Haven't gotten into franchise or anything yet, but have spent yesterday and today just toying with settings, sliders, and testing overall gameplay. I'll break it down into positives, negatives, and bugs/glitches I've run into so far. For the record, my User ID is BrandOG-182; Platform is PS5.POSITIVES:OVERALL GAMEPLAY: To my surprise feels pretty good actually considering the horrible experience CFB turned out to be. Movement is fluid and feels good; able to make good cuts on offense while running the ball, and good angle adjustments on defense while pursuing. Have only needed to make minimal adjustments to sliders, even being on All-Madden. Seems to be in a pretty solid place overall on both sides of the ball. Really plays like a pretty good game of football right now. Hopefully this remains fairly balanced at launch and after updates.SETTINGS: The amount of customization within the settings is excellent! From wear & tear, to weather; sliders & penalties, the ability to adjust everything to suit your style of gameplay has never been better. Haven't touched Franchise yet, but even last year, the XP sliders ability to adjust to age and position are great! This remains a strong positive and continues to improve.ANIMATIONS: New tackle and throw animations are really really nice additions, adding to the realism and overall emersion of the game.RUN BLOCKING: Even just blocking in general feels much better this year so far than previous years, and certainly a far cry from the dumpster fire experience it was within CFB. Running feels much much better compared to last year to the point the Run Blocking slider might even have to come down a bit. Will have to go through a season of franchise and see how the numbers look though. Pass blocking doesn't feel too overpowered for CPU, nor underpowered for the Player on 50 each, so that's pretty huge I feel. PLEASE, DO NOT screw this up with a future update!STUNTS: Were a great addition to CFB and are a great addition to Madden as well.RESTART GAME OPTION: A pretty nice touch as a Play Now option instead of just having the normal Quit option. Hopefully will see this in Franchise too.NEGATIVES:RATINGS: These are a matter of debate and discourse every year, but going through each team again this year, they still just feel out of touch with reality and leave me asking why a lot. I would really like to see more guys in the low to mid 70's, and far less in the 60's than I'm seeing. Some guys just really need some more respect on their name. Like, why is Matthew Stafford, a Super Bowl winner, still not at least a Superstar and yet Baker Mayfield (who I love as a QB so no hate toward him), is? Jared Goff with numbers he's put up is another. So many people either over or underrated. Make it make sense! These ratings affect how schemes work and play within game too, and too often I see them adjusted to make a guy fit a scheme while not emphasizing their individual skills within that position. This is especially relevant with linebackers, in which some can both rush the passer and play coverage really well at times. Good example of how it affects gameplay and scheme; Travis Hunter. Good at DB and WR. I'm afraid to even see the schemes in Franchise they were so jacked up last year. Idk who evaluates these each year, but DO BETTER PLEASE!!! KNOCKOUTS & 50/50 BALLS: My real problem with this is not just consistency, but how it pertains to overalls. This problem is exclusive to All-Madden to my knowledge because that's all I've played. Curious about other difficulties though. Whether it's knockouts or catches, they just seem to favor CPU way too consistently. I shouldn't need Superstar abilities to favor a catch or knockout when my CTH, CIT, SPC, or CVG calculates higher than the opponents player. I've had to turn CPU catching slider way down as they just do not drop the ball that often. Way too often have there been players with lower overalls coming down with, or knocking out balls against much higher overall players. This was a problem last year, and it was problem in CFB at launch with way too many 50/50 balls favoring the catch. This needs tuning. Overalls and ratings need to matter, even on All-Madden/Heisman.THAT BEHIND THE BACK KNOCKOUT ANIMATION: If you know, you know. It's in CFB as well...GET RID OF IT!!! Just terrible...QB RUNS/RUN OPTIONS: Seem very slow to launch; almost laggy. Not sure if this is just play design or buggy, but they feel as if they need a little tune up.CUSTOM UNIFORMS: The options are not great here. I liked it a few years ago when you could create multiple combinations from the whole selection of available uniforms, including the older 80s, 90s, etc versions. I hope at least the selection gets better after true launch, but we'll see. Also, the overall layout is a bit disorganized.DOWNLOADS: Specifically pertaining to older rosters/draft classes for nostalgic franchises. Been asking for this for some time now. Still no All-Time Teams either. Extremely disappointing for Franchise Mode, but I remain hopeful for possible future updates.BUGS/GLITCHES/MISLABELSSETTINGS --> GAME CONTROLS --> DEFENSE ENGAGED --> SPEED RUSH: On PS5, R2 is mislabeled here as R1 here.KICKOFF: Glitchy animation on kickoff where there appears to be a weird stutter and the kicker looks like he sort of glides across the turf instead of a fluid motion as with extra points and punts.ID MIKE: The ID Mike icon glitches out and disappears every so often. Hopefully this won't be an issue with routes as it was last year as well. So far haven't had the problem with routes in Play Now, but will have to see in Franchise.EXTRA POINT KICKS: I have the Kicking set to Multi-Meter; Tap and Tap. Every so often the extra tap doesn't register on the power gage, and the ball goes wide, even with the accuracy being good and aligned toward the middle for good accuracy on the first tap.So far this is all I've been able to discern and come up with after the first 24 hours. Going to dive into Franchise soon and leave a post in the Franchise section with what I find there. Hopefully this was helpful to those who read through it.

The pass blocking is terrible this year it is just constant misssed assignments

My real issue so far are the dropped passes, as well as too many overthrown, and under thrown passes ESPECIALLY on green and blue passes for placement and accuracy. Too many times where I'm standing clean in the pocket but I end up under throwing the ball for an easy interception. That HAS to be fixed. Or, I have a receiver beat his man, and I make a perfect pass but all of a sudden it seems to be under thrown and the animation switches from what could be a rac catch into an aggressive catch. It messes up my yardage or I end up dropping the ball because of glitchy tackle animation. PLEASE fix this.

As a Madden fan that buys into the game every year, I have officially requested a refund from XBOX. 0 start review form me. It's Glitchy, animations make no sense at all sometimes, and it's disappointing and aggravating. I dont know how every year it gets worse and worse. There's no reason within the first week of the game there's already game breaking plays/ bugs that players can spam on repeat. I really hope EA loses the license for this game, which is sad because ive applied to work for the madden team so many times. YOU NEED TO START LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE WHO PLAY THE GAME and HIRE football fans as employees. I've seen the people who work on the game, there are so many that don't understand football, or care enough/ have the passion to go above and beyond. Extremely disappointed 0/5. Done with madden.

Please get rid of Kate Scott she almost made me not buy madden 26!!!!!!! if she is on Madden 27 I will not buy it.

Hey if you play with Travis hunter with the jaguars in franchise and play him both ways he will not catch a pass he drop everything except on defense it really sucks

Forum Discussion

GVRH

New Ace

26 days ago

MADDEN 26 FEEDBACK

Haven't gotten into franchise or anything yet, but have spent yesterday and today just toying with settings, sliders, and testing overall gameplay. I'll break it down into positives, negatives, and bugs/glitches I've run into so far. For the record, my User ID is BrandOG-182; Platform is PS5.

POSITIVES:

OVERALL GAMEPLAY: To my surprise feels pretty good actually considering the horrible experience CFB turned out to be. Movement is fluid and feels good; able to make good cuts on offense while running the ball, and good angle adjustments on defense while pursuing. Have only needed to make minimal adjustments to sliders, even being on All-Madden. Seems to be in a pretty solid place overall on both sides of the ball. Really plays like a pretty good game of football right now. Hopefully this remains fairly balanced at launch and after updates.
SETTINGS: The amount of customization within the settings is excellent! From wear & tear, to weather; sliders & penalties, the ability to adjust everything to suit your style of gameplay has never been better. Haven't touched Franchise yet, but even last year, the XP sliders ability to adjust to age and position are great! This remains a strong positive and continues to improve.
ANIMATIONS: New tackle and throw animations are really really nice additions, adding to the realism and overall emersion of the game.
RUN BLOCKING: Even just blocking in general feels much better this year so far than previous years, and certainly a far cry from the dumpster fire experience it was within CFB. Running feels much much better compared to last year to the point the Run Blocking slider might even have to come down a bit. Will have to go through a season of franchise and see how the numbers look though. Pass blocking doesn't feel too overpowered for CPU, nor underpowered for the Player on 50 each, so that's pretty huge I feel. PLEASE, DO NOT screw this up with a future update!
STUNTS: Were a great addition to CFB and are a great addition to Madden as well.
RESTART GAME OPTION: A pretty nice touch as a Play Now option instead of just having the normal Quit option. Hopefully will see this in Franchise too.

NEGATIVES:

RATINGS: These are a matter of debate and discourse every year, but going through each team again this year, they still just feel out of touch with reality and leave me asking why a lot. I would really like to see more guys in the low to mid 70's, and far less in the 60's than I'm seeing. Some guys just really need some more respect on their name. Like, why is Matthew Stafford, a Super Bowl winner, still not at least a Superstar and yet Baker Mayfield (who I love as a QB so no hate toward him), is? Jared Goff with numbers he's put up is another. So many people either over or underrated. Make it make sense! These ratings affect how schemes work and play within game too, and too often I see them adjusted to make a guy fit a scheme while not emphasizing their individual skills within that position. This is especially relevant with linebackers, in which some can both rush the passer and play coverage really well at times. Good example of how it affects gameplay and scheme; Travis Hunter. Good at DB and WR. I'm afraid to even see the schemes in Franchise they were so jacked up last year. Idk who evaluates these each year, but DO BETTER PLEASE!!!
KNOCKOUTS & 50/50 BALLS: My real problem with this is not just consistency, but how it pertains to overalls. This problem is exclusive to All-Madden to my knowledge because that's all I've played. Curious about other difficulties though. Whether it's knockouts or catches, they just seem to favor CPU way too consistently. I shouldn't need Superstar abilities to favor a catch or knockout when my CTH, CIT, SPC, or CVG calculates higher than the opponents player. I've had to turn CPU catching slider way down as they just do not drop the ball that often. Way too often have there been players with lower overalls coming down with, or knocking out balls against much higher overall players. This was a problem last year, and it was problem in CFB at launch with way too many 50/50 balls favoring the catch. This needs tuning. Overalls and ratings need to matter, even on All-Madden/Heisman.
THAT BEHIND THE BACK KNOCKOUT ANIMATION: If you know, you know. It's in CFB as well...GET RID OF IT!!! Just terrible...
QB RUNS/RUN OPTIONS: Seem very slow to launch; almost laggy. Not sure if this is just play design or buggy, but they feel as if they need a little tune up.
CUSTOM UNIFORMS: The options are not great here. I liked it a few years ago when you could create multiple combinations from the whole selection of available uniforms, including the older 80s, 90s, etc versions. I hope at least the selection gets better after true launch, but we'll see. Also, the overall layout is a bit disorganized.
DOWNLOADS: Specifically pertaining to older rosters/draft classes for nostalgic franchises. Been asking for this for some time now. Still no All-Time Teams either. Extremely disappointing for Franchise Mode, but I remain hopeful for possible future updates.

BUGS/GLITCHES/MISLABELS

SETTINGS --> GAME CONTROLS --> DEFENSE ENGAGED --> SPEED RUSH: On PS5, R2 is mislabeled here as R1 here.
KICKOFF: Glitchy animation on kickoff where there appears to be a weird stutter and the kicker looks like he sort of glides across the turf instead of a fluid motion as with extra points and punts.
ID MIKE: The ID Mike icon glitches out and disappears every so often. Hopefully this won't be an issue with routes as it was last year as well. So far haven't had the problem with routes in Play Now, but will have to see in Franchise.
EXTRA POINT KICKS: I have the Kicking set to Multi-Meter; Tap and Tap. Every so often the extra tap doesn't register on the power gage, and the ball goes wide, even with the accuracy being good and aligned toward the middle for good accuracy on the first tap.

So far this is all I've been able to discern and come up with after the first 24 hours. Going to dive into Franchise soon and leave a post in the Franchise section with what I find there. Hopefully this was helpful to those who read through it.

30 Replies

walkingdead322
Seasoned Newcomer
25 days ago
Hey if you play with Travis hunter with the jaguars in franchise and play him both ways he will not catch a pass he drop everything except on defense it really sucks
GVRH
New Ace
25 days ago
Yeah that doesn't really surprise me unfortunately. Idk where they get these numbers from concerning ratings really. Do they convert them in game from PFF grades? I just don't understand what EA is doing to get these ratings. Do they watch football? After just starting a Franchise, schemes and depth charts are off again too which dumbfounds me. All they'd have to do is get a guy over there to go on ESPN.com to find out what they're running and adjust the depth chart. Hoping that'll be better after true launch in a few days.
naptural1
Seasoned Newcomer
24 days ago
The pass blocking is terrible this year it is just constant misssed assignments
GVRH
New Ace
24 days ago
Thankfully I hadn't run into that problem in Play Now too much, but I only used a select amount of teams that were mainly the highest and lowest overall for testing. I will say this though, the ratings and low awareness I'm noticing with so many players is troubling, and imagine that's likely a contributing factor apart from coding. Guys with awareness in the 30's and 40's I don't feel should be a thing, but they do this to order depth charts and fit guys into schemes a lot. But, anytime I've set my line properly and identified blitzes well enough, the blocking has been pretty good for me. I'm on PS though so I can't speak for XBox or PC though either.
xNYFTYx
Seasoned Newcomer
24 days ago
My real issue so far are the dropped passes, as well as too many overthrown, and under thrown passes ESPECIALLY on green and blue passes for placement and accuracy. Too many times where I'm standing clean in the pocket but I end up under throwing the ball for an easy interception. That HAS to be fixed. Or, I have a receiver beat his man, and I make a perfect pass but all of a sudden it seems to be under thrown and the animation switches from what could be a rac catch into an aggressive catch. It messes up my yardage or I end up dropping the ball because of glitchy tackle animation. PLEASE fix this.
GVRH
New Ace
24 days ago
Yeah I'm finding out the more I investigate and listen to other players that it's seeming the CPU is sort of broken. Changing the difficulty isn't fixing the problem and the CPU seems to be way to heavily favored concerning pretty much everything that it's coming off as too overpowered. Not sure what with the programming is causing this issue, but it absolutely needs to be fixed/adjusted with the first update because it's causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.
Shredding_punks
Seasoned Novice
24 days ago
NO CUSTOM PLAYBOOKS AGAIN ON H2H, a year later and you couldn't do it? Seriously?, yet you can go on 4th a 35 in the 1st qtr, Yea EA Sports its in the game
GVRH
New Ace
23 days ago
I don't play H2H too often, but this whole thing where they just keep removing things from the game is dumb af. Owner Mode: Gone; Custom Playbooks: Deceased; Custom Uniforms: On Life Support; Franchise Player Mode: Gone....like wtf is EA trying to do? Did they run out of disk space because of the new team intros?
Sn1ckers56
Seasoned Newcomer
22 days ago
As a Madden fan that buys into the game every year, I have officially requested a refund from XBOX. 0 start review form me. It's Glitchy, animations make no sense at all sometimes, and it's disappointing and aggravating. I dont know how every year it gets worse and worse. There's no reason within the first week of the game there's already game breaking plays/ bugs that players can spam on repeat. I really hope EA loses the license for this game, which is sad because ive applied to work for the madden team so many times. YOU NEED TO START LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE WHO PLAY THE GAME and HIRE football fans as employees. I've seen the people who work on the game, there are so many that don't understand football, or care enough/ have the passion to go above and beyond. Extremely disappointed 0/5. Done with madden.
Swollen18
Rising Novice
22 days ago
Please get rid of Kate Scott she almost made me not buy madden 26!!!!!!! if she is on Madden 27 I will not buy it.