Madden NFL 15 Gauntlet Mode Teaches You How to Play Football, Get Better at Madden

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by bucky60

Doesn't every player in the NFL try to improve? Don't coaches try and improve all players on the team every week? I guess I'll just have to wait til their CFM blog comes out and see if they have a mechanism for realistic progression for all players and maybe this is just a way to boost certain players at each position through these drills. Seems to me like having that extra bonus progression through drills would end up killing progression balance with the other CPU teams. That's if Madden starts off with balanced progression between user and CPU teams. They haven't been the best at that either.

The current practice implementation in Madden 25 - which as I understand from the released blogs is being replaced outright, though we'll see when the blogs come out - is already imbalanced in favor of the user in a one-player setting because the CPU never attempts practice whatsoever. Ergo the user's players get somewhere between 40,000 and 48,000 XP that CPU teams' players never see (given 2000 XP for a successful practice for each player each week from Preseason Week 1 potentially up through the Super Bowl).

If the CPU continues to ignore practice - I assume they will - limiting the number of players the user may practice in a given week actually works to correct the current game design imbalance by greatly reducing that massive XP gap.

[wordtobigbird]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

If the CPU continues to ignore practice - I assume they will - limiting the number of players the user may practice in a given week actually works to correct the current game design imbalance by greatly reducing that massive XP gap.

Bingo Madden has a lot of small yet killer problems that we won't know about until someone gets their hands on the game. if they haven't fixed this, still a huge problem in CFM. If SIM stats/CPU decisions haven't been improved CFM still won't have depth. I don't expect to know about any of this until late August.

[bucky60]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

The current practice implementation in Madden 25 - which as I understand from the released blogs is being replaced outright, though we'll see when the blogs come out - is already imbalanced in favor of the user in a one-player setting because the CPU never attempts practice whatsoever. Ergo the user's players get somewhere between 40,000 and 48,000 XP that CPU teams' players never see (given 2000 XP for a successful practice for each player each week from Preseason Week 1 potentially up through the Super Bowl). If the CPU continues to ignore practice - I assume they will - limiting the number of players the user may practice in a given week actually works to correct the current game design imbalance by greatly reducing that massive XP gap.

That was/is a huge problem with M25. If they're attempt to fix this is to greatly limit the users team progression, then I STRONGLY feel that is a bad solution to the problem and in fact no real solution at all. Feels like breaking one area to offset the broken part of another area.

And yes, we will get a better feel for how progression works when the CFM blog comes out and a much better idea of progression balance after the actual release.

[CT Pitbull]

Im interested to see how deep they go with this. I know the game. I've played it in real life. So its probably not going to do much for guys like me who LIVE football.


I do think its a good idea as long as they stay true to making Madden a complete simulation in the future. Ive said before they(EA/Madden) have their foot in BOTH buckets right now. The have a few simulation aspects but they still have more weight in the arcade bucket. It has made some nice strides in the last few years, its just at a snails pace.


They need to get the game to the point where the gamer is FORCED to play football, not play "Madden" football. I would say this mode would help those who lack basic football knowledge and maybe if more people actually knew how to play football, they're would be less players learning to cheese/glitch/ and exploit the AI.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by bucky60

That was/is a huge problem with M25. If they're attempt to fix this is to greatly limit the users team progression, then I STRONGLY feel that is a bad solution to the problem and in fact no real solution at all. Feels like breaking one area to offset the broken part of another area.

There's a big difference between a balancing issue and broken game design. You can't just conflate the two so brazenly.

In fact, assuming that it's one of the two implementations I suggested above I see it as adding an interesting gameplay choice for the player (who to use in the drills each week) and working to partially rectify the balancing issue all in one fell swoop (greatly reducing the amount of XP available to the user team which the CPU never has an opportunity to receive).

[reyes the roof]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

There's a big difference between a balancing issue and broken game design. You can't just conflate the two so brazenly. In fact, assuming that it's one of the two implementations I suggested above I see it as adding an interesting gameplay choice for the player (who to use in the drills each week) and working to partially rectify the balancing issue all in one fell swoop (greatly reducing the amount of XP available to the user team which the CPU never has an opportunity to receive).

It's just mind blowing to me and I'm sure a lot of other people too that they would ever implement a progression system where the user has the ability to gain XP in practice, and the cpu teams aren't simulating practices and having the same opportunity to gain XP

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by reyes the roof

It's just mind blowing to me and I'm sure a lot of other people too that they would ever implement a progression system where the user has the ability to gain XP in practice, and the cpu teams aren't simulating practices and having the same opportunity to gain XP

Mind blowing? Not really. CFM was IMO quite obviously designed with a online multiplayer emphasis. I imagine implementing simulation of CPU practice with rewarding XP, however trivial that task may be, was either incredibly low priority or an oversight.

That said, is it an issue to legitimately gripe about because it obviously creates a game imbalance in a single player setting? Unquestionably. I suppose there's a workaround in that the user can ignore practice and the game becomes balanced - and I'm sure that's what Tiburon would offer as well - but that's not a good enough answer for those who want to develop a young QB from the sideline, given that all other progression requires in-game statistical achievements in the current design.

An aside - can a user simulate practices in Madden 25 and earn XP for his team? I don't recall that being the case, but I could be wrong.

[kehlis]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Mind blowing? Not really. CFM was IMO quite obviously designed with a online multiplayer emphasis.

But even with that said how many 32 team online franchises are there? I know there are some but there can't be that many.

That means any league that doesn't have 32 users still has the same imbalance on the CPU controlled teams in online play as there is in an offline CFM.

Whether that was an acceptable loss based on design decision I have no idea but if it was designed strictly for online play versus offline it was still designed poorly.