Madden NFL 16: A Noob's Perspective

[kjcheezhead]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Your opinion simply doesn't hold up whatsoever upon scrutiny of the two versions of the game. First - that's not what refactor means. Second - "refactor" was admittedly poor word choice on my part, I should have said "rewrote" because that's Tiburon actually did. Third - I challenge you go put PS2 Madden NFL 08 (the last version of that game as far as I know) and PS4 Madden NFL 16 side-by-side and continue to reasonably proclaim that the difference in how things play out in the core gameplay is not dramatic. What you describe is specifically not online franchise. Online franchises specifically allow for concurrent user actions and games. Sharing a single franchise file over FTP isn't concurrent whatsoever. I can't play my friend in California in the Super Bowl in a franchise file shared in this manner. Sharing a single franchise file also doesn't allow me to do a live draft with said friend who lives in California.

Refactor was the right word imo. I know what it means. They changed or modified existing code and improved it. If they did rewrite it, it didn't change how those areas operate at their core.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NoG5hL8jU6o

That's ps2 Madden 12. Dramatic difference of the core gameplay? Hardly. Madden 16 has hd graphics, better animations and subtle changes like jostling but the core is the same. The defensive changes / audibles are the same options. Same x for x wr passing controls. The old game had swat ball vs int, the new game is play ball vs play wr. The new catch choices are really the only missing, but ps2 had qb cone and lead blocking so....

Also the EA locker did allow online games. You and your friend most certainly could play the super bowl as opponents. You and your opponent would link up in a match up, play the game and then the results would go back to the main file the commish took care of. The draft wasn't possible iirc, but the that was about the only franchise feature that wasn't possible.

[tarek]

Great write up. I'm a massive noob too. I understand more and more about the game and what is going on, but for me it's the controls and knowing what I'm meant to be doing. Maybe that's because I have poor stick skills, but maybe you can also talk about how you've transitioned not just in letting the coach suggestions dictate your play calling, but if you've progressed in understanding the game in order to better your performance? I use coach mode mainly because of the fact that if I try to play I'm exactly like you and get picked apart both on offence and defence.

[Fraser G.]

Quote: Originally Posted by tarek

Great write up. I'm a massive noob too. I understand more and more about the game and what is going on, but for me it's the controls and knowing what I'm meant to be doing. Maybe that's because I have poor stick skills, but maybe you can also talk about how you've transitioned not just in letting the coach suggestions dictate your play calling, but if you've progressed in understanding the game in order to better your performance? I use coach mode mainly because of the fact that if I try to play I'm exactly like you and get picked apart both on offence and defence.

That's a great idea. Maybe down the line I'll revisit this topic and comment on how I've progressed over time.

[X_isBringingSexyBack]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

What counts as significant progress? In the last five years Madden NFL has added real-time physics to collisions, refactored components of the game such as blocking, passing accuracy, and pass coverage countless times to make the behavior more authentic, produced and built upon the only full-featured online franchise mode in modern sports video games, built a whole new way to play the game in Ultimate Team which has introduced the game to a whole new audience, and is the only sports video game to-date with a comprehensive teaching tool to not only familiarize new players with the tools needed to succeed in playing the game but also the strategies and concepts real football teams use to win on Sundays.

Madden's version of RTP doesn't work well, never has. Is it better today than it was in Madden 13? Absolutely, but it had nowhere to go but up from that point, because it was utterly horrendous then. Still, lots of issues and years of video evidence to support the reality that it still has tons of issues. They also weren't the first to do it, so they're neither a trailblazer nor an innovator with that feature.

Blocking has fatal flaws and again lots of video evidence over many years to support that truth. It's not even debatable for anyone with just a cursory knowledge of football. Can't call it innovation when older games did it far better. What that is called is regression.

Passing accuracy has certainly improved relative to Madden's own situation, but innovated? I'm not sure I see actual innovation there.

Pass coverage has seen improvements, but there is also lots of video evidence showing new flaws and old standing flaws that have never been fixed, so there is certainly nothing innovative happening there.

Ultimate Team is a money-maker for them and it caters to a different type of fan than the sim gamer. I also can't ignore the fact they don't put much effort into making authentic legends (wrong faces, wrong equipment, wrong body types, wrong jersey styles) and since they're a big part of the MUT game I have to take huge points off for those inexcusable errors, but really they're not even errors there, those are just a lack of effort entirely when a player looks absolutely nothing at all like his historic self.

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

In fact, a bunch of these things are called out in this article as things which the self-proclaimed "noob" user enjoyed and/or found useful. Heck, I personally think Skills Trainer is one of the best things - if not the very best thing - that's ever been added into any sports game.

I respect your right to an opinion and all, but that kind of hyperbole is WAAAAY overboard for something so ordinary. If that constitutes innovation, then 11 years of no competition has certainly lowered the bar in football gaming to the lowest ground-level of earth. I mean, the bar has been lowered anyway, and I think anyone being honest would agree, but I'm saying that kind of praise for a basic feature that only casuals and newbies would need is a case example of just how low standards have gotten.

The sad reality for Madden is that people aren't even really expecting innovation so much as they're just expecting them to do things that were done in other football games that Madden currently doesn't do for reasons that make no sense and none of their public personalities have ever responded to with reasoning for it that was plausible. Also, a lot of us are just wanting them to fix things that have been broken or not working properly in Madden for a long time. Unfortunately, we pretty much get neither and instead get things like MUT, Skills Trainer, Draft Champions, and Gauntlet, and it only keeps the cycle going as their efforts seem to keep going in directions that nobody is asking for.

The game has become more about what's not in it than it has become about what is, and that to me should be embarrassing to a development team but their public persona makes it appear that they don't see a problem and have a fundamentally different perspective than sim gamers have where the things we ask for are deemed practically meaningless and worthy of discredit and challenge even when undeniable visual evidence is presented to them as it has been done countless times. I'm often left dumbfounded by how they dismiss some things to the point that I come away hoping it was satirical, but I know it isn't and that's quite troubling.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by X_isBringingSexyBack

I respect your right to an opinion and all, but that kind of hyperbole is WAAAAY overboard for something so ordinary. If that constitutes innovation, then 11 years of no competition has certainly lowered the bar in football gaming to the lowest ground-level of earth. I mean, the bar has been lowered anyway, and I think anyone being honest would agree, but I'm saying that kind of praise for a basic feature that only casuals and newbies would need is a case example of just how low standards have gotten.

I am going to focus on this because it's the only part of your post that is relevant to the topic of this thread. The airing of grievances with Madden in the general case is off-topic so I am not going to respond to that.

I don't know how to put this delicately - you're simply wrong. Skills Trainer is important and innovative. That Madden NFL is the only game attempting anything like it at this point (as far as I know) is significant.

The biggest problem that simulation sports games have on a mass scale is barrier to entry. You have plenty of people who try to play these games who don't understand the sport the game is attempting to represent. They don't know what "hike" means, much less what the proper blocking technique on zone blocking run is. The game developer has a responsibility to teach the user not only the mechanics of the game in question, but also how to effectively use those mechanics to overcome challenges and accomplish feats in the game, and Madden NFL is (again, as far as I know) the only simulation sports game actively engaging this duty.

For example, I don't have an intricate knowledge of basketball, soccer, baseball, or hockey like I do football. As such, even though I recognize that NBA 2K / FIFA / MLB The Show / NHL are doing great things individually as games, I can't begin to enjoy these games because I don't know how to play them and the game makes no effort to teach me how to play. Reasonable minds can beg to differ about how much fault is mine vs the game dev's with respect to how much knowledge I should have brought to the table before starting the game in a demo setting, but the end result is the same - I don't buy the game because I don't understand it and therefore I don't enjoy it.

Madden so obviously going out of its way to teach the mechanics and strategies of football to those who don't have the slightest clue what is otherwise going on is important because it grows the audience of the game and it increases the quality of online competition, which is a net positive for the game's core online modes of Ultimate Team and Connected Franchise. Skills Trainer will also benefit tournament players as the game continues to drive towards authenticity in gameplay and the various exploits and nano blitzes stop working. Heck, the drills are useful even to me, the simulation-style player, because I enjoy partaking in the relevantly devised drills; "practice using Smash against Cover 2", "learn how to use the Curl Flats concept", "how to use the Mills concept against Cover 4", etc. etc.

While Madden Skills Trainer is probably of no value to many people on this board, apparently you included and that's fine, it is objectively important to improving the quality of the game and community long-term. It is perhaps the singular feature in simulation sports games where Madden is far ahead of its peers and leading by example, an example which other sports games absolutely should follow.

[Toupal]

I see where you are coming from, CM Hooe. Madden 64 taught me a lot about football. I learned all the rosters, rules, and basic plays from a video game when I was 7. I remember when I first started to play, I was intimidated because my friends knew way more about the sport than I did. But, through trial and error, I figured it out and eventually became a madden/ football junky.

On top of that, I know I'm not alone in being intimidated by football before being exposed to it. I've spent time in the Middle East and Europe, and they are just as big into sports over there as they are here. Anytime I would talk to someone about sports, I would tell them that I was really into American Football. And almost 100% of the time they would say that they couldn't watch it, because it is too hard to understand what is going on in the game. however, when I was in Istanbul, I would see them selling football jerseys along side basketball jerseys.

So I can totally appreciate EA's stand point of not wanting to get too carried away with making the game of football less harder to understand for a new fan.
That's why we saw them come up the "one button mode". A long time user like me finds in worthless, but when I'm showing my 9 year old cousins how to play madden, it is pretty handy.

In contradiction to making it simpler for the new users, just because you make a game easier, doesn't mean you have to water down the game so much. One thing madden has been terrible at the last few years is customizing the game experience. What madden can do is give the users options. Just like when they came out with One Button Mode, you didn't have to choose this option to play an exhibition game. Just like if someone is new to madden, they can set the features to whatever makes the game easiest for them.

Madden just needs to give its users more options and control over the game that they bought. There isn't a reason madden can't cater to new users and veteran players. Just like there isn't a reason they can't make the online and offline community happy at the same time. I know some people hate when this comes up, but there is a reason NBA2k is voted the best sports game year after year. And that is because they find a way to make their fans happy. I didn't start playing NBA2k until 2014, and the last time I played a basketball game before that was in an arcade in the 90's. But I had no problem picking it up and playing, because the game was easy enough for me to walk into the game and pick things up. I still have a lot to learn, but because of sports video games, I learned a lot about the real sport itself.

[Hooe]

Toupal - to be clear, I'm not saying make the whole game easier across the board and that's it. The game still has to present an interesting challenge to those who already know how to play, the game's core audience. For the most part, Madden has been recently doing this, though there are always areas where it can improve.

In the case of Skills Trainer, it's not like the thing is teaching something completely removed from real football; it's teaching real football things in there and making them applicable to how to play Madden. I'm all for options, as well, and I think Tiburon is starting to follow this line of thinking; most of the recently-added core gameplay assist options are all optional - Heat Seeker, the tackle cone, Ball Hawk, etc.

In places like Connected Franchise mode, however, the game needs to add both more depth - to satisfy and challenge hardcore players - and more accessibility. A big problem with CFM from EA's perspective is that new players try the mode are intimidated by both CFM's breadth of options and the steep expectations upon the user with respect to the institutional knowledge required to successfully run an NFL team and/or a franchise game save in general. These user then never even finish a single season to engage with the most polished components of the mode like the draft because the game doesn't instruct them how to properly engage with what depth the mode does have, and then hardcore players are also upset because the depth that is there isn't enough to satisfy them.

Madden is a game of many masters - new players, veteran players, casuals, ranked / tournament players, the "sim" crowd, franchise mode addicts, MUT-heads / Draft Champions players - and it's hard to cater to all of these crowds simultaneously, particularly on a one-year cycle. For the most part I think Tiburon is doing a good job of pushing the authenticity and depth of the game forward while presenting said gameplay in a manner with which a new player may easily engage. There's obviously still work to do, however, but they have to do it in a manner that's digestible to as much of their audience as possible.

[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Toupal - to be clear, I'm not saying make the whole game easier across the board and that's it. The game still has to present an interesting challenge to those who already know how to play, the game's core audience. For the most part, Madden has been recently doing this, though there are always areas where it can improve. In the case of Skills Trainer, it's not like the thing is teaching something completely removed from real football; it's teaching real football things in there and making them applicable to how to play Madden. I'm all for options, as well, and I think Tiburon is starting to follow this line of thinking; most of the recently-added core gameplay assist options are all optional - Heat Seeker, the tackle cone, Ball Hawk, etc. In places like Connected Franchise mode, however, the game needs to add both more depth - to satisfy and challenge hardcore players - and more accessibility. A big problem with CFM from EA's perspective is that new players try the mode are intimidated by both CFM's breadth of options and the steep expectations upon the user with respect to the institutional knowledge required to successfully run an NFL team and/or a franchise game save in general. These user then never even finish a single season to engage with the most polished components of the mode like the draft because the game doesn't instruct them how to properly engage with what depth the mode does have, and then hardcore players are also upset because the depth that is there isn't enough to satisfy them. Madden is a game of many masters - new players, veteran players, casuals, ranked / tournament players, the "sim" crowd, franchise mode addicts, MUT-heads / Draft Champions players - and it's hard to cater to all of these crowds simultaneously, particularly on a one-year cycle. For the most part I think Tiburon is doing a good job of pushing the authenticity and depth of the game forward while presenting said gameplay in a manner with which a new player may easily engage. There's obviously still work to do, however, but they have to do it in a manner that's digestible to as much of their audience as possible.

Well said.
Just to throw on to the skill trainer, I liked back in the ps2 days, when madden had training camps. So that way you had somewhat of a skill trainer, and yet it also added depth to the game in franchise mode, because based on how you did, determined how your player would improve.