CFM suggestions
As it currently stands, team schemes in franchise mode are extremely rigid and don't make a ton of sense. The only thing that they really seem to matter for are the XP boost based on the head coach talent regarding scheme fit.
Instead, schemes should be informed by the playbooks that a team is running. Calculate a "suggested scheme" based on the selected playbook and the configured game plan within that playbook. For example, the Seahawks are set up with the 4-3 cover 3 scheme. This has a slot corner archetype as a scheme fit. However, in the playbook you probably would see a lot of zone coverage in their normal situational game plan scenarios. This should be reflected in the suggested scheme for any team using the Seahawks playbook. XP bonuses could be applied to the team's "suggested scheme" as opposed to the selected scheme as it currently does, or you could get rid of this XP bonus and move XP bonuses entirely into an expanded coaching talent tree. The suggested scheme should be a tool to inform Madden players what sort of players would make sense for that playbook/coaching philosophy. It should not affect results of games whether played, slow simmed, or fast simmed.
Allow us to use custom playbooks as the selected playbook for a team in CFM and inform schemes in the same way as described above. This will add a huge amount of flexibility and replayability to the game mode that feels pretty lacking right now. It is pretty well known that certain playbooks are "good for sim." This shouldn't be the case, and an update to the sim engine to fix this would need to go hand in hand with this update.
Generated coaches should not run team playbooks, they should have coaching philosophies that inform generated playbooks with applicable game plan scenarios play weighting. These would create custom suggested schemes.
Add flexibility to LB definitions (position definitions in general). While some teams/coaching philosophies a ROLB/MLB/LOLB makes sense, for others a Sam/Will/Mike might make more sense. Some teams will designate a RILB and LILB. Add more flexibility to position designations in general to allow for the flexibility that exists in the real world.
Support a coach/coordinator play mode. If I'm RPing a coach in a franchise mode, allow me to call the plays, manage the game time decisions, but support a CPU vs CPU execution of the plays. Introduce a difficulty level where in this play style (or CPU vs CPU slow sim) player ratings/abilities are the only thing that matter. All this slider tweaking garbage is super frustrating for people that enjoy a more management style of gameplay and just want it to work. This difficulty should be tuned to result in realistic stat lines when compared to what you see on Sunday. Similarly, the advance week/fast sim engine should result in more realistic stat lines and yearly stats when compared to what you see on Sunday.
Make money matter more in owner mode, and actually make some updates. Make earning money more immersive/dynamic than the pricing mini games (that have been solved and are pretty much searchable at this point due to lack of updates). Expand the coaching tree (more specialists) and make coach salaries a consideration. Implement a procedural stadium designer that allows for more unique custom stadium designs. Make advertising a thing that informs ticket sales. Etc.
Add dynamic face generation. It kills immersion when you look at your offensive line and they are all the same person. These should not be pre-defined, they should be generated based on player physical traits, and should look like the player model. I should not see a repeated on in a 20 year franchise.
Improve the scouting process and draft class generation. Allow us to export draft classes to external analytics tools similar to how we can export rosters. Expand the information available about prospects (generated college stats?) and make it less obvious to find hidden dev trait talent. I don't love the mini game of choosing scouts and applying them to regions, it lacks depth. It's basically impossible for storylines like, say Doug Baldwin, to happen. Sure, that's an extremely rare case, but it should be possible. What's more common is later round picks developing rapidly and becoming starters after the preseason. It's also fairly common for early round picks to be busts. It breaks immersion when every year a center pushes a car out of a ditch, and a corner has olympic hurdler parents. It's a nice idea, but this whole system lacks the depth required to make it any good. Spread out the hidden dev traits (and actually hide them), spread out the talent, without making it obvious like it is currently.
