Do you need authentic NFL roster management and player progression? If so, you might find some annoyances this year. Do you want a deep scouting model, RPG-like Player Roles, expanded rosters and a cool eBay style FA period? Then there’s a lot to like.
Let’s start with the annoying stuff and work our way up:
• The player progression model actually has a lot of good stuff in it. You’ll see young players take significant player ratings leaps – I saw one rookie, created by the game, jump a whopping 12 points from year one to year two.
• Veterans will also take a dive at certain points in their career, Browns TE Ben Watson hit the wall around age 32/33, dropping 3 points one year then 7 the next. That is precisely what we should see happen to most veteran players. But…
• The game seems to be downright leery of taking superstars out of the game, which is unfortunate. I’m willing to bet that by Week One of the year 2014 these players will not be playing at this level:
o Peyton Manning: 98 OVR
o Tom Brady 95 OVR
o Drew Brees 91 OVR
o Adrian Peterson 98 OVR
o Steven Jackson 92 OVR
o Reggie Wayne 94 OVR
o Dallas Clark 96 OVR
o Antonio Gates 92 OVR
o Dwight Freeney 91 OVR
o Julius Peppers 91 OVR
o Jerome Harrison 96 OVR
o Ed Reed 92 OVR
o Troy Polamalu 94 OVR
• These are all OLD men at this point – most of them anyway and they show very little sign of slowing down. Again, this is NOT the norm, these players are indeed outliers to the basic foundation of the progression model but superstars get old, too. And if Manning, at 38, is still performing like he was in his PRIME I will eat my hat. In fact, Peyton Manning, Wayne, Clark, Jackson and Tom Brady didn’t drop a single rating point between 2014 and 2015. Sorry, I’m not buying that.
• One of the complaints of Madden’s franchise mode was that teams used to hoard talent in certain positions, drafting three QBs or signing FAs that were in no way a position of need. Madden 12 fixes that – but takes it in the opposite direction.
• Teams are now very leery about re-signing players in the off season. If the player is rated in the 70s or even low 80s there is a good chance the AI will just let them walk, despite having the funds to pay them. When every team does this the FA pool is LOADED with players rated from 70 to 80. Not stars but clearly serviceable players. The AI will then sign a ton of undrafted rookies and use them as backups.
• For example, Brandon Jacobs, rated a 78 and asking for a measly 650K in 2012 sat out the entire season because no one would sign him but there were a slew of crappy young players serving as backup HBs on teams.
• The Browns, coming off a playoff run in 2013, failed to re-sign Colt McCoy, rated an 84 OVR and coming off a QB rating of 82.4, letting him just walk and now are starting a 1st year QB rated a 71 OVR. The Browns went 4-12. Hang the GM.
• You see this quite a lot – teams not signing players who they don’t see as valuable but then not replacing them with better talent. In fact it’s the opposite. You will see more rookie and 1st year players on NFL rosters in Madden than you can count while solid, 4, 5, 6 year vets rated 77, 78, 79 sit and wait for the human player to snatch them up.
• Getting into stats—for the most part these look perfectly fine. Aside from Manning throwing for 5,000 yards every year (this game loves Peyton Manning) I see QB % rates a touch too low. No QB will lead the league in completion % in the modern era at 61%. Most QBs in Madden come in around the mid to high 50s.
• There are way too many 90+ yard runs by halfbacks—usually 15-20 a YEAR. (There has been around 20 in the history of the NFL,…)
• Still, for the most part there aren’t too many red flags. You’re not going to get a stat engine that is ‘perfect’ in a game like this so seeing a few oddities is to be expected.
• The new scouting system is very cool and best of all doesn’t feel too much of a time burden. I like having to pick the players I want to scout depending on the event (combine, Pro day, weekly scouting). You really need to make sure you choose wisely because you can find some real gems in the drafts this year. But unlocking those ratings via scouting is the key to finding them. It makes me wish the game were on PC.
• A feature some will love and some will hate is the FA system. It’s like a frantic eBay bidding system with a 1:30 countdown timer. You need to know exactly what you need when FA starts because if you go into it and just freewheel it you’ll lose track of time and miss out on players. It’s literally a system of one button pressing. There is no “negotiating” with players this year – it’s click, boom, submit, outbid, and click again, etc. until that timer runs out but the timer is running for a lot of players so it’s monstrously frantic. My complaint is that the AI just isn’t aggressive enough at signing mid level players, as stated earlier.
• I love the Player Roles / RPG feature. You have mentors, underachievers, trench fighters, special teams stars, QB of the Future, that sort of thing -- and most impart rating impacts in the game, which is also a great touch.
• In all, Franchise Mode is a mixed bag – filled with fantastic ideas, some of them executed extremely well, but yet there are areas that it needs fine tuned – such as re-signing players and the age model for superstars.
Let’s hope for a fix from EA to clean some of it up because there is a great mode in here – it just needs fleshed out.
