Madden Commish Tools Guide

I've already posted this in franchise, but since it is also a thread full of suggested features, I'm posting it here as well.

Though we got some franchise features this yr, there r many many more that could be included, and that as commissioners, tools we need to further expand upon the game, and our franchises. Let's just start w/ some things that we currently have this yr.

▪ 6 Trade Slots - This was needed. Now makes it possible to make these big blockbuster trades happen.

▪ 3 Yrs Draft Capital - This is something I was gonna bring into my league (having to track manually of course) which just happened to be a welcomed addition to the game. More draft capital once again means making it possible to make these blockbuster trades.

▪ Streamlined Relocation - Best part of this is relo being instant now. Saves my league time from having to sim a yr for our relo teams. Another thing they added that was nice, not tying down the logos to certain areas (of course this excludes the Oilers). Also, not that all the uniforms look great, but least they got an update, and 3 uniforms that essentially make 9 dif uni combos.

▪ Trade Adjustments - Being able to make it easier/harder to make trades available is a nice lil feature. Wouldn't quite say it was 100% needed, but it can be useful.

▪ Draft Class Adjustments - Given the auto-generated classes weren't ever great in Madden, this is a decent step in the right direction. Making the classes weaker/stronger, as well as being able to focus solely on a certain position is a nice touch.

▪ Restructured Contracts - Something we've needed for a while in Madden. U see it all the time in the NFL. Again, though it's a nice feature, it could be expanded upon.

▪ 5th Yr Option - This has been in for a bit, but I don't recall them just popping up so easily. Knowing ahead of time (beginning of yr) that u have players up for their options is pretty nice.

▪ Play Call Cooldown/Limit - I like this b/c it helps keep players from using cheese plays or running the same plays all the time. Forces us to have to actually expand the playbook.

▪ FA Stage Negotiations - Being able to limit how many players a team can sign is a pretty underrated feature. Gives chance for not only AI to make plays on big named players, but also allows other users to get in on the fun.

▪ Coordinators/Staff Tree - This feature I love. Essentially, it makes u really think on who to sign so u aren't just saying screw the HC position b/c it doesn't matter. Being able to expand upon what ur coaches have on their trees is cool. More on this feature later.

▪ Training Camp - Not a bad thing to bring back as this was in older games. Can help develop players a bit more. Makes it more realistic to what is in irl, but some do/don't use it, so.... it's there. 🤷‍♂️

▪ Player Motivations - I feel like this is a lil underrated as well. I like the fact that it doesn't guarantee u will be able to sign/resign a player u want/want to keep. Added to this is the ability to adjust how much the motivations effect the signings, being able to make it easier/harder to sign guys.

As u can see, this is just some of what we have access to in the game. Imo, I think those r the biggest/best features we currently have available, and ones that matter the most. But as always, there's room for improvement. So here r some features that I think we need as commissioners, and that'll really improve/give us more playability of the game.

• Relocation - Lets start w/ arguably the biggest feature. Talked about above was the streamlined relocation. That's fine and all, but it's still not good enough when we've had something more before. Either A, bring back the old school relocation (which would be a great start), or better yet, B, give us something similar to the old NCAA Teambuilder. Give a website that we can create a team and import into the game and/or franchise mode. At the very least, give us back the rest of the relo teams/logos as well. We lost so many good ones M24. Like I don't get y they kept a team for Tigers when we already have the Bengals in NFL, kinda redundant when they could've kept Cougars or something in.

• Crossplay - Def like 1b, 1a to some on the biggest feature wanted. Ik they recently had the beta for cross-franchise, but let's be honest, this should've been a feature day 1, and it helps us fill leagues so much better.

• Multiplayer Resumes/Connection Issues - 2 things that r frustrating in H2H games r loss of connection and having to restart a H2H b/c of that fact. As of now, we have no true way of knowing who's having connection issues b/c both players get the "connection" screen. So having a concrete way to figure that out would help in deciding who the force would go to when it happens. Also, we can resume User/CPU games, but yet we don't have this for H2H games. If given the ability, picking up where we leave off in H2Hs due to connection issues would be another great way to go. It's frustrating when u have to constantly restart those games, especially when in a blink of an eye, a restart can favor any given person (Ik b/c I've had this happen to me on multiple occasions, losing games I was dominating before the restart).

• # of Plays - This focuses on the actual games. We should have the ability as a commish to set a limit on a number of plays a user can have during the week. I've literally seen some of my guys have 30+ plays for no reason. Setting a limit can force for a restart if there's an issue, or being able to cause a force loss for guys who keep replaying b/c they can't beat the CPU.

• Salary Cap Management - One of the biggest issues w/ Madden is that player contracts increase yr to yr, but the overall league cap never moves w/ it. This causes issues of being negative in Owner funds (which kicks u if u aren't positive within the yr) and being able to sign players. My issue to fix this is to allow commissioners to create incentives/or just generally have the ability to take control over the league salary cap and allow us to raise or lower it at will. This will, for the most part, fix any salary issues we have each game cycle.

• Owner Funds - Speaking of this briefly w/ Salary Cap Management, we used to have the ability to give out 5 mil in owner funds in leagues (I'd make this an item in my league's server). Last I knew this was still an offline feature (was from M23), but it was for some unusual reason, removed from online leagues. Roster bonuses r once again being taken out of the funds via new contracts (as they should be), but as stated earlier, if an owner in the league has negative funds, they've got the following yr to get back in the black, if they don't do so, the game automatically kick them out of the league. This solves this problem.

• Coaching Carousel - Something we had in NCAA, something I believe we 100% need here. This starts w/ having REAL coordinators in-game instead of generic. Allow us to be able to create and maintain coaches in the league (I'm talking create them and they actually stay in the league instead of retiring, etc). Essentially, the idea there is to create any coaches not in the league and having them available for hiring by a NFL team. Hiring coaches as coordinators or HCs. Bringing back the feature where retired players could return as a coach. As well as being able to trade coaches for compensation.

• Enticing Offers - Along w/ bringing back retired players as coaches, I'd personally like to see a return of enticing a player/coach w/ an extension to return to the team when they r thinking about retirement. I mean honestly, who didn't have fun convincing Favre not to retire every single yr. 😆

• Reverting Transactions - I feel like commissioners need this in a bad way. We had that revert FA signings a couple yrs back, but I haven't seen or heard about it since. My idea is to not only use it for that, but to also revert trades that r unfit, or not approved by the league's trading committee. Reverting transactions helps solve issues of ppl taking players that they aren't supposed to be taking.

• Limiting Transactions - Along w/ reverting transactions, the limiting needs more work. As of now, transactions r only limited to the reg season, and I've seen where the CPU totally ignores the fact that it's turned off. If u r turning or limiting transactions, it should be for every aspect of the league, and not just certain areas. If I tell ppl not to sign players during preseason before we actually atart, no one should be able to sign if I turn the transactions off. If squad stealing is off, no one should be picked up (for record I haven't seen an issue here). If trading is off, no one should be able to do so. Basically, if something is off, it should be unusable PERIOD, unless turned on otherwise.

• 3-Way Trades - Not often u see this, and u see it much more in NBA, but the ability to have 3-team trades would be a nice small feature.

• Coach Trading - U see this more, and it's def talked about more in NFL than 3 team trades, but we currently have no way to trade our HCs to other teams. If ur looking to part w/ ur HC, but don't wanna just lose out via releasing him, u should be able to recoup something for them, just as u would a player. Course more staff talents the HC has, and the more winning the coach is, the more someone would have to pay to trade for them.

• Abilities - We got more abilities for players which is pretty cool, I do wish ALL players had XF abilities though. OL gets killed by the D once a defensive player has their X activated. FBs aren't used much anymore, and Ks/Ps r used all the time, yet they don't have XF abilities either. But I'd also like to be able have NONE as a selection for abilities for players.

• Cap Penalty - In my league we don't use cap penalties, so I erase them. I think as commissioners we should be able to erase cap penalties league-wide if we really wanted to. Not being able to do so creates issues for trading w/ CPU or for them to sign/resign later down the line. Removing penalty means they gain the cap space to have transactions.

• Player Customization - Ik it doesn't really matter too much in Madden due to what u see on the field, but player customization could be so much better. Bringing back the facial import feature to create our players would be cool, as well as adding tats, or selecting a face and adding hair manually. Too many times, even w/ the new amount of faces have I seen where a player head has 1 feature u r looking for, and not the other. Being able to select faces, then hair/beard combos, as well as coloring the hair would help improve the look of auto-generated or custom players, and what eventually become so monotonous to see. Even w/ 250+ heads, it's still too limiting, especially when some of those player models look old as hell, or r just plain bad visually.

• Custom Uniforms - So creating uniforms in Madden is so bare bones. As of now all we can do is mix and match uniform pieces that r already in Madden. Lot of uniform combos r already missing in-game, not sure y they add away or home for certain options, but not the other. Anyway, u used to be able to "create" multiple versions of the custom uniforms as we wanted, till this yr, where I've noticed u can only create 2. My feature would be this, expand upon the entire custom uniform concept. We see uniforms being refreshed or rehashed almost yearly now. And now that the NFL has done away w/ it's 1 helmet rule, we've seen dif helmets that create new uniform sets. What I would do is allow the users to use any style jersey/helmet/pant the NFL has used. Allow us to use any logo or any colors the teams have used (black/white/gray automatically for all) and let us create our own uniforms for teams. As we progress through franchises, it'd be cool to be able to hit the reset on our teams and update them w/ new looks as u see them often do irl. Keeping the old franchise uniforms for the relocated teams would be a great touch too, even down to being able to use everything at our disposal to create throwbacks w/ a twist since the team is a dif name and has a dif logo.

• Top 100 FAs List - Just a small thing that could go a long way, having the newsfeed or some way for commissioners/users to view the upcoming FA list before we actually get into the offseason FA Stage would be a welcomed addition.

• League Expansion - Since we have seen NFL have expansion teams, I'd like to see this become a thing. I'd do up to 8 teams (1 per division), so that way there were still able to have an even number of teams in the league, and a singular division doesn't end up being overloaded. Force each team to select players up to give away, essentially do everything the original expansion did in the NFL, bring it into this feature.

• UDFA Stage - Currently any undrafted rookies go directly into FA once u advance to the 1st preseason week. Most of those players also end up being signed directly to AI teams before u've got a chance to look through to see what UDFAs r there. Adding a FA Stage for these players gives us the same sort of market the NFL has, where directly after the draft, we'd have the ability to sign an undrafted rookie to our team, w/ having a cap limit as to what u can spend on them (UDFA contracts generally r low), and then advancing to preseason week 1, or then UDFA "End" Stage, where we see who did/didn't sign w/ u or other teams, then placing the rest in FA to start the yr.

• Returnable IR - I've yet to see an instance in Madden, where u can temporarily place a player on a designation to return from IR who has the ability to do so. Currently if u need a player signed, u need to place that player on IR and not return for the yr, or release another player (who u can lose in FA later) in order to fill that spot. Having a returnable designation allows us to sign a player to fill that hole, while also keeping another piece we have, as well as being able to bring that player back when they r able to return to play.

• Player Announcing/Profane Name - This has got to be the dumbest thing ever for a feature at this point. Previous Maddens had no issue announcing custom player names, and long as both names r in the game somewhere, then they should be able to be announced in the game. Adding something similar to MLB's call name list could help fix this. Pertaining to profane names, I understand y this is a feature, but it hinders creating players who actually have "deemed profane names". We literally have players w/ the last names Cox and Gay, so we should be able to name players this as well. A work around I'd have for this, be like the NASCAR games and make us put our birthdays in the beginning of the game. Anyone older than 18 would then be able to put in the profane names within our provided leagues or game in general. Anyone on uploaded rosters or draft classes could be bleeped out (see WWE 2k online for custom hardcore titles), and then we would then just be allowed to change the names freely if we r 18+.

• Irl Player Editing - We used to be able to edit player's experience in a game, which we can no longer do b/c users were abusing this feature to keep players from retiring. And considering the experience issue we ran into this yr, I think this needs to make a return, but lock it to only commissioner use, unless we say otherwise. This would allow us to edit in-game players that likely will never be signed to bring back current FA players not currently in the game at start (there were a lot missing this yr), but also allow us to edit the yrs for players back to what they should be, given the issue w/ the experience glitch happens again.

• Contract Balancing - In a previous time of the game, we were able to select how we wanted a player's contract to be setup. We could frontload the payout to give the bigger cap hits and less $ at the end of the deal, giving less cap to work w/ during those yrs. Equal out the cap hit so it stays the same and gives a bit more flexibility on making moves during the season, as it'll spread the cap out equally through the length of the deal. Then u could backload the contract (which is something that basically already automatically happens in Madden), so the payout give u more flexibility w/ cap upfront, but then less in the conclusion of the deal. Being able to once again have the option to do these certain things creates more realism and gives u more consequences on the decisions u make based on what u decide to do for each player's deal. Including restructures into this would be cool too. The yr u restructure would automatically give u cap flexibility for the season but given the option to decide how to spread the rest of that cap hit out that's relieved.

• Contract Incentives - The idea here is once again to be more realistic. Gives us more flexibility each and every yr for cap space, and also a min/max threshold amount on what a player can earn each given yr by hitting certain objectives. Say 3 yrs 30 mil for a WR is the min, but they can earn an extra 5 mil on top of that each yr to push the contract to 3 yrs 45 mil. Hitting their projected goals automatically kicks in the extra cash, which would come directly out of the owner funds once the goal is reached. So what would happen during contact negations is this. U have it setup the current way it is for the offers, but underneath it'll give u a min/max # to put in where the non-goal is the offer in full, and the max amount would be ur an extra added amount u choose. So again, say u do 3 yrs 30 mil as the deal. in the min threshold u'd put the monetary amount in full, the 30 mil. Then in the max amount, u'd put what the extra payment would be. So since u offered 3 yrs 30 mil, u'd put say 15 in the max threshold, which would then make the deal 3 yrs 45 mil, an avg of 5 mil a yr for hitting the goal. Starting off, u could also do position groups as a whole w/ 1 singular goal, and then it be expanded upon in the future.

• Fully Guaranteed Contracts - We've been seeing this more and more, and we essentially automatically have it in the game, but w/ the inclusion of Contract Incentives, it would then give way to having the ability to do fully guaranteed contracts. Contracts throughout NFL r all performance based, and in the game they r all guaranteed, so combining the 2 makes for more realism.

• Voidable Contract Yrs - Something we don't see in Madden, we see all the time now in NFL, and something the MLB: The Show has. Being able to spread cap out, while also locking a player in for a specific amount of time can make a difference in how much cap u truly have as we've seen in the NFL. Essentially what we can do here is what MLB does w/ the "option" yrs, which is basically all this is in the NFL. Take the deal in full, add voidable yrs to the contract, that can either A, make the team decide if they wanna keep the player on the roster at that amount, B, make the player decide if they wanna stay on the team at that amount, C, give both player and team the option to decide if they r wanted (which is where a restructure could come in), or D, every party for A-C options decides against it, meaning the player hits FA. Say u have a player w/ a 5 yr deal, u make yrs 4 and 5 voidable, which means the deal really is a 3 yr deal w/ a 2 yr option. Dependent on performance, and Player Motivations, the team/player could be content w/ the deal and choose to move fwd w/ it, or the team feels the player didn't do enough to earn that much, the player feels they don't wanna be there/won't earn enough based on performance, or the 2 parties can't agree mutually to continue the contract, which then allows them to become a FA. And this would happen at the end of every season, during each voidable contract yr.

• Comp Picks - Something that really lacks is the fact that we have no way to do compensatory picks, which is what we see irl. The NFL hands these out so teams can have a way to recoup losing out on a solid player in FA that either doesn't wanna return, or they can't make a deal w/ that ends up signing elsewhere. Based on the player's overall, it could give a designation on what pick the team would be able to get back if they end up losing the player.

• Base Roster Movement - In my league, ur transactions matter. What this means is we don't start fresh yr to yr w/ the irl or base game rosters, we gather our rosters at the end of our final season, then recreate them the best to our ability each and every new cycle. W/out saying too much here on it, I'm gonna just post a previous thread that I had created and explained in detail what could and should be done to help any league similar to mine that does the same. Base Roster Movement

• Madden Website Hub - Something similar to the Teambuilder site for the old NCAA games, but w/ a twist. Not only would it deal w/ relocated teams, it would also be for player movement as stated above in Base Roster Movement, and so much more as far as flexibility w/ being able to get the league all setup, but in a more reasonable, and easier manner. I group this the most w/ the relocation I posted on earlier. Once again, instead of going through each part of the feature individually, I'll just post the link to the thread I had created before in here for u to view. Madden Website Hub

There are absolutely more tools Ik I'm missing, and some I'm sure many of u others would wanna see. I would love to keep this thread alive, and to show EA, THIS is what u need to give us freedom, THIS is what commissioners, and we all wanna see, and THIS is what would give franchise so much more playability for everyone who enjoys the game's best mode. Feedback and more are welcomed.