Madden: Is it just me or this this weird?
Ok so I simmed the 2006 season (Xbox) just to see how things shake out in franchise mode. The Browns won 6 games…score one for the sim engine.
Anyway, I run through free agency which is just like years prior (T.O. to the Bears, hah) and get to the draft, which this year you need to run rookies through drills or use in an All Star game to scout ratings. Personally, I find this tedious — but that’s just me.
Draft Day rolls around and once again — no trading unless it’s YOUR pick. That’s just plain stupid. It totally kills the ebb and flow of the draft when after your pick it goes into sim mode while the CPU does its thing and you are literally sitting there helpless. So what if that CB you thought would be there was taken 3 picks earlier (not that you’d know it because the picks fly by so fast that you can’t tell who took whom until it’s your pick anyway.) I just don’t get that. Anyway, that’s just a pet peeve of mine because the Draft is supposed to be one of the coolest parts of any franchide mode and here it’s just a rush job to get it over. You spend more time running 8 rooks through cones to test them than you do actually drafting.
None of this is what I really wanted to talk about, though.
I get through all the off season stuff, sim training camp, and get to the start of the 2007 season. Time for a new Browns team to hit the field! Let’s see how Charlie Frye looks now…
Wow. He looks the same. Exactly the same.
So does Braylon, Winslow, Travis Wilson, Sean Jones, D’quell Jackson and Kamerion Wimbley. It’s the start of the pre-season…and nothing has changed except that Willie McGinest lost 2 points of AWR…hey wait a minute..EVERYONE lost AWR points. No one gained anything — at all. Acorss the entire NFL, not one player saw his OVR rating go up a single solitary point during traning camp. Zero. None. Zippo.
I was unable to finish this little test but I am very curious if anyone has noticed this (if you’ve played or simmed a season.) Maybe they get a ratings boost after preseason and not camp? Surely, surely, the player progression model isn’t this screwed up. If players are not progressing…well let’s just wait and see how it looks after a few more test runs.
August 24th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
So the current Gen draft (draft itself, not scouting) has lost features?
Last year you could slow down the draft, so it took teams about a minute to make a selection, and in that time, you could check out who they were likely to pick (top 5 needs and such). I also saw a bunch of trades between CPU teams in 06 (on xbox).
I’m still deciding which one to buy…X or 360…I’m disappointed with ncaa on 360, so I might just go back to the xbox versions.