Madden NFL 11 News Post

How to Make Madden Appealing to Text-Simmers

02:44 PM - February 15, 2010 by RaychelSnr

Believe it or not, all text simmers are not complete snobs. Some of us enjoy taking a break from staring at statistics and doing a little button mashing. However, text simmers are a picky bunch. No matter how hard certain game designers try to woo us, we will probably never completely come over to the dark side. Simulation-style features may grab our attention for a while, and may even get us to acknowledge that games like Madden occasionally get a few things right.

But the only way text simmers will truly embrace an Madden-style game is if, well, it holds up against other text sims. We need realism, customization, challenges, meaningful evaluation methods and, yes, even graphics.

So I will use Madden 10 as our example. What would it take to turn Madden into a top-flight football text sim while at the same time maintaining its position as the king of football games?

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# 1 Pared @ 02/15/10 04:35 PM

A lot of that falls within simming a franchise. Shouldn't an article in this vain also include a discussion for simming through a game, not just to finish it?

Give them an ESPN GameDay style setup and allow them to play the game without playing the game.

# 2 teebee @ 02/15/10 05:29 PM

Gameday is mlb.com; ESPN is Gamecast FYI

# 3 CreatineKasey @ 02/15/10 06:07 PM

I'm sure the franchise in Madden is unacceptable for text sim football gamers. Really, my biggest draw would be a simulation league against other users (no CPU). That isn't possible in Madden at the moment.

I'm more of the type who likes playing the games, though. It'd take some exceptional structure and features to get me playing a managerial-type mode... coach mode maybe.

# 4 jyoung @ 02/15/10 06:46 PM

Head Coach was a great sim game.

Shame they haven't incorporated the sim engine from Head Coach into Madden.

Or the playbook creator, for that matter.

# 5 Trooper @ 02/15/10 07:51 PM

Am I dumb for not knowing what a "text simmer" is?

# 6 KBLover @ 02/15/10 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trooper


	Am I dumb for not knowing what a "text simmer" is?

Players who play games that are light on graphics but have a lot of depth/stats/strategy in them. Typically, these games are also very light on direct user control of players, if not no control at all.

Games like OOTP, Front Office Football, Football Mogul would fall under the "text sim" umbrella.

Football Pro is pretty darn close, though you could also control the action if you wanted. I guess that would be closer to coach mode in Madden with a much better sim engine.

Head Coach is also close. You have no control over your players and has a lot of depth. I guess you could call HC a "graphical text sim" as it did have a lot of text, just more graphical being on a console and such.

# 7 Jono078 @ 02/15/10 10:16 PM

This is my sort of article!

The biggest thing missing from a true sim game is having the little stories of pre season battles, players not performing during the season and being benched.

Id like to see the "coaches clipboard" thing be upgraded with a bit of graphics and more newspaper look than just a bunch of boxes with text.

For the first one id like there to be big stories and if it's and injury it displays picture of that player, and what happened. And then asking you what you want to do just like in game when someone gets injured, I believe head coach did this too.

You just want all the big things to jump out at you like Head Coach.

Also as mentioned in the article, You can't sim seasons and be satisfied when you see outrageous stats. They need to be pretty close to realistic give or take a bit, but not by as much as we see in;

QB YPA - All to low and probably even completion %
Rushing Yards and AVG - Way to high, for everyone.
Sacks - Again to high, if they were even halved it would look much better but maybe a bit low.

Then you want an entertaining draft which sucks you in so you know the players you are going for, NFL head coach did awesome job of that.

Biggest thing as I said though, is for those of us who just simulate endless seasons is we need some stories to see whats going on around the league and within our own team, we want to know if we should go with that young player, cut the players affecting team morale, time to get a new coach etc.

# 8 Jump @ 02/15/10 10:26 PM

Surprisingly, all the things you mentioned would not alienate the casual base at all. Win for everyone.

# 9 Trooper @ 02/15/10 10:31 PM

Thanks for that man!

# 10 SHAKYR @ 02/15/10 10:58 PM

This is a great article you had written. I totally agree with you. You made me smile when I read this, I feel this way about all my sports games especially boxing(Fight Night series).

The text-sim players want to play Madden, Fight Night, and other games but they want gameplay, depth, customization, and many options

# 11 GlennN @ 02/16/10 01:14 PM

I'd be happy just with two of your points, as they are my prime gripes - ratings need to matter, and stats need to be within reason.

# 12 jWILL253 @ 02/16/10 05:04 PM

Catch 22: They make a real sim in Head Coach, but it lacks graphically. On the other hand, they have great graphics in Madden 10, but the franchise mode is lackluster.

Look at it this way: MLB 09: The Show's SEASON MODE has features that most other FRANCHISE MODES don't have; then, you go to The Show's Franchise Mode, and you're overwhemed. The Show is a great model to use as an example for a good Franchise Mode.

PS: Operation Sports has to do a better job of identifying REAL sim gamers. I played someone in Madden online that was an OS member that claimed he was a "sim gamer". But, all he did was call I Formation runs on offense, and 44 Bear blitzes on defense. And, when I was killing him with the Saints, he said I was cheesing.

Rant over...

# 13 Cryolemon @ 02/17/10 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jump


	Surprisingly, all the things you mentioned would not alienate the casual base at all. Win for everyone.

Exactly. People (including some of the text simmers, just read some threads on the ootp boards) seem to think that text sims and games like Madden are mutually exclusive. They shouldn't be.

As I've said any number of times, a baseball game with OOTP's sim engine and MLB: The Show's graphics / gameplay would be the GOAT by far.

# 14 KBLover @ 02/18/10 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SA1NT401


	ratings really need to be straightend out....We all know 80% of them are just cosmetic and literally mean squat. Developer should admit the current 0-100 scale is flawed beyond repair due to the engine EA uses.

I think that has less to do with the ratings scale than it does the calculations that determines the success/failure of the plays/players.

You could go 1-15 if you wanted, that wouldn't solve anything if a 1 didn't do much worse than a 15.

# 15 Dark Cloud @ 02/28/10 06:17 AM

I think sim speed being faster would appeal to text-simmers quite a bit. Some folks just want to see history play out or want to sim years ahead before playing.

# 16 Joshua1207 @ 03/01/10 01:19 AM

NFL Head Coach did everything great. It did not fail miserably.

# 17 LordTC @ 03/22/10 06:37 PM

NFL Head Coach: I think EA wanted this to fail. In all honesty most of the head coach players bought Head Coach through Madden Collectors edition, and then EA said their wasn't a market for it. Lots of us play more Head Coach than Madden 09 and Madden 10 combined, and the forums for Head Coach still have posts every day.

Ideally EA would got the following route with Madden:

(i) If you don't have a way to use an ability in game then don't rate that ability at all, and don't give players stats for it. Also only have as many different rating points as you can differentiate on, so if you engine doesn't distinguish between 85 and 99 in ratings of 0 to 100 perhaps you should use a 1 to 5 scale.

I think that is the most important change they could possibly make.

As for the statistics. Part of the issue is they want the statistics to match up with the play mode so that people have legitimate fights for things like Sack Leader. If players are getting 40 sacks a season when they play the game you don't want the guy in second place having 22. I think ultimately the solution here is have two settings:

(i) Sim mode -> Tailored for realistic stats, and positions mattering.
(ii) Arcade mode -> Tailored for in-game play.

As for NFL Head Coach, most of the people in the forums got their copy in the Madden Collectors edition, myself include. I play more Head Coach than I do Madden by far. I found Head Coach 06 a little clunky but I wanted to see what Head Coach 09 did for the franchise and it was a great improvement.

If the NFL arcade-oriented Street Mode title came in a special edition bundled with Madden, it would probably have terrible sales also. Why buy it separately if you can get it earlier with Madden Collectors Edition and you're probably going to buy the special edition of Madden anyways.

# 18 King of Kings @ 03/22/10 06:54 PM

It would be nice if a "sim" actually played like a sim. I don't ever want to see my Jerome Harrison character run through two linebackers by throwing his elbow into their chests while not slowing down, then breaking out of a 9-man gang tackle without any effort and finally skating into the endzone. That would be a good start.

I'm so sick of this excuse for a football "simulation."

# 19 Bellsprout @ 03/22/10 07:03 PM

If anything, Madden is going to get less in depth, not more. They'd probably rather placate the masses, the people who to be able to play as their favorite team and don't necessarily give all that much of a damn about realism, than the incredibly small text sim crowd.

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