Madden NFL 16 Introduces a New Mode: Draft Champions

[ChaseB]

EA is just releasing a deluge of official blogs, this one in particular being the Draft Champions blog. I won't steal all their thunder as you can read about it at your leisure, but here's the general point:

Quote:

Having identified the challenges, we asked ourselves “What is the core fun of Fantasy Football that will work for Madden?” It is pretty obvious: Making the pick. Choosing the player that is going to carry your team. Draft night is the best part of Fantasy Football. The goal of Draft Champions was giving players draft night over and over again.

Our Take: At the end of the day, it's a middle-ground between Ultimate Team and doing a full-on Fantasy Draft like you would at the start of your Connected Franchise mode. It seems to be a very light time commitment in the grand scheme of things, which seems to be the aim. I think it personally speaks to those people who like the idea of Ultimate Team but don't like the grind. Or on another level, those that like Ultimate Team but more like just changing out their players all the time.

You go through 15 rounds and can upgrade a base team that is pre-drafted for you. The players you choose from each time will be random, so there's no guessing how many chances you will get to take an upgraded QB and so on. This is especially important because it's not like a regular fantasy draft where the best players go in Round 1 and you're picking up scraps by Round 15. Instead, it will rise and fall throughout the draft.

At the end, in the "solo" version you try to win three games in a row against better and better CPU teams -- one loss knocks you out. If you play a multiplayer version, it appears you're trying to win four games in a row without losing. If you do lose, your team vanishes and you draft again. I would assume here that by winning the "championship" would gain you more in-game currency that can be used in Ultimate Team -- but that's just a guess.

Source: Madden NFL 16 Feature Deep Dive: Draft Champions (EA Sports)

[HC0023]

Cool feature look forward to more information on it

[The JareBear]

I think this could be a cool time killer or quick-match kind of deal for me

[BleedGreen710]

i really hope there's not a way to buy better players

but thats probably just wishful thinking

[JayD]

I really wished they would of concentrated on CFM rather than giving another MUT type game mode. Looks like this is the age we are in now.

[kongemeier]

Hmm, I'm not really sure this mode is for me and I'm sorry if this is a bit off topic... but i did notice in the presentation (and screenshots posted) that a player like JJ Watt is a 91 OVR.

Compared to previous Madden games that's a bit low. I hope this means they worked on the ratings and that all the 99s in CFM will a thing if the past. But I guess it's much more likely that players will be rated differently in Draft Champions Mode and CFM - sadly!

Hope to hear more on this in the near future!

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by BleedGreen710

i really hope there's not a way to buy better players but thats probably just wishful thinking

I don't see why they would give you that option, doesn't seem like there's major payoffs to make it worth it, especially when the teams immediately vanish after you lose once.

[BleedGreen710]

Quote: Originally Posted by ChaseB

the teams immediately vanish after you lose once.

as such is the reason some may be willing to pay for improvements to their team

and we dont know what the rewards will be yet but as you mentioned it could be ultimate team currency. and im sure I dont need to tell you the correlation between ultimate team and spending money