Valdarez was right- The Field needs to be longer/strides shortened

[ryan36]

This game plays short. Valdarez caught this in the demo, saying player strides were too long (by several feet, I can't remember), and I flipped him crap about it. I asked him (apparently so did Ian) if it made the game less fun...but it DOES!!

Let me see if I can explain this: Imagine you were a designer and you had all the player models running around "ground" in your test software and this ground was just blue space. No yard lines, so you wouldn't know the distance gained on the play.

In that scenario, pick any given play. In your minds eye, the pass feels like it covered a distance of 7 yards (based on total length/time of the throw, and total time of the play), say a slant route...but when you put the football field under it, you see that the game thinks that's a 12 yard play. This is what Madden feels like. In my view, there'd be a much more sim feeling if the space between the yard lines was lengthened.

To me the field feels like it's too short by about a third. Drives are ending with scores much too quickly, 8 play 80 yard drives have been the norm so far , and they should be IMO 12 to 15 play drives. I just don't have that "fight for every yard" feeling from last year, and it's something the game is sorely lacking.

[MikaV]

Yeah, also, YPC is WAY too high, at least from the games i've played. This is a pretty big thing.

[bkrich83]

I think the strides are fine. To me the field is disproportionate to the size of the players.

[Afrikan]

Quote: Originally Posted by bkrich83

I think the strides are fine. To me the field is disproportionate to the size of the players.

actually I think its the players who are disproportionate to the field....after Madden 08, it always seemed like the players shrunk alittle....(and I'm not talking about the steroid arms from Madden 07)...but just the size of the player models.

I think the same happened with the football and the fields staying the same, but with the players getting shorter and thinner.

[Afrikan]

I first noticed this stride issue in one of the first Madden 11 videos we came across... I believe it was the one with the Bucs players playing the game...and someone returned a TD or something...but you could see the stride looked off.....

back then I just felt like the players and the fields were not designed well together....like different artist working on the same painting.

[ryan36]

Well BK , that's another way to say it, but the net of it is we're not getting enough plays on drives...at least I'm not. Lot's of people are loving this game, but so far not me...
Also somehow or another the players strike me as disproportionate...it's something that I'd have thought would be obvious , but maybe I'm just weird. I usually don't notice details about games

[treee]

You're right and if you look at APF2k8 they seem to get the field, players down I feel like. You get that overwhelming feeling of despair when you are pinned inside you own ten because the other endzone looks so far away, as it should, like in real life. See what I'm getting at? It(madden) makes the field position feel strange, which, if you ask me, screws up the whole feel of the game

[TombSong]

The strides look better this year but I think the players cover a lot of distance quickly. Making the field seem even shorter. Also I think people are still adjusting to the defensive movement which is leading to a lot of big plays, making drives shorter.