Whew. Well, now that that's over...

[Ian_Cummings]

Well, I am a sucker...I had to come back to see the feedback. 30 minutes later and a few notches down on my confidence level, we can be frank about what we saw.

The key thing to note here is that this trailer maybe didn't appease the community, but mainly because it was only focused on a few things. The direction given to them was to re-create the Super Bowl plays instead of actually focus on ALL the new stuff. As I said before there were quite a few cringe worthy moments, but I think it did succeed in showing a lot of new stuff.

If you've posted that you think the game looks exactly the same as 09, I am sorry, you are blindly hating. Just to give some perspective - we as a team have specifically added and changed MANY of the top items from the community, including things that haven't existed in Madden for 20 years. You can say "well it should have been there before" - ok, fair enough, but does that mean it's not supposed to be there now?

Things I'm talking about: More than 3 people in a gang tackle (the system supports up to 9 FWIW), all new OL/DL interaction, all new WR/DB play, fumble pileups, etc. We still have plenty of tuning to do but let's be real here folks...the running animation not being different is a change pretty paltry in comparison to those up above (and we'll try to do that)...those areas above took months of development time and I think we have to call a spade a spade and realize that we are moving in the right direction. For the majority of the shots there isn't a single animation from 09, and the footage also included something never before seen in a football game - 4-5 man gang tackles, and a real fumble pileup. I will be clear - I agree with many of the critical posts though:
- the edge rush/blocking animations were cool but blocking as a whole wasn't impressive. Yep, 'cringe-worthy' is what I would call this.
- the gang tackling was cool but Parker shouldn't be able to break that many...well known before the video went out
- the running animations are the same from 09 (stiff)...our animation director is working on this as we speak. Cringe-worthy as well
- there were times when the defense played in an incorrect fashion (most of these were done for the purpose of the highlight video, but AI tuning is something we work on all cycle)

iCombine's post (http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2039468448) is a great one to me and spot on - I am very happy we still have 2 months to work on this game and these are the areas that we'll be working on.

So all in all we have plenty of work still to do but at least we have some technology foundations to build off of. What if our first trailer showed no new animations? No OL/DL interaction improvements? No WR/DB jostling? No gang tackling?

[Derrville]

Was the trailer made before Community day Ian?

[Exonerated]

yeah those running animations really need to be replaced. Then blind people will automatically assume its a totally different game!

[burne]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ian_Cummings_EA

- the edge rush/blocking animations were cool but blocking as a whole wasn't impressive. Yep, 'cringe-worthy' is what I would call this. - the gang tackling was cool but Parker shouldn't be able to break that many...well known before the video went out - the running animations are the same from 09 (stiff)...our animation director is working on this as we speak. Cringe-worthy as well - there were times when the defense played in an incorrect fashion (most of these were done for the purpose of the highlight video, but AI tuning is something we work on all cycle)

QB throw animation knee bending. That's all I'm going to say.

Besides that, great work so far and I can't wait for some user-perspective gameplay footage.

[thudias]

I must be blind because I loved the video..yeah there were a few moments I was like WTF..but for the most part the changes that I noticed were unbelievable.

[ChampN252]

I think it looks good great, but you still didn't answer my thread. I'll hold you to that. Well, at least you are critical of your own work.

[Ian_Cummings]

Quote: Originally Posted by Derrville

Was the trailer made before Community day Ian?

Same time frame. But again, I could probably capture a trailer that would blow the community away. Anyone can capture specific moments and make sure they are perfect. These guys captured 'highlights' on rookie mode that they thought were key for the direction of the piece by marketing...they aren't capturing with the hardcore in mind.

[bigfnjoe96]

Keep-on, keeping-on Ian. The home stretch is almost upon us....