OS Roundtable: What Does Franchise Mode Need?

[wilson2k11]

1- Create a stadium that actually looks unique, not like the current create a stadium used in Madden, where they limit you to create some ugly stadium they make you design with there utterly limited options. 1.2- The ability to actually improve your current stadium, and I don't mean "add a food stand" or "add 5,000 seats" that don't actually show up in game. Like for instance the ability to add a 3rd deck to the 49ers current stadium, maybe make it more like the Penn State football stadium. Things like that would be very cool when playing a 10-20 year franchise mode, because then its realistic.

2- Better trade logic.

3- No more potential rating. If I draft someone who sucks, I still want to be able to turn him into a 99ovr MVP. If the guy sucks then fine, make it take me an extra few years to turn him into a 99ovr player. Just don't make some players totally worthless, it ruins franchise mode once you know a player has hit his rating peak.

4- New and different owners & coaches for the long offline franchise modes. Imagine in a off season, a NFL franchise gets sold, and the person who buys it is like the Dallas Mavs owner, will spend any amount of money to build the best possible team. Or new coaches that bring new play styles to the league, like imagine if the Ducks coach joins the NFL and brings his fast spread offense, Madden will have created playbooks so why not bring in new CPU generated coaches with random playbooks that fit the style they play. Instead of "this team" gets a new coach, and uses the same playbook the team always uses. Again this would be great for long played out offline franchise modes. Of course trade logic would play a role with this too, so the coach gets the type of players to fit his system.

5- Real pregame, half time, and post game show. Like NFL2k5 had, You have the rights to ESPN, so get the people from the ESPN NFL pregame show, make them all digital, add a ton of voice work, and have the most complete pre, half, and post game show ever. Shouldn't be that hard. Instead of the stupid crap you do now.

6- This adds to what I said for #5, add things like weekly highlight show, or the show ESPN does for NFL, like a highlight show for all the news, highlights and everything going on in the NFL for that week, like a news headlines type thing, but instead its all digital, again like NFL2k5 did. Add the same type of things for the offseason, like an award show, something for the draft, like maybe add a weekly "Path to the Draft" show from NFL Network, something besides, "hey lets just quickly as possible sim though the offseason and then skip through the meaningless preseason, 10 minutes later after the seasons done your next season starts. It shouldn't be like that. You have the NFL rights, NFL Network, ESPN, use it for something, for gods sake!!!

I could add more, but I don;t have all day. Truth is those should all be simple things to add, all the hard work would be is voice overs, how hard can that be? Is it that hard to mo-cap a ESPN/NFL studio show? Were not talking about fixing the gameplay here, shouldn't be to hard. And the stadium thing, really how hard could it be to give some options to creating a stadium? I mean hey it couldn't be that hard to make it so its possible to make a few 1000s of different stadiums, allow for sharing online, then people can upload what they make, you already have the online feature to create a team, why not use that along with creating a stadium, so people can add content to their stadium, like ads, logos, ect.. Anything is better then whats currently done.

Oh yeah and fix that bug that causes the stadium to be half full during cold games, I played the Super Bowl at NYC in Madden 11, the damn crowd was only half full. What a joke that was.

OHH last but not least!!! MINI GAMES, TRAINING CAMP, PROGRESS FOR EVERY GAME YOU PLAY!! Take a little tip here, go play Madden 06, thats how it should work for training camp, and progress. But just for the sake of it add more mini games to training camp, even the ps2 version of it could of been so much better. Just add the depth to franchise mode for those of us playing it offline. After 1 year it gets a little repetitive.

[Brassman]

There are a ton of great suggestions here to improve franchise mode, as there have been on Madden "wish lists" for years now. I agree that the first thing the Madden team should do is start adding features from Head Coach to Madden. This is especially true of the idea that coaches, players and teams have personalities and philosophies of their own. Teams, and the league, should change and evolve over time as new coaches, with their unique philosophies and players, with their unique skills come into the league. Teams with great running backs should adopt playing styles, and playbooks, vastly different than teams with great quarterbacks or receivers. A Michael Vick or Cam Newton should impact their team and effect it's playing style the same way an Earl Campbell or Barry Sanders did to theirs in the past. In the same way, great coaches should be able to get the most out of their players and bring their unique playing styles, like the 46 defense or the run & shoot offense, to the table. How great would it be if you really needed to scout your next opponent. To find each of their players strengths and weaknesses and understand their coaches personality and tendencies in order to game plan successfully, and know that the CPU team is doing the same to you. And, all this would change from team to team, week to week, year to year. Then franchise mode would come alive.

[big_larry]

Quote: Originally Posted by GoodImmigrant

Franchise Mode should be all about the offseason. The decisions you make when you're not playing the games. Draft, Free agency, training camp. It should even be called GM Mode.

I co-sign with this guy, the off-season should be longer and deeper than the season. Its so much too do in a NFL off-season, coaching decisions, scouting, the combine, rookie workouts, the draft, training camp, preason.

[mrprice33]

Context, context, context.

Weekly wrap-up show that goes in depth into the goings-on around the league, and commentary that actually reflects the league as well, be it standings, stats, news-worthy items, etc. It's still too much like a collection of exhibition games.

[ven0m43]

Ability to leave your franchise, allowing you to switch to another one, and build up that franchise.

[Smoke6]

A more deeper engaging franchise mode (online) that lets us have more immersion than we already have.

1) I would love a live player draft of atleast the 1st rounders to come out and shake the commissioners hands and pose for the camera, This use to be done back in the day in regular franchise mode.

a) I would love a draft and trade board to pop up on the screen for teams that are up for a draft and for those teams involved in some kind of trade to move up or down the draft pole.

b) I would love my scout guy to talk to me via "earpiece" to kinda keep me informed on whats going on in the draft as I am watching from home from either the PS3 or on my PC.

c) I know most of us have the "eyetoy" so we can all participate in the draft live on cam with our team representing in the corner by our name and face.

2) Dynamic weather with the camera zooming in on the QB or whoever so you can actually see how the weather is affecting the game or could affect it and then the cam zooms back out to god cam and you proceed from there to call your play.

3) For the love of everything madden, please have a spectator mode for online franchise please, this would be great or at least a feature that lets you stream the game as you're playing.

4) Scouting reports of you online franchise opponents would be nice, like a break down of times thrown to and what not.

5) As things are happening in the league like trades or cuts, I would like a message to pop up at the bottom of my screen with a slight detail to what its about, or something like a ticker letting us know that "joe schmoe" from the lions was released or signed or badly injured. U get the drift, it would keep us very closely tied to everything going on in the game as it pertains to the online franchise.

6) The option to determine if a player can or will be a game time decision going into a game each and every week and the status of his condition day to day.

[aksumite]

1. ONLINE Franchise- at this point it should really all be the same. basically EVERYTHING that is in offline franchise MUST be in ONLINE franchise. If you still want to play solo and not utilize the online capability then don't. But there should be no difference in the features.

2. Automatic ONLINE Franchise websites- This should be a given. Detailed websites including ALL coaching history, past champions, and any other info. The deeper the better. We want EVERY possible stat/achievement to be recorded.

3. Spectate Mode- So all GMs/coaches can watch other games being played within the franchise.

[ABR173rd]

1. Larger Rosters
2. Ability to change teams during the a franchise (hire/Fire)
3. A cool feature to implement would be to enter the league as a position coach or an assistant and have access to only training players or managing and using the players at your respective position. For example starting a franchise as a CB coach and only be able to manage CB's through out the season and during games and depending on your success being able to get new jobs or move up the NFL coaching ladder and gaining permanent boosts to the positions you coach along the way.
4. The ability to edit player attributes for all players including draft classes.
5. A more in depth off season and preseason.
6. Fixing player contracts.