Madden NFL 16 Community Impressions

[jb12780]

Quote: Originally Posted by 4thQtrStre5S

That wasn't helpful at all, why even post anything?

Try mixing up defenses, blitzing, show blitz, etc.

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[4thQtrStre5S]

Quote: Originally Posted by jb12780

Try mixing up defenses, blitzing, show blitz, etc. Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

I do all that stuff....Just in a number of the MUT games, I will score or be faced with the need to stop the CPU and I do my line adjustments and LB adjustments and nothing seems to work...Players that should not get separation as much as they do, do make great slant routes against equal or better corners; where on my end, I will pull a slant and, though I make a good many completions, the coverage of the M2M player is tighter on my WR, and in MUT right now my best WR is an 83 OVR with 88 speed, Emmanuel Sanders.

[4thQtrStre5S]

One of the defensive adjustments I like to do is come out in a cover 1 or 0 and then put all LB's in zone, and do the double Man align adjust to get their zones spread out....

[RogueHominid]

I just had an awesome 13-10 defensive slugfest on AP default 12 minute quarters.

Something I'm seeing consistently in my games is the difference the QB position makes. I was using HOU, and there were just certain throws that were absolutely off the table for me using him. Gone are the days where you could basically make every throw with every QB. I love that. If I played a whole season with a team like that, I could see 6-10 or worse being my record, which is just how it should be. I had to really work the safe passes and my offense lost all hope of creating explosive plays as a result.

Also, I think the sacks are just right. My high for a game is 4, which I've gotten twice, but I've also had a 1 sack game and two 3 sack games. I'm very happy with the way the pass blocking and pass rushing are tuned.

[johnnyg713]

Love all the animations in this game. I wish there were replays after every play. I find myself pressing start and going into replay mode all this time. There have been some crazy interceptions, especially from safeties. I've really seem some jaw dropping plays. They need to fix the play calling screen next year and go all out on presentation. Gameplay is finally there IMO. Just blow out presentation next year.

The sack issue has been fixed, however now it's been replaced with an intentional grounding issue. Intentional grounding isn't getting called, however every time I get to the qb, he ends up trying to get the ball out and it falls for an incompletion. Hopefully there's a way to tweek this.

[rudyjuly2]

Finally got Madden today. And after popping it in, waiting for the update and then waiting through a very long opening game sequence between Pitt and Arizona (it was cool but I should be able to skip it; load times are long) I got some gaming in. I did do a quick skills trainer on the passing game to get a quick look at the new passing and receiving controls.

I started out on All-Pro. Played a tiny bit against the Lions with Miami and got a pick 6 off of Stafford. Then shut if off since as I had to get back to work. Fired up a game later with Miami at Pitt (cpu). Roethlisberger lit me up like I couldn’t believe. At half time I was losing 35-7 as he ripped me a new one. He was 12-12, 285 yards and 4 TDs. He hit a couple bombs too as my coverage was horrid. It was actually really nice to see. I shut that game off at half and took on the Bills in Miami. This time I won 23-14 and Cassell was nowhere near as good as Big Ben. Very happy to see a separation between cpu QBs. I was also shocked that I saw the cpu QBs in some games actually throw the ball away including one time on a screen pass I covered where the QB spun out and threw the ball away. Unfortunately the pass rush is so awfully neutered on default that both QBs can read a book while sitting in the pocket. Definitely something that needs tweaking in the sliders but something that is certainly fixed offline.

I saw a few spectacular catches but more often than not these passes were not completed. My early impression is that the aggressive catch is not over powered although I haven’t used a dominant WR (although I expect a dominant WR to actually dominate). I think it’s true that you don’t have to hit those special catch buttons – I think they automatically trigger. But I do like the fact I can change them to something else. Quite a few times RAC popped up when I just wanted to secure the catch with possession. I do love the fact there is a battle in the air for the ball unlike years past where it was an automatic knockdown for the DB. I also like the options to keep my WR in bounds and this does seem much better to me.

The game itself looks fantastic in the afternoon games on the grass. The tackling looks great and realistic too. The halftime show is well done imo. But why can’t they apply that for a postgame show too? Instead we gets some highlight clips and no commentary. Nantz and Simms have similar commentary and I’m fine with them.

Special teams are still weak. No separate sliders for human vs cpu for some strange reason in franchise and you can’t even access special teams sliders in-game. CPU kick returners are never a threat and the cpu punter is terrible. The one time the punter kicked from his own 45 and I got the ball on my 41! I guess he kept it out of the end zone.

CPU clock management has changed. I don’t see the automatic timeout at 1:00 anymore. I’m guessing it’s around 45/46 seconds now. They don’t seem to burn their timeouts as fast but they also don’t use them well either. The cpu tried to squeeze in one more play before the half and the time ran out WITH a timeout in their pocket! Penalties are called more on default. I haven’t messed with those sliders but I trust everyone else that it’s much improved.

Everything feels like Madden has improved a bit or stayed the same and that leads me to my biggest annoyance – the inside running game. Overall with the running game I’ve seen some cool animations. Twice my RB seemed to spin off a tackler (without me hitting spin) and I got some extra yards including a cool long TD with Lamar Miller. The r-stick juke sucks but if you hold L2 (modifier) it’s decent although the spin is probably better.

For the last 2-3 years the inside running game has been too easy on ANY difficulty level and you could not fix this with sliders. The same appears to be the case in Madden 16. Guards and Centers routinely knock the DTs off the ball – usually by at least a yard though not always. DTs almost never seem to get into the backfield or even hold the point of attack. Despite all the cool animations in the passing game you don’t even need to see them. Just run ISOs inside or Inside Zone runs out of the shotgun and you never need to pass. Three straight runs and you get a first down as you march down the field and score. I dropped the user run blocking to 0 and the same thing happens. I then changed it to All-Madden with user run blocking and my interior OL kept knocking the DTs back as I continued to grind out first downs on the ground. I took Miami and had rushed for almost 200 yards against the Bills on All-Pro. Then in the second half with Cleveland against Philly I tried All-Madden with 0 run block and continued to stick it down their throats. It’s not like I’m running for 25 yards every time but when you can routinely pick up 3-6 yards every time it’s basically a money play. Running basic plays between the tackles should never be a money play and tackles for losses should happen more often. It makes third downs too easy to convert. I have begged EA to fix this but it’s still not. Very disappointed in this aspect of the game. This area killed M15 for me. I’m worried it will do the same for M16. If so I won’t be continuing my mistakes by buying Madden again for awhile. If they would only make the run blocking slider more powerful and tie it into the movement the OL gets I could fix this myself. But that slider still appears fairly useless. I’m frustrated.

[Madden's Jowels]

I hate how the CPU can sit and hard count all day long and never false start, I do it like twice and it's an automatic false start every time, and I never draw an offsides.

[taylor34]

Playing Madden for the first time in years due to EA Access, had fun so far but there appears to be menu/play selection lag? All I know is I keep accidentally selecting plays trying to skip animations, which is super annoying. Currently I'm leaning towards not buying it because of that. Everything else seems generally how I'd expect it, a few bugs but nothing major. The new receiver/db interactions are pretty decent, I'm glad that they brought back a tecmo bowlesque feature like that.