An update from Executive Producer Seann Graddy on Franchise Mode. Hey Franchise FansIt’s been about four weeks since we last spoke and we wanted to share some of the progress and the path forward for Franchise improvements.There are four key things we’d like to update you on regarding Franchise mode in Madden NFL: Our Franchise team Madden as a live service High-level Franchise commitments in Madden 21 and 22 Your involvement as the community Our Franchise teamAs we said in our video update in July, to better deliver on community feedback, we are reshaping our Franchise team to increase our focus specifically on the direction described ahead. We are making changes, including dedicating a higher percentage of team bandwidth, to deliver a greater investment in core Franchise features through Madden NFL 21 post launch support, Madden NFL 22 launch, and beyond.We are passionate Franchise fans, just like you and we’re placing some of our most-passionate Franchise voices to lead the creative path forward.Madden as a live serviceWe operate Madden NFL as a true live service. That means that we deliver content, features, heck even new modes sometimes (ie: Superstar KO) throughout the year. In Madden NFL 20 post launch updates, you saw new X-Factors and Superstar Abilities, a new Mode in Superstar KO, new house rules and playbook challenges in H2H Seasons, new scenarios in Franchise, evolving celebrities and teams in Superstar KO, weekly commentary updates, weekly roster changes and of course the massive amount of ever-evolving content you’ve come to expect in Madden Ultimate Team.The game you buy on launch day is only the beginning of the annual Madden NFL 21 journey. Our commitment to you is to deliver meaningful change to the game throughout the year. In Madden NFL 21, we’ll expand our dedicated live service team to allow for more focused delivery of Franchise improvements based on your feedback, while continuing to evolve the broader game for our wide cross-section of Madden fans.Our current plan is to deliver the Madden 21 updates in two or three title updates over the course of the coming months.High-level Franchise commitments in Madden NFL 21 and Madden NFL 22So, to that end, we’re sharing with you some of the areas in Franchise we’ll target both in our live service in Madden NFL 21 and next year for Madden NFL 22. We have to first acknowledge that this work requires a lot of planning. So, while we can’t commit to an exact timeline right now, we can share areas where we are targeting meaningful change in Madden 21 and beyond. We are targeting these based on your feedback from our social channels, our game changer program, and how we see you playing our game. MADDEN NFL 21 - Post Launch SupportBased on community feedback (subject to change) With each update, this list may shift as our plans for M21 and M22 come more into focus. We will share with the community as the list evolves. TUNING - Improved progression and regression of players. Improve core player progression into the future such that X-Factors and other abilities for older players work well with incoming rookie classes. COMMISSIONER TOOLS - See a more detailed summary below. AI PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT - The AI will make better team management decisions in the draft, free agency and trades. PLAYOFF and SUPER BOWL PRESENTATION - Improve and refresh. X-FACTOR / SUPERSTAR ABILITY CUSTOMIZATION - Introduce the ability to customize X-Factor and Abilities on all players, allowing you to customize your roster as you see fit. CAREERS STATS UI - Improved UI showing historical player performances. More immersion and depth on how players have progressed in your Franchise. TRADE LOGIC - More fidelity, depth, and authenticity. RETIREMENT UI - Better insight into retirements each season to allow players to react/manage. PLAYOFFS UPDATE - Add an authentic playoff bracket screen to see who’s in, who’s won and who’s up next Commissioner tools is a large bucket of items with a lot of opportunities and a lot of work. We see this as something we’ll continue to work on to give you more control over your Franchise in the year(s) ahead. For Madden NFL 21 and 22 we are looking at the following tools:Commissioner Tools Priority Ranking Ability to undo transactions, reducing friction and control over player movement contracts and trades. Ability to approve trades. Ability to reset a game in case of a disconnect. MADDEN NFL 22For Madden NFL 22 it is still very early. We are at the very beginning of the planning and pre-production of next year’s product. That said, we’ve been actively discussing some of the areas we’d like to focus on, stemming from your feedback and player engagement. Here are few of the areas, while not fully committed yet, we are exploring creatively: Coaching and staff management Scouting improvements New scenario engine enhancements New team chemistry system Commissioner Tools improvements MORE CONTENT - Examples: Relocation/Branding Assets for Franchise - New uniforms, names, and logos to relocation options for more variety and depth in deeper careers. Plus other key additions that we’ll reveal as we get deeper into the year for Madden NFL 22 development season.Your involvement as the CommunitySo that is where we are at. There is still a lot of work to be done here and these things will take time. The target time frame for our next communication update is just before the NFL Season kickoff in early September, where we hope to share more specifically the roadmap for projected improvements for future title updates.The last thing to cover is how you, as the community can stay involved.During the Madden NFL 21 Closed Beta the team utilized a feedback platform called Madden Voice. This is an online forum where community members are able to share feedback and upvote priority topics that our teams are able to review, investigate and identify the best way to address them. Not only is it important that we collect your feedback, it’s important in how we communicate to you about new features and updates coming to our game. We look at every new feature reveal and live service update in the following way: New feature reveal Gather community feedback Analyze and evaluate feedback Make adjustments and share plans when possible We look forward to the start of the Madden NFL 21 season on August 28! We will have more updates on the Madden Voice platform closer to launch.As always, Thank you for your passion and feedback for Madden NFL.Thanks,Madden NFL Team(Source)

It still amazes me that a future title is worked on before the current iteration is even out! 🏈

What we want:- Console menus are super laggy (ps4) and cluttered. Like, they've become messier and messier the last 5 years. Clean it up and make it user friendly again. My father used to play and stopped because of how not user friendly it is. I'm sure a lot of casual players have stopped, and I don't blame them. Get rid of the coach pacing back and forth. Nobody likes this, it's silly and does nothing for us players. If you want to get creative with menus- add new player art or card art like MLB the show instead of the derpy head on face picture. Of all the things Madden has lost, it has not lost that derpy picture. You should have enough player models to have the actual models face show up and if you really wanna get wild you could add an aging feature where guys models actually age as they get older. See Skyrim or basically any other game you create your player there's an aging bar. Honestly madden may have used to have this. Imagine if NFL still used Brett Favres 23 year old face pre game when he is 40 and all grey hair.- We want to create our own teams again and either bring in current players on a replaced team or generate a random roster based on your choice off templates like in old maddens. (Cupcake (very bad) team, superstars, etc. One of the most fun things to do on Madden was to create a bad cupcake team and rebuild them. You took that ability away from us. You barely have relocation, it's just silly pre made teams with next to no customization. Don't make more teams or update them- Let us do that!! We don't care about how your team uniforms/ designs turn out. That's like you playing the game for us.. it's awful. It's fine to have Templates, but we need to be able to customize team colors and choose a logo out of like 30 and then provide letter logos. NHL and all other EA/ Sports games have figured this out- why haven't you? See NBA2k. Madden is like decades behind with these features it's disgusting and disappointing as a long time player.You need to bring back the old progression system where it is heavily influenced by season stat performance and off season drills. This XP format is awful and doesn't work well whatsoever. You try to come up with ways to speed up games/ user experience then you add in awful xp format that is pain stakingly slow and lags the already laggy menus. Even if you adjust settings to just do it all automatically- it doesn't work. It's no fun at all and you go and check your players and nothing makes sense progression wise. Literally go put in Madden 04-06 and bring that backIn game presentation is awful. It's gotten slightly better recently, but I know very little about my opponents week to week. At least starters usually get announced. Why not spotlight the top players from each team before the game? Watch for this QB he is lights out coming off a 4td game, or this LB had 4 sacks last game. Honestly this doesn't even feel like a football sim anymore and that's sad. Like what is important in football isn't spotlighted.I see player chemistry- we need people not getting along, getting along, coach influence, coordinator influence, but make it somewhat random. Players from the same college get huge chemistry boosts and want to play together. Have high rated players that don't get used much demand trades or hold outs for more money. Add preseason position battles and let us decide who is in them. It was fun back in the day, but maybe you want to give a random WR a shot you should be able to without manually tracking stats. Also, yeah stats are a mess and awful.Also, every franchise experience should play out differently and not feel the same. Would be awfully nice if we could add expansion team (s) and design our own stadiums from templates. Again, old maddens from 20 years ago did this.

@DJ_Englishman The team working on Madden 22 is much much smaller than Madden 21 and resources will shift over to 22 as time goes on, but when you have new NFL seasons starting every year and the time it takes to develop new features, you always have to think slightly ahead so you're ready to deliver a new Madden NFL title under 12 months. As a side note, it's possible that feedback seen on the forums might not make it into the current year's game due to various reasons, such as technical limitations based off what is already built, but when you have the following year's title in the works that is where you have an opportunity to implement it much easier when feedback is given so early ahead of time. 🙂

@EA_Blueberry Great job EA I am so excited to play a new and revamped franchise!

Forum Discussion

EA_Blueberry

Community Admin

6 years ago

Gridiron Notes: Franchise Updates Coming to Madden 21

An update from Executive Producer Seann Graddy on Franchise Mode.

Hey Franchise Fans

It’s been about four weeks since we last spoke and we wanted to share some of the progress and the path forward for Franchise improvements.

There are four key things we’d like to update you on regarding Franchise mode in Madden NFL:

Our Franchise team
Madden as a live service
High-level Franchise commitments in Madden 21 and 22
Your involvement as the community

Our Franchise team
As we said in our video update in July, to better deliver on community feedback, we are reshaping our Franchise team to increase our focus specifically on the direction described ahead. We are making changes, including dedicating a higher percentage of team bandwidth, to deliver a greater investment in core Franchise features through Madden NFL 21 post launch support, Madden NFL 22 launch, and beyond.

We are passionate Franchise fans, just like you and we’re placing some of our most-passionate Franchise voices to lead the creative path forward.

Madden as a live service
We operate Madden NFL as a true live service. That means that we deliver content, features, heck even new modes sometimes (ie: Superstar KO) throughout the year. In Madden NFL 20 post launch updates, you saw new X-Factors and Superstar Abilities, a new Mode in Superstar KO, new house rules and playbook challenges in H2H Seasons, new scenarios in Franchise, evolving celebrities and teams in Superstar KO, weekly commentary updates, weekly roster changes and of course the massive amount of ever-evolving content you’ve come to expect in Madden Ultimate Team.

The game you buy on launch day is only the beginning of the annual Madden NFL 21 journey. Our commitment to you is to deliver meaningful change to the game throughout the year. In Madden NFL 21, we’ll expand our dedicated live service team to allow for more focused delivery of Franchise improvements based on your feedback, while continuing to evolve the broader game for our wide cross-section of Madden fans.

Our current plan is to deliver the Madden 21 updates in two or three title updates over the course of the coming months.

High-level Franchise commitments in Madden NFL 21 and Madden NFL 22
So, to that end, we’re sharing with you some of the areas in Franchise we’ll target both in our live service in Madden NFL 21 and next year for Madden NFL 22. We have to first acknowledge that this work requires a lot of planning. So, while we can’t commit to an exact timeline right now, we can share areas where we are targeting meaningful change in Madden 21 and beyond. We are targeting these based on your feedback from our social channels, our game changer program, and how we see you playing our game.

MADDEN NFL 21 - Post Launch Support
Based on community feedback (subject to change)

With each update, this list may shift as our plans for M21 and M22 come more into focus. We will share with the community as the list evolves.

TUNING - Improved progression and regression of players. Improve core player progression into the future such that X-Factors and other abilities for older players work well with incoming rookie classes.
COMMISSIONER TOOLS - See a more detailed summary below.
AI PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT - The AI will make better team management decisions in the draft, free agency and trades.
PLAYOFF and SUPER BOWL PRESENTATION - Improve and refresh.
X-FACTOR / SUPERSTAR ABILITY CUSTOMIZATION - Introduce the ability to customize X-Factor and Abilities on all players, allowing you to customize your roster as you see fit.
CAREERS STATS UI - Improved UI showing historical player performances. More immersion and depth on how players have progressed in your Franchise.
TRADE LOGIC - More fidelity, depth, and authenticity.
RETIREMENT UI - Better insight into retirements each season to allow players to react/manage.
PLAYOFFS UPDATE - Add an authentic playoff bracket screen to see who’s in, who’s won and who’s up next

Commissioner tools is a large bucket of items with a lot of opportunities and a lot of work. We see this as something we’ll continue to work on to give you more control over your Franchise in the year(s) ahead. For Madden NFL 21 and 22 we are looking at the following tools:

Commissioner Tools Priority Ranking

Ability to undo transactions, reducing friction and control over player movement contracts and trades.
Ability to approve trades.
Ability to reset a game in case of a disconnect.

MADDEN NFL 22
For Madden NFL 22 it is still very early. We are at the very beginning of the planning and pre-production of next year’s product. That said, we’ve been actively discussing some of the areas we’d like to focus on, stemming from your feedback and player engagement. Here are few of the areas, while not fully committed yet, we are exploring creatively:

Coaching and staff management
Scouting improvements
New scenario engine enhancements
New team chemistry system
Commissioner Tools improvements
MORE CONTENT - Examples: Relocation/Branding Assets for Franchise - New uniforms, names, and logos to relocation options for more variety and depth in deeper careers.

Plus other key additions that we’ll reveal as we get deeper into the year for Madden NFL 22 development season.

Your involvement as the Community
So that is where we are at. There is still a lot of work to be done here and these things will take time. The target time frame for our next communication update is just before the NFL Season kickoff in early September, where we hope to share more specifically the roadmap for projected improvements for future title updates.

The last thing to cover is how you, as the community can stay involved.

During the Madden NFL 21 Closed Beta the team utilized a feedback platform called Madden Voice. This is an online forum where community members are able to share feedback and upvote priority topics that our teams are able to review, investigate and identify the best way to address them. Not only is it important that we collect your feedback, it’s important in how we communicate to you about new features and updates coming to our game. We look at every new feature reveal and live service update in the following way:

New feature reveal
Gather community feedback
Analyze and evaluate feedback
Make adjustments and share plans when possible

We look forward to the start of the Madden NFL 21 season on August 28! We will have more updates on the Madden Voice platform closer to launch.

As always, Thank you for your passion and feedback for Madden NFL.

Thanks,

Madden NFL Team

(Source)

26 Replies

Wh1T3MenCanJumP
6 years ago
Is anyone else having issues when playing franchise real life mode? When I go to click on a week to start my season nothing comes up it’s just a blank screen...
Wh1T3MenCanJumP
6 years ago
@EA_Blueberry Have you heard of any issues with franchise real life mode? Since the latest update I get a blank screen when clicking on this mode? Tried uninstalling my game still doing it...
Primetimus21
6 years ago
Hello just like to say as a fan of Madden since 1992 and I played the game till Madden 10 then I stopped till Megatron was on the cover, then I stopped till Maholmes was on the cover till now. My favorite Madden was 2004 mainly because you could pretty much put any player you wanted wherever you wanted them on the depth chart. My QB could be a WR or a CB, a CB could be a WR and WR could be a QB, my favorite was trying to play QB with Eric Crouch, he was a WR but a QB in college so I tried to be QB with him he was terrible but fun to try with.
So mainly from what I wrote there is that the depth is very important to the game. I very much want to be able to put a CB at WR or QB at CB again or Kicker especially if my kicker goes down I don't want to have sign a new one I want to use my QB or punter instead like I have before, what is the sense of having all those ratings for everyone if you can't put them to good use unless you manually change the position which i love but depth chart have to become completely customizable.
I think a button that removes people from the depth chart is much needed, plus I don't want my depth chart fully filled if I only have 1 FB I only want to see the FB like it is when you download the roster update. It would be great if maybe if left button pulled up an option that says remove from depth chart, and stays that way unless I add a player. This should be this way throughout the game in Franchise even in offline mode without the cloud.
Also when I start a season and load the roster from the official roster all players should be added and none of them should be removed from their team.
Every team should be able to keep all their players, nfl team rosters always have pretty much 75 players but they are on IR or practice squad, in Franchise you shouldn't have to cut players all players that aren't going to play should be be able to stay on the team but in the practice squad. It doesn't make sense that when I put on setting that say don't fill roster and no cuts or roster is not to reduced that i still have my roster filled, players still have to get cut, i want to be able to control the whole game to even what my opponent wears without me putting in another controller. I think everyone wants a full roster. I try to keep my teams a close to the real teams as I can in my Franchise mode.
If a player gets injured i shouldn't be forced to take him out unless the injury is serious, and if it is serious we should see the player being taken off the field in a cart. Also I should have my pick of who replaces my player instead of just the next man up. If a player gets injured but is tough i should be able to keep him in and play him injured like Roethlisberger, he will play injured even with a broken hand or injured leg, i should be able to have that guy play with the injury the whole season if I want to but obviously his skills would lose points and depending on what is injured, the player should wear brace because of it.
I like to control all teams on offline Franchise mode, i would like if there was a select all option for every coach so I could easily control them all instead of having to pick every coach individually, it takes too long.
There should be extra coaches like in previous Madden, where you had a choice to have your head coach to be replaced with your Offensive coordinator or your DC or your special teams coach, we need those opinions back.
In the edit options it would be cool to be able to spin the player around rather than the player just stand there Also if i edit a player so it looks more like the actual player the art or picture for him should not dissappear, the picture should stay instead of turning into the player model.
Also when loading roster into Franchise mode the numbers of players changed, Bowden Jr on the Dolphins has the number as Wilson does but for some reason his number changed and shouldn't have.
I thinlk a cool would be to be able to make a custom play list for Madden by being to pick any and every song from previous Maddens it would be cool to have 1992 Madden theme be in this version somehow.
Also player hair seemed to get darker,, Fitzpatrick hair should be way lighter like almost blonde or red..
Depth chart button is my main concern and to not have my depth chart fully filled, it would be a great option to get that like it is in MUT, where you can remove players from your depth chart, ot should be the same way in Franchise for the regular depth chart and the player card depth chart also same options for when you edit rosters for your default roster
The scheme in Franchise should allow you to put any player you want anywhere you them to be in Franchise.
Thank you
Oceola27
6 years ago
Thanks EA, but the game should have come this way. The Formation Sub problem is fixed and kicking is not a nightmare anymore (other than my poor timing!).
griffey24sea
6 years ago
Heres a Suggestion for Madden 21
Add a Blue LOS (Line Of Scrimmage) line like they do on TV to go with the Yellow first down line. I can't tell you how many times as a passer where I'll step up in the pocket and go to make a pass and then all of a sudden my QB will step pass the line and take off running. It'd be nice to have that visual of where the LOS line actually is so I don't have to guess as much.
Just a thought
EA_Blueberry
Community Admin
5 years ago
@WrathOfHades85 wrote:

@EA_BlueberryAfter reading your update, I just have a few things I would like to see if you are planning to add...

1. AI controlled teams initiating trades. (It’s just not realistic to go through seasons and never having a team initiate a trade with you). I did see that you mentioned more authentic trade system. Is this what you meant?

2. Home field advantage benefits (crowd volume issues for away team, etc.)

3. Player management (ie. dealing with a primadonna or players demanding trades, etc). It would make it a bit more realistic, if a player's morale could lead to him demanding a trade or deciding to sit out, until needs are met, etc.

4. Allow us to change colors, stripes, etc. for the relocation teams. I understand that the team names and locations may be predetermined, but that doesn’t mean we should only be allowed to choose between 3 looks. Just give us more customization options, please.

5. More in-depth scouting and NFL draft. The combine grades are useless, right now, and you really don’t get much info about any of the players. In real life, there are draft bios written up about all of the players. I feel like we should have something close to that. Give us a more immersive experience. Maybe even the pre-draft workouts. I did read that you plan to improve the scouting. I feel like it would make more sense to be able to send scouts to college games, rather than having the giant list and just boringly go down the list, while clicking "quick scout," until all 3 have been done. The bios would be pretty awesome, in my opinion. It would make me feel like I know something about the player, rather than just the basic stuff we have had, over the last handful of years.

*EDIT*

Had to add a #6, real quick, because I just thought of it...

6. Make custom playbooks eligible for formation subs. It kinda takes the fun out of creating a playbook, if it's not even a choose-able playbook, when trying to set up formation subs.

As I said, I did read everything above, but some of it is a bit generalized, which is to be expected this early on. So, I just wanted to clarify a few things and maybe even add to the idea bucket.
Thanks for what you do!

@WrathOfHades85

Here are some early announced features coming to Madden NFL 22.

Check out the article here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Gridiron-Notes-Welcome-to-Madden-NFL-22/m-p/10441653#M5

Franchise

We heard you. Not only is your feedback extremely important to us, but also helps Madden NFL get better each year. Our development team worked tirelessly to incorporate highly-requested updates to Franchise in Madden NFL 22 that make you feel more connected and in control.

There will be more detailed staff management and skill tree progression systems, with comprehensive weekly game strategy that integrates into your gameplan. Through the regular season and off-season, new scenarios will keep things fresh as you weigh various risks and rewards to make the right decisions for your team. Plus, Franchise will see improvements throughout the year via three Live Service updates. Our first live service update targeting September to release is one of your top requested features, Player Scouting. Keep an eye out for more Gridiron Notes as each Live Service update rolls in.

Gameday Atmosphere is also bringing real NFL game scenarios to Madden NFL 22. You’ll experience the impact of spontaneous moments that can change the outcome of a game in a split second - all based on the unique atmospheres and environments of the stadium. With each stadium housing a unique Home Field Advantage game modifier, you’ll be able to shift momentum in (or out of) your favor during high-stakes moments. You’ll also see all-new crowd animations, on-field reactions and celebrations that bring the real world emotion of game day to life.