How EA can bring Game Planning to Franchise and make it Simple - johnnyg713's Blog

johnnyg713's Blog

How EA can bring Game Planning to Franchise and make it Simple

Posted on February 11, 2012 at 05:14 AM.

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In football, practice and game planning are just as, if not more important than playing the actual game. Being prepared and having a great game plan for your next opponent that week are the things that make football so exciting and each game feel so important. Too bad, none of this stuff can be found in EA's franchise modes, particularly online franchise.
The best part about being in an online franchise is that you compete with other user controlled teams. Fighting over recruits from week to week is great and can get really exciting, but not as exciting as actually going head to head with someone in a game. However, what takes away from the experience is that you don't have any access to player tendencies in scouting reports, weekly preparation or game planning. Adding these three simple things can make online franchise mode one of the greatest modes in sports gaming history.

I want to first propose that online Franchise will no longer advance from week to week basis. It will have 4 phases; beginning of the week, middle of the week, end of the week, and game day. Each of these phases will allow you to make changes to your game planning or keep track of how well your team is preparing for the next game (these phases can be set by the commissioner to automatically advance in a predetermined time frame, for example every day). What I think is great about this is that your not just waiting around for everyone else in your league to advance, there is always something you can do to prepare for the next game.

Scouting Reports
This is pretty self explanatory, having access to your opponents scouting report at the beginning of the week would help you better prepare for the game. Being able to see who the best player on the team is, how many times your opponent passes or runs the ball, or simply viewing what kind of offense they run all being presented to you in on one menu screen would be perfect before setting up your game plan.

Game Planning
Once you have done your research on your opponents tendencies, its time to go to the game planning menu. From here you can; customize your playbook, focus on certain areas of attack, and alter coverages and match-ups.

Playbook - this will be where you make all you changes to the playbook. Add/remove plays, setting packages, etc.

Schemes and coverages - here you will be adjusting defensive and offensive schemes. For example you will now have the option for setting defensive match-ups. Say your scouting report shows your opponent has a stud WR. Knowing this, you decide to put your best corner on him, set coverage to "bump-n-run", double cover, or shade a safety over the top (or hell do them all). No longer will you need to hit start during the game to set these options up, they will be preset before the game (however i dont even think you have the option to do this stuff anyways which is a shame.)

Adjusting play style and tendencies - In NCAA you have the option to do this already in the in-game play calling menu (NCAA 11 at least haven't played 12). I believe you hit x and you are presented with area you would like your defense to focus on, on that particular series like stripping the ball, setting pass rush to aggressive, or having your secondary play more conservative and not go for the big plays such as picking off the ball.
You will have very similar options to have your team focus on during the week. As the week advances from beginning, middle, and end, you can keep track of how much your team has improved in these areas giving them a boost, seeing how they have regressed in other areas you didn't focus on, or changing the tendencies up as the week goes along.
Again for those familiar with what I'm explaining its just three simple options on these tendencies; conservative, balanced, or aggressive. This is very simple and very straight forward but can really change the way your team plays week to week.

How does coaching carousel affect any of this?
I think you can see where I'm going on this one...

Scouting Reports - based on how good your scouting is, the more in depth the report. For example, poor scouts will present information like your opponent runs the ball 60% of the time and passes 40%. Average will say your opponent runs to the left 30% to the right 40% and up the middle 30%. Quality scouts will go as far to say things like how many times your opponent runs on any given down.

Play books - based on your offensive and defensive coordinators, you will be presented with play books already made up for you (to ultimately approve and alter of course). The quality of the playbook obviously reflects the quality of the coordinator. A poor coordinator may not make many changes at all, while a good one will go as far to give you new plays you've never even seen before. Same will pretty much go for Schemes and coverages as well.

Adjusting play styles and tendencies - again this is just like I just explained for play books. Your coaches will advise you to approve certain tendencies they feel you should focus on and you have the decision to give them the go ahead to coach them up. As the week advances your coordinators will present you with how well the team has taken to the new game plan. Based on how good your coordinators are, you can see great improvement to certain aspects of the particular areas you assigned your coaches to address or no changes at all.

I believe if these options were added to dynasty, it would make a world of difference as to how a player prepares for a game. Again this stuff is all determined by your coordinators so you can spend as little or as much time as you want actually preparing for your next game. If you trust your coordinators did a good job scouting and game planning, you can completely ignore game planning and just focus on playing the game.