Today the NCAA decided to pass down a punishment on Penn State that would essentially cripple the football team and university for years. It does raise a question about how much video games should or shouldn’t reflect what happens in real life. For instance, in NCAA 11 and 12 you will notice that teams like USC and Ohio State are given terrible ratings as far as Championship Caliber and Coach Ratings matching those of Luke Fickell (eventhough they aren’t really those coaches… riiiight).
When game developers gloss over the realities of the sports they are trying to reproduce they are short-changing their creativity and the consumer’s ability to take part in a true simulation of the sport itself.
Now we are in the midst of a USC team coming off of a ban, an Ohio State team starting a one year ban and last but not least – Penn State. In NCAA Football 06 you would have to deal with players violating team rules and all sorts of things that brought real life situations to the game. Why have these things been taken out of games this generation?
Madden NFL Football doesn’t have late hits, real-time injuries or even contract holdouts. Are sports games being held to a different standard somehow? We have shooter games that allow for some of the most gruesome actions to take place but when it comes to sports titles we can’t have late hits or concussions? We can’t have bowl bans or shady recruiting? We can’t have team rules violations by players that have questionable motivations?
You can’t say we never had these things before… we did… but now they are gone with the winds of political correctness or some sort of false societal demands.
As we approach the launch of Madden 13 it should be noted that EA Sports still has exclusive rights to the NFL license. There are a few things in gaming that truly drive innovation and the primary motivating factor is true competition. EA has found out the hard way that monopolizing the market to fix prices is the wrong way to go about this not only with fans of sports gaming, but now with the Federal Court system.
If you want the real moral of the story, it is that EA Sports will be banned from exclusive deals ONLYwith NCAA Football and Arena Football League. Which in all honesty is simply a slap on the wrist. The real competition they faced was from 2K in the NFL 2K series.
What this really means is that you shouldn’t hold out hope that 2K (or any other developer) will get a chance to make an NFL game. However, if they do get that chance, it will probably be on the next generation of consoles (if ever).
What about the Class Action Lawsuit?
In terms of what you ‘get’ out of it… $2 for any 360, Wii or PS3 American Football Title (AFL, Madden, NCAA) and just under $7 for PS2, Gamecube and XBox games that came out after 2005.
Bottom Line
EA Sports is being hit where it counts – the wallet. This isn’t the type of punch in the face that knocks them out of Exclusive Rights in sports gaming, but it is a sign that what they have been doing isn’t right. EA has potential to make some of the best sports games out there and when they had to fight against NFL 2K5 it was the best iteration of Madden (2005) ever.
Analogy Time
In 2005 it was like watching Rocky 2. Two developers were busting their asses trying to prove that they had the best game out there. In the end you see both of them fall to the ground in the last few seconds. 2K5 came out with a great game for $20 and after seeing this, EA released Madden for $30 rather than $50. EA came out on top and then just like Rocky they were the world champs.
Then after 2005, EA Sports turned into Rocky in Rocky 3. They got lazy and lost a lot of their motivation to train hard. They started doing stupid promotions and simply got full of themselves because everyone they would fight would be a push-over (if there was anyone to fight).
The biggest fear that EA has right now is for a game like NFL 2K to come back around like Clubber Lang and “crucify them, real bad.”
While it seems that we might not like EA Sports games… it is to the contrary. We love EA Sports titles, but we loved them more when they were trying harder. It isn’t fair to EA Sports that they have no competition, it makes them look soft and it prevents them from improving. We want to see a good fight between developers that makes us get excited again.
It has been just over a month sense E3 and there are still people waiting to hear more details about Franchise Mode/Connected Careers in Madden 13. There are a few things we can deduce from details that have either been given to the community straight up or through videos that leave you to draw some conclusions. Not to mention the fact that some of the good people that were invited to Community Day at EA Tiburon have given a lot of great feedback.
This is one of the biggest changes for Madden in years. The issue we are facing is that the details have become rather muddled.
Here is a list of answers and a few thoughts (after the facts) so you can have your questions answered.
Is Franchise Mode dead?
In name, yes. In practice, no. Franchise Mode still exists and it will be under the selection of being a ‘Coach’ – you will still have the same control over your team, etc. Also, you will have the ability to get fired as a coach. Everything you have been able to do in Franchise Mode in the past – you can still do in Madden 13.
What about Superstar Mode?
Superstar Mode is still around. You will ‘Be A Player’ and in the process you will only control yourself. You will get to choose plays as a QB, etc.
Legends, what’s the deal?
Legends (Coaches and Players like John Madden and Barry Sanders) are not coming into Connected Careers as 99 OVR versions of themselves. Their presence in Connected Careers is also up to you as the main user to turn them on or off (off is default as of E3).
How does XP work for Connected Careers?
XP is a two tier process –
1– You have to earn it through performance and milestones. However, you won’t be able to earn more XP if you cheat or run up the score on the CPU. (IE – If your goal is a 300 yard passing game in week three for 1000 XP and you pass for 900 yards, you still only get 1000 XP)
2– Leveling up costs increase as your ratings get higher. You will earn XP as you accomplish certain goals, but as you try to make your player either faster, stronger or simply better all-around you will see ratings cost more as you go. (IE – The cost to go from 85 to 86 SPD as a QB could cost you 6000 XP, but the cost to go from 86 to 87 SPD could cost you 7000 XP, etc.)
Do Coaches Matter?
Not really. Coaches simply get put into one of four levels. You can grow your created coach into a ‘Level 4’ but it really doesn’t mean anything. (Unfortunate)
Do player ratings change depending on a team’s scheme?
Yes, there are finally ratings that dynamically change to reflect the player’s overall value to your team or coach and what type of offense or defense you run. A 6’3″ 349 lb DE won’t be valued highly by a 4-3 Defensive Team, etc. This doesn’t mean his ability ratings ‘change’ but his displayed OVR and value to your team will be.
Can I make existing players retire if I control them?
No, you technically ‘stop’ using them. However, if you have a created player and retire they will be removed from the game.
Can I still control all 32 teams?
No, you can only control one team or player at a time.
Is Connected Careers Online or Offline?
It is both. If you hate playing against people online you don’t have to worry about it.
Can more than one person play a Connected Career on the same console?
No.
Can Commissioners kick people out of the league?
Yes
Is there online Auto-Pilot?
Yes.
Can Online Connected Careers have different roles?
Depending on your settings, you can make it so everyone has to be a QB, Coach RB, etc. It is totally up to the commissioner.
Can I play on the same team as a friend in Online CC?
No.
More to come! Stay tuned to NoobTubeTV as Madden gets closer.
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A few quick thoughts…
Madden 13 is really depending on Connected Careers being a high quality experience. There are a few things that it seems EA still needs to figure out for coaches especially.
In NFL Head Coach you would be able to say one of a few different things to your players at key moments. This added immersion and actually made coaches important. As well, the idea of a player fitting into a team’s scheme… it should be a coach’s scheme, nota team’s scheme. The Browns have switched coaches so many times in the last decade that the players change as often because they don’t fit what the coach wants to do and how his staff prefers to approach the game.
Making people earn XP to increase abilities is a great attempt to make the game a bit more involved and honest. By removing the ‘Potential’ rating you are now pretty much in charge of proving that a player is as good as you think and they will have to earn every bit of that OVR Rating you think they deserve. The nice part is that it is all on you to do this.
The overall closed nature of Connected Careers is a good thing for this year, but next year it needs to be opened up. There is a danger in allowing people to mess with time paradoxes, true simulation and that little thing called the game’s actual coding. This is something that can be improved upon with a more open approach in the future. Let the beta testers gamers mess with all sorts of things so EA can figure out the issues and fix them rather than avoid them because they are scared of problems with freezing and system crashes, etc.
All things said, Connected Careers is starting to look like a great mode for Madden fans that want to have a nice experience in growing a team or a player as they see fit. Even with some limitations that make you scratch your head.
Madden 13 is coming to your console with Legendary Players. If you are excited about this – more power to you.
On the other hand, you could pop in a game that is five years old tomorrow and use quite a few of the same players such as the great Reggie White.
This is a screen capture of Mr. White as a Philadelphia Eagle while it looks very nice, the only thing different is that it is a licensed NFL rendition on the Madden engine.
It isn’t really a question of whether or not Madden or 2K Football is better. It really is apples and oranges when you start comparing how the games play and other nuances that are too numerous to discuss in this article.
However, the real issue at hand is that EA Tiburon is putting this ‘feature’ in a game and almost acting like it is an original idea. 2K Sports (out of desperation) to please their hardcore football fans and with a feeble attempt to jump into the football gaming foray early on in this generation of consoles tried to grab a foothold with the inclusion of legends such as the aforementioned – Reggie White. As well, they had players you can see here on 2K’s website.
The Original ‘Legends Game’ can be had for cheap. You will be amazed with the gameplay and animations that might not even be in Madden this year… or ever.
The issue at hand also makes the controversial Connected Careers Mode a little more strange in that it allows these legendary players (Barry Sanders, Ronnie Lott, Troy Aikman, etc.) as well as Legendary Coaches! It is puzzling that they can’t allow people to do something like edit rosters, but they can allow legendary players onto their teams.
To compound the confusion there is also another vital question that needs to be asked –
Since when does the coach matter in Madden football?
Legendary Coaches is also a nice enough feature (and one that isn’t in APF2K8) but coaches have never mattered in Madden NFL. You could have gone to the Super Bowl with Romeo Crennel’s ‘I’m Thinkin’ Arbys Cleveland Browns All Stars’ and it wouldn’t matter a bit. Your coach means nothing in Madden and that has always been the case.
Madden 13 is on par to impress with their usual growth this year, but the inclusion of legends and marketing of their presence in Connected Careers (as well as Ultimate Team) is something that makes a lot of people look at EA with confusion and wonder if they will ever understand that gimmicks (especially those that have been done by another company) don’t sell games or make their game more enticing. They are cheapening the ‘experience’ and making it feel more and more like it should be Downloadable Content to mess around with like a toy from a Happy Meal and then forgotten forever in the annals of Epic Sports Gaming Fails.
If you want a great game with classic players that requires a more simulation approach than Madden, please follow our link to a bargain of a fantastic football game!
While there have been a lot of detractors (yours truly included) coming out against EA’s decision to keep roster editing out of Madden 13’s Connected Careers Mode, there are some things to consider before you decide to hate it entirely.
There is something behind not having control of every aspect of rosters once you start a franchise mode or dynasty. The biggest (most obvious) downfall is if the coding for progression and regression is bad (see Madden 09, 10, 11, etc.). However, if the coding and player development is good (see the possibilities for Madden 13’s new XP system) you might have one heck of a deep career mode that will allow you to truly develop players and teams as you feel they should.
If you edit Phil Dawson to have 99 Kick Power and Accuracy you should have to pay for it. In Madden 13 you have to earn it rather than change it.
In Madden 12, they opened up player editing during Franchise Mode and it was/is awesome. However, the downfall is that you have to really find a way to be honest about your edits and then make sure that you do the same thing for other players and teams across the board. If your player did well but didn’t progress as you feel he should have, you had the ability to make sure his ratings went up as they’should have’. The problem with this is that it can ruin the longevity of a Franchise Mode when you have a team that becomes too good either because you edited them that way or you are just great at using the fastest players in the game.
It is nice to develop a great team, but it is even nicer when you have to spend points and be honest with how you go about it. If you want to make Brandon Weeden have 99 SPD, you will have to spend a ton of points to do so. While this seems unrealistic, ask yourself how much more realistic it would be if you simply went in and edited him to be that way. It wouldn’t be realistic at all and you are now stuck looking at Madden 13’s lack of player editing from a more honest perspective.
The main problem with Madden’s Franchise Mode in-particular has never really been in progression/regression anyway. The issue that is the most obvious is the way players and draft picks are valued. A player might come in and do an amazing job out of the blue (Matt Cassel for Tom Brady in 2009 is one example). He then went on to get a big contract offer from the Chiefs where he has been average/above average at best. The moral of the story is that Madden hasn’t ever really taken this into account. The player’s value has always been based around his ratings (OVR mostly) and that isn’t how business is always done in the NFL (unless your name is Al Davis (RIP)).
For Connected Careers to work as it should, there needs to be a better value system for players that forces teams to have to make decisions on whether or not the player will work in their Franchise and system.
This is the next aspect that has never been in Madden…. Do players FIT THE SYSTEM?
Stop wondering why the Browns seem so slow, even on the line. Granted, they are supposed to fit the system… although, they don’t seem to know what system it is. (Go Browns!)
More goes into how a player is chosen for a team other than ‘Is he qualified?’
The Patriots and Bill Belichick drafted a player out of Ohio State that played more rugby than football. They also picked up Danny Woodhead and made him into a valuable part of their team (and he is only 5’8″ 195lbs).
Woodhead is small, but he works for their system.
There are other examples such as different defensive schemes such as the 3-4 and 4-3 that require different styles, sizes and speeds for defensive linemen and linebackers. There are certain offensive schemes that don’t require a receiver to be fast as long as he can run good routes and catch the ball (West Coast).
Do you think someone like Tim Tebow would succeed outside of Denver if he had to take every snap from the center rather than playing college-style?
If you run a 3-4 offense and need fast, athletic linebackers the last person you want to look for is going to be an average speed 6’5″ 270 lbs… you will most likely want to look for a fast and lean 6’3″ 240 lb mean S.O.B. that doesn’t care about anything other than ripping faces off of QBs.
Every position is important, but in Madden that doesn’t seem to be the case. Again, say what you want about real-time physics and other improvements. Those are needed and extremely valuable, but when it comes down to longevity for their most vaunted mode and biggest overhaul in years EA needs to make sure that more than just ratings truly matter.
If you aren’t football savvy here is a quick example:
Two people are applying for a car sales job.
The first person is fresh out of college with a degree in marketing and experience working a retail sales job part-time. They have a good, confident attitude to eventually work at the corporate level and maybe someday head up a department or possibly their own company.
The second person graduated from high school and then spent two years at a community college. They have a strong personality and make you feel like you have known them forever. They are also from the region and have strong ties to the area.
Who gets the job? The second person gets the job. Why? Because they fit the system.
Football is the most popular sport in the United States. The people that love the game know it and the hardcore fans of football video games know it too. So, why does it seem like EA Sports doesn’t really give a damn?
New cover athlete, same game.
If you consider the fact that the only option you have for a legitimate football title (pro or college) is limited to EA Sports, that should tell you enough. Then you get to live the annual nightmare of playing the same game with different glitches and problems.
The saddest part about NCAA Football is that for a few years it actually stepped up its game enough to be preferred over Madden. Now we are seeing it fall back into the grand old EA trap of “If it works, let’s break it!” and “If it is broken, let’s put something in slow-motion or ignore it altogether.”
NCAA Football 13 relies heavily on Dynasty Mode for the bulk of its players. One thing that had been part of NCAA Football for over a decade was being able to export your draft classes to Madden after each year of college football. While this transition often translated to poorly rated NFL Draft Counter-Parts and other problems (every black player having dreadlocks back in Madden 08, for example) – it was still one heck of a cool feature to have.
Now it is gone.
You have a ‘new’ scouting system and some new ways to sell recruits, but what it all really boils down to is – nothing has really changed. It has either been tweaked or taken away.
You will (supposedly) notice players have to ‘see’ the ball to make a play on it, but that won’t last long as EA has never had anything like this in a football title and likely will find a way to screw this up like they did with ‘Rocket Catching’ and Linebackers that compensate for bad AI with the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
You might look at this as a harsh criticism, but what it really boils down to is the fact that EA Sports’ football titles are like settling for White Castle’s Sliders. You may like it at first, but you will pay the price later.
We are only a few days from the release of NCAA 13 and just over a month from Madden 13. That being said, you can almost smell the football in the air. Unfortunately, you can also smell the elitist sports gamers over the internet. Readying their little fingers to type angry messages in response to your excited Franchise Mode Connected Career performance updates that may or may not include winning a Super Bowl with the Cleveland Browns in 2013.
Usually your success with a ‘weaker’ team is going to be attributed to your Slider Settings. These wonderful additions to sports games have been around for awhile. They are meant to act as a way for you (the end user) to tune the gameplay in order for you to either make the game play like your opinion of simulation (or Arcade – which Madden is usually a fine example of every year). It then becomes a war of words and Slider Settings in the messageboards and sports gaming communities.
Your typical interaction with a slider nazi could sound (read) like this.
———
You – I just won the Super Bowl with the Browns! It was amazing! We managed to sweep the AFC North behind the amazing play of Trent Richardson (led the league in rushing and TDs) and our under-rated defense! We beat the Cowboys 24-10 as Brandon Weeden connected with Josh Cribbs on a screen pass that ended up sealing the deal late in the game!
Responding (Hater) Slider Nazi – You obviously have to change your sliders! There is no way the Browns will EVER win a Super Bowl, let alone this year. You need to make sure your run blocking is tuned down if Trent Richardson is leading the league as a rookie. Not to mention the fact that the Browns are terrible… wow. big props to you on beating the weak CPU to a pulp. Did you have the difficulty set to Rookie?
———
There are two ways to look at this conversation and neither of them is necessarily wrong.
1 – If you enjoy your game, no one should be able to tell you how to enjoy it otherwise. If you truly have a good time winning the Super Bowl with ANY team, let alone a team like the Browns, Cavaliers, Kansas City Royals, Western Michigan or Columbus Blue Jackets… more power to you.
2 – There is something to be said for a game giving you a challenge. While the reactions of many sports gamers (such as the example above) are blown out of proportion, you should often consider if your sliders are providing you with the best challenge while still being fair to both sides. I have played 18 Collective Seasons in Madden 12’s Franchise Mode with teams such as the Browns, Bears and Jaguars. I won a few Super Bowls with the Browns and decided I wanted a new challenge so I switched teams and tweaked my sliders. It was three seasons before I won a Super Bowl with the Bears and the Jaguars team I inherited after leaving the Bears is going to be rough to work with.
Is this really what sports gaming is coming to?… The amount of detail being put into these players and their equipment is impressive. However, the amount of attention these things get from the ‘hardcore’ community is atrocious.
Enough is enough, while there are numerous pet peeves among gamers (and sports gamers in-particular) you would think it would hinge on something that made gameplay more of the focus.
It seems that the new generation of gamers and the apparent generation of developers had decided to focus on the material aspect of the NFL and the players.
You would think that there would be more of a focus on things like Pass Interference or maybe even the terrible o-line/d-line interactions. Then again, there are other numerous problems that the hardcore fans tend to forget when they see things like… armsleeves.
Over the past two decades it has been a fixture in sports gaming. On occasion it has even been hailed as one of the best games of the year in that genre. However, the Madden Franchise has fallen on hard times as of late and it looks more like Tiki Barber trying to make a comeback rather than Brett Favre making a Super Bowl run after his 2nd retirement. Either way it goes and however you view the analogy – Madden is getting worse every year. Only a few weeks ago we were looking at Madden 13 as the rebirth of a franchise after a long drought. Now it seems as if it has lost its luster and even its marketing steam.
The NFL season is set to start in just over two months and Madden is slated to come out in the middle of Pre-Season games. How on earth can it be that this game doesn’t have a single commercial in wide circulation or even some sort of hypemobile rolling through forums drumming up blind support?
While it isn’t terribly surprising to see a sports title come out and grab the core audience, it is rather shocking to see the publisher pretty much throw in the marketing towel this early/ late in the game’s development cycle. With high profile titles such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty coming out within a few months of Madden, it is going to be interesting to see how EA’s sales for their football games perform without any real concerted effort at this point.
Madden has its core of fanboys out there that live up to the stereotypes of sports gamers with false bravado and a sharp case of ego-stroking football knowledge that should place them at the sidelines of any local youth football game screaming at children as they try to live out dreams they never should have had in the first place. These gamers tend to ruin the online experience as they exploit the poor animation and AI system in order to rank up the leaderboards or win some sort of digital league.
The typical Madden Online/Tournament gamer.
The rest of the Madden fans out there don’t even play online. They want a game that focuses on Franchise Mode/Connected Careers and some sort of longevity to keep them coming back. Sadly, it looked like a promising year for this group of fans until EA dropped bombshell after bombshell crushing the dreams of franchise fanantics (yours truly, included). It seems that the time has come to call EA on their bluff. They have been bluffing for almost seven years now and there are still people out there folding under the pressure to buy this game on release day.
Are you buying Madden this year? Are you avoiding it like the plague?… Or, are you simply going to wait it out a little while and see what the reviews look like?
If you consider the way Madden was going with their announcements of Connected Careers Mode and Real Time Physics it seemed as if the sky was the limit.
Now it feels like someone has come to your 4th of July party and taken all of your fireworks.
EA Tiburon has announced many new limitations for Madden 13 since the vaunted reveal of Connected Careers.
Darren McFadden should probably have an injured knee, back or right arm after this hit. However, thanks to EA and the NFL, this will most likely result in nothing more than a regular tackle and recovery… every single time.
– You can no longer play more than one game per week and it must be for only your team.
This is a big deal for people that like to play random games along the way of their season to expand their enjoyment of the league as teams evolve… or to throw games like the 1919 White Sox so their team can make the playoffs. Either way it goes, this limitation is silly and only hurts EA from the perspective of once again taking away any sort of further depth a gamer may want.
– Editing players is completely gone for Connected Careers.
Perhaps the biggest kick in the analog stick was the news that you can only edit players for Play Now games but not for your team before you start your Connected Careers Mode. So, not only can you not edit your players… but now you have to hope that you bought the game new and got the $10 Roster Update Code included with the retail release. Then you have to suffer the more unfortunate fate of having to depend on the Ratings Czar, Donny Moore.
– Madden still depends on the the ‘all-important’ Speed Rating
Please understand that this isn’t new or even an announcement. However, it is still a major issue that annoys us to no end. Football is the one game that is more than just fast guys running everything 80 yards for a TD. It is a game of strength, awareness, determination, size and motivation (of which only one is a ‘rating’, Strength). This leads us to our next limitation which is a continuation…
– Ratings still determine everything…and nothing.
Madden football has turned into a bastardized arcade version of simulation NFL Football. There are ratings (like Speed) that mean everything to a player. Then there are ratings (Awareness) that are some sort of mysterious presence that make a player’s Overall Rating but little else really comes out of it. One of the things that All Pro Football 2K8 got right was taking those number ratings away from your view and made you ask yourself…”Can this guy play football?”
That is the real question facing Madden and NCAA.
Are these games really football?
Something that has troubled many football fans lately is the constant focus on ‘safety’. If you want to be safe, play golf. Football is about blood, guts, glory, concussions, playing hurt and yes… violence. It is a game where every single play the goal is to destroy the player carrying the ball. The NFL is taking it away from the game as much as they can but EA is taking it away altogether.
There are no late hits in Madden NFL Football.
There are no real time injuries to go with real time physics.
There are no roster edits for your (or any other team) before you start a Career Mode.
Which really starts to beg the question. What exactly is in Madden outside of a couple of what now seem to be aesthetic changes to the game?
Are you angry with EA Tiburon’s approach to football games? Vent below…
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