MADDEN 26-27 IMPROVEMENT IDEAS

Thanks for the reply...  I'm not sure how long you've been at EA.  If it's been a while, we may have met.  I've been at a couple EA Football Community Days (2008, 2012).  The best suggestions I've ever given for Madden were:

- Let Users choose whether they use QB Vision in online games (2007)

I hated QB Vision.  HATED IT.  It made ranked games unplayable for me in Madden 2006 and 2007.  I wrote a college paper about how horrible QB Vision was both visually and as an unecessary, cumbersome layer of buttons manipulation, just to do what we'd always been able to do with a button and a stick.  I sent it to Phil Frazier in 2007.  He was Executive Producer at the time, and I appreciated that he took time to let me know he read it and he wasn't happy about what I wrote.  It was very professional though, because we both wanted what was best for the game.  Fast forward to Madden 2008, the cone was optional and mostly unused.  By Madden 2009, it was gone.  

In the time I wasn't playing Madden online because of the Vision Cone, I started throwing tournaments.  I noticed that the pro players that were winning my events were using the cone, but only for one of two throws a game, in situations where they needed to throw a pass that they couldn't throw with the button and left-stick alone.  Many of those passes went toward the sidelines.  Defenders ALWAYS dropped any ball they didn't intercept at the sideline, particularly when the cone was used...  NEVER would a defender catch the ball and land out of bounds...  NEVER.  I also noticed that the screen changed on leaping interceptions while the defender was still in the air.  When I went back to Community Day in 2012, I asked the developers if they could make another change:

- Change possession so defensive players must have one knee or two feet inbounds before the screen flips (2012)

The second took 2 years to accomplish the 2nd one because there was something tying the screen turn after a turnover to defensive catches at the sideline where defenders dropped 100% of the balls if both feet weren't going to land in bounds.  They said that at the stage in the development cycle they were in, they wouldn't be able to get thaat change in before Madden 13 was released - but they said they would work on it.  

In a game of Madden NFL 15, I threw a pass to a receiver streaking down the seam against what I thought was a Cover 3.  It was a well disguised Cover 2 and the linebacker made a leaping grab just inside the numbers, landed, and they screen turned...  Before or since, I've never been HAPPIER to throw an interception.  

I'm down for whatever makes the game better...  

Later