Madden’s Franchise Mode
(This post relates specifically to Madden PC and Xbox since I haven’t played the 360 version yet)
Remember back when Madden went head to head with NFL 2K? Specifically NFL 2K4 and 2K5?
Remember what the universal mantra was?
NFL 2K5 may have the edge in gameplay but Madden kills it in franchise mode.
I remember that mantra; I sang it myself in reviews of both games and in a head to head feature for GameSpy.
And I still believe it…from a certain point of view. Most of us know that NFL2K5 franchise mode out of the box was an utter mess. That’s been documented. Madden’s really won by default and by not doing anything particularly dumb.
So now it’s two versions later and a few odds and ends have been added to Madden’s franchise mode, things like the Player Roles, which on the PC version are next to impossible to find a definition for what the symbols mean. You have to go to roster, right click on the player, choose “edit” and then “roles”. Now that’s intuitive. Why does an “underachiever” lower the ratings of other players? Most of the roles don’t do anything but alter trade value or give a +1 boost to AWR. It’s all kinda trivial, really. Still, why add a feature and make it impossible to get info on it?
Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant on the Role thing, since it’s really a minor feature. Here’s what bugs me a bit:
Madden’s franchise mode, as far as franchise modes go — in text based games like Front Office
The reason is in its details. Now I know damn well that the focus of Madden and other games like it is in the on the field action. I get that. But Madden has had a franchise mode for how long now? Six versions or so? At what point is it “ok” to start to criticize its lack of attention to details? And I don’t mean really minor stuff…I mean basic shit that anyone that plays the game for more than one season will notice?
For this example, I want to look at player progression and rookie progression and rookie busts and rookie sleepers.
Player progression in Madden is very poor and it shows up in the game’s very basic player retirement model. Players retire in Madden when they hit a certain age or get hurt. So a player like Lorenzo Neal retires at the age of 36 with a 96 overall player rating. That should be a red flag that something ain’t right. It’s very, very rare when an NFL player hangs up the cleats when he’s still an elite level player. You see this happen all the time in Madden, though. Players 36 to 38 years old with high 80 to low 90 ratings calling it quits because the game sees that he’s a certain age. That’s silly.
This all goes back to the aging model — it’s busted. If it were a text game fans would eat this thing alive. I know that it’s not a text game, though, and I also know that “fixing” the franchise mode that most people deem to be fine and dandy probably isn’t high on anyone’s fix list, but I guess it just bugs me that you have a company like an EA (although this is not a problem exclusive to them) rarely goes the extra step to make aa feature like this from decent to great.
The big problem, at least from my PoV, is one of predictability. You can set your watch by Madden’s franchise mode.
1st round picks are high 70s low 80s rated players, 2nd rounders a shade lower and right down the line — and they all progress, ratings wise, at a snail’s pace. After simming five seasons the incoming rookie classes have barely moved up or down one way or the other. Some have, but every single one of the “99″ rated players in 2010 are players that are currently in the league.
In fact, every single player rated 95 - 99 (which the game considers its elite lvl players) are real players. No fictional incoming players have progressed to that level…in five years. If you really want to sink your teeth into the game’s franchise mode…that’s a problem. A very big one, I’d argue. If you plan on playing a long franchise, what will happen once most the real players retire? I didn’t sim long enough to see–maybe I should.
Along the same lines, in that same five year span there are virtually no rookie sleepers; those 6th round picks that end up being solid or even All Pro level players. (Tom Brady…) On the Browns, the players I drafted in that five year run, the vast majority of the drafted players have the same OVR rating they had when they were drafted. Some have improved — most of them 1st rounders. As is, I see absolutely no reason to keep a 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th round player on your team.
On the plus side, it seems like a player doesn’t need great ratings to play well, particularly in simmed games. The Browns 82 OVR RG made the All Pro team. Of course you’d expect to see him get a nice ratings boost the following year, right? Well, he lost a point of AWR. That was it.
I’d get into the trade AI but no game has ever gotten that right — even a lot of text games. Granted, the Bills offering me their 1st round pick for my 4th and 5th was a tad (ok more than a tad) insane, but hey..I can always decline them, right? Teams are quick to give up that 1st round pick…I didn’t even ask for it.
As a gamer, I get upset when I see this kinda thing especially when the game is so mega popular and I think the t’s should be crossed and the i’s dotted.
That said, I cannot fathom the level of pressure that is placed upon the people that actually make Madden every year. It must be enormous. Just enormous. I know that “fixing” franchise mode is not going to help fill the coffers, which is why in reviewing a game like this; I don’t think it’s all that fair to rip it up and down for not being as deep as Front Office
It doesn’t mean I think it’s OK for it to stay in this shape or that EA shouldn’t fix it.
They should.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Bill -
Have you settled on a slider set yet? I keep tweaking mine, but sliders aren’t my thing.
August 28th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
The amount of time it would take to design and implement a realistic system is a drop in the bucket, relatively. For ESPN Baseball, I spent about 4 weeks re-designing and then tuning the player generation, development, aging, and retirement systems (and coach effects on all of these), and a programmer spent about 2 weeks implementing them. Total cost to the company in salary and benefits for that time was about $7000, or less than 1/1000 of Madden’s development budget. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, as it’s really one of the basic things that franchise mode should get right. Just need to have someone with enough football and mathematical know-how to design it, and enough patience and eye for detail to run through a few hundred years of simulations and find and fix problems.
August 28th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
While they should actually fix the aging model, I would rather have age determine retirment than ratings, otherwise we’d have teams full of 40-year olds.
I am surprised they haven’t done more with franchise over the years. The CPU trading is better than it used to be because there used to be no trading, but the logic is screwy. It amazes me that a game programmed by one man (FoF) can do a better job than a company with EA’s resources.
August 28th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Dan, no, not yet.
Neil, thanks for that, and I agree. I just don’t think it’s a priority. No doubt that it could be done and not be a huge drain on the budget.
Brando, I think it should be slanted more toward ratings than age IF they fix the age model. If a guy is 37 and still a 96 OVR, he shouldn’t quit. Thing is, VERY few players should be a 96 OVR at the age of 37. Every year when you look at the retire list it is filled with 88+ rated players. I think that’s way off.
In fact, I think pushing the high 30s…you should start to see 5, 6, 7 point drops rather than the small ratings drops that we see in Madden.
I have simmed to 2010 now and I’ll post a “new player” rating breakdown when I’m done which should show a bit more clearly the ratings oddness, esp with incoming rookies.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
The way I see it, there are three goals with the player progression systems:
1) Ratings distributions need to fall within the user’s expectations (a certain amount of stars, a certain amount of average players, a certain amount of scrubs, etc.) This is true not jsut of the league as a whole, but within age groups. Rookies should be generated with ratings you’d expect from a rookie, 2nd and 3rd year playesr should improve at rate comparable to how real players improve, players should age, get worse, and retire like real players, etc.
2) Rating distributions need to stay relatively consistent from year to year. A league full of fake players needs to produce the same kind of games that a league full of real players does. In practice, this means that you want individual rating distributions of fake players (agility, awareness, strength, and so on) to be around the same as it is in the default roster. Otherwise, you end up with a game that isn’t quite balanced because, (a made-up example), fake running backs tended to develop break tackle 8 points higher on average than the real ones.
3) Rating distributions need to be varied and interesting. When rookies are generated, there need to be some elite players at the top of the draft. There needs to be a variety of player “archetypes” created (at HB, you would have power backs, finesse backs, all-purpose backs, etc.). There need to be players who have a high potential to be stars, but who aren’t going to be ready to take a starting job (have low initial ratings) for another year or two.
August 29th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Batshit crazy.