Probably the most important post I've ever made.

Madden 23 is a really good game. It's the best Madden I've ever played, by far. It's not even a close decision.

It has flaws, it has warts, it has legacy issues. But fundamentally it's just way beyond anything that EA has put out before this. And for that I give a sincere thank you to the development team.

However (and I know you knew this was coming), the one thing that really needs to be fixed above anything else, is really a cultural thing. It's something that has always and probably will always exist in Madden, but it's toxic and it ruins the competitive nature of this game every year. I'm talking about the need for players to break the game, find glitches, and abuse game mechanics instead of just making better play calls, getting good on the sticks, or being a better sport.

I don't expect the development team to change the way players are. But I do expect the game to play like a football game, and not like Street Fighter II where people are trying to time animations and dissecting frame rates to get a tenth of a second edge on performing a combo move. That's gotta be the dream for everyone working on this game, doesn't it?

I just got done working my full time job going into the long labor day weekend. It's been a rough month at work. Lots of hours, dumb bosses, really stupid processes I have to follow. And then I have kids and a wife, and all the responsibilities that entails. So here I am ready to jump into Madden hopefully all weekend. Ready to forget about all that other stuff for a few hours here and there, and it's exciting.

But before I do, I have to out and read websites, and watch youtube videos, and figure out what the new meta is and how you stop it. I have to learn all the dumb tricks and glitches and abuses of your game that will make very basic football rules irrelevant. I have to figure out why people are throwing bombs using free form passing everytime I play man to man, and learn that it's because the AI gets fooled trying to guard a comeback route, and so man to man is essentially dead.

And this has been going on for years...really since the very beginning. And for some people THIS IS THE GAME. They couldn't tell you what a cover two defense is actually supposed to do to save their lives. But they could tell you exactly how rocket catching worked in M12 or whatever (who cares!).

I guess I just hope that you guys (the dev team) find a way to lock this stuff down, and I can't help but think that the only way to do that is to get rid of the legacy design and start from scratch. Because the game of football is really not as complicated as Madden often makes it out to be. A guy running a comeback route is simply not going to be running a fly pattern so throwing it deep to him on the initial run wouldn't result in anything but a needless overthrow. But this game just doesn't have those rules currently, and so instead of playing the game, I now really need to watch hours and hours of people monetizing the poor game design just so I can step on the field.

It's really hard to believe that no one thought of doing this during QA Testing, btw. Seems like something that should've been fixed before it was broken.

In summary, please continue to work towards a game that I can play versus a game that I have to spend my whole weekend figuring out the new rules. That would really be something. Like just turning this game on and saying, well whatever happens, I got that guy covered in man to man and it's a 50/50 ball at best. Instead of saying, what the hell just happened? My best corner just didn't cover that guy? I mean, that's a really poor game experience, and I can't imagine how many people will just take a break from playing because of it.

Clean this stuff up. Design the game with strict rules based on real football concepts.