Potential Madden NFL 11 Features.

[Nature Boy]

During an EA Sports "Season Opener" presentation at GDC that detailed the ways the company is using player-generated data to identify and fix weak spots in its games, Madden executive producer Jeremy Strauser hinted at a couple new features being implemented in the next version of the football powerhouse.

Using the extensive amount of play data generated by online gaming sessions (the company said 82-percent of NCAA players and 76-percent of the Madden audience plays online), EA Tiburon has identified some telling trends. Though the Madden NFL 10 offers over 300 different plays in various formations, the average player only uses 13 different playcalls a game - not exactly a ringing endorsement for the armchair offensive and defensive coordinators of the world. Strauser's focus on this issue indicates that making the playbook more accessible to players will likely be a point of emphasis in Madden NFL 11, though he didn't divulge any details as to how the dev team plans to achieve this goal. One option could be revamping the playbook's user interface to give players new ways to mine the playbook. Redesigning the "Ask Madden" playcalling assistant to more accurately recommend plays that fit the down and distance of the situation at hand could also go a long way.

Another eye opener EA Tiburon discovered was how players spend their time in games. Though the average head-to-head match lasts a little over an hour, only 17 minutes are spent playing actual football. Trimming this down-time will likely be another point of emphasis, which hopefully indicates that the formation substitutions will return to Madden as they are doing with NCAA. Allowing players to prepare and save changes to their depth charts and specific formations for each team could drastically cut down the time opponents spend buried in the menus after kickoff.

The reams of game data also uncovered some hilarious fun facts. For instance, gamers threw over 7.5 million interceptions with Brett Favre in Madden NFL 10, which falls just short of the record-breaking number of picks the old man has thrown during his real-world career.

Link to the story.

 

[killgod]

I hate their focus for Madden 11.


The gamers only play online, lets focus on them! (PROBABLY BECAUSE OFFLINE OFFERS A BUGGY, UNINSPIRED AND SHALLOW EXPERIENCE!)

The gamers only average 13 plays from the playbook, it must be too complex for them! (PROBABLY BECAUSE THERES ONLY 10-15 PLAYS REQUIRED TO DEFEAT ANYTHING THE DEFENCE BRINGS TO THE TABLE. SEE MJD AND HIS UNSTOPPABLE FB DIVE OFFENCE WINNING THE MADDEN BOWL. WATCH AND OF THE MADDEN TOURNAMENTS OR THAT STUPID FUCKING TV SHOW. THE MOST "SKILLED" MADDEN PLAYERS YOU GOT ONLY USE 13 PLAYS (OR LESS), ARE YOU SAYING ITS TOO COMPLEX FOR THEM TOO? FUCK YOU)


You are all fucking morons Tiburon.

 

[St. Francisco]

I hate their focus for Madden 11.


The gamers only play online, lets focus on them! (PROBABLY BECAUSE OFFLINE OFFERS A BUGGY, UNINSPIRED AND SHALLOW EXPERIENCE!)

The gamers only average 13 plays from the playbook, it must be too complex for them! (PROBABLY BECAUSE THERES ONLY 10-15 PLAYS REQUIRED TO DEFEAT ANYTHING THE DEFENCE BRINGS TO THE TABLE. SEE MJD AND HIS UNSTOPPABLE FB DIVE OFFENCE WINNING THE MADDEN BOWL. WATCH AND OF THE MADDEN TOURNAMENTS OR THAT STUPID FUCKING TV SHOW. THE MOST "SKILLED" MADDEN PLAYERS YOU GOT ONLY USE 13 PLAYS (OR LESS), ARE YOU SAYING ITS TOO COMPLEX FOR THEM TOO? FUCK YOU)


You are all fucking morons Tiburon.

I NEVER play football games online...I'm a franchise junkie to the end.

My games are slowly slipping away from me, into a new (and stupid) generation.

 

[PP]

I NEVER play football games online...I'm a franchise junkie to the end.

My games are slowly slipping away from me, into a new (and stupid) generation.

You dont play bc you would get smoked.

 

[St. Francisco]

You dont play bc you would get smoked.

No...I don't play because it's just not fun for me. It's the same for FPS and all that other crap. I simply don't see the fun in playing against other people.

I'm a fan of the stories in FPS, and in football, I'm all about the managing aspects: formation subs to put proper personnel in their place, the draft, free agency, coaching moves, etc.

Online franchise/dynasty intrigues me, but my work schedule doesn't allow me to join any of those leagues since I'm away from the house for up to 15 days at a time.

 

[Saluki]

I think people are taking the article the wrong way, just because this is some of the stuff their working on doesn't mean it's all their working on.

 

[St. Francisco]

I think people are taking the article the wrong way, just because this is some of the stuff their working on doesn't mean it's all their working on.

What everyone is worried about is that every bit of information we've seen so far suggests that the priority for this year's game is making it more user-friendly to those players who couldn't name half of the NFL teams if you offered them money.

Oh yeah, and adding DLC to drain every last penny out of us.

 

[killgod]

What everyone is worried about is that every bit of information we've seen so far suggests that the priority for this year's game is making it more user-friendly to those players who couldn't name half of the NFL teams if you offered them money.

Oh yeah, and adding DLC to drain every last penny out of us.

It's funny cause it's not just here.

It's OS, it's EA's own forums, it's the same feeling all over the place. People are not pleased with anything said so far.

All they want to do is broaden their audience which means that most of their work/development time/resources will be put towards pushing the product on to people who DON'T usually get this game.

Does this mean the things we want fixed/upgraded are ignored? No. But at the same time it's not the priority for this cycle and they've made that abundantly clear.

What to make of that? Well the jump in gameplay from 10 to 11.....maybe not as big as we'd hope? Things like Superstar mode are pretty much a wash, because it's clearly the lowest priority, so you know that'll be back and as pathetic as ever.


I think the guys here want the Madden 11 focus to be on making the game great. SCEA's MLB 10 game, what's their focus? Making the game as great as they can, not appealing to 10 year old girls and grandpa Joe. Exaggeration to make my point, obviously.

 

[St. Francisco]

I think the guys here want the Madden 11 focus to be on making the game great. SCEA's MLB 10 game, what's their focus? Making the game as great as they can, not appealing to 10 year old girls and grandpa Joe. Exaggeration to make my point, obviously.

I agree with you...EA's stance for years has not been to make a great football game, but to make a more profitable football game.

What's fun is that if they would make it great, it would be more profitable. Instead, they shove useless shit inside the game so that have something to put on the back cover, and spend more time picking cover athletes than they do fixing pursuit angles in the secondary.

 

[Nature Boy]

From pastapadre

Madden 11 To Be “Simpler, Quicker, Deeper”.

Coming out of a media event held yesterday are some hints towards the focus for Madden 11. While we now know that NCAA Football 11 is centered on “core experience, authenticity, and innovation” Madden is being described as “simpler, quicker, and deeper”.

Citing different statistics collected through Madden 10, including one that put the average game length at 63 minutes, EA Sports is hoping to compact that or provide options to ease the strain on gamers. An hour long is understandably just too great of a commitment for many to take on. According to EA, of those 63 minutes, only 17 were spent during on-field action. The rest was in navigating plays and menus or through presentational elements.


Hopefully EA doesn’t take this to mean that quarter length needs to be shortened. All that does is pressure people to pass more, which results in more incompletions and clock stoppages. The limited number of possessions puts more pressure on the user to conserve time therefore defeating the whole purpose of shortening quarters. The accelerated clock with longer quarters seemed to provide a really nice balance in Madden 10.

What will hopefully be done is to provide different options such as in-game saves which has been on the to-do list but missed the cut for the past few years. A quick-play option to skip through the presentation that slows the pace down would also be beneficial, we’ve seen the baseball games go this route.

There is also discussion about the streamlining of playbooks, as the average gamer only used 13 plays out of the hundreds available. Ultimately people are going to get comfortable with a handful of plays especially when the playbooks are all relatively similar. I think a great addition, one that has been discussed before, would be custom playbooks. If people could construct their own playbooks from the wide array of plays included in the game (not necessarily create new plays) then it would be much more likely that person would mix up their play selection as well as know where to find each play when they are looking for it.

What do you think about EA laying out the plan for Madden 11 to be “simpler, quicker, and deeper”? What would you like to see done to accomplish that?

 

[Realist]

Keyword there that I don't like is SIMPLE.


Also, peoples games are long because majority of people pass most of the times. My games are rarely close to a hour because I'm more balanced and run more than most.

 

[Tengo Juego]

EA, just release Madden 11 on PC, using the engine, animations, interfaces, etc... we saw on PS2/Xbox and sell it for 50 bucks. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

 

[Derrville]

Just allow the Old gen Maddens to be backwards compatible.

 

[SHOGUN]

This direction sounds fucking retarded.

 

[Point Blank]

Why dont they just steal from The Show and give the options of what kind of game you want to play.

 

[Nature Boy]

Ian posted this over at OS about an hour ago.

I will repeat.

We are NOT dumbing the game down. Just because someone throws picks means zero to the hardcore community and Madden fan that doesn't throw picks. The two have nothing to do with each other. Some folks are taking this presentation totally out of context.

The stats shown in the presentation were purely informational, to showcase that we can track stats over MILLIONS of games and focus our gameplay tuning to produce accurate NFL stats. We're not going to dumb down the playbooks or do any of those things you guys that think "we just don't get it" assume we're going to do.

Thanks.

 

[St. Francisco]

Ian posted this over at OS about an hour ago.

And when Ian says it, you know it's true!

 

[BigBiss]

And when Ian says it, you know it's true!

I have no issue with Ian, he has don much more for the hardcore gamer then the last guy did.

 

[killgod]

they are the hardcore crowd, EAs not gonna try and please them because they know they'll still buy it no matter what, while a casual gamer will generally not

so why wouldn't you focus on casual gamers?

Because casual gamers won't buy the game year in and year out.

They might bring this whole approachability aspect to 1 Million new casual players, but will they be back for Madden 12? Well why would they? They are casual video gamers/sports fans, why do they want to buy a near same game the following year? Only us hardcore types care for the minor gameplay changes and additions, which is all you get in a yearly cycle.

So to recap, you have these casual gamers which might boost some sales this year (all while pissing in the cornflakes of the yearly buyers, who are clearly fed up across all the forums I read). However when Madden 12 and beyond rolls around, will the casual guys be buying it again? Will the hardcore guys be gone to a different product or just not coming back?


These casual buyers aren't the people that keep Madden on the top of sales charts every year, but how long can you keep pissing on the people that do before they really stop buying the product?


Is it gonna be this year with Backbreaker? Or when American Needle wins the case and abolishes the exclusive agreement so 2K and such can return?

When these things start to happen, I don't think EA would be best served having a chunk of their "yearly buyers" already pissed off with their focus on the casual gamer.

 

[Aso]

Not if the features they have to please the casual gamer are the default online settings.