Why did Madden get rid of play designing?
I thought the play design feature that was on madden 2004 or 2005 was a great thing. Why didn't it make it back.
Forum Discussion
I LOVED create a play! It was one of my absolute favorite parts. From combining plays from similar formations to creating my own plays and formations.
I have bought madden every year for the last two decades and honestly I would happily pay twice as much each year if there was a create a play feature that could be used in franchise mode.
Every year I hope they will bring it back and let us truly act like coaches, seriously immerse ourselves as innovators of the game.
EA_Blueberry
Community Manager
Community ManagerCreate a play was fun to experiment with for sure. I think with today's version of Madden it gives you a very robust selection of audibles on the fly so you're able to quickly customize a play before the snap. Not 100% the same thing but it's the closest thing to it.
I know some players would likely develop some exploits to certain create-a-plays which would require the team to address and that could be an ongoing battle throughout the year. While it might be fun to play with, the downside is that it would also lead to a lot of frustration from opponents whom these plays are being used against.
- @EA_Blueberry On the contrary... I think Create a Play would prevent exploits in virtual real time. And with online sharing of custom playbooks, we can literally counter and adjust to anything strategic (personnel, position, and tempo) more nimbly as a community of football gamers instead of waiting for title updates. That alone would free up developers to work on critical game items - instead of being focused on every minute complaint from the community's lowest common denominator...
Frankly, I was personally adjusting to what the online Madden community called glitches as early as Madden NFL 2003; two years before defensive hot routes. Since then, we've been given even more potential for adjustments while seeing the stock playbooks become more and more vanilla (where are Double X, Y, or Z in the Dime formations?), unless you use shotgun (I don't).
It's high time to bring back a play editor that works with custom playbooks - if for nothing more than to allow players to RELAX pre-snap instead of being rushed to make 100 adjustments to stock plays that don't work while lining up.
Later I know MUT is the king because of on going revenue but if the fear is Create-a-Play would unbalance things, then just allow it in Franchise or local play and not online play. Personally I think it should be allowed everywhere but at least this would be a start and a way to test it's impact on the game. Again, and I know I may be in the minority but, I would pay $60-$70 or more just for the feature of Create-a-Play/Playbook. The amount of game play hours and fun I would get out of just the creation portion (plus then using it in Franchise) would be well worth it.
It's not an exploit if your worthless company would put it's money into development rather than marketing to develop the correct physical simulation model so that no formation was unstoppable, but rather an more intelligent player could design a counter, and then a counter to a counter, and so on. It's called innovation, and it allows a person to actually play a dynamic game instead of a static predetermined micro transaction piece of trash, and momentum shouldn't be determined by a select few preconditions being met, and there should be a lag in player learning based on switching systems (and how long in a given system, and player work ethic and intelligence). But hey, the intelligence and actual football fundamentals teaching that madden (and I guess the developers back then) brought to Madden University back then has been replaced by the lazy, greedy, unintelligent executive ranks that have accumulated by Madden winning the winner take all market structure game (by actually having a good product years ago) years ago and having no real competition to force innovation. Some of the things like switching consoles should take a fair amount of work/time to re-code to, but some of this can't be (though maybe it should be) much more than an 'if then else' statement and some basic GUI junk. Basically all Madden is now is a roster update, but at least the blockers learning to adapt to pass rusher redundancy was an improvement (though I never bought that version, because why should I shell out new game money for one still somewhat slight improvement, especially with what should be the capabilities today). But hey, add some more micro transactions and player celebrations and unique clothing/graphics for the stadium audience (static garbage).
I know I’m a little late to this party, but as someone who just started playing Madden again after several years away, I too was wondering why there was no play creator.
I get what you’re saying about it being frustrating for opponents trying to figure out how to counter these plays, but isn’t that a core component of football?
I love coaches like Andy Reid who isn’t afraid to try something new and strange. Watching the Chiefs using an occasional gadget play that you’ve never seen before and watching the defense try to figure it out is one of my favorite aspects of football and unfortunately it’s an aspect that is impossible to recreate in Madden these days.
Maybe once the AI gets to the point where it can better recognize alignments/formations etc and the possible routes the players could take from them then it will return. I’ve got to think the main reason it’s not there now isn’t that it fools other players, but that it fools all of the non-player controlled players, ie, the AI. The possibility that a created play would make the AI react in an unrealistic way, say with defenders seemingly ignoring an obvious threat, or even having the custom play cause defenders to tangle up an the AI not knowing where to send them or what to tell them to do, sounds like it would be the real problem.
In any case, I hope the technology or the abilities of the programmers eventually gets to the point where creating custom plays can return to Madden.
As someone else said, I’d be happy for it to come back, even if it wasn’t in all modes.
Better yet, have “Allow Custom Plays” be something you can toggle on or off, where unless both sides agree to use them, it’s turned off. That would give the game a way to keep the integrity of ranked matches while also allowing for the feature’s return for use by the players who might care less about those types of games and are more into the strategy and creativity that games using custom plays would allow.Thanks for listening (if this thread ever gets visited anymore. I probably just wasted a lot of time arguing my point to myself).
- EA_Blueberry@hunter328
I'll bump this over to the team as a request. I imagine if players are able to create their own plays it can result in potential exploits and bugs that need to be addressed, therefore post-launch Support has to be there for the community too.
My concern personally is whether the creation of plays will ultimately just lead to the community using the same dozen or so plays that everyone sees as super successful. It could be seen as a flaw at that point if a defensive counter isn't show. What I'd like to see if that is added is an updated list of what counters what based off community use, that way you can at least toss in some recommended plays to weigh in on that concern.
If there are certain plays you want to see that you have an idea of creating, what would they be? The team could consider adding those specific ones. The Yard has a ton of creativity in it compared to what you see in other parts of the games. So if you're looking at more trick plays let us know what you want to see.Hey, @EA_Blueberry While you're at it, bump this over to the team as well. I have owned and operated the longest continuously running Madden fansite on the earth. August 12, 2022 will make 20 years.
I used to love playing Madden. But the quality of the gaming experience has stagnated for the better part of the last decade due to enhanced emphasis on marketing gaming modes I'll never touch (MUT, The Yard, etc.), the things that matter most and make football enjoyable have either been glossed over or completely ignored all the while the game-play ubiquitous to the experience gets only marginally incremental improvements. There are no "game changers" anymore on the level of Defensive Hot Routes (Madden 2005) or Custom Playbooks (Madden 25). I don't use shotgun plays, so Custom Playbooks are integral to the positive game play experience I simply have never been able to have without them and Defensive Hot Routes are the only way to design a play on the fly.
I don't play Madden anymore.
Why? No play creator. Outside of plays in the multitude of shotgun formations, there is little to no variety. My concern with the lack of a play editor is that my old fingers will be forced to repeat the same 15-20 adjustments to overhaul an ineffective play before every snap instead of just designing the play I'll ultimately end up with PRE-GAME like the real pros do. I'm all for drawing plays in the dirt, but that's not how it works in the NFL and it shouldn't be that way in Madden.
That said, please spare us the talk of "exploits" and "AI". Take if from someone that has run an effective offense from under center for almost 20 years, some of us were beating the nastiest nano pressure blitzes long before we could slide protection because we understand the beauty of formation and how it relates to play design.
I can't say whether I'll play Madden again or not, but it's been at least a year since I've considered picking up the sticks... A play editor would change that.
Later
