[Gameplay] Zone Coverage is broken

Here is what is happening in Madden NFL 23 per Community feedback:

Before we share a few of the Foundational Football improvements coming to Madden NFL 23, get caught up on how the all-new FieldSENSE™ Gameplay System is changing the foundation of Madden gameplay, only on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions, if you haven’t already checked that out.

Player feedback continues to drive our development efforts around gameplay and we want to thank you all for taking the time to share that feedback with us. Our primary gameplay goal with our foundational football initiative is to strengthen the fundamentals so that players will have the tools to solve football problems with football solutions on the virtual gridiron.

Our Foundational Football Gridiron Notes starts with the areas of gameplay that our players have told us matter most: pass coverage, pass rush, and QB Contain, to deliver a more balanced gameplay experience. For Madden NFL 23, we believe these three defensive fundamentals all have to work together to provide the authenticity and balance our players desire.

Pass Coverage

We received a ton of feedback at launch last year around pass coverage and continued to action on specific coverage call-outs through Title Updates post-launch. Like every Madden season, we know that players have high expectations for defense, specifically pass coverage and this year is no different. This year, we are solidifying our basic, fundamental coverage principles with a focus on zone coverage and defending the deep pass.

• Spot Drop Zones
  We will be featuring ‘spot-drop’ zones as our core zone coverage concept within our defensive playbooks and AI. This means that by default, all the zone coverages in our playbooks will be strictly using spot-drop zone logic and covering a specific area of the field, instead of a mixture of both spot-drops and match coverages like we had last year. The main purpose of this change was to make the play-art in the play-call screen the central source of truth for players so they can better predict how their zones will react during the play.
  
  Match Zone coverage concepts are still accessible through our Coach Adjustments menu during your play selection. Simply flipping the Zone Coverage Coach Adjustment to ‘Match’ will bring back our in-depth ruleset for match coverages, those that convert from zone to man during the play, when specifically calling the match coverage play types.

• Drift Logic for Deep Zone Defenders
  Drift Logic is all new coverage behavior for Deep Zone defenders. This logic prevents deep zone defenders from ‘drifting’ too far up the field without having a vertical threat in their area. This will prevent those ‘Third Window’ throws on deep crossing routes. Drift Logic allows the defender to recognize a receiver approaching his zone sooner, plaster him in coverage as he crosses his face, and not get beat underneath. Players told us those third-window crossers were completed too consistently and this new ‘drift’ logic aims to address that feedback.

• Zone Defender Locomotion
  We’ve captured a whole new set of defensive back specific movement animations and along with AI support, the defenders in Madden NFL 23 will back-pedal, flip their hips, strafe and look back at the ball more smoothly, more athletically, and more realistically. Not only will defensive backs look the part, but these new movement animations also get them to where they want to go with more efficiency, which will make passing windows against zone coverage much tighter.

• Route Specific Break-on-Throw Logic
  We’ve also added dynamic break times for each type of zone defender when facing specific routes. Zones that are supposed to take away specific routes or areas of the field will now break on the throw faster versus those routes than they will against routes their zones are not designed to take away. One example of this is a hard flat zone aggressively breaking on a route to the flat instead of leveraging deeper routes first; another is deep outside third defender in Cover 3 breaking faster when a corner route enters their zone.

• New End Zone Coverage Logic
  Previously, our deep zone defenders made little logic adjustments when they were covering in the endzone. This resulted in defenders squeezing down on routes breaking to the inside while disregarding the underneath zone defenders resulting in the sidelines and the corners of the end zone being left wide open. This year, those outside deep zone defenders stay outside and sit on those out-breaking or third window crossing routes. They let the route come to them and then they aggressively break on the throw.

• DB Catch vs Swat
  With our zone coverage defenders playing stronger fundamental football, we have tuned the balance between ‘play ball,’ ‘play receiver,’ and ‘swat’ so that you’ll see defenders use a wider variety of behaviors when the ball is in the air, rather than always attempting the interception. This coincides with tuning on how far defenders are allowed to see the ball when not facing it and promotes more organic mid-air interactions at the catch point, via our FieldSENSE Hit Everything branching technology and mechanics.

See the whole article on gameplay changes here. Thank you for your feedback over this last year and please let us know what you think in our Madden NFL 23 forums.