Truly, there are so, so many reasons that not having full customization just doesn't make any sense.
- How many times do we see a highly touted kid just flame out, and so his ratings need to be adjusted to have a realistic experience? A la, Arch Manning. How many times do we see a kid explode on the scene as awesome, so we need to adjust his ratings to have a realistic experience? A la junior QB John Mateer or true freshman WR Malachi Toney (and so many others). Not allowing us to do so, while not allowing even these kids themselves the option to do so...that actually prevents correct likenesses being portrayed. Only allowing one or just a handful of folks at EA decide all of these players' ratings is direct contradiction to if likenesses are portrayed absolutely 100% accurate...IF that was even a legal precedent that was a factual issue (news flash: it's not). If you haven't seen the contract these kids sign, and it's for the entirety of their college careers, go look it up. It specifically says that they can't sue for any reason after signing over their NIL. That means that EA can do as they please, and that carries over to any of us end users, et. al.
- Teambuilder and RTG options for customization are a slap in the face level of contradiction to anything anyone has ever said that they "think" or "claim" NIL prevents per customization options.
- In every single Madden game for the last decade, I can and have created these same kids (before and after NIL even existed). I customized all of their ratings. I customized their whole careers in some ways. Where is all of the outrage and lawsuits over that? crickets sounding...
- The game in and of itself does things / makes choices that no one, even the programmers can prevent from happening that would break the supposed NIL no-no's. The way that it changes ratings, teams and sometime even the positions of these NIL kids from year to year - surely there are some of these real life kids pretty upset about that. I'm sure they'd love the ability to change, edit or entirely prevent that from happening, and when you have the full customization level that Madden does, said problems can be handled.
Make it make sense. No excuses. No more lies and BS or thinking that we don't know the facts. Even if you just come out and say that you can't get the code to operate correctly without jacking up the game....even if it just comes down to being obtuse and ignorant to true legalities...we can handle the truth. Everyone of us are dead set honest with you, EA. Why can't you do the same? We don't hate you. We're rather justifiably disappointed.