Please Improve/Expand Online Play Capabilities for Madden
This message is intended for the Madden Developers to urge EA to make some changes to Madden. You are missing out on a major portion of your market - Fantasy League On-Line Play. (See, for example, the Football Idiots website where folks have contributed incredible hours to develop tools to solve the deficiencies of various versions of Madden.)
In short, you need to expand or include in future versions of Madden an ability for buyers of your product to play each other head-to-head in online play. I know what you're thinking - "wait, we already do that". Wrong. Your current version of Madden is a close gaming environment; it does not allow for the play I am talking about. In fact, you have to go back to Madden 08 to find the flexibility in online play I am referring to.
For example, with one exception in Madden 24, online play requires us to use the NFL Rosters; custom rosters such as those built in fantasy leagues are not available for online play. See your "H2H" feature or "online" gameplay in Madden 24, where we are forced to use the stock Madden/NFL rosters. Under that scenario why could anyone choose the Bears as their team to play an online game; everyone wants to be the 49ers, KC, Mia, DC or the Bills? Your game current design is merely an attempt to recreate the real-life NFL season as a game and make us play it your way [stock NFL rosters and including injuries].
The only way, the "customer," can create personalized team rosters is to do so in the offline mode. Hence the game is a closed loop. Thus, while I can draft my own team, I can only play the CPU; I cannot play another opponent over the Internet with my modified roster.
The only exception to the above "closed loop" is if I create a franchise, import my modified roster [that I created in Madden using the modify roster feature], and then play the opponents contained in my franchise league.
The Franchise feature fails to allow for real fantasy play for 2 main reasons. First, we must play in a 32 league (i.e., all the NFL teams). Second, we must play the schedule the game generates. I am in 14-member fantasy league. The same core group of guys, including myself, have been playing computer-based football games since 1987 (e.g., Xor, Frontpage Sports, FBPro, and, now, Madden.08 - it's the only version of Madden that has the flexibility.) There are many other such leagues out there -see any of the numerous forums where such leagues communicate. Under Madden's current design, if the members of our league want to play online games against each wwe must use either teh stock madden rosters or play in a fanchise where our schedule will be dictated by Madden and likely not have all of our members playing each other.
Madden 08, in contrast, allowed the use of custom rosters in online games albeit outside the franchise structure.
Therefore, I am writing to urge EA to make the following changes to future versions of Madden so that fantasy leagues can enjoy the full "Madden Experience:"
⚽ the ability to play online games with custom rosters, inside and/or outside the franchise structure of the game;
🏈 For those committed to the concept of Franchises in the game, then please, please, please, allow us to select the number of teams to comprise the created franchise (e.g., 12, 14, 16 18 team leagues). It doesn't have to include divisions or a playoff schedule, just the league size would be sufficient. Playoff seeding could be handled by allowing the commissioner of the league to select the playoff schedule.
🏀 True "coach mode" gameplay. There is a significant number of the Madden gaming community that doesn't want "game stick" play. We want the ratings and the skills of the NFL/Madden character to determine the results on any given play - not the "nimbleness" of someone's fingers and reflexes.
(4) Coach mode must include kicking and punting similar to what existed in Madden 08 [but with better performance.]
I hope you will take the time to give my request careful and thorough consideration. It appears the Developers spend a lot of time working on algorithms to deal with player progression and MUT and other such stuff, but you are missing out on what a large number of Madden gamers want - a more flexible game that allows us, the customer, to adapt the game to our fantasy leagues.
