MCS Feedback - and Ideas for the Future

I've watched a lot of MCS games this year. Far more than any other year.

The patch is a big reason for that. The game is much better, and it's keeping me engaged. I care more about who wins and I want to compete myself. What I'm trying to say is, don't ever revert this patch, it's being amazingly healthy for the game in so many ways.

Watching last night's MCS games was a big letdown though. The players all seemed to run essentially the same offenses and defenses, they used the same players, and they had virtually the same abilities on the same players. 

After the MCS, I watched several streamers on Twitch doing the same thing. And there are surely multiple reasons this is happening. The game's community is slow to change and innovation, the community mimics what they see in the MCS, the community gravitates towards what they believe is the META. That's all true. But I think you guys have a lot more to do with this than the community. You only seem to make viable content for a particular style of play. And the game seems to only work for a particular style of play. 

Here's what I'm talking about. You guys are coming out with a Most Feared Theme Team that at least in the very short term will represent the best team money can buy. That theme team is built to throw it deep! It's built for speed! It's built for the only one real style of play. Jamaar Chase on crossing and corner routes. There's no player that can man him up, there's just the same old max protect wait for the WR to get to top speed and let it rip!

Why? Why is that always the default for this game? Football is so much more than that. And in Regs, where the teams are much more diverse and it's harder to make that style of play a four-down focus, the games are so much more compelling and interesting to watch.

I just really struggle with why you guys can't make the competitive scene more diverse content and thoughtfully design the game more like regs and waaay less like MUT.

Here's a list of things I think you should consider doing ASAP:

1. Stop making super players that are great and near perfect at everything and start making players that are great at specific things. Deion Sanders is a perfect example. GREAT at man to man. HORRIBLE at run defense, tackling, getting off run offs, block shedding, not getting pancaked by everyone. This guy should totally lock down a single receiver in man to man coverage. But if you run to his side of the field, it should be pretty obvious that he's a liability. All players have a little bit of this in them. Yes, there are legendary players that were REALLY good, and some of them were really good at a lot of things, but not everything. You guys need to really be thoughtful in the content that is provided.

2. The game has to support diverse play. And one of the biggest problems you have is that if you make the defense too fast, then nothing on the field can get open. If you make the defense too slow then everything gets open. And that's really where we are now. Everything gets open at the top levels of play. But if you don't have the best receivers than nothing can get open.

It's not the fault of the game designers at all. Because when you play regs, it's not like this. It's design very well. In regs, because there are not super players everywhere on the field, there are significant limitations to what can and can't be done. The Chiefs and Dolphins have all kinds of speed on offense, and create the most MUT like experience, but they're not unstoppable and they do have weaknesses that can be exploited by the other teams. This is both interesting and fun.

But in MUT, everyone is top speed, and it dumbs down the game to a checkers match. You can see it in every MCS game. It's the same route concepts over and over again. It's the same blitzes over and over again.  It's the same results over and over again. Guys are WIDE OPEN in the flats and MCS players are waiting for 5 full seconds so they can throw deep crossers that the zone defenders will not be in position to play. It's gross. It's not football, and it's something that regs avoids by having better game design (with gameplan mechanics and normalized player ratings). 

Speaking of gameplan mechanics, I originally thought this would be a horrible feature for MUT, but after playing hundreds of games in regs I've changed my mind. I think gameplans would be a great thing to have in MUT, and I believe you could make more money of it by selling gameplans as strategy items, so you should be all for it.  I actually think that the current gameplans in regs should be just a starting point for gameplans in MUT. I think the gameplans in MUT should be very diverse and help create new ways to defend certain META's and encourage more offensive diversity.

Here's one example:

Just imagine if we replayed the entire MCS Championship game from last night using the Regs format. John and TJ would've first had to have selected a gameplan. Obviously, both would've picked either Deep or Medium Passing as their defensive gameplan. And maybe both guys would've selected the same for their offensive gameplan. And in this scenario the gameplans probably would've cancelled one another out.

Which is why a more nuance and diverse set of choices is needed, so as to avoid this from happening. The want here is to have strengths and weaknesses, and to NEVER EVER have a META that can/will/or must be exploited to have fun or compete.

So what if instead of binary choices like Defend Deep Passing, you had something more like these examples of Gameplan Strategy Items:

1. Cover 1 Man Defensive Gameplan: +++ Deep Middle, - Deep Sidelines, - - Double Moves

2. Cover 2 Zone Defensive Gameplan: ++ Deep Halves - - Medium Zones, + Short Zones, + Outside Run, - Inside Run.

3. Cover 3 Zone Defensive Gameplan: ++Deep Sidelines, - Seams, - Flat Zones

4. Cover 4 Zone Defensive Gameplan: + All Deep Zones, ++ Inside Run, - Flat Zones, - Outside Run

There could also be variations where you have a Palms Defensive Game Plan that is great against Screens and RPO's.

Or you might have a Cover 4 Defensive Gameplan with additional focus on the run, that would look something like this ++ Inside Run, - - Flat Zones.

Or maybe a Cover 4 Press Defensive Gameplan that looked like this, ++ Chuck Outs, + Press, - - - PA Passing

5. Cover 0 Bump and Run Defensive Gameplan: ++ Short Routes, - - Double Moves, - Deep Routes, + Press

The big key here is that in order to get a positive you have to give up an equal number of negatives somewhere else. And the positives have to make logical football sense! Prime example in the NFL would be how defenses tend to play Cover 2, Cover 3, or Cover 4 on 1st and 2nd down, but on 3rd down and long they almost all universally play cover 1 or cover 0 and blitz because they know (and gameplan) to be able to force a throw prior to a WR being open 7 yards down the field. It's why football is football. It's why teams in the NFL don't do what happens in MUT and just throw the ball deep 4 straight times, because the pass rush gets there too quick and 3rd and long is HARD to convert efficiently.

The Offensive Game Plans would work the same way. Here's two examples:

1. Vertical Passing Power Running Offensive Gameplan: ++ Deep Routes, - - Short Routes, + Power Run Blocking, - Zone Blocking

2. Vertical Passing Stretch Zone Offensive Gameplan: ++ Outside Zone Run Blocking, + Pass Blocking on Outside Run PA, - Pass Blocking on Inside Run PA, + Deep Routes, - Short Routes, - - Outside Power Run Blocking

Note, my examples are just for conversation, I know they may not be perfectly balanced.

Having a diverse set of gameplans would change this game in really important and healthy ways. It would strengthen the use of abilities and while allowing players to experiment new ways to use offensive and defensive formations and curve the impact of "the meta" into what would look more like real football. This absolutely has to happen! There should be tons of available game plans to choose from.

This is what I love about Regs, you can game plan around likely META nonsense and it really helps! It's not nearly as nuanced as I'd like (which is why I recommend having lots of available gameplans) but this has already been tested to great degree in regs and it's so much more fun than MUT. It really gives players more tools to stop some of the spamming of same plays and forces opponents to do more than just whatever they plan on doing. 

One more thing that would be really helpful in both Regs and potentially in MUT with this gameplan system is having the ability to scout your opponent prior to playing them. In regs you can see all your opponent's historical statistics after you finish a game, but not before. This has to be something you can quickly view prior to playing someone so you know if for example someone runs the ball 80% of the time you are game planning for that appropriately. Also, there should be more information about tendencies, like for example if your opponent runs the same 2 plays the whole game, or if your opponent uses playmaker, or scrambles, or whatever. You really should have a good solid 20-30 seconds of time to prepare for whoever you're playing against.