Now that the "fresh paint" smell has worn off, sorry, but this commentary is BAD

[NEOPARADIGM]

I feel like I've made a dozen posts about this over the years regarding any number of sports games. I'm gonna give it on more go here because I love football.

Most of what these games program into the commentary is completely useless fluff. I mean hours and hours worth of recording, paragraphs and paragraphs worth of script. For what? For it to get old about five or ten games later.

"Commentary will always get old" people always say.

Well hold your horses, pal. Here's the thing: you know what doesn't get old? Stuff that's actually relevant, true, and context-sensitive.

Does it ever get "old" to hear an announcer say: "Lions first and 10 at the 24 yard line, Bears defense in press coverage, Stafford under center with three wide to the right"?

Does it ever get "old" to hear an announcer say: "Linebacker crashed the play there, nice tackle, Woodley, the 8th-year-man out of Michigan."

Of course it doesn't. And it would it not be the CAT'S *** if, years into franchise, those names were replaced by your new guys? "Great stop buy the end, FAKE NAME, the rookie out of Central Florida"?

THAT'S what they should be focusing on. Nail down what's happening, what happened, and who made the play. Everything else is fluff.

And I'm sorry, but this commentary is FULL of fluff.

Every stinking game, every time a fullback touches the ball, it's a three-minute diatribe about how it's not necessarily a fullback playing that position, and when homeboy scouts players, he's scouting kickers and punters more than actual fullbacks, because the college game isn't producing fullbacks anymore. Like, Chriiiiiiiiiist.

I want to keep this as short as possible so I'll try to summarize. Every game, basically since commentary started to get pretty neat, has made this mistake: they think what we want are real-life references. They think what makes commentary cool are lines like "Ameer Abdullah had a nifty 34-yard run in the preseason last year." On the contrary, what would make me drool is if they had in place a system where they'd reference a 34-yard run from earlier in the game.

"Ziggy Ansah, his second sack of the game!" - THAT'S the cool stuff. "Matthew Stafford, 18 of 23, 236 yards and a touchdown, under center." Where's THAT line? No, let's record some more references to week two and get those into the update.

I don't know if my point is clear or not, but I'm just trying to say it doesn't have to be that difficult, and the "it will always be repetitive" is short-sighted. Certain things are never repetitive, you just have to recognize what those things are and expand upon them instead of stuff that is inherently repetitive, like how the Lions had the fewest rushing yards of any team in the league last year, which I have to listen to every game. How about changing that to what my team's rushing rank is THIS YEAR?

[underdog13]

I hate the line about wondering if my hb has an injury they aren't told about.

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[jfsolo]

Although I like the energy of the new team, and won't go as far as to say it's bad, per se, I do agree completely with your take on what the commentary should be focused on. Meat and potatoes narrations of each play, saying generated player names, discussion of X's and O's used by the teams. The repetitiveness of the anecdotes make commentary untenable for CFM, IMO.

[reverend_heat]

To piggyback on what you are talking about, they really, really, really need to get the refs to announce penalties correctly. It's not names, it's just numbers! I don't want to hear "holding, offense". I want to hear "holding, offense, number 77, 10 yard penalty, repeat second down.

[rich8682]

Your points are right, but I definitely wouldn't call the commentary bad. It's way better than last year.

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[ABR173rd]

Quote: Originally Posted by NEOPARADIGM

I feel like I've made a dozen posts about this over the years regarding any number of sports games. I'm gonna give it on more go here because I love football. Most of what these games program into the commentary is completely useless fluff. I mean hours and hours worth of recording, paragraphs and paragraphs worth of script. For what? For it to get old about five or ten games later. "Commentary will always get old" people always say. Well hold your horses, pal. Here's the thing: you know what doesn't get old? Stuff that's actually relevant, true, and context-sensitive. Does it ever get "old" to hear an announcer say: "Lions first and 10 at the 24 yard line, Bears defense in press coverage, Stafford under center with three wide to the right"? Does it ever get "old" to hear an announcer say: "Linebacker crashed the play there, nice tackle, Woodley, the 8th-year-man out of Michigan." Of course it doesn't. And it would it not be the CAT'S *** if, years into franchise, those names were replaced by your new guys? "Great stop buy the end, FAKE NAME, the rookie out of Central Florida"? THAT'S what they should be focusing on. Nail down what's happening, what happened, and who made the play. Everything else is fluff. And I'm sorry, but this commentary is FULL of fluff. Every stinking game, every time a fullback touches the ball, it's a three-minute diatribe about how it's not necessarily a fullback playing that position, and when homeboy scouts players, he's scouting kickers and punters more than actual fullbacks, because the college game isn't producing fullbacks anymore. Like, Chriiiiiiiiiist. I want to keep this as short as possible so I'll try to summarize. Every game, basically since commentary started to get pretty neat, has made this mistake: they think what we want are real-life references. They think what makes commentary cool are lines like "Ameer Abdullah had a nifty 34-yard run in the preseason last year." On the contrary, what would make me drool is if they had in place a system where they'd reference a 34-yard run from earlier in the game. "Ziggy Ansah, his second sack of the game!" - THAT'S the cool stuff. "Matthew Stafford, 18 of 23, 236 yards and a touchdown, under center." Where's THAT line? No, let's record some more references to week two and get those into the update. I don't know if my point is clear or not, but I'm just trying to say it doesn't have to be that difficult, and the "it will always be repetitive" is short-sighted. Certain things are never repetitive, you just have to recognize what those things are and expand upon them instead of stuff that is inherently repetitive, like how the Lions had the fewest rushing yards of any team in the league last year, which I have to listen to every game. How about changing that to what my team's rushing rank is THIS YEAR?

Glad you mentioned this. I was going to post a similar question asking if these commentary updates are impacting offline franchise mode. I whole heartedly agree that these updates referencing what is happening in the NFL right now provide very little value outside of "Play Now" games. My hope is that they are indeed recording all of the created players names and draft classes as well as information you referenced above to create a story throughout the user franchise. I would expect this is the ultimate goal in regards to online and offline franchise mode. On another note- do these commentary updates feed into offline franchise that are already started?

[BleedGreen710]

in my opinion this is more about commentary on sports game in general then madden. a game widely believed to have one of the best commentary in sports is nba 2k and i can't tell you how annoying it is to hear them tell stories and repeat the same jokes and fluff every game. thats just what commentary in sports games is like. and im glad madden is at least getting into the conversation this year with their much improved commentary team.

[Fist Of Kings]

I don't think it's bad, but I still think that 'ancient game' still has much better commentary, and presentation too for that matter.

I think the initial praise(including me) was due to this being the first time in a long time that a madden game had decent/good commentary.

The problems? I think most of us could care less about the patched in lines about real life nfl events, which I believe you can only here in play now games anyway. They still don't say names of created or drafted players, which is an immersion killer for some of us.

They don't notice details, like the same play being ran. Davis said something about my team struggling to run the ball, but that was because one rb had 20 yards, while my starting rb had well over 100. I don't know if this is the norm, but I ran a missed fg back and there was no commentary, which seemed like they had no audio for that situation.

That annoying gag where the announcer makes a rushed for time joke when you skip the halftime report, do we really need to hear that every game?