Why all the CCM twitter feed hate?

[Icarus2k9]

Genuine question here, would love people to actually explain their position on it without resorting to ZOMG FLUFF as an answer...

Back in the golden era of franchise mode, we had the newspaper reports and the radio show with Tony Bruno. These were held up as a great immersion plus point despite their occasional limitations - mostly built around repetition. But regardless, they were seen as a great way of fleshing out the franchise mode and helping you connect with the entire league, not just your squad (vital as the years rolled on and the names became less and less familiar).

Now we go on to 2012, and CCM has attempted to recreate that immersion in the league factor with the twitter feeds for celebrity pundits. You only need to look on this board and the amount of people who tweet Josh Looman etc. and hang on every tweet for info to see this is one of the most relevant ways we get information these days...so why aren't the tweets held up in the same regard?

Not just that, they provide a series of advantages that the other methods didn't have:

* Tweets are much smaller - gives room for a significantly increased amount of unique lines, providing less repetition
* Adds personality to the way you get your news - allows for conflicting opinions, breaking gossip, etc.
* Provides a far more efficient way to communicate that immersion - a quick scroll on the main franchise page, as opposed to having to tab through and read 33 stories, which people are more likely to abandon sooner and therefore lose that immersion factor.

Having said all that, why are they being held up as a strawman to beat whenever one of the recognised issues/missing features of CCM are brought up? Usually in the format "They had time to add all that twitter nonsense/fluff, but no x! Typical EA!"...

I would be very interested to have seen what would have happened if they'd brought the newspaper stories back instead. To be honest, I don't think people would be slamming those even though they would have taken the exact same length of time, because they were in the franchise mode we used to know and love.

I think in part this is very telling compared against the lack of editing etc in the game. More committed players have become adept at immersing themselves by being the controllers of the franchise storyline almost...dictating progressions, trades, names and so on while spinning what they believe is the best and most appropriate storyline in their head. EA is finally starting to give the less committed people a chance to experience those storylines and it's being rejected. It's baffling.

This isn't an apologist comment wrapped in a shiny bow - CCM's omissions are for many too much, and I can't blame them for being upset. We are unique and passionate creatures on here sometimes and EA would do well not to forget that on their mission to try to rebuild their fanbase. I just don't understand how a presentation system that is unobtrusive, quick, immersive and laden with character is held up as a pile of rubbish, when many of the alternatives people clamour for on here (half time show and highlights of all the games for starters) would have major issues to overcome with repetition, length and overall quality to avoid being buttoned through, ignored and therefore become pointless.

[Moor]

Because EA is good at promising things just to shut us up when they could really care less, they just want your money...Thats how I've felt about them for years and this year has made it worse..None of us really believe they're going to fix anything in this patch that we REALLY want fixed...And the reason people edit is not to make their own storylines, its to stop the cpu from making dumb trades, dumb draft picks, the depth charts being all out of wack..and we all know EA never gets the ratings rigiht..in fact, not even close a lot of the time...TE's being 3rd on the WR depth chart, even though I have 6 wr's rated higher than him at that position, the cpu does this with every position on every team, EVERY YEAR...The only way to fix it is to edit the depth charts...Teams don't play like they should, EVERY YEAR...So we have to edit gameplans which we can't do...The fact is, us sim heads are the ones who really lost out, even though they made a mode that they claim is for us, they take out everything that we use to make the game sim...I can see how its not a big deal to some people, but how can anyone defend them? Every year, its wait till next year, it'll be in then..I've been lolling at that for about 5 years now...

[ajk49er]

I like the twitter feed a lot

I think it moreso comes down to all the things that are broken, and since the twitter feed works, it gets the wrath of all of those angry at the 500 things broken in ccm.

love the mode, but it is one flaw fest

[brandon27]

When I first heard about the twitter feed in CCM, i thought just that... fluff. Stupid. What a joke. lol

Now that I have a CCM on the go, I think it's really kind of a nice addition to franchise. Its quick, to the point notes on whats going on around you league. Trades, re-signings, draft news, game updates. IT's grown on me now, and I actually think its a nice little feature of CCM.

The news stories are nice too. Wish there was a bit more depth to them aside from just a headline, like... how in NCAA's dynasty mode you can click on them, and it may take you to the box score of the game its referring to, or a players stats that it's referring to. Something along those lines.

All in all though, it does a nice job of actually making you feel like your league is alive, a real living NFL season. Not just plain old boring Madden 12 franchise that you just played a game, week after week.

[raiderphantom]

It seems like it was done pretty well, but it's just not a big factor for me. Twitter isn't bad but it should've been waaay down the list of priorities.