Madden NFL 12 Super Bowl Halftime Blog: Tuner Sets and Surprise Onside Kicks

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by The GIGGAS

Yet you're not going to wait to bash the game? Let's step back for a minute. Let's look at what we know about Madden 12. It's got tuner sets. It's got surprise onsides. That is pretty much all we know. Anything we saw in that build Ian was playing could be changed at any time. All I'm asking is to wait to bash the game. The game is not anywhere close to a shippable state. Madden hasn't been great, but just because a game hasn't been great doesn't mean it can't recover. FIFA recovered. EA NHL recovered. Let's give Ian and co. a chance to improve it without jumping down his throat because he showed us two features that he barely got approved.

Given EA's track record, with Madden, EA has earned my skepticism. I've purchased every Madden on this generation of consoles and have been disappointed every single time.

I have no problems with the tuner sets. In fact I'm glad that there are tuner sets in the game. It would have been nice to have them in M11, but that's water under the bridge. The onside kick footage was discouraging. The player movement, emotion, and awareness left a lot to be desired.

[The GIGGAS]

Quote: Originally Posted by LiquorLogic

Given EA's track record, with Madden, EA has earned my skepticism. I've purchased every Madden on this generation of consoles and have been disappointed every single time. I have no problems with the tuner sets. In fact I'm glad that there are tuner sets in the game. It would have been nice to have them in M11, but that's water under the bridge. The onside kick footage was discouraging. The player movement, emotion, and awareness left a lot to be desired.

Why have you continued to buy them if you are disappointed?

Regardless, software can only change so much in the early part of a piece of software. First, features have to be designed and implemented. February is a very early stage to completely cast out the chance of a game being bad. I understand the idea of skepticism, but at least give the Madden guys a chance to build the game! Emotion isn't just a flip you can switch in the code... it's going to take time to build into it (if they are indeed doing that). To extrapolate that the game is going to suck (or if it is going to be great) based on 20 seconds of a pre-alpha build is jumping the gun so badly that the gun hasn't left the official's pants pocket.

[TexasBorn1]

Having tuner sets is nice. The NHL team has made great use of them and I hope the Madden team can do the same.

Don't really care about the surprise onside kick, but I know they can't give much else because of Marketing. We'll see by draft time what the game is mostly about

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by The GIGGAS

Why have you continued to buy them if you are disappointed?

Because I'm an NFL junkie.

Quote: Originally Posted by The GIGGAS

Regardless, software can only change so much in the early part of a piece of software. First, features have to be designed and implemented. February is a very early stage to completely cast out the chance of a game being bad. I understand the idea of skepticism, but at least give the Madden guys a chance to build the game! Emotion isn't just a flip you can switch in the code... it's going to take time to build into it (if they are indeed doing that). To extrapolate that the game is going to suck (or if it is going to be great) based on 20 seconds of a pre-alpha build is jumping the gun so badly that the gun hasn't left the official's pants pocket.

See, it's more than just this development cycle. The current regime has had plenty of time;this has been going on for multiple development cycles, and there are still some of the same issues that have plagued the game for years. This game is still missing things that were present in the last-gen iterations, and there are still things, to this day, that games made six years ago (one of them was developed by EA) did much better than Madden 11.

[frankrizzo380]

oh yeah, i forgot to tell yall,

[BlueNGold]

^ Already posted.

[carnalnirvana]

when tuner sets were being introduced for ncaa, some guys over at the nhl boards came over and told us the things it had done for their game, they mentioned things like gameplay elements like puck speeds, on the ice changes so we were all hyped thinking things like throw velocity or jumping LB's could be altered

well.....

if i remember right ncaa tuners fixed bugs in stats

the Lb's the qb's and on field elements were never touched what are the tuners really for in the football games?

if the tuner sets aren't for gameplay then its like admiting that the game has bugs that we will try to address at a later date post release.

tuners were supposed to give you a different version of the same game, you choose which tuner you wanted to use.

why do we even need tuners?

[spit_bubble]

Quote:

"Since so many people have asked...surprise onside as of today is only allowed 2x per team per game. That value is also in the tuner set."

It's stuff like this that makes me question this team's ability to design a game. A better way to set it up would be to simply have a surprise onside kick have about a fraction of a percent chance of actually working a second time around.

In real life, if a team pulls off a surprise onside kick, it's basically not going to work if it's tried again. So in the game a better design choice would be to have the receiving team ready to snuff out any subsequent attempt at a surprise onside kick.

The way they did it is merely a shortcut, and while it may be at least somewhat effective at simulating reality, it is not strong design.

If they are worried about people spamming the play, the fact that it wouldn't work a second or third time should be enough to discourage said spamming.