Madden 24 Beta: Franchise Mode Impressions and Mini-Game Rankings

[Steve_OS]

On June 8 EA Sports revealed the first trailer for Madden 24 along with this year's...

Written By: Josh Houtz

Click here to view the article.

[goalieump413]

Seems like more duct tape and zip ties, rather than a better-engineered effort. It's a shame, but like you, I'll hold out hope that whatever the developers HAVE done to address concerns...

1. is substantial
2. actually addresses key concerns in the simulation of franchise operation
3. works, out of the box

[venem557]

Quote: Originally Posted by Steve_OS

On June 8 EA Sports revealed the first trailer for Madden 24 along with this year's... Written By: Josh Houtz Click here to view the article.

If some drafted players are going to need a position change to be better, will the cpu be doing that with their players?

It’s always strange to me that they don’t move players into their scheme fit by changing defenders from right to left. But to need your qb to be a wr, that seems like a huge change that needs to happen for their team’s success

[Broncos86]

So incredibly frustrating. Once again, left with the sense that Clint’s team sees franchise mode as not worth proactively improving. We’ll need another pitchfork moment just to get anything. What’s more disappointing is that all this hoopla about improving franchise left us with a mode that still feels lackluster and boring overall.

What a punch in the gut. The only way this mode improves at all is if mass riots break out.

[CM Hooe]

A couple follow-up questions for the author:

- Could you provide a couple examples for the newer items on the coaching skill trees?

- How powerful are the draft class generator customization options (there are new options in Madden 24 which let a user determine how strong each position group will be before the draft class is generated)? Should we expect those options to drastically alter the trajectory of the league, or is it more of a fudging around the margins thing?

- Similarly, what are the new options are available for managing player progression and regression, and how much flexibility do those offer?

[Cusefan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Broncos86

So incredibly frustrating. Once again, left with the sense that Clint’s team sees franchise mode as not worth proactively improving. We’ll need another pitchfork moment just to get anything. What’s more disappointing is that all this hoopla about improving franchise left us with a mode that still feels lackluster and boring overall. What a punch in the gut. The only way this mode improves at all is if mass riots break out.

Did any game mode get any attention at all? They made improvements to the actual on the field gameplay, but I haven't seen anything in the way of mode improvements.

It's a punch in the gut, but EA has punched me int he gut so much recently, the pain doesn't hurt as much anymore. Maybe I'll play Madden when it comes on Gamepass, probably not though. This whole series is just absurd. The last deep Madden game was on a PS2. Does Tiburon not own any of their old games? All they have to do is fire up Madden 2005, look at what that game did in Franchise mode, copy it, and we'll be happy.

They don't care about us though, because we're not going to give EA hundreds or thousands of dollars playing Franchise mode. The lemmings who throw money away at MUT are the reason this game is in the state that its in. I can't fault EA for pandering to them though, if I owned a money printing machine, I would probably use it too.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

How powerful are the draft class generator customization options (there are new options in Madden 24 which let a user determine how strong each position group will be before the draft class is generated)? Should we expect those options to drastically alter the trajectory of the league, or is it more of a fudging around the margins thing?

There was actually a bug with these causing them not to work in the beta that I believe was fixed in the patch this week. There's more to come on this but I can provide a couple quick bullets from the tuning I did on these:

• The average OVR difference between Very Weak and Normal (default) classes is around two points lower OVR across the board. That may not seem like much but the data is from over 20K generated rookies so it's pretty significant. The difference between Very Weak and Very Strong is around six to seven OVR points on average.
• The chances of finding an X-Factor on Very Weak is somewhere around a fraction of 1% while on Very Strong it's about three times as likely as on Normal.
• The chances of seeing generationals on Very Strong is 10 times higher than it is on Normal. They're not even possible on Very Weak. The likelihood of drafting a player with Hidden DEV with Very Strong is going to be somewhere around 35-40% while that likelihood on Very Weak is around 10-20%

[sheredia]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cusefan

Did any game mode get any attention at all? They made improvements to the actual on the field gameplay, but I haven't seen anything in the way of mode improvements. It's a punch in the gut, but EA has punched me int he gut so much recently, the pain doesn't hurt as much anymore. Maybe I'll play Madden when it comes on Gamepass, probably not though. This whole series is just absurd. The last deep Madden game was on a PS2. Does Tiburon not own any of their old games? All they have to do is fire up Madden 2005, look at what that game did in Franchise mode, copy it, and we'll be happy. They don't care about us though, because we're not going to give EA hundreds or thousands of dollars playing Franchise mode. The lemmings who throw money away at MUT are the reason this game is in the state that its in. I can't fault EA for pandering to them though, if I owned a money printing machine, I would probably use it too.

agree. just copy and paste madden 2005 franchise mode (from almost 20 years ago) and they'll be golden. not sure if they can (or even want to) at this point. it's bad enough there aren't any historic teams, historic player challenge modes, myera modes, (need i go on?), etc. they consistently offer less than any other sports video game on the market. might as well call it madden 24 ultimate team because that's really what it is.