Madden NFL 15 Connected Franchise Details, Trailer and Screenshots

[PacMan3000]

Well, maybe it's me, but I still don't get the difference between confidence and the hot and cold streaks. They both seem to work the same way (week to week)--I guess the only real difference is you can actively improve a player's confidence via a point system.

With that said, whenever changes like these happen to franchise, I'm always a bit skeptical just because there is no way to quantify it. In other words, if in week three Johnny Manziel comes into the game with a confidence rating of 50...if week three sees him making errant throws, is it because he had low confidence or mediocre accuracy ratings? How would you know? And does confidence override ratings? Can your confidence of 90 result in you completing downfield passes--despite having a deep accuracy of 70?

It's kind of like the "clutch" rating that you can improve with XP points. I've played with it a few times, but there's never been a point when playing a game and a guy makes a play where I'm like "Ah, see I know he definitely made that play because I specifically spent time trying to improve this intangible element of his game."

I like the idea of confidence or morale or hot and cold streaks. But I think there's a reason these things get introduced and them removed 3 years later. You just can't quantify how it actually impacts your games. It's fun to tinker around with, but I honestly wonder if stuff like this is more cosmetic than anything. It gives you the idea that you're making improvements to your players and to your team, when at the end of the day, things like accuracy, catching, speed and other ratings are what really matter.

Personally, I'm hoping that in franchise mode, we can get away from pushing buttons on our controller in static screens and actually having more true engagement. For example, in one of the screenshots, it shows an image that says something like "Defensive Film Room." Instead of just clicking buttons on a screen, I think it would be better and far more interesting to be presented with, say, 10 highlights of your opponents previous game and allow you to study and take notes on their team, their impact players, the formations and player personnel they like to use in certain situations, their defensive scheme, etc.

[Scott]

Wish you could edit draft classes, I'm passing

[Sheba2011]

Quote: Originally Posted by mmorg

That might be what the lawsuit says from the prosecution's perspective, but what did the judges actually legislate their decisions on? Find that and get back to me. It has been ruled in numerous courts, and is displayed evidently in games like OOTP and FOF, that people do not own the rights to their names and only their likeness.

Here's the 9th circuit court of California's opinion from their ruling in which they rejected EA's first amendment defense (the same defense those other cases used):

"In NCAA Football, EA seeks to replicate each school's entire team as accurately as possible. Every real football player on each team included in the game has a corresponding avatar in the game with the player's actual jersey number and virtually identical height, weight, build, skin tone, hair color, and home state. EA attempts to match any unique, highly identifiable playing behaviors by sending detailed questionnaires to team equipment managers. Additionally, EA creates realistic virtual versions of actual stadiums; populates them with the virtual athletes, coaches, cheerleaders, and fans realistically rendered by EA's graphic artists; and incorporates realistic sounds such as the crunch of the players' pads and the roar of the crowd.

EA's game differs from reality in that EA omits the players' names on their jerseys and assigns each player a
home town that is different from the actual player's home town. However, users of the video game may upload rosters of names obtained from third parties so that the names do appear on the jerseys. In such cases, EA allows images from the game containing athletes' real names to be posted on its website by users."

[Sheba2011]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

Which is exactly my point. You shouldn't be able to just go and pluck guys off the street and plug them in and get that player at their neutral level or rating. As for Sealver Siliga, he was added to their practice squad on October 23rd of last year and wasn't put on their active roster until November 27th, over a month later which just kind of furthers my point.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

[jeremym480]

Quote: Originally Posted by Scott

Wish you could edit draft classes, I'm passing

I wish that I had your strength. This year has just been a down year for me (gaming wise) because there just as been that many great titles out - especially for Next Gen. so I'm in a bit of a lull. Because of that I'm actually really looking forward to Madden this year.

As far as the lawsuit discussion, I can see why EA would be hesitant about Custom Draft Classes.... however, I'm not even asking for those at this point. All I want is to be able to edit the players in my own offline franchise, nothing more, nothing less. There's no sharing or anything going on with that, so to me there's really isn't a reasonable excuse for it not to be allowed.

[bcruise]

Along with the random draft classes I'm also excited about the changes to confidence and how it's tied into game prep. Confidence was always a very nebulous, under-the-hood factor in Madden, such that the only 2 ways you could tell it was changing on you was to go all the way into an individual player's traits screen and see it there, or if they would go on a hot/cold streak (Very poor Confidence = Cold, Very Good Confidence = Hot). And consistency has NEVER been fully explained, except to say that it's what controls how "streaky" a player is (increases or decreases the confidence effect). Now we'll be able to see just exactly how these two factors affect the ratings.

Just as an example, in the one screenshot we're provided of this we can see Tannehill's three accuracy ratings are lowered, to 85, 78, and 68. Comparing that to the AFC East Ratings Spreadsheet, where his ratings are 87, 80, and 70, it looks like we'll actually get the updated rating shown to us in the game, and not just an up or down arrow indicating progress either way. I'm DEFINITELY interested in seeing which ratings are affected by this for each position - it's something I've wanted to know for years.

[EASPORTS_AJ]

Okay, so to answer a lot of your question on Coach Mode...

Coach Mode is available in CFM but it must be enabled in the Front End by going to Customize -> Help/Settings ->Settings-> Game Options ->Coach Mode and setting the toggle to ON. This will enable Coach Mode capability in Online and Offline except for Head to Head games.

Hope that helps, guys.

[Sheba2011]

Quote: Originally Posted by PacMan3000

Well, maybe it's me, but I still don't get the difference between confidence and the hot and cold streaks. They both seem to work the same way (week to week)--I guess the only real difference is you can actively improve a player's confidence via a point system. With that said, whenever changes like these happen to franchise, I'm always a bit skeptical just because there is no way to quantify it. In other words, if in week three Johnny Manziel comes into the game with a confidence rating of 50...if week three sees him making errant throws, is it because he had low confidence or mediocre accuracy ratings? How would you know? And does confidence override ratings? Can your confidence of 90 result in you completing downfield passes--despite having a deep accuracy of 70? It's kind of like the "clutch" rating that you can improve with XP points. I've played with it a few times, but there's never been a point when playing a game and a guy makes a play where I'm like "Ah, see I know he definitely made that play because I specifically spent time trying to improve this intangible element of his game." I like the idea of confidence or morale or hot and cold streaks. But I think there's a reason these things get introduced and them removed 3 years later. You just can't quantify how it actually impacts your games. It's fun to tinker around with, but I honestly wonder if stuff like this is more cosmetic than anything. It gives you the idea that you're making improvements to your players and to your team, when at the end of the day, things like accuracy, catching, speed and other ratings are what really matter. Personally, I'm hoping that in franchise mode, we can get away from pushing buttons on our controller in static screens and actually having more true engagement. For example, in one of the screenshots, it shows an image that says something like "Defensive Film Room." Instead of just clicking buttons on a screen, I think it would be better and far more interesting to be presented with, say, 10 highlights of your opponents previous game and allow you to study and take notes on their team, their impact players, the formations and player personnel they like to use in certain situations, their defensive scheme, etc.

I think it depends more on how long Johnny is making those errant throws. If it's a one week thing his confidence rating might drop a few points which won't affect his ratings. But if it's happening every game he plays then it will affect his ratings negatively, as it should.