[INFO/How to:] Madden 21 MUT Solo Battles

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General information about this mode

The MUT Solo Battle mode is a weekly event. It starts on Mondays 10.30 AM ET and ends on Monday 9.00 AM ET [sidenote: I’m not exactly sure about the end of the event since the official information provided in-game says 8.30 AM; please confirm!] the following week. The weekly event consists of up to 13 games against AI-controlled teams. 12 of the 13 opponents are chosen from lineups of human players (i.e. the MUT community). The 13th opponent (“featured opponent”) most often is based on a specific MUT promo (e.g. in the first week of April 2021, the featured opponent was containing players from the NFL Honors promo filled up with other players).

Opponents vary from week to week and differ in their OVR strength. Most often there are 6 opponents with a lower OVR average and 6 with a higher OVR average. In addition, the featured opponent most often is above average regarding the lineup’s OVR.

On Monday, when the Solo Battle event kicks off, the featured opponent and the first 4 opponents from the community are released. 4 more opponents will be released every Wednesday and Friday (at 10:30 AM ET) respectively. The featured opponent is available all week long. Both the Wednesday and Friday updates need a manual input (i.e. “update opponents”). As soon as you updated the opponents, all previous games are no longer available (if they have not been played yet).

The first 4 games (i.e the Monday release) are available all week long too if you at least open the Solo Battles menu before the Wednesday release. Otherwise, when opening the Solo Battle menu later than Wednesday 10.30 AM ET (or Friday 10.30 AM ET), the Monday (and Wednesday) games are skipped and you can only choose from the last released 4 games.

In other words, if you want to play all 13 games of the week’s event, you have to 1) open the Solo Battle menu before Wednesday 10.30 AM ET for the first time, 2) complete the 4 Monday games and execute one opponent update before Friday 10.30 AM ET, and 3) complete the remaining 9 games (incl. the featured opponent) before Monday 9.00 AM ET.

Sidenote: Solo Battle games are not available during server maintenance. Maintenance windows are usually displayed when the game is opened and announced in advance via the Twitter account @MaddenNFLDirect. If the servers are down due to maintenance, the Solo Battle menu only shows your current weekly score and the weekly rewards scheme. Make sure that you finish your Solo Battle games before server maintenance starts in order to avoid losing Solo Battle score points due to a lost connection! Unfortunately, in this case your game might be rated as DNF (“Did not finish”) not allowing you to replay the game.

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Difficulty levels and rewards

Rewards granted by the event are based on the aggregated weekly score (for the purpose of completeness: completing a game is worth 50 coins each and completing the event is worth 25 coins. The amount of rewards (coins and packs) depends on the tier you reach through the aggregated Solo Battle points per game. If you are one of the top 100 players with the highest total weekly scores, you will get special (comparatively very high) rewards. You can find the rewards in detail in the Solo Battles menu under the tab "My Rank".

Each game can be started only once! An abandoned game will be counted as DNF ("Did Not Finish") and will not score any points for the weekly ranking.

Rewards are rolled out on Monday at about 11.00 AM ET. [please confirm!]

The score per game mainly depends on the chosen difficulty level (from “Rookie” to “Legend”) and whether you win the game. A higher difficulty level brings with it the chance to earn more points for the weekly overall ranking. The attached file MUT Solo Battle scores per difficulty level.jpg shows the guaranteed Solo Battle score per game if you win the game (against the community opponents and the featured opponent respectively). But be aware that the difference between winning and losing a Solo Battle game is very large in terms of the Solo Battle score! I therefore warmly recommend choosing the difficulty level where you have a good chance of winning the game.

The score per Solo Battle game consists of

1. a base amount of points for completing the game,
2. a bonus for winning the game,
3. an amount of points for scoring TDs, field goals etc.,
4. a skill score (see details below)
5. a multiplier bonus for the difficulty level (e.g. “All Madden” difficulty doubles the sum of scores from 1) to 4), i.e. +100%).

The amount of Solo Battle score points in categories 1) and 2) increase with higher difficulty levels.

Before starting a Solo Battle game (i.e. when selecting “Advance” for one of the opponents), the guaranteed score for winning the game is shown in detail for each difficulty level (see attached file). This guaranteed score equals the sum of Solo Battle score points you receive for 1) and 2) above.

The scores for completing and winning the game (i.e. 1) and 2) from above) against the featured opponent is about 6k higher than against the community opponents, except for the “Legend” difficulty where the featured opponent brings a bonus of 400 points only for completing the game.

For every point scored in the game by TDs, field goals etc. (i.e. category 3) above) you get 10 additional Solo Battle points, up to a limit of 500 points. E.g., if you win the game 35 – 21, you will receive 350 Solo Battle points, but it does not matter whether you score 50 points or 100. In both cases you will receive 500 Solo Battle points.

The skill score (i.e. category 4) from above) depends on the following statistics you have achieved by the end of the game (but only if you have won the game!). You will receive additional skill score points for (I tried to sort the stats by their importance for the total skill score):

• Gained offensive yards: up to 300 passing yards and 200 rushing yards (return yards do not matter [please confirm! I’ve heard that one return TD might be considered in the score, but this assumption does not fit my observations])
• Gained first downs (up to 25)
• Completed passes (up to 25 [please confirm!])
• Defensive sacks (up to 5)
• Defensive INTs (up to 3)
• Usered catches [I’m not completely sure but I think up to 5 possession and 5 aggressive catches. Not sure if usered RACs count. Please confirm!]
• Spin and juke moves [not exactly sure but I think up to 5 each and they might have to be done on run plays; not sure either whether trucks, stiff arms or hurdles count]

Deductions for the Solo Battle score result from:

• Allowed yards on defense (return yards do not matter)
• Allowed points on defense (a pick six or a PR TD or KR TD does not matter)
• Allowed sacks
• Incomplete passes [not exactly sure whether this is really true. Please confirm!] (thrown INT do not matter)

The highest skill scores I could achieve so far was slightly above 1,700. I guess the theoretical maximum of the skill score might be about 1,750 to 1,800. [please confirm]

I guess that the theoretical maximum of the Solo Battle score per game for winning on Legend difficulty (while scoring 50+ points) and completing all skill score objectives might be about 26.1k (26.5k for the featured opponent).

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Tips and tricks: some thoughts on strategy to play a Solo Battle game

Your aggregated weekly score (and therefore your rewards) is mainly determined by the chosen difficulty level and whether you are able to win the Solo Battle games or not. If you struggle to win on a higher difficulty level, I’d suggest to reduce the difficulty level, in particular against those opponents with a high OVR. The top scores are of course only feasible if you are confident (and able) to beat your opponent on the highest difficulty level (“Legend”).

If you are not sure which difficulty level to choose, I’d suggest to do some calculations first. You have 13 games to maximise your score. The highest rewards tier requires a Solo Battle score of 250k+ (ranking top 100 requires 300k+ on PC and I’d guess even more on PS or xbox since the player base is larger there). It doesn't make much sense to take too big a risk with the difficulty level if you risk slightly missing a rewards tier (if you lose one or more games), but on the other hand have no chance of reaching an even higher rewards tier (if you win). Playing against low OVR teams first might be helpful in order to decide what difficulty level to chose for the strong opponents. For instance, if there are 2 games to play left and you are short of e.g. 20k score points in order to get to the next rewards tier, it is not necessary to chose a difficulty level higher than “All-Star”. Winning both games at All-Star difficulty you will get about 11k score points for each win and will easily manage to reach the next rewards tier. but if you lose one of the games at the next higher difficulty level, you may not make it there.

If you are not sure whether you can safely win all games at the highest difficulty level (“Legend”), I’d suggest to select “MVP” difficulty against the featured opponent. The difference between "MVP" and "Legend" in the guaranteed score is much smaller for the featured opponent compared to the community opponents. Therefore, reducing the risk (i.e. by decreasing the difficulty level) is much “cheaper” (2,200 score pointes) in the featured opponent game than in the 12 other games (7,840).

If you are less experienced in playing Madden and would like to improve your weekly Solo Battle performance, I’d suggest to primarily focus on 1) trying increasing the difficulty level while still safely winning the games, 2) trying to score more points (TDs, field goals), gain more yards and First Downs, 3) trying to allow less yards (and points) on defense. The skill score is less relevant at this stage since the big points cannot be reached through e.g. juke or spin moves.

Since the AI does not adjust its strategy depending what plays you are selecting, I recommend to focus on a small set of plays and formations (both on offense and defense). Unfortunately, every play is relevant for the Solo Battle score, either directly by increasing or decreasing your skill score (e.g. by adding some yards, first downs, etc. to your game stats) or indirectly by losing time you might miss afterwards in order to complete additional objectives (for the final game or skills score). If you focus on a small set of plays (and formations), you will be able to learn 1) which plays work well against which formations/plays of the AI, 2) how to read the defense, 3) how to avoid frustrating bugs/glitches, 4) how to avoid INTs, sacks etc. and of course you will become better in executing your plays. But be aware that this suggestion focuses on maximising your Solo Battle score! It does not necessarily increase the fun of playing the game too since your game(s) will become more monotonous than using a broader range of plays and/or formations.

If you are confident to score a TD on every offensive drive (no matter where the drive starts) and you are able to safely score 50+ points per game, I recommend to try to start your drives at your own 5-10 yard line (depending on how confident you are not allowing a sack/safety on your first plays of the drive). Doing that allows you gaining more yards and First Downs per drive (and therefore helps increasing your skill score). Since PR and KR yards as well as yards after a turnover do not matter for the Solo Battle score I’d suggest to try running backwards your own 5-10 yard line (or give up your play there if you receive the ball in or closer to your own endzone).

In order to verify that you score 50+ points (or as much as possible) in your games, I strongly recommend to go for 2 instead of kicking the field goal for the extra point. I suggest to do some practice to find out what play(s) fit your playstyle and safely work in most cases. Since the AI always lines up in goalline formation, the AI is very predictable and can be beaten relatively easily after finding and practicing your preferred play (the same holds for all plays starting closer than 3 yards to the endzone). For instance, outside runs (maybe with some blocking adjustments) or bubble screens are among the concepts that work quite well in these situations.

On defense, I recommend to use a man coverage blitz play and adjust your lineup accordingly. Man coverage is very strong if you have fast CBs (and safeties) who are strong in man coverage (and pressing). If one (or both) of your safeties are aligned in man coverage (e.g. in Cover 1 Man or Cover 0 blitzes), it might be fruitful to substitute them with CBs (if you have enough fast CBs with high skills in man coverage). In addition, you might consider substituting the blitzing players by your best and fastest pass rushers in order to increase your chances to sack the QB. Please be aware that using a man coverage blitz goes hand in hand with taking risks too! If you do a all-in blitz and your DBs are beaten, you might give up very long TDs too from time to time. Furthermore, using man coverage requires having fast DBs who are also good at man coverage (and/or press).

If you struggle on defense  (i.e. if you did not yet find your strategy to stop the AI), it is better to allow a one-play-drive TD (or even a KR TD) than allowing a very long drive resulting in a TD anyways. Long drives on defense cost a lot of time, which you then lack to score points, yards, first downs, etc. If you are able to score on all of your drives and are able to convert more than 50% of your 2-Point-Conversions, you will always win the game (at least if you do not allow your opponent to score a TD on every drive and allow him to score at the end of both halfs).

Another approach in order to minimise the damage of struggling on defense might be to focus on very long offensive drives (e.g. by giving up your plays after short yardage and chewing the clock). It is sometimes better to win e.g. 14-0 without allowing any yardage on defense than winning 63-56 (due to the deductions in the Solo Battle score of allowing yards and points).

A very important factor, especially for the skill score, is clock management. It is always good to get the last score in a half. Furthermore, as soon as you are able to score on every drive and easily stop your opponent, you will have to learn how to save time in order to be able to do as much offensive plays as possible. In order to achieve 25 First Downs, 300 passing yards, 200 rushing yards while scoring 50+ points, you have to find your strategy to minimise the loss of time per play and between plays (you only have 12 minutes per game to achieve all of these stats!). In particular, you should focus on achieving either a First Down (in best case out of bounds: this stops the clock, in particular in the 4th quarter and the ultimate 2 minutes of the 1st half) or a TD on every single offensive play, stop your opponent’s offense as soon as possible (e.g. by a turnover or at least by a 3-and-out), use your timeouts strategically, etc.

Whatever happens during the game, do not panic! I know from my own experience that a lot can go wrong during a Solo Battle game. Sometimes you may make mistakes, sometimes there occurs a weird animation or bug, sometimes you are just unlucky. I strongly recommend to pause the game for a second if you feel anger or frustration just because something went wrong. Every play potentially counts for the Solo Battle score. If something already went wrong, you cannot change it anymore but you can avoid that it gets even worse just because you are angry or unconcentrated. Try to calm down again during the break, try to accept it and focus on the next play! It's just a game!   

Finally, please do not use / exploit glitch plays in order to trick the AI! First, as long as glitch plays are exploited, competition (i.e. the top 100 leaderboard) is extremely skewed in favor of those players who actively seek (or accidentally stumble upon) these plays. I would not mind if players use glitch plays as long as other players are not affected (why should it bother me if these players deprive themselves of the fun of the game by using these stupid glitches?). But each player who ranks top 100 because he is using any of these glitch plays steals from another player (who is playing straight) the chance to get the rewards for a top 100 rank. If you become aware of glitch plays how to trick the AI, please report them in the Bug Reports forum (Madden NFL 21 | Forum | Bug Reports | EA Answers HQ | EN). Any bug or glitch play the development team becomes aware of and is able to fix will increase the fun and fairness of this mode for all players. Furthermore, players who overuse glitch plays in order to cheat in Solo Battles also run the risk of being subsequently banned from playing MUT once the exploited glitch play comes to the attention of the development team!

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Known bugs and workarounds

Unfortunately, there are a few (severe) issues that potentially affect the fun of this mode. At the moment the following bugs and solutions are known (to me) (last update: April 5th 2021):

• DNFs caused by lost connection: all Solo Battle games that do not finish regularly or disconnect from the servers in between will be counted as "DNF". The main idea behind that is verifying fairness of the leaderboards. Otherwise, players could end the game because something went wrong and restart the game again in order to get a higher score. Unfortunately, the game evaluates each abandonment of the game as caused by the player intentionally. If you face an unstable connection to EA’s servers (a fast internet connection does not necessarily guarantee that it is stable), I hope the following post about my lessons learnt are helpful for you in order to decrease the frequency of DNFs due to disconnects: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Why-am-I-getting-constantly-DC-GLITCHED-I-CANT-EVEN-PLAY-A-GAM...

• Not allowed to play all 13 Solo Battle games (Solo Battles still not Allowing me to play 13th game - Page 34 - Answer HQ (ea.com)): a lot of players reported that they are not able to play all 13 games. Most often, the 13th game was missing while there was an error message after the 12th game. Sometimes this bug occurred even earlier. The following approaches seem to help avoiding this bug:
  • clearing the cache (as described above, I'm quite convinced now that the issue is cache related): the game saves (user-specific) information there. if something corrupted is stored there, it seems to interfere with the counter of Solo Battle games (or maybe cause the bug directly). how to do that: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/
  • avoid playing too many games in a row in one session: for me (and I've read from other players too) it seems to work to restart the game (i.e. Madden) between Solo Battle games if I want to play more than 2-3 Solo Battle games in a row. I guess this approach might help to avoid that the cache interferes with the counter for played Solo Battle games.
• When starting a Solo Battle (or a Solo Challenge), sometimes the following error message occurs: "our servers can’t process your request this time. please try again later" [not sure about the exact wording, please confirm]. This bug might be based on something corrupted stored in the background of your lineup. Creating a new lineup (e.g. by using the "generate best OVR" option) solved this issue for a lot of players. You can rebuild your previous lineup afterwards too (if you want to).

• Frozen screen at the end of the game (Solved: Screen freezes when game ends and post-game animations are skipped - Answer HQ): if you skip the post-game animations, sometimes the screen freezes and you are not forwarded to the end-of-game screen showing the game and player stats menu, highlights etc. In this case, sometimes the menu has been loaded in the background but the screen shows a frozen picture. I realized that by pressing the following keys (once down, then confirm) you can still exit the game without losing all progress and facing a “DNF”. If you pressed another button before, you might have to use the “go back”-button first before using the keys described above.

• Qualification for Weekend League: sometimes players report that they did not qualify for participating in next week’s H2H Weekend Leauge although the reached the required rewards tiers. If you face this bug, please report it in the bug AHQ bug forum (Madden NFL 21 | Forum | Bug Reports | EA Answers HQ | EN) in order to inform the MUT team. Some of this year’s Weekend League tournaments have been opened for all players (without having to qualify for it) since a lot of players had been affected by this bug.

• The PAT attempt at the very end of the 4th quarter is skipped if you score a TD while the game clock ran down to zero (PAT at the end of Solo Battles and Solo Challenges is skipped - Answer HQ (ea.com)). If you did not score 50+ points already, the only workaround is to try to score before the game clock ran down to zero in order to be allowed to either go for 2 or kick for the extra point. If you do not want to allow your opponent to have a final opportunity to score, you might use the squib kick option at the kickoff following your PAT attempt. For the sake of completeness, the PAT attempt is not skipped if the AI scores a TD at the very end of the game.

• Starting Solo Battle games seems to be risky if doing it during the rollout of content or title updates (see here: Solo Battle DNF caused by update/bug fix/make-right rollout? - Answer HQ (ea.com)). It may be that conceding a DNF this way twice was pure coincidence, but to play it safe I'd recommend to avoid playing during rollouts, at least if you have seen its announcement.

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How do I play MUT Solo Battles?

Some introductory words about myself: as I said in the introduction of this thread, I'm a top 10 contender in Solo Battles on PC. I'm playing Solo Battles (almost) every week because they are the best opportunity to receive coins and packs if you are not interested in playing H2H. In my case, I do not like playing H2H just because I do not want to compete with other players but I really like football and in particular its strategic chess factor. In addition, I would not even be able to be competitive in H2H. I'm European and face really bad latency most of the time which renders a fair game almost impossible. It's just no fun at all when every ballcarrier move, pass, catch, tackle etc. is not predictable because the required timing to do it successfully strongly varies from game to game. That's the reason why I mainly focus on Solo Battles and invested a lot of time trying to understand the game and optimising my Solo Battle strategy.

I started playing Madden on an almost daily basis in 2019 when Madden was released on PC again. I also played Madden 2004 and 2008 but started to understand the game only in the last 3 years. I'm definitely not the best player, in particular in terms of stick skills. I do not even play with a controller but use my keyboard (on PC) only. I do not even use the mouse which probably would allow better control of my usered players.

Why am I able to rank top 10 in Solo Battles anyways? I think it is because I invested so much time thinking of how to improve my strategy while I never tried to make use of severe glitch plays (but of course I face some bugs from time to time, both to my advantage or disadvantage) although I know others do. This is very frustrating when trying to play straight but have to compete against glitch play users. But avoiding to exploit glitch plays allowed me to learn a lot about the game (but also about football itself). From my perspective, the following reasons are important for my performance:

• I only use a small set of plays, both on offense and defense. Doing that allowed me to get very experienced in e.g. reading the defense, adjusting pre-snap depending on how my opponent lines up, etc. and further improving my strategy.
• In principle I use only 2 different plays out of two formations on offense (one for the run and one for the pass) and one on defense but do a lot of adjustments pre-snap.
• Reading the defense is a top priority for me. I call different hot routes depending on whether I see man or zone coverage and I do blocking adjustments (both on run and pass plays). On run plays often flip the play to chose the better side for the run (e.g. if I face 4-3 defense, I try to run to the short side of the field in order to be able to get out of bounds. If I see other defensive formations, I often chose the long side of the field).
• In my lineup, I focus on a few key attributes for my players. Since I only play with my theme team and do not make use of other players who do not have the 49ers team chemistry, my choice is limited. Key attributes are speed (for all players), man coverage (and press) for my DBs (I substitute CBs in instead of my safeties), pass rush skills for my OLBs (since I use Pinch Buck O out of 3-4 odd with some adjustments allowing one of my OLB to sack the QB unblocked in most plays), run blocking skills for all my TEs (since I substitute TEs for WRs on my run plays (I use RPO Stretch out of I-Form pro).
• I also tried to optimise the abilities (and x-factors) for my players. In particular on defense, where I mainly upgraded the DBs and my pass rushing OLB. On offense, I focused on pass accuracy for my QB and ballcarrier moves for my HB.
• Using always the same allowed me to learn a lot about potential bugs which might occur and often had blown up my plays. In the meanwhile I think I know almost all of the bugs and found workarounds to avoid them (for instance, my FB often confusingly turned around and ran into my HB. I learnt to make use of blocking adjustments in order to avoid that).
• Most importantly, the key for my performance is clock management. I learned how to minimize the time lost between plays (in particular on offense. Trying to end all plays out of bounds or as a TD is key!) and how to minimise the number of plays for my opponents' offense (that's the main reason why I use a risky Cover 0 man blitz. It is better to sometimes allow a long yardage-1-play TD than continuously losing minutes due to long opponent's drives; a 3rd Down Conversion of your opponent costs you up to a minute, for instance). If you are wondering what the best strategy in terms of clock management might be, you will find a hint in the game stats of my recent Solo Battle games which I uploaded here: Madden NFL 21 Solo Battle - How to? - YouTube

If you are interested in the plays I use, I tried to summarise them in the attached file Plays I use for my Solo Battle games.pdf. I added screenshots of the plays as they look like pre-snap. Of course, the might slightly differ depending on the formation of my opponent's offense or defense respectively. I also added some descriptions about the situations I use the plays for and risks I face using these plays. I also added some words about adjustments I do pre-snap but since they often depend on the specific situation I face they at least slightly vary from play to play. I also uploaded 7 clips I've recorded at the end of recent Solo Battle games showing my team and players stats and the final score (see Madden NFL 21 Solo Battle - How to? - YouTube). In the first video you will see my lineup too (with a 97 OVR average as it was in the first week of April 2021). Funnily enough, the week I started creating this thread, I managed my best ranking (2nd on PC) and possibly my highest weekly score (the latter I cannot safely confirm).

Some summarising words, on why the scores differed between my Solo Battle games where I have recorded my stats and scores: the most severe damage to my score was caused by the following factors (or combinations of them within one game). Some of them indirectly affected my score due to the loss of time they caused. It does not hurt that much (in terms of lower scores) if the loss of time does not often happen or I could compensate it with e.g. a fast turnover.

• how often had my DBs been beaten in man coverage and had I been able to catch the WRs to tackle them or not?
• how often had my run plays not resulted in a TD or had ended inbounds (because my non-usered OLs and/or TEs did not manage to successfully block DBs or LBs) resulting in a huge loss of game time?
• had I been unfocused and read the defense wrongly (or not at all) resulting in either a sack, a tackle inbounds or an INT?  
• how often had I faced unlucky animations regarding sideline catches? I'm not exactly sure whether some of these animations are a bug or an intended result (i.e. I throw the pass too late maybe?). some of them look quite weird anyways...
• had I been able to create a turnover? in best case INTs?  and had I beenable to run backwards to my own 5-10 yardline in order to be able to gain a lot of 1st Down and yardage in my next drive?
• how often had I faced very unlucky or lucky animations (maybe they might be called bugs sometimes) in terms of e.g. body collisions, etc.?
• how often had my opponent's plays ended without stopping the clock (in particular run plays, completed catches inbounds, sacks)?
• how many First Downs had my opponent gained? the most severe damage is caused if it happens due to a 3rd or 4th Down conversion.

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My personal opinion and suggestions to improve this mode

Even though I've played (or more accurately: tried to play) almost every single Solo Battle game in the last 3 years and I became able to rank top 10 (on PC), my assessment of this mode is ambivalent. I went through a long learning process (regarding football itself and how the game works) where I really struggled to win against the Solo Battle opponents on low difficulty levels in the first year but learnt how to easily beat the strongest teams on the highest difficulty. Based on my experience from a newbie becoming a top 10 Solo Battle contender, I would like to argue in this section, what I like and what I dislike and what I would suggest to improve the fun of playing this mode.

I would be very grateful if you would take your time to read through my thoughts and give me your feedback on them!

In a nutshell, summarizing advantages and disadvantages: I really like the idea of Solo Battles (i.e. playing against player lineups), the chance to play on the highest difficulty, and that it does matter what you are doing in every play. On the other hand, this mode is a potential source of facing 1) stress (because you have to plan your week to be able to play 13 games when they are available) and 2) huge frustration (in particular if facing DNFs compromising the rewards of a whole week playing!). Furthermore, the enormous difference between extremely high rewards when ranking top 100 and mediocre rewards for the basic reward tiers incentivizes to search for money plays (glitches?!) to be exploited again and again and again. Players who are in principle able to compete for the top 100 leaderboard therefore have to decide to either play for fun or for rewards.

I’d therefore like suggesting the following modifications to improve the fun of playing and the fairness of how the mode’s rewards are divided among players. From my perspective, …

1. Solo Battles should be one-game-events to be played as often as you want and whenever you find your time to play them.
2. When starting a Solo Battle, players can decide about the average OVR of their opponent’s lineup. The opponent is then chosen from all currently available (at a fixed weekly cut-off date) lineups with an average OVR that equals the players’ decision.
3. Rewards should be based on your performance in one single Solo Battle game only.
4. Rewards in terms of coins should be based on your achieved skills score but taking into account the average OVR strength of the opponent’s lineup too.
5. Rewards in terms of packs could be based on the total Solo Battle score which is converted into a probability what packs you get for completing a Solo Battle.
6. The weekly leaderboard should be based on the highest Solo Battle game score the players were able to achieve in any of their Solo Battle games in the respective week.
7. The leaderboard should be used to give away a special prize as part of Good Morning Madden (GMM) to give the (non-competitive) community a more prominent and game-related role in GMM.

I will describe my thoughts on my suggested improvements in more detail at the end of this section, but first I would like to describe my experiences playing almost every game in the last 3 years where I started as a Madden newbie but became a top 10 contender in MUT Solo Battles (on PC). My suggestions are heavily based on my experience both in terms of the negative and the positive. I will spend more time on the negative since my main intention of writing down my thoughts is about further improvements of the mode.

With my suggestions I would like to contribute improving the mode so that it provides both fun (even over a long period of time while avoiding potential frustration due to DNFs, bugs, etc.) and worthwhile rewards for all players, while it does not incentivize 1) searching for and exploiting (glitch) plays and 2) doing the same plays all the time again and again in order to maximize rewards by ranking top 100.

What do I like about this mode?

1. The chance to play against lineups from other players is a nice feature. You always face different teams when starting a new game and you can also see how other players’ lineups look like.
2. You can play Solo Battles on the highest difficulty level available (Competitive, All-Madden). Against teams with a high OVR average, these games can be challenging (in particular if you are less experienced in playing Madden and/or have a low OVR lineup).
3. This mode offers the highest rewards players might earn in MUT playing with their own lineup without having to play H2H, if you are able to rank top 100.
4. The event is available every week again.
5. Your (sticks) skills matter. The better you play, the higher (potentially) are your rewards.
6. It is not just about chewing the clock in order to finish the game as fast as possible, but you have an incentive to get everything right every play, because every play counts (either positively or negatively).

What I do not like about this mode?

1. The helplessness to avoid unintended DNFs while not being allowed for making up for it afterwards is a potential source of huge frustration. The idea of not allowing to restart or replay a Solo Battle game is to verify the integrity and fairness of the leaderboard (i.e. players who have more time to repeat games would have an advantage if they could replay games where they got a low Solo Battle score in their first trial). If players could abandon the game (and therefore interrupt the connection intentionally) as soon as something bad happens, the leaderboard might be skewed.
   However, there are so many reasons why the connection could be lost (just happened the day when I was writing this post: I faced 3 DNFs out of 9 games (because I did not manage to play all 13 games on time) due to different reasons, whereas I ranked 2nd in the week before). For instance, the game might crash (e.g. I recently started to try to play some Solo Battle games on my laptop because I would not be able to play all of them on my PC on time. While the game works well in e.g. Solo Challenges, I did not manage to complete a single Solo Battle game. Every time there is a turnover in a Solo Battle game, the game freezes leading to a complete game crash and I have to restart my laptop again…); you might face a bug such as not being allowed to even play all 13 games, bad internet latency just because there are too many nodes between your device and EA’s servers and you cannot do anything to improve your situation, etc. This issue would be much less severe if the DNF would only affect the result and rewards of one game only. But it feels really bad if you already invested 6-7 hours and your rewards are significantly reduced by a factor you can't influence at all.
2. The Solo Battles mode only offers high rewards for the players ranked top 100. Furthermore, it is the only Solo mode with rewards that high and it is not possible to gain a similar amount of rewards (as the top 100) by playing all other Solo mode games available in one week. The difference between top 100 rewards and the normal reward tiers is just huge. How frustrating it must be if you miss the top 100 by only a couple of score points! You don't really have an alternative to earn a satisfying amount of coins and packs if you want to play with your lineup but do not want (or are able) to play H2H. [as a sidenote: I’m really wondering what role the lack of a repeatable solo mode plays in Coin Distribution and Coin Selling leading to such an enormously high number of bans and suspensions?]
3. In order to qualify for good rewards, you have to commit yourself to spend a lot of time within one week to play all 13 games but you are limited in your planning because not all Solo Battle games are available all week long. On average, I guess it takes about 6-7 hours to complete all 13 games. It is much less fruitful if you do not play all games because every additional game potentially increases your rewards more than the previous games because rewards increase faster with higher reward tiers.
4. This pattern incentivizes to “either do it all or nothing”. In other words, you start to play this mode if you think you will be able to play all 13 games (or are at least able to complete enough games to reach a rewards tier high enough to be worth the time playing). This can cause tremendous stress if you want to participate in this event just because it is the only Solo mode allowing you to earn additional coins (in addition to available Solo Challenges but the number of games and also the amount of coins you can earn with them is limited. On the other hand, you can play H2H Seasons all day all year long and might easily get tons of coins if taking into account that (some of) your opponents might quit in the 1st quarter just because of your high OVR average…). If you don't have enough time to play all the games in time (i.e. in a single week), then the mode is much less interesting. You also can't divide the necessary time (of playing 13 games) over several weeks (for example, if you have time for playing only on Tuesdays). Unlike H2H Seasons, in Solo Battles you can't freely divide the time and number of games.
   And if you did not find the time to participate in a week’s Solo Battle event, you have no chance to retrieve the rewards (you might have received) by playing any other Solo modes: just because the amount of available Solo games (and linked rewards is limited).
5. The AI needs some improvement. In particular, the fact that the AI doesn't react (or adjust) to the player's strategy at all, even if it is screwed with the same (small range of) play(s) over and over again, reduces the challenge and fun of playing Solo modes. As soon as you have a good enough lineup and found out how to read and how to beat the AI, you will easily beat it again and again and again.
   To say it bluntly, the AI allows to make use of money plays that always work (therefore, we might call these plays glitch plays?). Competing in Solo Battles (i.e. ranking top 100) is therefore more about finding the “best glitch plays” to trick the AI and less about playing well in a football game. From my point of view, this pattern is reflected by the fact that the weekly scores of the players ranked top 100 do not strongly differ from week to week. As soon as you’ve found out how to get a specific Solo Battle score, you most likely will be able to (approximately) get there again and again.
   Although the exploit of glitch plays is penalized with disqualification (in theory, if the MUT team became aware of the glitch), but most likely players will search for (and find) other (maybe less severe) glitches to be exploited. The bad thing is that those players who actively search for glitch exploits most likely will not report the bug / glitch and inform the MUT team about it. Therefore, it might always take some time till the MUT team realizes the existence of the glitches that are exploited by some players. And while cheating players might be penalized ex-post, other players who would have qualified for a better reward if the cheater was disqualified (and deleted from the leaderboard) on time, will not receive the rewards they should have gotten.
6. Occurring bugs sometimes result in weird-looking animations or very unlucky results. I would not care if this pattern just happened but does not have an impact on the rewards you get. But due to the fact that every play counts, facing a bug on the field (in particular when caused by non-usered players where you cannot do anything about it or could not avoid it) costing you a huge amount of Solo Battle score points can be so frustrating. The existence of bugs or unlucky animations (the latter one should be part of the game because otherwise the game would be much too easy!) reinforces my thesis from before even more: maximizing the Solo Battle score is much more about finding the best glitch play, because that also minimizes the risk of having bad luck due to bugs or unfortunate animations.
   Focusing on a very little amount of (glitch) plays (and formations) reduces the risk of facing a bug you have not seen before and you might learn how to avoid it. However, taking this thought to its logical conclusion means that you make your own game more and more monotonous, and the game loses a lot of its fun as a result.
7. Taken together the points above, when playing Solo Battles, you have to decide between trying to have fun or trying to receive good rewards. The best strategy to maximize your Solo Battle score and rank top 100 (i.e. your rewards) is focusing on a very small set of plays which almost always work and where you learnt how to minimize risks of making mistakes or facing bugs. In other words: do always the same!
   On the other hand, if you are interested in having fun playing a football game, you might have to use various plays trying to react on what your opponent is showing you, trying to benefit from reading your opponent correctly and adjusting or audible the play to beat him at his weak spots. If you try to do that, making mistakes is part of the deal! If you would not make mistakes anymore or every play easily works, why should the game be challenging (and therefore fun) anymore at all?
   I want to cite one of the players who was able to rank top 10 on PC too: “I do not play Solo Battles for fun, but just for the coins!”
8. Depending on your lineup’s OVR, you will probably either struggle to beat strong opponents (if you have a team with relatively low OVR or are not yet experienced enough in playing Madden) or it is no challenge to beat weak opponents (if you are either good at playing Madden or your team is very strong). If so, I’d say in half of the games there might be room for improving the fun of playing. In particular, if you try to compete for ranking top 100, you most likely will not face any difficulties winning the games against low OVR opponents (and possibly not even against strong teams). If so, I assume that these games are not challenging and most likely do not provide (as much) fun (as they could), at least in the long run. At least I assume that the gameplay could be increased if the games were more challenging, depending on your skills and lineup.

I’d therefore like suggesting the following modifications to improve the fun of playing and the fairness of how the mode’s rewards are divided among players. From my perspective, …

1. Solo Battles should be one-game-events to be played as often as you want and whenever you find your time to play them.
2. When starting a Solo Battle, players can decide about the average OVR of their opponent’s lineup. The opponent is then chosen from all currently available (at a fixed weekly cut-off date) lineups with an average OVR that equals the players’ decision.
3. Rewards should be based on your performance in a single Solo Battle game only.
4. Rewards in terms of coins should be based on your achieved skills score but taking into account the average OVR strength of the opponent’s lineup too.
5. Rewards in terms of packs could be based on the total Solo Battle score which is converted into a probability what packs you get for completing a Solo Battle.
6. The weekly leaderboard should be based on the highest Solo Battle game score the players were able to achieve in the respective week.
7. The leaderboard could be used to give away a special prize as part of Good Morning Madden (GMM) to give the (non-competitive) community a more prominent role in GMM.

My suggestions are based on my experiences playing almost every game in the last 3 years where I started as a Madden newbie but became a top 10 contender in MUT Solo Battles (on PC). With my suggestions I would like to contribute improving the mode so that it provides both fun (even over a long period of time while avoiding potential frustration due to DNFs, bugs, etc.) and worthwhile rewards for all players, while it does not incentivize 1) searching for and exploiting (glitch) plays and 2) doing the same plays all the time again and again in order to maximize rewards by ranking top 100.

Since there are no other Solo modes (playing with your lineup) available that could be repeated and still provide rewards as many times as desired, Solo Battles might fill this gap. At the moment, the amount of rewards to be gained by playing available Solo games is limited because there is only a limited number of Solo Challenges available (while you could play an unlimited number of H2H games allowing you to earn tons of coins and packs just by playing).

The opportunity to restart Solo Battle games would furthermore decrease (and minimize) the frustration facing a DNF. Due to various bugs, DNFs (and the caused frustration) seemed to be a huge issue in Madden 21 so far.

The opportunity to chose the opponent’s OVR would allow players to play challenging games depending on their own skills and lineup strength. If the rewards in terms of coins consider the opponent’s OVR (an “OVR adjustment factor“ comparing your opponent’s OVR to your own OVR, e.g. if you play with a OVR 70 lineup against a team with OVR 80, you would get more coins than playing with a OVR 99 lineup against this opponent), there would be an incentive to play against stronger teams. But since the amount of coins depends on your skills score, playing against a much stronger team would not convert in a much higher reward (because your skills score will be probably lower and the OVR adjustment factor might not balance out the lower skills score resulting in a lower amount of rewarded coins.

After completing a Solo Battle, the total Solo Battle score could be used to calculate a likelihood to get (better) packs. For instance, if you score less than 5k Solo Battle points, you get a Hail Mary Pack, if you score 5k-10k you will get at least a Hail Mary Pack but have a chance to receive a midfield pack. The closer to 10k your score, the higher the probability (e.g. for 75 Solo Battle score points, your odds to receive a Midfield pack increase by 1 percentage point. When scoring exactly 5k (12.5k), you will have a probability of 0% (100%) to receive a Midfield pack). The same pattern could be applied for 12.5k to 20k (i.e. the probability of receiving a Redzone pack increases by 1 percentage point with every 75 Solo Battle score points. If you are unlucky, you will at least receive a Midfield pack). If you are able to score 20k to 25k, your probability to win a TD pack increases by 1 percentage point with every 50 Solo Battle score points.

I would want to see the proposals mentioned in the previous paragraph as a starting point to balance the reward system. For instance, it is definitely important to adapt the Solo Battle score according to the chosen opponent’s average OVR. Otherwise, players would always choose a 61 OVR in order to maximize the Solo Battle score and easily win a good pack. I’d therefore suggest to add a bonus-malus correction factor depending on the relative OVR of your opponent: the higher the difference between the player’s OVR and his opponent’s OVR, the higher the bonus (or malus). I’m thinking of the following formula: for every OVR point (up to 10) your opponent’s team is stronger than yours, you will get a bonus of 1 percentage point added to your Solo Battle score. But for x OVR points (up to 10) your own lineup is stronger than your opponent’s OVR, you will get a malus of x2 percent deducted from your Solo Battle score. For instance, if your own team has an OVR average of 80 and your opponent of 90, your Solo Battle score will increase by 10 percent. On the other hand, if your OVR is 90 and that of your opponent is 80, your Solo Battle score will be 0 (because -102 = -100), but if you played against a 81 OVR team, the deduction would only be 81% (=92). This adjustment would avoid that players choose to play against 61 OVR teams only because it is easy to get high Solo Battle scores (which would then translate into favourable odds of receiving good packs). In other words, the bonus-malus correction would incentivize playing against stronger teams but would punish playing games against weak opponents (=> Solo Battles should be challenging!).

Finally, if the weekly leaderboard is not directly linked to rewards, it would still be nice for players to see the ranking showing how good they have been compared to other players. Furthermore, if your highest Solo Battles score of the week would be used to define your odds of winning special giveaways during Good Morning Madden (once a week?), there would be still an incentive (in terms of receiving rewards too) to rank high in the weekly leaderboard. For instance, you could square the Solo Battle score to determine the weight with which a player is likely to be drawn in the draw for special GMM prizes. A numerical example: a player with his personal weekly maximum score of 20k would be 400 times more likely to win a prize than someone with only 1k (400 = (20k*20k) / (1k * 1k)). Compared to a player with a weekly top score of 10k, the likelihood would be 4 times higher (4 = (20k*20k) / (10k * 10k)). 

On the other hand, the incentive to exploit glitches (or other cheats) would be much lower, since higher scores (which might be feasible by using glitches) would not automatically convert into rewards. Players most likely will decide in favor of having fun playing instead of using glitches and monotonous playing just for a slightly higher likelihood of winning a giveaway. From my point of view, it would also increase the visibility and inclusion of the community in Good Morning Madden.

One final remark: the worst thing that could happen (at least from my perspective) is to further reduce the amount of rewards players could earn from Solo modes (in particular from Solo Battles). This would further increase incentives for players to search for alternative sources to get packs or coins (buying coins, using secondary accounts, etc.). I guess it is important to implement a mechanism in order to avoid that one could use bots (or similar cheats) to farm rewards. But if the only reason for not improving a MUT Solo mode is because it could be abused by a few cheaters, then MUT as a game (and business model) has a really serious problem.

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Change log

• Added >>>The PAT attempt is skipped at the very end of the game...<<< to the Known bugs and workarounds section [April 15th 2021]
• Added >>>When starting a Solo Battle ... "our servers can’t process your request this time. please try again later"<<< to the Known bugs and workarounds section [April 15th 2021]
• Added >>> Starting Solo Battle games seems to be risky if doing it during the rollout of content or title updates<<< to the Known bugs and workarounds section [April 23rd 2021]

I can’t play solo battles because it says the servers can’t process it I need advice

"Added >>>The PAT attempt is skipped at the very end of the game...<<< to the Known bugs and workarounds section [April 15th 2021]"

btw its only for us players that we can not play the last pat/tpc. if the ai score a td at the last play then the game goes on. perfect cheating by @ea.