Madden NFL 16: Penalties Are Finally Going to Be a Thing

[Hooe]

Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff:

I played a half of a six-minute quarters game on All-Madden difficulty. Before starting this game, I maxed out every penalty slider.

At the end of this half of football, the two teams (Packers and Broncos) had combined for just over 400 yards of penalties. There was literally a penalty on every other play. It was excessive and insufferable.

Needless to say, the penalty sliders work. lol

I had opportunities to speak with Clint Oldenburg, Andrew Johnson (AJ), and Kolbe Launchbaugh (still not sure if I'm spelling his last name right, I need to check that) about penalties today, more info follows:

- Penalties are NEVER triggered by CPU-controlled characters in online head-to-head, Ultimate Team, and Draft Champions (this explains why I saw so few yesterday). A user controlling a player may still trigger a penalty in these modes, however. CPU-triggered penalties do occur in online head-to-head games in Connected Franchise, however; I specifically asked about that for clarity's sake.

- On the "caps" DeuceDouglas mentioned - at the default penalty level settings, the game keeps track of how many flags it has called, and at a certain point it will stop calling fouls which have occurred frequently. For example, if the game calls like ten defensive holding calls by the third quarter (assuming the cap is ten, I wasn't told a specific number), the game will no longer trigger defensive holding fouls and animations. This is a usability feature; mainstream players get easily frustrated when they get penalized for something they didn't do (understandably). Increasing a penalty slider's value above 50 will remove the caps for that foul altogether.

- On how penalties are tuned - Tiburon researched real-life penalty frequencies for the baseline values for how often penalties should occur. They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency.

- On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example.

- Play style influences what penalties will be called. For example, if you play a lot of 2-Man press coverage and have undisciplined cornerbacks, you are going to see more defensive holding penalties. I did a few drives on defense as the Packers (max penalty sliders game still) where I exclusively called Nickel 2-Man with press coverage, and Dmitri Goodson was effectively tackling the slot receiver he was guarding at times and getting flagged a ton. He was not very good.

- Penalties will always have an animation; there shouldn't be any situation where a penalty is called and the foul doesn't have a corresponding animation. These animations do not necessarily require contact. I saw one defensive pass interference penalty by Sam Shields where he was impeding the progress of Demaryius Thomas on a fly route; the animation was not initially triggered by contact between Shields and Thomas.

- The penalty I saw the most when the penalty sliders were maxed out was Illegal Block In The Back. Saw plenty of offensive and defensive holding, roughing the passer. I did see defensive pass interference. Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count. I do not recall seeing offensive pass interference. Strangely, offensive pass interference is an On/Off toggle, not a slider. Not sure if that's the final implementation.

If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer some, I'll be around on OS for a bit this evening.

[jfsolo]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff: {snip}

That is on point.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count.

Excellent post and greatly appreciate the info! Could you elaborate a little bit more on the above? The main thing I'm wondering is if there were still false starts as well as the neutral zone infractions and offsides on CPU players without actually using the fake snap mechanic.

[georgiafan]

Great info Cm on flags sounds like it's gonna be spot On

[The JareBear]

Great post CFM. very promising information

[jpdavis82]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Follow-up and a data dump on penalty stuff: I played a half of a six-minute quarters game on All-Madden difficulty. Before starting this game, I maxed out every penalty slider. At the end of this half of football, the two teams (Packers and Broncos) had combined for just over 400 yards of penalties. There was literally a penalty on every other play. It was excessive and insufferable. Needless to say, the penalty sliders work. lol I had opportunities to speak with Clint Oldenburg, Andrew Johnson (AJ), and Kolbe Launchbaugh (still not sure if I'm spelling his last name right, I need to check that) about penalties today, more info follows: - Penalties are NEVER triggered by CPU-controlled characters in online head-to-head, Ultimate Team, and Draft Champions (this explains why I saw so few yesterday). A user controlling a player may still trigger a penalty in these modes, however. CPU-triggered penalties do occur in online head-to-head games in Connected Franchise, however; I specifically asked about that for clarity's sake. - On the "caps" DeuceDouglas mentioned - at the default penalty level settings, the game keeps track of how many flags it has called, and at a certain point it will stop calling fouls which have occurred frequently. For example, if the game calls like ten defensive holding calls by the third quarter (assuming the cap is ten, I wasn't told a specific number), the game will no longer trigger defensive holding fouls and animations. This is a usability feature; mainstream players get easily frustrated when they get penalized for something they didn't do (understandably). Increasing a penalty slider's value above 50 will remove the caps for that foul altogether. - On how penalties are tuned - Tiburon researched real-life penalty frequencies for the baseline values for how often penalties should occur. They have the ability to adjust these values with tuner sets if their telemetry is showing too few penalties or if there is consensus user feedback requesting changes to penalty frequency. - On how penalty sliders function in Madden NFL 16 - the example I was given was with offensive holding. At the default value of 50, the holding chance is pretty low on any given play; there are about 2.5 offensive holding penalties per game in real life, per Tiburon's research, and the game is tuned to get that number on average. Increasing the offensive holding slider to 99 will effectively multiply that target average value by 10, so the chance for a holding penalty on any given play goes way up and one should expect to see around 25 holding penalties in an average Madden game at this setting. I was also told that penalty sliders do not affect any non-penalty components of gameplay. You won't see general run blocking success or failure rates change by messing with the offensive holding slider, for example. - Play style influences what penalties will be called. For example, if you play a lot of 2-Man press coverage and have undisciplined cornerbacks, you are going to see more defensive holding penalties. I did a few drives on defense as the Packers (max penalty sliders game still) where I exclusively called Nickel 2-Man with press coverage, and Dmitri Goodson was effectively tackling the slot receiver he was guarding at times and getting flagged a ton. He was not very good. - Penalties will always have an animation; there shouldn't be any situation where a penalty is called and the foul doesn't have a corresponding animation. These animations do not necessarily require contact. I saw one defensive pass interference penalty by Sam Shields where he was impeding the progress of Demaryius Thomas on a fly route; the animation was not initially triggered by contact between Shields and Thomas. - The penalty I saw the most when the penalty sliders were maxed out was Illegal Block In The Back. Saw plenty of offensive and defensive holding, roughing the passer. I did see defensive pass interference. Saw a bit of CPU players committing neutral zone infractions and offsides. Didn't see many false starts but neither my opponent nor I was doing a whole lot with the snap count. I do not recall seeing offensive pass interference. Strangely, offensive pass interference is an On/Off toggle, not a slider. Not sure if that's the final implementation. If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer some, I'll be around on OS for a bit this evening.

You said penalties do occur in online head to head in CFM, I'm assuming penalties will be called on the CPU in offline CFM games right?

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeuceDouglas

Excellent post and greatly appreciate the info! Could you elaborate a little bit more on the above? The main thing I'm wondering is if there were still false starts as well as the neutral zone infractions and offsides on CPU players without actually using the fake snap mechanic.

I did not see false start, offsides, or encroachment trigger without using the fake snap button, except in the case where a user manually moved his defender offsides.

I also did not see any field goal / punt plays where a pre-snap penalty was instantly called, either (which is how those penalties have always appeared to work in previous EA Sports football game). Granted, small sample size.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by jpdavis82

You said penalties do occur in online head to head in CFM, I'm assuming penalties will be called on the CPU in offline CFM games right?

Yup, you'll see penalties in user vs CPU games in Connected Franchise.