Defense: Add two buttons for swat, one for each hand

MaddenUniversity​ Yeah man, I'm getting up there too and I totally agree with you. I don't play competitively anymore, so the incentive to learn new mechanics this is definitely low priority for me. I still often use O/B to switch as well because that's what we've been doing in Madden for the last couple decades and that's a muscle memory habit pretty hard to kick. It's not that I'm not willing to use Switch Stick, but it's not where my mind first goes in that situation tbh.

 I remember QB vision and I literally don't know anyone that liked that. With QB vision, that right hand (specifically the thumb) was asked to do too much with that specific mechanic. Having to adjust vision and then transition the thumb over to a button to make a throw wound up being too conflicting and negatively impacted the timing of throws. Decent idea, just not one that could be well incorporated.

In terms of how you would hold the controller, first off, anyone capable of using both index and middle fingers to execute inputs is god tier talented imo, lol....I literally cannot do that. But with this specific mechanic, and how it relates to holding the controller ultimately, I don't think how you hold the controller would be severely impacted. Essentially you'd wanna hold it just like you were playing COD almost, with that left index consistently hovering that left trigger while your right hand does most of the dirty work, constantly trasitioning between the RS and buttons while that right index opperates the right trigger for speed control. With this mechanic and how the controller layout already is though, I don't see how we hold the controllers being severely imapacted. I just don't think it'd really change how we're already holding it. But without trying it, we may never know either. EA would have to tinker with it and have it playtested.

I may be getting older, but I tried to play some SNES the other day, and it was rough. Our brains, over the last 30 years, have been wired to hit more buttons. The more advanced the games get, the more advanced the controls get, so when you swap from one game to another, you have to rely on muscle memory.

Madden NFL on SNES - pressing B to hike, using the D-Pad to move, and A/B/Y for audible selections

The real, only true muscle memory you ever need to know - ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️BA Start

EA_Shepard​ Is that the old Konami code?!

GVRH​ Indeed. I miss having those codes in games. Made things interesting when you first learned about them. 

EA_Shepard​ They were a lot of fun...and may the days of Game Genie's and Tips & Tricks magazines forever live on through us

GVRH​ I still have a Game Genie in a box. I wanted to play some old games last summer, so I started rebuilding an NES and SNES and found my Sega. It was nice to hop on games I grew up playing.

EA_Shepard​ Most excellent sir! I haven't seen one of those in ages. You got one of the SEGA or NES ones? Man, if you had one of those back then you were like the grand poobah of the neighborhood lol! That's awesome that you're actually rebuidling those consoles for yourself. It's definitely a worthy investment. I've just been buying up what I can of the older games they've been putting up for purchase in the PS Store, like the Genesis Classics and whatnot. After the market hits a point that I no longer care to keep up with the new consoles though, I think I'm going to invest in a PS2 again. It was probably my favorite console since you could play your PS1&2 discs on there. FF6/7 and Legend of Legaia are probably still my favorite games of all time. I grew up on Sega though, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.

GVRH​ Found it last night, SNES one, and now I really want to clean it and see if it still works. Oh I would. I bought one and cleaned it up too. A lot harder than an NES though. I started on PS before I went to Xbox so PS2 took a lot of my gaming days. Come to think of it, I think I still have a Madden 2003 game. Now, if I can find the NCAA 04, that would be nice.

FF6/7 will always be in my collection. I have almost all of them in the 4 disc set cases. I'll never let those go.

EA_Shepard​  Man, that's seriously so cool that you found that! You gotta let me know if you get that genie cleaned and fire it up! I never actually got to own one. Only time I got to use one was when my friend brought it over and he'd let me keep it for a few days at a time if I was lucky. He had a SEGA one I remember. No better way to play Sonic & Knuckles at the time. It was especially useful for a lot of the older Konami games like Contra and Castlevania.

PS2 days were the best of gaming days for me. I got Xbox for Halo eventually (I feel bad for those who have never experienced a LAN party), but PS2 I always played more. Which of the Final Fantasy games was your favorite. 6 and 7 seem to be what most prefer, but 8, 9, and 10 especially were all great in their own right imo. Since then my interest in them has waned apart from wanting to give 16 a try.

GVRH​ Man, Halo LAN party days were something else. That whole era just hit different. PS2, original Xbox, GameCube...there was just a crazy amount of good stuff to bounce between back then. I made my niece play a game, told her no saves, no memory card, there is no cloud backup, you'd better survive!

If I had to pick, 6 is probably still my favorite overall, but 9 has always been right up there for me, too. 10 was awesome in its own way. It's hard not to compare them, but they were very different. Honestly, that stretch from 6 through 10 was just stacked. I still want to give 16 a shot too, because I’ve heard some really good things about it. If you do end up jumping in, let me know what you think.

UtahUtes32​ BTW, I have sent this to the team, so it didn't go unnoticed.

EA_Shepard​ Yeah man, they were the best of days for gaming imo. LAN parties were some of the most fun I think I've ever had, especially in college. Maybe we didn't have the best graphics and whatnot then, but the games they were putting out then were innovative, creative; absolute bangers! Tbh, I literally almost forgot about GameCube because Smash Bros is pretty much all I ever played on that and I never personally owned one, but I'll never forget the N64. With games like Mario & DK 64, the first Smash Bros, Starfox, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Zelda Mask/Orcarina, Pokemon Stadium, etc...easily my #2 favorite console of all time. PS2 will always be my favorite, but N64 gives it a run for its money imo. Yet another I think I might seriously consider investing in again.

Man, idk if I can ever pick a favorite Final Fantasy at this point, because you're right when you say that 6-10 were all stacked and great in their own right. I'd like to play through each of them again at some point, and maybe then I could choose. But right now I have such fond memories of each there's no way. Some say 12 is woefully underrated, but I've never played it. Some say 16 is another more matur installment, almost Game of Thrones like, so that's why I'd like to at least give that one a try. 7 Rebirth I might give a go after the final insallment comes out, but idk how it compares to the original and I don't want it to ruin my memory of the original either, so idk. Have you played any of the new FF7 games? If so, what's your opinion on them?

GVRH​ They were the best. You got just as mad when you died and could not revive, but you didn't rely on servers and back-ups, just a memory card, which I still have with my original FF games on! Those should be in a time capsule lol. 

When I started in gaming, I actually worked for Sega and the Dreamcast, so that is how far back my CM days will go. That is why I do what I do here. I am a true gamer. PS2 will be my starter, so I will always be a fan. They have them all on Steam, and Xbox pushed some, I believe, as well, with remasters of them. I have not played anything from rebirth on. I believe 15 was the last one I played. I liked it. 7 and rebirth and all these, I don't have the time to get invested in them and learn them again lol. I play way too many other games, and with a new Switch 2, I need to play those.

I have the new FF7 because it is on my queue, but I have not played it. I have watched a bunch of playthroughs, and it seems good, but I need to actually jump in and play.

EA_Shepard​ Oh man, speaking about memory cards. Another thing many in this generation will never experience is the horror of plugging in your memory card and not having it load properly....just a blank, black screen. You wanna toss something in a time capsule, toss in a picuture of the face you make when that happens, lmao! Heaven forbid you find a corrupted file on your card after too. Talk about a hissy fit. That's the cartridge era in general though... all else fails, pull it out, blow on it, and pray. Maybe slap it up a little. Half those old consoles, tv's, and cell phones could survive a nuclear blast.

Man that's cool you've gotten to have that experince in the industry though. I would have loved to been part of it myself, but went a different direction. I tried FF15 demo/trial or whatever, and I just couldn't get into it. Just didn't hit the same for me as 6-10 did, but maybe that's just because I'm older now, idk. I spent most of the time when FF11-14 came out playing MtG and COD with a variety of other stuff. God of War had its time. Elder Scrolls games; Diablo; Madden; and a variety of Survival Horror like RE and SH. I have a hard time getting through most games now. I just don't have the ability to invest as much time anymore, which frankly has made Madden perfect for me. Can pick it up, take an hour to play a game, and I'm good for the day. Last major game I got through was Baldur's Gate 3 which I absolutely loved. After all this talk about gaming though, nothing will literally ever hit more me as the fun of playing actual tabletop D&D. Idk if that's anything you've ever tried, but it's peak gaming imo. The level of imagination and creativity is really hard to top. Computerized games will always have some limitations involved, but D&D is truly limitless. I've really enjoyed seeing the resurgence of it.

GVRH​ Man, that memory card panic was real. That memory card was something you held onto for dear life, too. If that messed up, you had a bad day. Nothing quite like turning the system on, seeing that blank screen, and immediately feeling your soul leave your body lol. Same with corrupted saves. That was full-on five stages of grief in about ten seconds. And yeah, the old universal fix for everything was basically remove it, blow on it, smack the console once like you were trying to wake it up, and hope the gaming gods were in a good mood that day. Those older consoles really were built differently, though. Between cartridges, memory cards, and those giant brick cell phones, half that stuff probably would survive the apocalypse.

And, I get what you mean about games not always hitting the same now. Sometimes it really is just life and time more than the game itself. FF6 through 10 was such a ridiculous run, though, so that’s a hard era for anything to live up to. FF15 never quite grabbed me the same way, either. Baldur’s Gate 3, though, that game absolutely deserved all the love it got. Elder Scrolls, Diablo, RE, SH, old God of War, early COD, even those random demo discs and trials you’d play way more than you probably should have...that whole stretch of gaming just had a different magic to it. The one issue I have in my position is when newer (let's say the last 5 years) games are compared to things they shouldn't be. Games evolve, they change, they introduce new aspects. Game A is not Game B, but realistically, most games these days I can see being copies of others or playing like others, so it is hard. You want to give your opinion but you cannot. I have straight out said to players. BF is not COD, so we aren't going to keep comparing it in the thread; if we do, I will shut the thread down. We aren't playing COD, we are playing BF.

EA_Shepard​ LOL... there is with no doubt in my mind any feeling closer to a near death experience than firing up your console and getting blank screened. Apart from your house burning down, days didn't get much worse than getting bricked. The full-on five stages of grief in ten seconds pretty much sums that up perfectly, lmao! 🤣

I'm going to have to say, your response is pretty similar to how a lot of the greatest athletes who have ever played summed up opinionated comparison. Apples are not oranges; COD is not Battlefield; and just because Michael Jordan is considered the GOAT by many, doesn't mean we should forget what Magic Johnson or Wilt Chamberlain did...much less not have appreciation for what others like LaBron, Mello, Kobe, Curry, etc. have done. Different eras. Different styles of game even. I think you're probably most right when you say life was just different then too. Gas wasn't over $5/gallon; food was affordable. We have a lot of different problems, priorties, and things in general to think about now. I think it was easier to honestly just enjoy more then when stress levels weren't quite as high as they are for many now.

GVRH​ Oh, those bricks. And you couldn't do anything. What is funny is when you blow into the NES cartridge, and on it it literally says don't do it, but we have all been doing it since the 80s.

Exactly! When you watch football, and you see Deion Sanders and Emmitt Smith come on to the field, it does not matter what team you root for. Those guys had their game on point. But yes, very different times. I remember the first time I had to buy my own gas. $1.09 a gallon. 89 Nova, the last year of the fifth-generation Nova. And it had some power because my cousin modified parts of it. We have very different issues these days, but some of the same ones. The difference is the cost to fix, replace, or repair them.

EA_Shepard​ You know, what's funny about those warning labels is that it was about 2-3 years into owning a SEGA that I first even became aware of it, but I will swear to my dying day it was the only fix to the problem, lol! 

It's hard to even believe gas was ever under $3 at this point. I'm in Michigan and it's been hovering around $4.99 in my specific location recently, and it makes me sick every time I see it. That sounds like a pretty sweet first vehicle, especially if it was modified. Was it the engine or body (or both) that was modded? I always thought the '70 Nova was pretty sweet lookin personally, though I've never owned one. My first vehicle was a Geo Tracker, lol. Had manual wheel locks and an e brake. Winters were fun in that thing! Could take the top off in the summer too, but it was kind of a pain I remember. Pretty alright for gettin around on the beach or through mud though.

GVRH​ My mom had a 77 Nova. I saw some photos a while back. That was a car I wish they had kept, but things change, and you gotta get that family wagon! You dont know that struggle unless you have ever had to do a manual shift in the winter or on a hill at a red light.

EA_Shepard​ Lol, those family wagons were something else. Makes me think of the movie "Vacation". Good ol' Wagon Queen Family Truckster. '77 was pretty tough lookin too, so that definitely would have been a sweet car to own. Any of them that had the extened front end were pretty tough lookin really. Idk when they switched over to that more European Vauxhall sytle look, but I definitely don't like the look as much. I really loved that classic muscle style look it had, particularly throughout the 70's versions.

I'm just going to come out and say manuals were not my thing. I tried to learn, but since it wasn't a necessity, I very quickly noped it. I know what you're saying though, and heaven forbid you stall out on that same hill, at that red light. When it comes to the experience, I do well judging the RPM's and the feel of when I need to shift, but some of those old manauls could be so stiff and hard to work, and that was the case with the truck I had to learn on; hated it! Many of the cars now have that built in electric manual, which is easy peasy and I'm perfectly fine working those now, but I usually just keep in auto anyway unless I get stuck in snow or something.

GVRH​ Those old wagons really were something else. Those massive back seats alone made them legendary when you were a kid, and half the time it felt like the whole car was basically a living room on wheels lol. My mom's buban had that 3rd seat you fought everyone for, and now everyone wants that shotgun lol. Kids just won't ever understand that backseat life.

The Family Truckster reference is dead on, too, and those older 70s bodies really did have a way tougher look before everything started shifting into that more rounded European style. And I’m with you on manuals. In theory, I always liked the idea of them more than actually dealing with one, especially when you got stuck on a hill or had one of those stiff old gearboxes that felt like you were arm wrestling the car every time you shifted.

EA_Shepard​  Lol, a living room on wheels is hilarious, but so true...and because seatbelt regulations weren't as strict then, you could easily have a wrestling match back there just fine, lol. Just in terms of seatbelt regulations, kids these days will never know the joy of riding in the back window like the family dog, lol! Of course they'll never know the feeling of having the breaks get slammed on ya back there either. Backseat life then was truly different! 😂

GVRH​ No, it really was a living room on wheels lol. Your seats werent bucket seats, they were couches, then you had 3 rows of them plus the trunk in which some cases had its own back seat. Plus you could ride in the back of a truck. Now you cannot.

EA_Shepard​ I literally Googled that to get a reminder of what that actually looked like in some of those wagons, and sure enough it really was a living room on wheels, lol! Literally like a wrap around couch in the back of many, and the passenger seat could flip around into pimp mode. Would have been fun to clean all that out a put a bunch of 12 or 15" woofers in the back of one of them things. Nothing like road trips at 150 dBs, lol

GVRH​ We had one where the back door swung open sideways and had a back seat with seatbelts. If you look, the '60s and '70s were all about the giant couch seats in vehicles and in houses. especially through the 70s. Your living room went down two steps, with a separate living room featuring a wraparound couch. 

My favorite car growing up was a 89 Grand Marquis. I have two 15s in the trunk with a 10-disc changer and the CD player that took off the faceplate and looked like Windows Media Player. I drove a boat with subwoofers lol.

EA_Shepard​ Yeah man, when I looked that up and looked into more, you're absolutely right. Not that I'm surprised that some were made like that, but more surprised that those couch seats were far less exclusive than I thought, and were pretty much standard issue at that point. And you're right, that by design, the way those entertainment rooms and the vehicles were designed were intentionally similar. Pretty cool actually!

Those Grand Marquis were pretty cool acutally. They remind me a lot of the Olds Cutlass, which is another vehicle I liked a lot. My favorite car growing up was the 67 Impala. I had a model car of one and I loved the design of them growing up. Love to hear that you been ballin' out too lol! I used to have a Ford Focus packed with 4, 12" MTX MZS 1204's in the trunk of that thing, lol....different times then for sure. Can't remember the AMP I had very well, though I do know it was MTX as well. Had a pretty nice CD player with the removable faceplate and the customizable settings, but definitely wasn't 10 disc or anything. I couldn't win a competition with the setup I had, but they were definitely loud and got me some sound quality honors back in the days of comps. Loved putting some Heavy Metal on display when everyone else was doing Rap for deep bass. The precision those MZS's had in tune with double bass drums were fantastic! My friend had 15's in the back of his Ford Explorer though, and he regularly won comps. Then there was the Sounds & Motion company van that was literally lined with woofers...and that thing hit 150 dB's on the regular when they actually displayed it. I went in there once when they cranked it up a decent amount and that was enough for me, lol! The MI Tech guys that ran the business were pretty genius at rigging stuff up into pretty much anything on wheels. Fun times in those days...same days as LAN parties man. Would have been hard to have more fun in that time!