Madden NFL 16 Community Impressions

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by rudyjuly2

For the CPU I like 40 accuracy and 53 power. For users I want to test 27 accuracy with 58 power more. I hope the practice mode translates to play now and eventually franchise.

I'll play with it this weekend and let you know what I see.

[kcchiefs1984]

Some say the game is won before the players even get on the field. Obviously, that is incorrect, however, the purpose of that statement, is to stress the importance of preparation. I feel like the work I do prior to playing any cfm game should be applied to the advancement of the players' mental aspects of the game. When I look through the opponents depth charts, injury reports, and their stats for the season, I am essentially formulating a game plan. Learning how to approach the team, how to exploit their weaknesses, or how to cover up my own teams weaknesses. Scrolling through all those pages should earn experience points for every player on the team that can be applied to attributes associated with the mental portion of the game, such as play recognition or route running. This would logically tie experience and progression of the players understanding of the game, while also rewarding the person controlling the team for putting some effort into the process. As it stands now, I have to remember to go to the progress player screen at some point each week, and select the seven players that the coaches spoke to that week. Every time I progress players, I feel like I have Chris Farley for a Head Coach. How many players did you coach up this week? 52,53..... Seven, seven players. Did you show the players where they're going to line up in each formation so I can get the match ups I want? No, no, we'll just figure that out when the game starts.
As for the physical progression of players, it should all be based on what is done on the field.
I like the improvements on the field this year. The ball has some life to it, seeing some organic plays, but cfm is like the niners, off field issues every where. It appears as though the focus will be applied to cfm for next season, and hopefully these guys will reach out a little further in advance of the release. Plenty of helpful people out there.

[spankdatazz22]

May as well give my $.02. Full disclosure: I'm a long-time 2K fan that has only purchased one Madden game since Madden 05 on the PS2, sometime during the 360 generation. The game was so awful to me I traded it in a little over a month later. As far as Madden 15 on the Xbox One goes for me, I generally like it. There are some things that I find equally fascinating and frustrating with the game:

LIKES:

- The WR/DB interaction: very well done, primarily the WR play. WR route running and foot planting is enjoyable to watch. While the one-handed catches are a little overdone imo, I've also seen some really nice normal catches, with a ton of variety. Overall the WR play is the best facet of the game imo. The DB play is mostly good, but it's noticeable the same attention to detail paid to the WR play wasn't done to the DBs.

- Passing game: The ability to choose the type of pass you want is very intuitive and gives you a lot of control as a user. Great enhancement imo

- Running game: I like that the game gives you a ton of options, with both the buttons and right stick moves and the left stick as a modifier. Kinda curious why the stiff arm doesn't seem to work though. Much like the WR animations, the RB animations are mostly well done; the sense of acceleration when using the speed burst hasn't been this good in a game since the XBox/PS2 era of Madden.

- The Tackling: I thought I'd never say the tackling system for a Madden game is a positive but the rag-doll physics are mostly well done and yields a ton of variety. Unfortunately there are still a lot of wonky/unrealistic moments but it's far better than I would've imagined and has come a long way from the days of Pro-Tak

- Player Ratings seem to matter: Probably moreso than in any Madden game to date.

DISLIKES:

- The Animations: I was going to list this as both a positive and negative, but I after some thought it's more negative than positive. The WR animations are so well done - the WRs seem to rarely slide and seem tethered to the ground. Not so much for everybody else. DBs noticeably skate and slide into/out of position at times, moving an LB even a little bit pre-snap and they skate over the turf (well, even the WRs noticeably slide pre-snap). The QB throwing animations aren't very good. All ball carriers seem to have the same few running animations, there's very little individual player distinction; it's a credit to the ratings system that there's any player distinction at all. LBs and sometimes DBs make half-hearted unrealistic looking plays on balls at times, seemingly because the attention to detail wasn't paid to those aspects. Everyone still has that weird bent-knee lurch walk pre and post play from Madden '06 on the 360/PS3 - and still skate when doing it. Just stiff and robotic. There's some greatness there, with the WR play, or even the celebrations - but overall I'd have to say it's more a negative than positive.

- The OL/DL interaction: the patty-cake win/lose nature of the OL/DL play is extremely disappointing. It's such an integral part to football but seems like an afterthought in the game. There is SO much gameplay depth to be mined from appropriate OL/DL play. It makes the game seem more like a 7-on-7 drill. It's all the more frustrating because sometimes it seems like the dynamic nature of OL/DL play is in the game, it's just nerfed/scripted.


I've only done practice and Play Now games so I'm just commenting on those aspects; I'd rate it a 7 or 7.5 myself. The game is at least fun for the most part, even if it's also very frustrating to see the less fleshed out aspects of the gameplay. The lack of footplanting/the skating or lack of situational animations that noticeably occurs on every single play needs to be improved. The near-complete lack of individuality expressed with the game's animations is mind boggling in this generation - it was for last generation, frankly. I can't say for sure, but teams don't play true to their real life counterparts - or it'd be nice if the teams played more to their real life counterparts.

Can only hope Tiburon stops their piecemeal approach of focusing on 1-2 facets of the game every year and makes a full comprehensive effort to building the game up going forward.

[Hammerhunker]

Quote: Originally Posted by jvalverde88

I noticed this last night, the cpu does a bad job with clock management when its down 2 scores with 5 minutes remaining. They didn't hurry up or anything until they got to the 2 minute warning. I don't know if its hard to program or what but it kinda took way from a good game.

This has always been a gripe for me. Additionally, when the cpu is on defense and down, they won't call timeouts until the 2 minute warning. Inexcusable that it is still happening in 2015.

[redux1000]

Has anyone else noticed that the cpu runners don't really do anything? Like it seems running backs/punt returners etc just run in a straight line and hardly ever juke, spin or stiff arm. I'm on all madden, custom sliders..... Any way to try to address this and make cpu ball carriers more dynamic?


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[Smoke6]

I think I am done with this game, no matter who or what i play defenses designed to stop the run do the opposite and its turning me off.

Everyone sit in ZONE, yeah the tuner fixed it but its something else weird going on that other players have figured out and its making for crappy experiences all for the sake of a win. Why is it that safeties can charge into a pile and come out as if there was no one there and make a play in the backfield or recover and cover a receiver he shouldnt have been able to cover after engaging the LOS?

Yeah, im not feeling it no more at all, no type of strategy to this what so ever, its just spam the same crap all day long regardless of what team and personell you're against.

[bkrich83]

Quote: Originally Posted by redux1000

Has anyone else noticed that the cpu runners don't really do anything? Like it seems running backs/punt returners etc just run in a straight line and hardly ever juke, spin or stiff arm. I'm on all madden, custom sliders..... Any way to try to address this and make cpu ball carriers more dynamic? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I haven't particularly post tuner.

[Bootzilla]

They've made good TE's too good. LB's aren't as helpless vs TE's as the game makes it out to be. In real life even the quickest TE's don't get off of the line of scrimmage and in and out of breaks at the break neck speed they're able to in the game. There's seldom any contact or wading through traffic. Just a clean release and really fast pass patterns. I think all of the TE's acceleration or release should be toned down. Most TE's are somewhat lumbering guys yet in game they're super quick-twitchy with Ben Johnson-esque first steps.