Dev. team vision change in 1 year?

[REDRZA]

I remember Ian and Co. talking about making the game as realistic as possible, touting "Everything you see on Sundays, see it in Madden NFL". Seems only a year later, and the philosophy has become more "casual gamer" friendly.

Everything about this game from it's new "features" like Gameflow and the Strategy pad (I know, i know, they are patching in the old controller scheme) seems to cater to the "pick up and play" gamers. You can see Gameflow is just ridiculous, letting the CPU pick 1 play instead of you calling your own play.

I assume the idea behind the strategy pad was to make it more accessible to the casual gamer also, with all the assignments and hot routes written on screen.

The thing that really bugs me so far is the lack of defense at times. Too many high scoring games, and one play scores. Too many broken tackles lead to big plays and scores. Just seems a bit arcadish at times.

EA's slogan this year is "Simpler, Quicker, Deeper", well real Madden fans don't want SIMPLER, or QUICKER. Deeper, sure, but this game doesn't seem any deeper than previous versions. So, goes back to the original question, why the philosophical change?

I'd be happy if they patch the amount of broken tackles, and make the coverage a bit better.

Guess they don't realize the decrease in sales has nothing to do with the game being "too complicated" for the masses. Dumbing the game down will not increase sales, making a better quality game will.

[canes21]

You complain about things that are options such as GameFlow and Strategy Pad(soon anyways) and also things that can be fixed through sliders.

[thssanders]

I changed around the sliders and have made it much more about defense now

[REDRZA]

Quote: Originally Posted by canes21

You complain about things that are options such as GameFlow and Strategy Pad(soon anyways) and also things that can be fixed through sliders.

I love guys like you. Reading comprehension is key. Where did i complain about those features? If you cared to read i stated that those features are casual gamer friendly, and the game this year seems to cater to those gamers. Not once did i complain, or say we were forced to use them.

Also, i only play online, so sliders are useless to me. The game should play good out of the box, so there would be no need to mess with sliders, which don't effect online play anyway.

[G-Men_in_Mass]

The game feel more like Sunday then last year, now myself I dont waste my time online, so I can tweak sliders and have defensive struggles.... Its to bad they dont have a Cheese slider for online play...

[canes21]

I don't love guys like you and it seemed to me you were complaining about them going more Casual and you mentioned some features you thought made it more casual. So I used a logical thought process and came up with you complaining about those features too.

And if you play online only, then you're out of luck with the sliders helping. But user vs user games have always seemed to play a lot better all around than CPU games, but that may just be me.

[bxgoods]

Defense can be fixed with a patch. So I'm not worried at all.

[REDRZA]

Quote: Originally Posted by canes21

I don't love guys like you and it seemed to me you were complaining about them going more Casual and you mentioned some features you thought made it more casual. So I used a logical thought process and came up with you complaining about those features too. And if you play online only, then you're out of luck with the sliders helping. But user vs user games have always seemed to play a lot better all around than CPU games, but that may just be me.

Well no offense Canes, but your "logical thought process" is called assuming. I never complained about the features, because they are optional, and as a matter of fact, i kinda like the strategy pad. Just made the point that there seems to be a philosophical change in their development process.

I've always hated sliders because i have always been a head to head competitive gamer. I never play the CPU, it gets boring. If im playing a single player game its never a sports game. Sliders don't help in tournament play, or onlne play. They need to make the game play great out of the box.