Scrap the CA & Playsheets in Franchise

I agree. As someone that has also had issues with my league this year, I can tell you this stuff breaks leagues. 

Fully agree with this the coach ability's completely break the balance of the game 

I agree with this. It's extremely difficult to have a variety of different winners when the best players take all these play sheet and ability combos they find on the web. Either give an option to disable them or just take them out completely. 

Yes!! Franchise owners should have way more adjustment controls. They should be able to limit whatever abilities they want to, coach and players abilities! And to be able to take away abilities as a commissioner. They should also have options to suspend players in the game!!

I was worried about this at the beginning of the year, but since I don't do online anymore I've been curious how people felt about it until I saw this. After reading this it's pretty much as I expected. What I think they need to do to balance this is:

First, not put so many different buffs into one single ability (having 4 different things each get a huge buff is OP);  Second, tone done the amount to which something gets buffed (a +7 in anything is ridiculously high). 

I think the different tiers and the ability to master an ability is great, but if any stat within a player's rating is to receive a said buff, it would be far more balanced to have the buff increase by +1 for each tier (maybe up to +5 for a mastered ability). Also, it would be far more balanced to scrap abilities like "All-Madden Effort" that buff mulitple stats, and take a more focused approach on specific stats. "Bookend Busters" is a far more balanced ability compared to others that give mulitiple buffs, or large buff increases, or both. While this specific ability doesn't grant a plus to a specific stat, it does gradually increase how two very specific stats function making it a good example. It's focused, and doesn't do too much at once.

Also I think they need to remove buffs from playsheets and instead have each tier just unlock more available plays as a more balanced approach. I don't think they need to outright scrap everything, just refine what is most balanced and works best. What do you guys think?

EA_Shepard​ 

So a large issue we were facing was people getting the same ability or playsheet on the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and the head coach, and then triple stacking it. That means any of those ridiculous abilities or playsheets suddenly become three times as bad.

Admittedly, asking to scrap the entire system is a bit of a stretch, but we at least need the option to turn things off as a head commissioner. I run a league that’s based on trying to keep things realistic, and by mid-season of season two we had three 99-overall teams due to triple stacking Camp Counsellor. How does this stuff get through play testing?

We’ve had to ban certain abilities and playsheets, which has been a nightmare to try and keep on top of. As I said in my original post, I’ve been running a league for seven years without stopping, and this year has been horrendous and the closest I’ve come to quitting. I definitely cannot do another year of this without significant changes.

Yeah I hear you man. The stacking was a very early concern that unfortunately is a bit of a nightmare come true. Way too OP with the way things are currently set up. I expressed very early within my M26 Franchise Feedback that the lack of discernable separation within the staff apart from the trainer absolutely needed addressing. With them all essentially receiving the same abilities, playsheets, and unlock potential, none of these positions felt special or discernable from one another. I was unaware of how the buffs would impact H2H gameplay at the time, but here's what I put about how I felt things could be addressed within Coaching Central:

1. Make more slots available. I think there are currently 6 for coach abilities, 4 for playsheets, and 2 for trainers. I wouldn't mind if those numbers were bumped up to 9 or 10 for coach abilities, 5 for playsheets, and 3 for trainers at higher levels. More slots especially seem better when there are certain abilities, such as the scouting abilities, that remain in the loadout for several weeks without the ability to remove them.
2. Not only would more slots be nice, but I would love to see them distributed differently. Right now there is just one uniform loadout for coach abilities, playsheets, and trainer abilities respectively, in which you can activate whatever ability or playsheet from your coach and/or coordinator each week. To make each coach and coordinator feel different and special though, I would like to see the loadout sorted by each coach and the trainer instead. Give each coach and the trainer 3 abilities max to activate each week, maybe 4 for the head coach if you bumped the number up to 10 max coach abilities, then give each coordinator 2 playsheets for max activation, and the head coach 1. This makes coordinators feel more important as they can give you access to more plays per game while the coach has more of his/or own special abilities to activate that the coordinators don't.
3. I would like to see some better spacing for ability and playsheet unlocks. Some unlocks seem they could be too far apart, but I have yet to max a coach out, so we'll see.

As you can see, though I never really addressed how buffs and abilities stack, if you take what's written above and balance that with what's  been suggested here in the comments, I think it would be a pretty decent start to getting Coaching Central off to a far more balanced experience. Gotta get rid of the stacking for sure though. I think giving the HC and Coordinators different focused abilities, or at least removing the ability to stack the same abilities with be a major win for how this operates in the future.

GVRH​ Hey,

Personally, I would like to see some of this implemented just to test it out and see if we like it or not. In theory, something may sound good, but then you test it, and you're like, nope. I do like the idea of a balanced approach, though. I can certainly pass the feedback along to the team and have them review it.

I would like to see what others think about this, too! The more feedback on this, the better.

Cheers