After Super Bowl concerns for Madden...

[4thQtrStre5S]

After that amazing shootout in the Super Bowl last night, and EAs tendency to focus on the standout points of the NFL season, do you see much chance of defenses being improved? Considering base play logic, user pre-snap options, substitutions and so on?


I am concerned, and I believe rightfully so, that the high scoring, lack of general defense, BIG games are going to cause executives to move focus away from defense.

[roadman]

That is great cause for concern.

The phrase, "defense wins championships" was not on display yesterday.

[SpectreBugg]

There is always going to be a focus on offense before defense. In the minds of the NFL execs, that is where the money is. Big plays, big scores, big checks. To think that madden would follow suite is pretty much on point, but to be honest, I don't think any of that has much to do with the broken defense in madden. As far as whether or not they will shy away from fixing the defense because of it, well, I can't imagine so. I think the developers focus more on offense because the money making community, aka the MUT players, focus more on offense. Just as most casual fans find excitement more from offenses scoring than from defenses making stops, the same goes for most casual madden players. That being said, the defense has to at least function reasonably well, and right now, it doesn't. If they do nothing about it, they will hear it from even the casual fans.

[reyes the roof]

That would be a pretty big knee jerk reaction if they did that based on the Super Bowl. The conference title games featured 4 of the top 5 scoring defenses

[kennylc629]

The funny thing is that after watching last night's game, I said to myself "welp, I guess I should quit complaining that Madden 'cheats' in the SB." I played against Pittsburgh in a Madden CFM Superbowl and Big Ben was like 19/18 475 yards and no... " 19/18" was not a typo. Some how those were his final stats.

As far as the video game part of it goes, I think it will always lean towards offense. Gamers don't want to play if every pass is knocked down or picked off. But of course, that's what the whole arcade mode vs simulation mode is supposed to account for.

[JayhawkerStL]

I sometimes wonder if sim gamers even watch current day sports anymore. It seems like they just want the games to reflect the gameplay of their childhood.

[jfsolo]

We're in February, I'm sure that big ticket features are locked down, so the major concern would probably be tuning like what was done after E3 this year. Hopefully the outcry from that decision can be a deterrent against that happening again.

Yeah, we know that executives like shinny things, yes the Super Bowl was high scoring and an outlier in term of the yardage, two tier one scoring teams in the league played a game where their defenses just didn't show up.

Scoring, yards per rush, passing yards per game, completion percentage, all ticked down this year. So it could be a matter of the Super Bowl feels of the Suits vs actual data from the dev team. We'll see what wins.

[DeuceDouglas]

Quote: Originally Posted by reyes the roof

That would be a pretty big knee jerk reaction if they did that based on the Super Bowl. The conference title games featured 4 of the top 5 scoring defenses

I think there's a pretty strong precedent for it though. IIRC we got surprise onsides immediately after the Saints did it in the Super Bowl. Same kind of thing happened with the Tyree catch and its animation. Last year we got fake special teams plays likely as a result of the NFC Championship game the year prior. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting.

I think what supposedly happened between EA Play and launch was a good indication of how things are handled though. Good defense doesn't equate to fun for the casual user which is a huge part of Madden's target audience. That being said this is precisely the reason for the different play styles but it seems like that even though they're separate the difference isn't as great as hoped and gameplay elements are still handled globally. Offense is always going to reign supreme though and I don't really think this Super Bowl is going to change any of that. They've tried a couple times to touch defense but it never really seems to work out and always just ends up getting neutered anyway.