Madden 27 Feedback

First off, thank you. Madden 27 is absolutely beyond my expectations. I never thought half the stuff that you guys fixed would ever be fixed in my lifetime. This is a very good game overall, and it was worth the money I spent this year, which is one of the only times I've really felt that way in at least 20 years.

Second, it's really difficult to talk in-depth about all the things that are good about the game. All the improvements and little things that have made this game so much better. Why? Because there's so much left to improve on, and my passion for this game is still focused mainly on that. But before I begin, I will say that the improvements to coverage overall, allowing players to assign conservative and aggressive gap integrity and zone coverage, the new coverage checks, the attention to detail regarding the QB aim point and stepping up in the pocket, the incredibly improved run blocking (it's heaven seeing a fullback wall off the backside pursuit on gap scheme runs!), are all brilliant and make me want to find out what else you can improve on!

With that, here's my feedback for this years game. I've played about 180 regs games as the Browns, which I think is a good amount of playing time to be able to provide you with valuable feedback based on the current state of the game. Thanks as always for reading and considering my thoughts.

Wishlist Items:

1. Custom Playbooks in competitive play.

I'm sure this is something everyone wants, but there are probably technical reasons this hasn't been added. I'm guessing it has to do with the cost of the space to save all the custom playbooks for millions of players.

But the need/want is real. I love the work the team has done on the playbooks, it's top notch, but I really hate the limits of the playbooks and desperately want to create my own so I can focus on what I want to do, and not constantly battle the game telling me coaches suggestions, filling up my screen with plays I'll never use, and having to annoying see plays that don't fit my personnel.

For example, if I wanted to use the Run and Shoot playbook, I don't need a TE or FB on the entire team. I need more WR's. So it's not really helpful that one, I have extra TE's and FB's, it's just an inefficient way to build my team that I'm forced into. And the plays themselves reflect this. Because honestly all I want and need are the single-back spread and single-back trips open plays, and that's it! Get all that other stuff out of my way! Let me build a playbook with what I need and want, not what conceptually kind of came close to the Run and Shoot offense when it was put into Madden 20 years ago.

I need the ability to access these plays in a way that is convenient to me and that allows me to master the navigation over time without inefficient and annoying filler. The game is pretty stressful (in a challenging way) without the hurdles of the current system.

2. Sight Adjustments.

We need the ability for receivers to perform sight adjusted routes when the defense is blitzing. These would be predetermined routes that would only trigger when a marked defender blitzed so the QB could throw hot.

3. Predetermined snap counts.

This is needed for 100 million reasons, but mainly to stop the completely unrealistic quick snapping. It would be amazing if we had the option for predetermined snap counts that would give the offense (if snapped on time) an advantage to blocking and release of receivers. While if the defense guessed the snap count it would give them a jump on the ball. Of course, not snapping on time would give teams disadvantages. Meaning people that just run to the line over and over again quick snapping immediately, would potentially be at a huge disadvantage because the defense would know the snap count.

4. Game Planning.

The ideal would be that you allowed us to create our own playbooks from existing plays, and basically made each play more "expensive" the more diverse the formations that were in use. For example, if you made your playbook all Pistol formations, you could fit a lot in there because it's all the same family. But if you wanted to have I-Form Tight, Gun Bunch Nasty, Pistol Strong Slot, and Gun HB Empty, then you'd have less plays overall. Personally, I think it would be amazing if the plays you ran all the time your players were more discipled and better at. And the plays you barely called or never called would be less reliable and more prone to penalties especially in pressure situations (yes, I think this should be in competitive play, all this stuff should be in comp play).

But if you're not going to allow us to have custom playbooks in Competitive play, could you at least allow us to simplify the way the playbooks are filtered? What I mean is that it's really difficult play to play to get some of the formations. For example, I use the Browns Playbook and they have a lot of Gun formations, to get to the one I want quickly is challenging. It burns valuable seconds off my play clock that I need for shifting and motioning. Yes, I understand I could make favorite plays and that might help, but I really want to call plays by formation and personnel, not individual plays.

I also continue to be enraged by the coach suggestions that intrusively disrupt my train of thought in crucial situations like 4 and short, or the last play of the game, or telling me to go for it on 4th and 18 on my own 30 yard line. I don't want or need this advice, I swear this is the most ignorant part of the game and it's been like this for decades. Just let us turn off coach suggestions. If you only did this, I would pay for Madden 28. Please for the love of god allow us to turn this stupid mechanic off.

5. Locking players out of motion.

I know this is a niche ask, but I do a lot of motion and constantly find myself motioning the wrong player as a byproduct of trying to get to the correct player to motion. For example, I'll start to motion my TE on the line of scrimmage, when what I was trying to do was motion my WR set out wide. But once my TE is in motion it's hard to get him set in time to still motion the guy I originally intended to motion, and it screws up the entire play and I have to either call a time out or take a penalty. All because the mechanics are too rigid. The reality is that my TE should not have any expectation of going in motion on this play ever because I didn't design it to work like that (not just pre-snap but pre-play call).

So what I'm asking for is a way to only motion the guy I want to motion without triggering people I don't want to motion. Which also leads me into my next wish list item.

Also, as a side note I want to motion whoever and however I want to motion them. Don't lock me out of motioning a player that will give me a penalty, that's football! Make me understand who can go in motion and hold me accountable for putting the wrong people in motion. Give me an illegal formation, that would be amazing! Let me motion two people at once and give me a penalty for that! But give me the freedom to get wild with motion and shifting. Stop limiting my creativity. 

6. Stop making the controls trigger unintended results.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to quickly slant my defensive line to the middle and then watch as my player dives forward because the offense just quick hiked me. I've lost several games because of this. It's kind of an instant touch down on inside zone.

Yes, I could remap my controller. But how about instead, you try not to default map controls like this in the future, and also give us a way to have slight delay on input the moment the ball is snapped?

7. Fix No Huddle and Quick Hiking to be realistic.

Quick hiking is still completely out of control. I know what's coming and I still can't really audible and get my players set up in a meaningful way because the offense is just moving way too fast. You guys really need to attempt to balance this. No huddle is great and a part of the game I enjoy. But it's stupidly fast and it doesn't work anything close to this in real life. Even if you're looking at prime Oregon or the Eagles under Chip Kelly, or Tom Brady and the Patriots during covid, no NFL or College team has EVER moved that fast in the history of football. It's about 5 seconds faster than is humanly possible.

8. Regarding punt returns.

The receiving team should not automatically see where the ball is going to land without doing something that keeps their eyes looking for the ball. In other words, if they don't field a punt return team and have their user on the returner, they shouldn't know where the ball is going to land. This means that if they field a normal defense, and run a safety back to act as a returner, they should have a much harder time tracking the ball. If they take their user off of the returner to set up blocking, they should have a harder time tracking the ball (because the indicator for where the ball is going will no longer be visible to the returning team).

This gives the punting team more opportunities to pin the returning team back and to create better plays through the punt game.

9. QB Sneak from any formation.

We need the ability to have a qb sneak on every play, but it should take up an audible spot. Maybe make it a setting you can turn on that either takes up all the audible slots or you don't have the qb sneak option other than the normal goal line formation.

10. More defensive checks.

The more special defensive checks the better. One that I think would be great to add would be assigning a designated "motion adjuster" for match coverage that would bump and replace any player going in motion.

11. Cover 1 Hole and Cover 1 Robber.

This one has bothered me for years. My expectation is that in Cover 1 Hole and Cover 1 Robber, the Rat or the Robber, will pick up crossing routes and allow the defender that was in man coverage to become the new hole or robber player. This would be a fantastic update to defense in a future release. In addition to this, making Cover 1 Rat act like more of a hybrid QB spy that also plays crossers would be preferred.

12. Rock Paper Scissors is the standard.

There should always be viable strategic and tactical mechanics that can not be ignored (glitched) by players to avoid or dilute the chess match. The standard of rock, paper, scissors is the only way to balance game play, and the EA team should constantly (and forever) be looking to improve this balance for competitive balance.

A great example of this was the unintentional speed boosting, as it remove/ignored basic football rules and allowed players to turn all plays into a contest between guy running around at inhuman speeds verses AI and users that could not consistently get into a position to tackle the player. This wasn't rock, paper, scissors, it was rock smashes rock, rock smashes paper, rock smashes scissors. Great job fixing it fast! But this is, in my opinion, the very top priority of the team going forward if you want to preserve the integrity, and the fun, that you've created. Please keep it up!

13. Free form streaks (intentionally throwing to the far right or left of the receiver) is not football. Free form streaks have replaced corners as the route that the AI can never cover. The receiver shouldn't be able to run full speed on a streak and then instantly cut to the right or the left. The momentum would never work that way.

I love free form passing, I think it's great for the game. But just putting multiple receivers on streaks and throwing completely unrealistic throws every other play is not football. Receivers have to know where the ball is supposed to be, they don't have eyes in the back of their head. These aren't even back shoulder throws, they're just instant out and in routes 20 to 40 yards down the field, whatever the QB decides on the fly.

This needs to be patched out of the game for competitive balance (and because it's not football). If you want this in the game, it should at least have it's on special animation that makes it look and feel and play like an actual back shoulder throw.

14. Play action passing is still incredibly difficult.

On some levels I think it's balanced almost perfectly. Play action passes are supposed to be difficult. As Kurt Warner recently explained on his Study Ball Podcast (related to Justin Herbert), "These are not easy throws to make."

However the problem in Madden is that they are nearly impossible to make in competitive online play because the vast majority of player defenses live in a constant state of pass commit with contains. And while that SHOULD completely destroy play action passes and roll outs, it should not do as well as it does against the run and there should be some way to tell definitively what the defense is doing play to play.

From an offensive perspective, you just can't tell if players are pass committing or not. It always looks the same. The only way to really tell is try a play action pass and when you get sacked for a 10 yard loss you will know they were almost certainly pass committing.

There's also the fact that running the ball against pass committed defenses is still very hard because in many cases the defense is blitzing nearly everyone, clogging the running lanes, and daring you to throw the ball in 2 seconds or less against press coverage out of a two-back formation that is not great for passing. Yes, this happens in real life all the time, but not on every play all game because in real life it would be far too risky to play defense like this. In Madden, the risk is misplaced on the offensive side of the ball.

And that's the problem with play action passing. The level of risk for the offense is disproportionate to the level of risk for the defense. I have no problem with the defense "guessing right" and destroying the play action pass, that's football! But what I don't like is all the times the defense guesses wrong and they're not punished more reliably. I'm good at running the ball, and this year's run blocking is fantastic in comparison to any other year. But I play against people in regs that basically get lucky stopping the run while never putting themselves in a position where it's obvious pre-snap that play action passing should have a very easy win rate.

And when you look at MUT, it gets even dumber. Because the players in MUT all have super high PRC and AWR scores, so there are no real weak links to exploit. And no real matchups to scheme around.

Despite the major improvements, this continues to be a major source of frustration. I don't want play action passing to be easy. I want it to be skill based. But I also don't want the defense of it to be easy it, that should also be skill based, and it's not. It's as simple as calling pass commit on most downs, even if someone is running the ball constantly.

I really think the key here is that when someone is running the ball against a pass committed defense, the defense should stop trying to tackle anyone but the QB for the first 2 seconds unless they get an incredible PRC and AWR roll. And, this is equally important, I think that when defenses contain and the ball is handed off, they need to go follow the quarter back as if he still has the ball. And the in multiplayer, if a QB makes a complete play fake, the visual indicator needs to stay on the QB even though the running back actually has the ball. This will make user defenders wrong a lot more often and make play action passing the weapon it should be. It will stop the most aggressive gap shooting (on every play!) and it will add much needed balance into the competitive scene.

15. I've asked for this for years, and I'm not going to stop.

Please remove the visual indicator showing who the defensive user is. And for that matter, just remove it from the QB as well.

Showing who the user is makes playing defense (at the highest levels) harder than it should be. So many players work their entire offense off of who the user is and then attack the AI. Stop letting them know who the user is! The defense will play so much better if the user can hide within the scheme and bait and react to the ball. This would stop so much of the cheese plays and cause the offenses to have to scheme and play call in a more realistic way because just throwing to the same routes every down would be way too easy to bait for the defense.

I really think this would be the very best thing you could do for the game on a competitive level. I think it would make play calling so much more important.

16. QB footwork should influence zone defenders.

If my QB stance points to the left, zone defenders should glide to the left. If my QB rolls to the right, zone defenders should glide to the right. The more depth the defender has (like at normal safety depth) the more influence there should be. In fact, I would argue that there should be advantages to having deeper safeties as much as their are disadvantages. For example, if the offense is throwing deep, influencing the safeties in this way should have an increased impact. If the offense throws a quick pass, the impact should influence the 2nd line defenders, but have less impact on the 3rd level.

17. Throwing away the ball mechanics are OP.

Please stop allowing players to just chuck the ball out of bounds with just the press of a button. It should be more skill based and require some kind of thought process to ensure a grounding penalty is not obtained by the throw. It's just way too easy to throw the ball at the last second and rarely get penalized for it. My recommendation would be to make this throw require free form passing.

The State of MUT:

1. MUT is still a horrible game mode. It's pay to win. It ruins the competitive balance of the game. It punishes creativity, and it rewards bad strategy and tactics.

Although there have been improvements in Madden 27, namely more flexibility and customization of team captains and evos, MUT is still just a toxic least common denominator of regs.

There has to be a way for you guys to make your money while still having a salary cap that rewards team building.

There has to be a way for you guys to make your money while not reinforcing a meta where everyone plays man defense 90% of the time, and every offense is in 5 wide.

There has to be a way for you guys to make your money while not dumbing down the game.

2. I'm watching all of the MCS games. I'm invested in it, but not because of the personalities (the competitors don't have much of that), and not because I care who wins (I don't). I'm watching it because Madden 27 at it's core is just really good. And so watching the best players is more relatable because the game is fun to play and the competition is more interesting than it has been in the past.

3. MUT is confusing. I just want to play the game. Can I please just give you money and play? Trying to keep up with the daily non-playing grind of MUT is not the least bit fun. It's actually very damaging to the game because it makes me want to never play, which in turn makes me want to never pay.

I'm currently in the mind set that because the game costs so much to play competitively, it's just not worth it to also drain my soul trying to keep up with the day to day grind of figuring out what are your dumb promotions are, how to min max them while also actually playing the freakin game. I simply don't have time or energy for the mess that MUT is.

I just want to build a cool team and play. All the extra stuff you guys are doing with marketing and constant card churn is exhausting. I can play regs without all that and it's already paid for. So what value is MUT offering me other than the chance to win a completive tournament that only one person can win if they successfully spend 10k a year and win like 60 consecutive games against the world's best players? It's almost like you're saying here's a lottery ticket where every day we punch you in the gut so many times you actually don't even want to win anymore you just want the pain to stop.

You are leaving so much money on the table by making MUT so stupidly complicated, needlessly annoying, and pointlessly devoid of competitive balance.

Bring back the salary cap, stop making "the meta" bump and run man defense with variations of mid-blitz, and the offense a variation of 4 verts with one drag route, and start making it more like regs where there are real strengths and weaknesses that create actual team identity. I'm not opposed to spending a lot of money, but I'm not going to do that for the product that MUT is, it's just a horrible experience that will make me poor and depressed. If I'm going to be poor, I should be getting a good experience from it (like regs).

4. The MCS Broadcast is really bad. They talk about everything but what's going on in the games. And I don't blame them because someone's either throwing streak passes on every play, or they're running the same route concepts over and over again. I would rather watch random players in Regs than this. At least in Regs you'd have more offensive, defensive, and personnel diversity.

5. Competitive Balance.

There's no universe where the style of MUT play is fun to watch. How many play action passes were thrown in competitive MUT play this year? I'm guessing it's close to zero. That means there's no run game, 1000's of plays are unusable, and there's no variety from one offense or defense game to game. You guys have to change this to make it interesting. The whole reason people love football is the balance. If the NFL worked like Madden people would stop watching it. Every play they go for on 4th down, every play is a drop back waiting for crossing routes to open up. Every game is essentially defense free as the best defense is out scoring the other team. That's basically arena football, and who exactly wants to watch that? Nearly no one.

Fix the competitive balance! It should resemble real football, not whatever this dumb Frankenstein product is that you've slopped together to sell MUT cards to 13 year olds.

Thanks again for reading and considering my thoughts. Please keep the direction of the game, this is really starting to be fantastic and despite my long list of gripes and requests for improvement, I'm really enjoying Madden 27 and appreciate all of the hard work the team has put in.