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EA_Blueberry's avatar
EA_Blueberry
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
5 years ago

Re: Instant Replay & Challenging Plays in Madden NFL 21. Why Can't We Do It?

@cloud_wyne Moved your post from this thread below:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Madden-Games/Instant-Replay-on-Madden/m-p/9977167/highlight/false

To answer your question, I've raised this up to the team myself out of curiosity because it's a feature within the NFL. There's a big thought process that goes behind this. Some factors to consider:

1. Was the challenge system perfect? The answer was no, it wasn't. There were times plays were challenged where it should have been overturned which it wasn't. This is because the play in game was actually correct and the animation of a player running out of bounds was an animation bug.

2. To add on from point #1, if you want situations where a player runs out of bounds on purpose because it's built into the scenario engine in order for your opponent to challenge it, causing you a loss of downs, do you ideally want that to happen? Do you want the players to run the routes they were designed to run which gives both sides a fair shot, or do you want the development team to purposely script games where it tilts in a player's direction?

What if you don't have any challenges left and that resulted in a 4th down conversation for the opponent? Are you going to shrug it off and say "well, that happens in the NFL."

Or are you going to feel that was unfair leading to frustration? Madden players are very competitive and I am leaning towards the later if it was a really important game.

The team is aware of this feedback, they know there are players that want to see this incorporated into the game. With the feature not always working correctly in the past and a psychological effect it can have a person's overall enjoyment of a game, that's where they want to make sure that if and when it's done, it's done right.

3 Replies

  • EA_Blueberry's avatar
    EA_Blueberry
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    5 years ago

    To add on one more note from a personal experience. I remember the option of challenging plays always being available when you played online and players would press pause, go hit challenge, we watched the replay knowing it wouldn't be overturned and eventually moved on with the game. It was a brief slow down of gameplay which felt like a waste of time. I'm with a lot of players in the community in hoping the game will have more real life features added in like challenging plays. When you're adding the feature, I think to make it even better you'll want fresh animations and commentary. The whole point of the challenge in the NFL is the emotional suspense on whether the play will be changed. To demonstrate that in game you need the commentators to break down the play with various camera angles. If it's not innovated and fresh, it eventually becomes a stale predictable feature. 

  • OJSimpson1970's avatar
    OJSimpson1970
    5 years ago

    That makes sense, but why is the "Challenge" option presented in the first place then? It is very misleading; I've been in online games where I used up my one pause to challenge a play only to see the "this play cannot be challenged" message. Why no remove the option from the UI? 

  • Neo_Novalis's avatar
    Neo_Novalis
    Hero+
    5 years ago
    @OJSimpson1970 fully agree that it should be removed if it is not available at all. but frankly, from my perspective (or at least based on what I have heard/read/seen so far), the game has a lot of issues to be solved. some of the bugs, glitches etc. have severe impacts on the game and I'd guess the dev team should tackle them with higher priority. so I would not be surprised if this 'bug' would remain visible for a longer time, unfortunately.

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