circumstances in the real NFL, and this should be reflected in Madden.

Instead of raising someone's ratings by measuring how much their performance exceeds their expected performance, and then raising their OVR rating based upon how far OVR is currently below POT:

[(Performance) - (Expected Performance)] * [(Potential) - (Current OVR)]

change it so something that uses a Gaussian curve instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function

If you have a function that uses the derivative of that curve to modulate the (Performance - Expected) number, you'll have a natural POT rating that will act like a magnet, constantly pulling players to their potential. If they're very close to potential, they can go up or down a little if their performance is close to what would be expected, but they can also go a bit beyond it if they have an exceptional performance (Ladell Betts 2006) . Likewise, they can temporarily drop well below potential if they're not being utilized properly (LaDanian Tomlinson 2009). Also, if their OVR is quite a bit below their POT, a few stellar games can quickly bring them up to speed.

I'll be happy to go into more mathematical detail if anyone would like.

[adembroski]

I don't think it needs to be an option all of the time. Hell, during Pre-season would probably be enough for the most part, but for some during the regular season might be important too. I'd make it a point to lock it during the off-season for the sake of stability.

The one that I am concerned about is rendering the save invalid. I don't care if Joe Schmo wants to cheat in his game... I wont in mine.

[Palo20]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ian_Cummings_EA

So I need help from you all... Please comment and be specific about what exactly you NEED to edit. What is your overall specific intent with wanting to edit these players? Are there certain time frames we can lock it to? Are there certain specific changes you could only be allowed to make instead of full league-wide control? By reducing the amount of variables we can look into finding ways to make this happen. Unfortunately allowing the user to set every player in the league anytime from a 0 to a 99 is not going to be an option because of all the instability it will cause...and we just don't have the testing man-power to ensure that the mode won't start crashing all over the place.

I really like the idea mentioned above about tying contracts to production instead of OVR. Is that possible with the current system and would that solve the problem with the crashes?

Why do we need to edit?

I want the ability to edit player ratings because I generally do one franchise where I like to duplicate the NFL season. I start around opening day and play a bunch of different teams' games throughout the year, and I would like the weekly ratings changes from Donny Moore to be reflected in my franchise. So I'd like the option to change Vick into a game changer in my franchise for the 2010 season.

Also, giving us the ability to edit ratings would satisfy a number of different hardcore gamers:

--People like me who like to edit during the current season
--People who want imported NCAA draft classes to look right
--People who don't trust the current progression system and would like to make their own changes.

MLB the Show has one of the most respected franchise modes around, and they've given the user complete editing control. I'm not sure what workarounds they've used to combat "user cheesing" but it may be worth looking at.

Once again, if progression could be tied to production, I think that would help a great deal.

What do we NEED to edit?

--Ratings (most important to me personally)
--Player Appearance
--Home/Road or Warm/Cold Weather options for equipment

When do we want to edit?

I'd like the ability to edit in season.

[Winnipeg59]

Ian, thank you (and Josh) for asking.

Personally I can see editing prior to a franchise but once the franchise starts the ebb and flow of the player and games played should dictate the rating movement. I wouldn't edit within a franchise (but that's just me).

Don't want to repeat what's in the previous posts, but working on more dynamic progression/regression (even a weekly, Josh Looman-type tweak based on performance), certainly looking at performance based contract demands and having US on an equal footing with signing players compared to the CPU prices, finding a way to make players as smart or smarter yet have their skills degrade via the ratings and allowing us to freely move people around at positions without the minimum player requirement are ALL excellent ideas.

Stay focused on 12...and offline franchise specifially!!! Please.

[KingV2k3]

Firstly, thanks for continuing to stop by for input like this, despite the often poor behavior displayed by some of the (adjectives edited in acordance to TOS) members...

Anyway:

I am strictly an offline franchise guy...

I usually grab the opening day roster, go in and make whatever edits I feel are needed BEFORE starting my franchise and live with it...

In some circumstances though, I'd like to be able to bump a guy up...

Take, for instance, the case of Stevie Johnson of the Bills...

He would (IMHO) deserve more than the usual "progression" bump, based on his progress this season...

This is often also true of some rookies who get saddled with low AWR for the remainder of their "careers"...

I suggest that, in these cases you could designate a few players, per team, per season for a bye week bump...similar in impact to what offseason progression would give them...

It would give a few guys a "double bump" and that's all...

A few extra OVR points to be distributed to a few guys per team per season...

Thanks!