Forum Discussion

Hero

1 year ago

MADDEN 26-27 IMPROVEMENT IDEAS

This is a thread I wanted to start so everyone on here can have their ideas seen and heard by EA_Shepard and other EA Staff while also having a single, organized place to share them. This in turn ma...

Community Manager

5 months ago

This is a good one. I can see where both of you are coming from. Madden really does split into some pretty different lanes depending on where you spend your time, and EA’s own mode breakdown separates things like Online Head-to-Head, Franchise, and Ultimate Team for a reason (lol, the corporate in me answer), so it makes sense that Regs and MUT can feel like two different games even when they share the same core football base.

On the playbook side, I can also see your point that more tools and customization appeal to many Fans, while the competitive concern usually comes down to how those tools are used rather than the idea of customization itself. Madden’s official playbook tips and gameplay pages already lean pretty heavily into scheme, counters, and adjustments as part of high-level play, so I think you’re landing in a pretty fair middle spot by recognizing both the creativity side and the competitive side without really dismissing either one.

MaddenUniversity

Seasoned Veteran

5 months ago

The emphasis has definitely shifted recently. What was once protectionism of newbies has changed into informing the user. I, for one, applaud the change; but we've already lost so much 'football' that we may not get back because the stigma associated with the reasons the changes were made hasn't gone away.

In 2007 I wrote a paper for my Persuasive Writing class called "NFL Rules Should Rule". In the paper I took rule sets from various online leagues and compared those leagues to the NFL. In my research, I found that there were only about five (5) different rule sets and an overwhelming number of rule sets online were copied verbatim from one of the five.

When we compared multiple NFL legal strategies to the rule sets to determine if the NFL legal strategy would be legal in these 5 rules sets, only one rule set scored higher than 50%. Not only did the 4 rules sets fall under 50%, but the most copied rule set published by MaddenNation .com (now defunct), was by far the LEAST like the NFL.  Seeing how every strategy we've ever seen in an NFL game is a direct reflection of the rules - these leagues eliminated more football than they encouraged.

Outlawed were things like running a play more than 3 consecutive times. By this rule, the real life final drive of Super Bowl III is illegal. In that game, the Jets repeated the same play 6 consecutive times. Run left. Run left. Run left. Run left. Run left. Run left. The Colts couldn't stop it, but these made up rules could...

These arbitrary rule sets still effect the way people THINK about playing Madden. As people began seeing the effect of these different rule sets on how people played, EA devs began catering to the fake rules rather than the real ones and are the biggest reason some of the football we lost might never come back to Madden...