First time in DECADES I stopped playing Madden altogether

This isn't a rip job, but honestly this is the first time since I started playing Madden in the early 2000's that I stopped playing.

To me, there's a few fundamental reasons why.

First and foremost, the player ratings and overall progression. After a year, there were 130 players rated 90 or above. To me, this is incredibly unrealistic and takes away from the overall fun of the game. This leads to teams so tightly rated. I tried to get back into things today and found that the Titans were rated as an 80. Shouldn't that be a low 70's?

They've erased the simplicity of what made this game fun. One thing I want to square in on is the coaching elements they added this year. I appreciate the effort to include the coaching tree elements, but the layout, menus and overall implementation of that whole process falls short and makes me want to skip through it. Simplify this. With all the data, they should know that Brian Flores in Minnesota is a blitz heavy guy that can dial up blitzes that other coordinators can't. That alone would make him intriguing if I take a team in franchise and want to hire someone with a unique defensive scheme that could turn the tide of an underperforming franchise. But when I can "buy" the same elements with another coach, it sort of mutes the fun and individuality of each "coach" you could hire. A way to develop someone that can have those type of skills would be to hire someone on my staff as a defensive coordinator under Flores, who then after a season would gain access to a Level 1 blitz playsheet that Flores runs and perhaps it at Level 10. Then if you hired that defensive coordinator from Flores' squad you could develop him into the next Flores.

When it comes to gameplanning, there should be more feedback on how your choice in schemes and play calls affected the outcome and then should impact the next time you play that team or a similar situation. For instance, if Flores' blitz heavy scheme didn't work against the Bears, it should say "the Bears averaged 6.7 yards per play on blitzes and had 3 plays of 20+ yards." Then offer a suggestion or allow you to tweak certain things such as "have X player shadow X player all over the field."

Surely you can do this in some fashions, but the simplicity of this being featured on a menu screen to set it up going into the game would make me feel more invested into playing that game and it feeling unique and different.

Other elements could be if I hire Flores, maybe I have to spend more money to attract an experienced offensive coordinator or I have more options to take chances on inexperienced first-time play callers. There should be a budget to hire an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, trainer, etc. like NBA 2K. That model is so simple, but much more entertaining in the overall franchise mode.

Allow us to feel like we're the ones in control of the situations, success and development versus it feeling more like a mini game with predetermined outcomes.

I know a lot of this has been stated before and I'm not unearthing anything ground breaking, but when we see versions of the game from years past with all NFL coordinators and the ability to hire them with grades next to their attributes or player ratings that didn't make every guy feel like an 80 or above, we're going to keep hammering for these things that made the game more fun and made me want to play a 5-year franchise with a team.

I can't tell you the last time I played more than one year with a team and since September, I haven't flipped Madden on at all beyond my curiosity this week to see if I could get back into things.

Make franchise mode feel less corporate and more fun.