Forum Discussion

Drizzt9922's avatar
4 years ago

How to play defense on Next-Gen Madden 21

I have lost the last 25 straight games of head to head i've played. My team is 97 OVR, and I thought I was getting better, but now i don't know what to think.

Everyone i play marches down the field any time they need to. I can usually stop one drive, then they move at will, usually scoring on a 30second drive or something to really rub it in.

I try making adjustments, shading outside, shading over top, setting a QB spy, and I keep losing.

What can I do to be better at defense in next gen madden? I just don't even understand why I am losing so often. When will matchmaking kick in and give me a fair shot at a win?

9 Replies

  • @Drizzt9922 did you already check how good your connection to EA's servers is? I recently wrote a post about my situation facing bad latency very often (see here: https://forums.ea.com/en/madden-nfl/discussion/271002/losing-streak-unprecedented-over-20-years). for me, it is sometimes impossible to catch a ball, throw the ball at the right time, do a successful ballcarrier move etc. sometimes, I'm able to have some successful offensive drives although I face these latency patterns but as soon as I face a good player and usering becomes even more important, it is just wasted time for me. even worse if my opponent uses man coverage on defense.
    the latency disadvantage is most severe while playing defense. I'm always too late whatever I try to do. My first approach would be therefore to do a UO Trace (see below) in order to verify that it is really you (or your connection) that causes your struggles when playing defense.

    >>> UO Trace
    Do you have a PC/laptop by any chance so a UO Trace can be ran? It's a free connectivity tool from EA's website link below to check how your connection is reaching EA's servers? EA's Support staff can't help with those because of tool limitations. Usually when DNFs occur when game results are being calculated it's due to a de-sync that happens when exchanging the data. There is a loss of connection which causes the system to assume it was a disconnection from the user.

    https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/connection-troubleshooting-basic/
  • Drizzt9922's avatar
    Drizzt9922
    4 years ago

    I will try this! I definitely feel the input latency very badly sometimes, other times I don't notice it but I almost hope that's the explanation (rather than me sucking). Thanks for the advice.

  • Drizzt9922's avatar
    Drizzt9922
    4 years ago

    Fortunately (unfortunately?) the UOTrace doesn't show that latency is my problem. I guess i am just not very good.

  • Drizzt9922's avatar
    Drizzt9922
    4 years ago

    Fairly regularly get long, bad losing streaks. Probably every few days. In between i'll go on shorter winning streaks when the game matches me up against people with lower OVRs but i think thats mostly when most U.S. users aren't online.

  • Neo_Novalis's avatar
    Neo_Novalis
    Hero+
    4 years ago
    @Drizzt9922 so, I'd guess you are not from the US? for me, it is similar if I play quite early in the day (in Europe). Sometimes I meet players where the name suggests that it might be an Italian, French or German player. Sometimes I also hear it from the language in voice chat. In these cases, it might be that my opponent is even more severely affected. that's why I'm sometimes able to have some winning streaks too. but it is no fun either if I see it with the naked eye that my opponent struggles just due to bad latency...

    I guess the latency issue might depend on the number of players currently playing (and therefore using EA's servers) too. For instance, when the MUT Sugar Rush House Rules event started (at the weekend), I faced severe lags since there seemed to be a lot of players playing. A few days later (during midweek), it was much better...
  • Drizzt9922's avatar
    Drizzt9922
    4 years ago

    Yes, i'm located in UK and there's definitely longer queue times in the morning here than in afternoon & evening, and I think you're right i've seen latency in other players.

    I have pretty strong internet service, advertised in the 150mbps range but regularly hanging around 70-100. I didn't experience bad connections at all during sugar rush-- the mode was one of the best times i've had on madden bc of play cooldown (that's a different conversation).

    I guess Madden just isnt really made for non-US players

  • Neo_Novalis's avatar
    Neo_Novalis
    Hero+
    4 years ago
    @Drizzt9922 Other continents would probably need some EA servers too. If the playerbase was too small e.g. in Europe (i.e. causing long queue times during matchmaking) it would be fair if H2H games would be sometimes hosted by US based server (if one of the players is based there) and sometimes by Europe-based servers. If both players are close to the same servers (e.g. in the US) it should be clear which servers to use.
  • With the huge influx of new M21 players due to the heavy Easter sales, it won't @Drizzt9922  It's not just been ELO and latency causing these frustrations all year for us non-Yanks, but surely DDA too as per this ol' favourite EA patent abstract;

    ”Dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) is a technique for adaptively changing a game to make it easier or harder. A common paradigm to achieve DDA is through heuristic prediction and intervention, adjusting game difficulty once undesirable player states (e.g., boredom or frustration) are observed. Without quantitative objectives, it is impossible to optimize the strength of intervention and achieve the best effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a DDA framework with a global optimization objective of maximizing a player's engagement throughout the entire game. Using level-based games as our example, we model a player's progression as a probabilistic graph. Dynamic difficulty reduces to optimizing transition probabilities to maximize a player's stay time in the progression graph. We have successfully developed a system that applies this technique in multiple games by Electronic Arts, Inc., and have observed up to 9% improvement in player engagement with a neutral impact on monetization.”

    I've been Madden sober for 2 months, 1 day, and 4 hours now; and i'm much happier for it. 🍺