I love Madden 21. Love it!
I played last year's game and was really impressed with the direction Madden 20 was going in. However, after a few months of complaining from the community at large, the developers made a lot of changes that, imo, reverted back to many of the problems this franchise has had over the last 20+ years. Because of this, I simply uninstalled the game and stopped playing the game completely by October.
I played M21 beta and was again impressed. My two big complaints were that there wasn't a pass rush normally, and there wasn't a way to generate a pass rush. But after playing M21 for the last week or so, I now see that the game is moving in an incredibly positive direction.
Madden 21 is by far the best Madden game there has ever been. It's better than I thought possible, and my biggest fear is that as the community at large begins to digest these changes they will also begin to say "it's not fair" and "it's not fun" and "blah blah blah I just wanted to throw roll out corners every play" etc.
Please for the love of God do not listen to these people. The following features and improvements are just a small amount of the changes that have collectively improved this game beyond my dreams:
1. Goodbye super user. With the change of direction attribute users are no longer capable of playing the entire middle of the field. Sure, some players have incredible speed and there's still a bit of annoying coverage of ground, but nothing like last year!
2. Run defense is much improved. I do understand that defending inside zone plays against a spread offense is very challenging, but it's supposed to be, that's the point of running inside zone from a spread offense.
3. The super star abilities, especially the ones that protect areas of the field to essentially turn "money plays" into risky or at least unproductive play calls, are amazing! Totally changes the "meta" that we've seen over the last 20+ years.
4. The new zone drops are also very well received. The chess match is alive. More tools like this please!
5. The new fatigue system in competitive play is outstanding. This was a really clever way to reduce the spamming of plays, as well as simulating the use of a QB as a primary ball carrier without having players get injured. Very good game design. Well done!
Again, this is not a complete list of improvements that I have noticed, just the first ones that popped into my head.
I really just wanted to spend some time to thank the development team for these huge improvements to Madden 21. I'm totally hooked on this game, and I hope you will please continue to move in the direction you're currently going in without reverting back to the older styles of play that created a lot of the misguided expectations that some gamer's seem to have about what this game should be - a glitch fest that has near nothing to do with actual game balance.
I also want to comment that anecdotally I've been watching a ton of twitch streams from the usual suspects (as I regularly do) and it's incredible how slow they are to change and how easily they blame "the game" when they start to lose or fail to make easy "football related" adjustments. Over the last week I watched top 10 Madden "pros" struggle to make first downs and have to punt! It was glorious. It was exactly what should be happening in a well balanced game where stupid play calls and dumb defenses are punished. Please continue to focus on making this happen, forever.
Thank you! Long live Madden 21!
I played M21 beta and was again impressed. My two big complaints were that there wasn't a pass rush normally, and there wasn't a way to generate a pass rush. But after playing M21 for the last week or so, I now see that the game is moving in an incredibly positive direction.
Madden 21 is by far the best Madden game there has ever been. It's better than I thought possible, and my biggest fear is that as the community at large begins to digest these changes they will also begin to say "it's not fair" and "it's not fun" and "blah blah blah I just wanted to throw roll out corners every play" etc.
Please for the love of God do not listen to these people. The following features and improvements are just a small amount of the changes that have collectively improved this game beyond my dreams:
1. Goodbye super user. With the change of direction attribute users are no longer capable of playing the entire middle of the field. Sure, some players have incredible speed and there's still a bit of annoying coverage of ground, but nothing like last year!
2. Run defense is much improved. I do understand that defending inside zone plays against a spread offense is very challenging, but it's supposed to be, that's the point of running inside zone from a spread offense.
3. The super star abilities, especially the ones that protect areas of the field to essentially turn "money plays" into risky or at least unproductive play calls, are amazing! Totally changes the "meta" that we've seen over the last 20+ years.
4. The new zone drops are also very well received. The chess match is alive. More tools like this please!
5. The new fatigue system in competitive play is outstanding. This was a really clever way to reduce the spamming of plays, as well as simulating the use of a QB as a primary ball carrier without having players get injured. Very good game design. Well done!
Again, this is not a complete list of improvements that I have noticed, just the first ones that popped into my head.
I really just wanted to spend some time to thank the development team for these huge improvements to Madden 21. I'm totally hooked on this game, and I hope you will please continue to move in the direction you're currently going in without reverting back to the older styles of play that created a lot of the misguided expectations that some gamer's seem to have about what this game should be - a glitch fest that has near nothing to do with actual game balance.
I also want to comment that anecdotally I've been watching a ton of twitch streams from the usual suspects (as I regularly do) and it's incredible how slow they are to change and how easily they blame "the game" when they start to lose or fail to make easy "football related" adjustments. Over the last week I watched top 10 Madden "pros" struggle to make first downs and have to punt! It was glorious. It was exactly what should be happening in a well balanced game where stupid play calls and dumb defenses are punished. Please continue to focus on making this happen, forever.
Thank you! Long live Madden 21!
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1. Screen passes are perfectly balanced, don't change.
2. Kicking is much better because it's harder. I really enjoy this. Please don't change. In fact, please make it harder.
3. The pass rush is still really poor, but you CAN generate better pass rush if you know what you're doing. I like that a lot, please don't change. This is the right direction.
I'm a huge fan of the players being fatigued now, especially when you try to run outside the pocket with the QB. I was getting spoiled relying on that for a bit. The Change of Direction attribute was added to the game to help combat players that were covering the middle of the field which should help open up the field a bit for the offense.
Glad you are enjoying the screen passes too. Always considered those a money play a few Maddens back and then it became very difficult to pull them off. The way the RB catches the pass and quickly moves upfield makes them much more viable now.
What do you mean by the kicking meter? There is an issue the team is aware of right now where it's difficult to see, so perhaps you are experiencing that and just prefer it?
No, I haven't seen an issue with the kick meter being harder to see. I noticed that this year the kick meter appears to be more random than last year and I'm missing more extra points and field goals, which is wonderful. Part of that may be that I have a poor kicker, but I'm hoping it's an actual change (as I believe Clint had mentioned that was a goal this year, making it harder to kick).
I would ideally like to see kicking extra points and field goals require additional player skill so that every kick really counts, and gamers are not able to buy Justin Tucker and call it a day.
Unfortunately, the more games I play online the more I'm noticing that variations of the "scum kick" are back, and my full back is getting a ton of work on kickoffs. What I'd like to see is the ability to anticipate a "scum kick" and set up a special return (maybe a designed pitch back) that sets up an explosive return, making it more dangerous to always kick it to the full back.
There are things that need fixed, for sure.
Here's a list of my top five issues with online play. This list is in no particular order.
1. The toxic community. I no longer allow people to message me, 99% of people that message me are telling me how lucky I am, that I'm "straight trash", or that I should never play the game again, etc. From the dumb and offensive names people use online to the overly aggressive and cheesy play calling, to the inability to gracefully win, the Madden community as a whole is devoid of sportsmanship. If there was a option to walk out to midfield and instead of shaking hands punch the other coach in the face and key his car after the game, the majority of online Madden players would choose this option. When I start winning a game, people immediately quit. When I start to lose a game I'm asked why I'm still playing and told to quit. If I'm losing by double digits, my opponent will attempt to run up the score. Is there 1 second on the clock left? Well that's more than enough time to try to make the score 42 to nothing instead of 35 to nothing! Is my opponent up by 30 points? Why not call a fake field goal and then go for 2? Why not call fake punt as an offensive play for the whole second half? Why not go for it on 4th and 36? The whole experience online is dreadful and it can really create an environment of love/hate that is hard to justify why I play this game at all. Oh yeah, and when I do win games, you can bet that half the time someone will "experience network issues" in an attempt to rob me of the win. Sometimes it works and they actually get the win, that's a lot of fun.
2. Accidentally hitting run commit. I probably intentionally use run commit about once every two or three games. So there's absolutely no reason to have it mixed in with pass commit on my controller, which I use 99% of the time on every game. The margin for error as you're trying to set up your defense can be surprisingly slim. It's probably one of the dumbest controller setups I can think of. It's like putting an self destruct button directly next to a light switch.
3. Static AI. If you can run a play successfully the first time, chances are the AI will allow you to run the same play a second time. The AI doesn't adapt. Unfortunately, much of this game requires the gamer to use the AI in weird non-football related ways to successfully play defense against players that have 1000's of hours executing the same exact play to perfection. It's really a case of poor overall game design. There's just way too many options on offense and way too little tools on defense. That said, there are always "meta" or "optimal" ways to contain offenses, but they have very little to do with football and are more or less the same every year, a misuse of the defensive AI to force offensive play calling of a less optimal nature to be the only thing that can be used in the game. In other words, stock offense stops working, and offenses generally become custom playground rules where Mike Vick and Lamar Jackson are the only way to play the game. Case in point, I bought Tom Brady's elite card and power up card in MUT for a combined 16k coins.
4. The Meta. I've played over 120 games online in Madden 21. Probably 99% of everyone I play against has Lamar Jackson and runs virtually the same type of offense. 11 personnel, inside zone, slip screen, crossing routes, and of course verticals with Lamar Jackson easily running around contains. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped these offenses 3 out of every 4 plays. But getting that 4th down stop, that's the hard part. Why? because the the offense is the optimal way to play the game. Inside Zone is broken. Contains are broken. Slip Screen isn't broken but it's very hard to defend when Lamar is running a read option to the opposite side, and pick your poison between Lamar running and crossing routes 30 yards down the field. There's just too much for one user to cover and the AI doesn't do enough to help out (broken AI). Furthermore, there are always glitches that prevent more plays from working on offense and defense. On defense you can't generate a pass rush and still be fundamentally sound (from a Madden perspective), and you can't use basic route concepts against the stupid glitchy defenses. So basically Madden forces a certain style of play out of practicality. It's painful.
5. The hurry up offense. The clock. The quick hike. I roll all of these up into one category. I always feel like I barely have time to think between plays. I can't get through the play calling screens or make adjustments fast enough. And in my opinion that type of "skill gap" is not a good one, for several reasons. One, it encourages players to find a few plays that they can master and adjust on the fly quickly. Two, it rewards younger players that generally have faster reflexes. Three, it rewards speed of the game at the expense of thoughtful play calling. The entire game is designed like this. I don't get any information about what the offense called on the last play. I don't get information about what player stats are unless I burn my one pause and I take 30 seconds to speed through their attributes. I don't get to view my own play art unless I burn 2 seconds out of the 6! before my opponent snaps the ball. And on hurry up offenses, even though the play clock runs off 7 to 18 seconds, I only get the same amount of time to call my plays and set up my plays. It's really annoying and it all favors the offense.
So yeah, there's a lot I would change in this game if I could. These are just the first 5 things I could think of.
I seldom run plays to the FB, so I sub in a backup running back for them. This usually puts an end to the scum kick once the other guy realizes he is kicking off so someone who can break one....