How is Madden 21 not as good as NFL 2k5?
How come EA never answers to critique of the game and how its not even close to as good as a game that came out 15 years ago in NFL 2k5? who can I email to get answers? as a paying customer i feel as...
Forum Discussion
EA_Blueberry
Community Manager
Community ManagerIs there anything specific you want the team to look into that you feel will make Madden NFL a better product going forward? There are going to be different opinions and we welcome both positive and negative, but I'm enjoying this year's version of the game so far. Back in November the company announced Madden NFL 20 was the most successful game in franchise history last year and now Madden NFL 21 already has nearly 30% more players year over year from launch.
The AI from 15 years ago is programmed better than this years madden somehow?
Defenders get lost in their zones constantlyconstant ball glitches,
receivers dropping wide open passes, with catch ovr over 90
animations that trigger when they shouldn't, O-linemen stop blocking once they get disengaged on, they just stand there instead of looking for someone else to block, if you see gameplay from NFL 2k5 Olinemen will block a defender, then disengage themselves to block a defender running free to the quarterback, in madden this does not happen, resulting in being able to cheese blitz's at people without them having more than 1 second to throw the ball, this is what i do to everyone i play online and its BORING.
theres no challenge, they can never get the ball out because they blitz is so OP because of how bad the AI programming is for the o-line.
lack of on field presentation (see NFL 2k5)
Franchise mode being 100 times more deep in NFL 2k5 and even madden 08.Lack of AI sense from CPU franchise teams making awkward decisions that don't make sense.
I mean the constant glitches makes the game damn near unplayable.
Should I keep going?
Plus, my question was more so that the critique of madden has been horrendous, its user score is well below every other madden in history because of these problems yet EA never responds to any of the criticism thats out there. why is that?
and i can almost guarantee i wont get a satisfactory answer to this either. If i even get a response at all. either that or ill get a generic response saying "we'll let our team know about these issues and do our best to fix them!" no, take a page out of cyberpunk and come out and tell your customers why, why is a game that came out 15 years ago able to hold up SO well against such a modern game, give us a reason, respond to the criticism.
Do you think the numbers would be the same if there was an actual competitor out there who could also make football games? ofcourse the numbers are going to grow, ITS THE ONLY NFL GAME THERE IS. The game grows as the NFL grows as also gaming grows. the numbers have nothing to do with it. check the user score, players HATE the game. but EA never responds to anyones issues.
no response just like i thought.
still waiting
@Sabreu1989What you are asking for them to confirm is solely based on opinion. While I agree with your sentiments, and we could easily argue that franchise mode had way more depth in the past than prior to this year--or the whole last generation of consoles, the concept of fun is subjective. Somewhere someone is banging their forehead into a concrete block for enjoyment.
Anyway, I just downloaded an emulator and played my copy of 2k5 and there are things I like, but the game is really dated. While it would have been interesting to see what TakeTwo would have done with the NFL license, this is the s-show we have. Take it or leave it, but don't expect any apologies for the product. Or any significant improvement....see the Next Gen release.
are you going to answer to any of my specifics or no?
@Sabreu1989I don't believe the managers on this site could answer those specifics even if they wanted to. They are not the programers of the game.
P.S. quarterbacks overthrow wide receivers all the time in real life. Football Outsiders tallied the stats and the best deep ball passer was Mahomes who had a deep ball accuracy of 60.7%. in 2019. Second was Watson at 60%.I mean, of course deep balls are over thrown all the time. But im talking about 5 to 6 yard slants or drags, with my feet set, no pressure in the pocket. Deshaun watson overthrows those over their head right to a linebacker? i've never seen that in real life and i watch a ton of football. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions tho man, i know im coming off kind of hostile but it just infuriates me that i had so much more fun with older versions of the game and it makes no sense how its gotten worse over the years. I feel cheated, like EA just straight up does not care about the customer because they know for a fact we are going to buy the new version of the game regardless because we want the updated rosters.
- EA_Blueberry
Hey, @Sabreu1989
I wasn't at work over the weekend which is why you didn't get any response. Please tag me later in the day if I don't get back in time for a response as a reminder. I have to focus my current time today tackling issues being reported across all of our sports titles. We can have a discussion on this and ultimately I'll pass along your sentiments, but to set some proper expectations you're asking for an answer that is at a higher level of what we normally chat about on these forums which would come from someone like a Creator Director for the franchise.
I understand that my specifics were more for a creative director or programmer. but theres absolutely no chance i ever get to talk to any of them. so my original question is how come EA has not responded to the widespread criticism of the game? how come no one has come out and at least tried to address the issues publicly? It feels like they dont care what we think about the game
BUmp
bumpy bump
- EA_Blueberry@Sabreu1989
Hey there!
Please refrain from bumping any further, I will get to your post. I'm currently chasing down issues reported across some EA titles. We'll have a chat about this soon.
Saying the most recent version of Madden was the most successful game in franchise history is meaningless when you have no competition.
To answer your question about what issues Madden still has compared to NFL 2k5? https://youtu.be/Nxt6XeOlOSA This video right here pretty much sums it up. I'd still rather play NFL 2k5, or it's spiritual successor All Pro Football 2k8 than the stuff you have out now.@CalvinistGamer82lol yeah and in typical EA fashion, He cherry picks the easy questions to answer and the ones that are the most egregious and cant explain away, he ignores. I appreciate him taking the time to answer what he did answer and that was great, but it was kind of convenient to pick those easy questions and answer them but just completely ignore the other ones i pointed out in my response to his response as if i didn't ask them. A simple, "yeah those are some issues in the game that we will try and improve on" would have sufficed, but instead he just completely ignored them, esspecially like WR's dropping everything after contact and linebackers making impossible 360 interceptions and never dropping the ball on contact the way WR's do. its as if linebackers and CB's catch better than WR's. He cant explain away those issues so instead they just get ignored. typical.
im not going to stop bumping this forum until i get the explanation im looking for or admitting of short-comings and promise of improvement in the areas i've listed that were not answered.
- @EA_Blueberry daily bump
- @Sabreu1989 I'm gonna have to start doing the same thing, on mine. I tagged him in it, to have him watch the videos that could actually help this franchise, if any of it was passed up, but...*crickets*
I guess it's all just "hot air." They don't have any intentions of actually taking our concerns seriously. Otherwise, they may actually respond to things that are important.
I'll bet if you made a post about MUT, they would respond though. That's all they care about.- @WrathOfHades85 frankly, I have to say that there are no changes made in MUT either. I posted a lot of thoughts on MUT Solo Battles, in particular on the leaderboard, since the Solo Battle mode is incentivising players to exploit the most severe glitch plays all the time again and again in order to rank top 100. I do not use this glitch and I'm really frustrated having to compete with players using it.
I know that EA_Blueberry forwarded at least the information of this block-field-goal-audible-to-punt-easy-INT glitch play to the dev team months ago and there is still no change made since then. my perception is that the dev team is on the one hand understaffed, and on the other hand (most likely due to too few developers) focused on the most urgent problems affecting the game.
at the moment, I'm going through a Madden phase of deep frustration again. I really do not see a solution how the dev team should be able to improve the game as it is on the one hand while trying to implement something new every year, in order to provide a reason to buy a version of this game every year (from my perspective, that's also the main reason why "the yard" was released this year, or "Superstar Knockout" last year).
I'm convinced that releasing a Madden game every year would require parallel ongoing projects. football is a very complex game, from my perspective much more complex compared to soccer or hockey. developing a football game of high quality would require more than a year, for sure. why haven't all these issues that are fixed (or not fixed) in the updates during the year been taken care of in a clean QA process long ago pre-release?
I started to take notes and recorded clips from what I'm observing while playing against the AI a few months ago. my objective was trying to help the dev team to identify issues, bugs etc. in order to improve the game. however, I recognised some issues potentially happening every single play (or at least every single time I call a play or face a play called by my opponent). a QA process that even comes close to deserving the term "quality assessment" would immediately recognize something like this and try to fix it. however, I still see some (or more exactly "many") of these problems today, even though i already noticed them in Madden 19... and also regarding new content released weekly in MUT (incl. packs and content EA offers for cash), there occur errors every single week (although they are often quickly solved)...
I will continue to report "bugs" in this forum, but honestly, I'm really pessimistic that it might change anything. I hope my mood towards Madden improves soon again ....
- EA_Blueberry1. Tackling animationsThat's a popular hot topic and the studio is aware of more improvements needed to make tackles feel more fluid. With the chips and real world stats, moving forward we should see more enhancements in this area.2. Catching animationsRatings system with real life stats should help with that, but feedback on the 72 corners is valid. Keep in mind though Metcalf isn't blowing way corners on every single play in the NFL, otherwise they would throw to him every single time. Even elite receivers are beat against #2 and #3 corners, just not all game.3. Linebacker catching
There were changes made to this at launch and the team will continue to review feedback. Keep note that as ratings increase in Madden Ultimate Team, the game will be faster and the linebackers will be faster, allowing them to get to each side of the field more quickly. This is where you may see them make more eye popping interceptions. I play a lot of Online H2H and see this happen too and personally want to see linebackers reduced to where they're more of a run stopper and bobble those interception opportunities unless they're a top tier linebacker like Wagner or David.4. Running game/Jukes
Running the ball has always been an area where the team has to constantly watch balance on because when great players are able to master it, it becomes extremely hard for other players to stop. Do you see the stop and go being widely effective? I hardly use it myself because it doesn't work unless there's a defender come across at me when I'm running up the sideline and I stop to have him pass me by. The stick is very sensitive to it though so if you pull back to hard you can stop hard rather than slow down if you gradually pull back.5. Communication
I'm not in a position to comment on Clint and what he chooses to say over Twitter. He's a real nice guy with the limited amount of time I've been around him. He really does have a lot of passion to make the game better and do what's best for the community. I can't imagine having his job though where you have to balance your love for the NFL, this game, and also strive for excellence while receiving harsh feedback over social media day in and day out. I see it here every day, it can be mentally tough at times. I love this game though so it's worth it at the end of the day. We'll do our best to be better at communicating with fans and appreciate you being honest and constructive about this.
Thanks for being patient on the response. I got held up with some personal stuff at home and now we have this crazy power outage, so with those two and other issues with the game that popped up in the last couple weeks it threw off the schedule. Thank you for being a fan of Madden nonetheless!
