Bring back Create-A-Team!

I know EA has a solid team. They did a pretty solid job with the branding options in the last few NHL games. I can’t find the specific article at the moment, but I can almost swear I recall seeing a post on EA’s Gridiron Notes back in 2020 that mentioned something to the effect of adding team branding options in franchise mode. 

It just seems like such a simple low hanging fruit ripe for the picking that could give the Madden franchise a HUGE injection of life!

That’s fair. I hadn’t thought about there being separate teams. But surely this isn’t the first (or second, or 20th) time this has been brought up. 

Mind you, I’m not a game developer. So speaking as the layman here, I would think it wouldn’t be too terribly difficult to peak their heads down the hall and pick the brains of the folks who’ve worked the customization options of EA’s other sports games. 

They could totally male it happen, they just need to focus resourced to that and franchise as a main instead of overlooking it for MUT, Yard, and KO. Hell even FoF had some promise a few games back till they blew that up w/ the nonsense it is now.

I will definitely lend credence to that. Call me crazy, but I actually kinda liked the story aspect more in Long Shot than I do Face of the Franchise. That’s another game mode that can use a MAJOR facelift. But, I digress. 

I personally would like to see team branding and creativity options prioritized over Face of the Franchise. The world is your oyster in terms of cosmetic creativity in all of the other EA branded sports games (especially UFC, which I understand is a totally different can of worms. I’m just simply emphasizing the fact that EA clearly has the resources to make the creative aspect of the game much, much more enjoyable). 

I rather enjoyed Longshot as well. FoF just lacks hard. I agree though, franchise, and it's expansion should be the priority, and absolutely should be opened up WAY more than it already is. And it's not like the ideas aren't there, shoot, the community gives them plenty to go off of. They just gotta stop being lady and put the work in.

Well spoken! And I don’t want people to hear what I’m not saying. It’s not that the idea of a “story” mode is off putting. I think Superstar Mode back in 06/07 was fantastic! IMMENSE potential if they were to use modern technology to bring something like that back. 

Something immersive like how they did it back then with modern innovations could be spectacular!

Agreed. Dating back to the old mode, or even stealing from Road to Glory from the old NCAA games, the whole point of a career is to immerse urself as if u were actually the player.

I do the same thing w/ my franchise. Every move anyone makes actually matters b/c we recreate our rosters from the previous cycle (within reason). Making these guys feel like they actually own the team and can do what they need to do in order to build a competing franchise. Plus just the extra work put in outside of the game itself to help fully encapsulate everyone to bring them that feeling of true ownership.

If they would just go the extra mile, this game, and it's modes outside of MUT could he awesome. Like KO and Yard have some pretty cool uni concepts, y not expand and bring those into franchise to be usable if u wanna update ur team, or even use then for a relocated team.

Using the concept of the Yard to bring a 3V3 player mode option as like the PB, or allow multiple ppl to play the PB game in franchise would make it much more exciting. Even being able to manually select ur own PB participants at the end of the yr would be cool.

I also don't understand y as a commissioner, y we don't have control over expanding the cap for the league. 1 major issue w/ contracts, is that they used to take bonuses out of owner funds. They stopped that, just recently rectified it last game. But in turn, now u can't give out owner funds to users like u could in the past. What happens here is u end up in a hole u can't get out of, and then u get booted from the league. But the major issue at hand is the overall league cap stays the same in-game, but the contracts and yearly salaries for the players get larger, which completely screws u over in trying to sign guys.

But I digress. 😂 Guess main point I'm just trying to make this time around is that EA and the dev team have the tools at their disposal. And there's SO MUCH more that could be implemented that they seem to overlook, or frankly not care about.

Yeah I think a lot of the “face lifts” that they’ve given to the game are a step in the right direction, but frankly feel like such a missed opportunity to add little nuances to make it even better. 

The Yard and Superstar KO are a big plus in my opinion.  It almost feels kinda like a modern day version of what made the old NFL Street games back in the day so much fun. Those modes are kind of an “Arcade Mode”, which I get. No need to spend a bunch of time making it a hyper-immersive experience.  

But man….I feel like the team at EA could do so, SO much better making the modes that are intended to be immersive so much better. I get that Ultimate Team is what helps them inflate their bottom dollar. This is America. I’m all about capitalism lol. 

But I feel like allocating just a little bit of time and resources to make the totality of the Madden product outside of Ultimate Team with other features that allow the player to let loose their creativity (CREATE A TEAM) and other aspects that make you feel more immersed through modes like Franchise, Face of the Franchise, etc. can easily be done without affecting their bottom dollar. There are going to be die-hards of Ultimate Team regardless. That’s not gonna change. Why not use some of that revenue to improve the totality of the Madden product? 🤷🏻‍♂️