Madden 19 – NoobTubeTV

The Biggest House Rules For Madden – Play Books and Playcalling

For those of you looking for a reason to continue playing Madden 19 I have a challenge for you. Invest some serious time in two things – designing a playbook that doesn’t include the money plays you have come to find honestly (or … less than honestly?) and then go through that playbook and set up the Down and Distance star ratings for each play.

I have found that All-Pro seems to become more challenging when my plays are limited to whatever shows up on my ‘Coach Selection’ rather than going through the playbook to find my go-to plays. While this by no means fixes what is seemingly a consistently broken game, it does add a bit more fun in your gameplan and it also keeps you on your toes as some plays might become new favorites.

I am still at a point in Madden 19 where I am frustrated by the lack of difficulty in All-Pro and the annoying cheating of the CPU on All-Madden. I don’t think there’s a fix for that at this point. Slider sets and other such mechanics are less than desirable fixes for an issue that has plagued Madden for over a decade.

I am to a point where this is my last go-round with Madden 19. It’s sad to say, but I would probably get more enjoyment out of uninstalling than playing through another easy season of Franchise Mode. I would certainly have more enjoyment in uninstalling rather than playing a single snap of the toxic Ultimate Team.

All I Want For Madden Christmas Is A Smarter CPU… And A Better Franchise Mode

I try my best to enjoy playing Madden every year. As much as I gripe about the game every year in one way or another I truly go into each iteration with high hopes only to have them dashed by the time I get into my Franchise Mode.

I tried to play with the Bills on All-Madden after winning the Super Bowl with the Browns on All-Pro in the first season. It was the same old story – All-Madden is artificially difficult while All-Pro wants to be challenging, it is still hamstrung with the same problems. The CPU doesn’t adjust to certain plays being called on succession (HB Toss plays from a Twin WR set will almost always get you 7+ Yards if the CPU is in Man Coverage, for instance.). Money plays are alive and well – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The other issue that plagues this game is the idiotic Free Agency process and logic of the CPU. After the latest update you will see that LeVeon Bell becomes a free agent (which is nice), but then I see him get signed by the Cardinals… the same Cardinals that already have David Johnson. I rolled my eyes when I saw the signing during this latest run with the Browns (I used the Cloud Franchise to start my season in Week 12 or so). It doesn’t stop there, unfortunately.

By the time the draft comes around and after I see Bell get signed by the Cardinals the idiocy continues in the draft. I am convinced that the CPU is programmed to look at your Draft Board and make picks that will push you to take certain players earlier than you should if you want them. While I enjoy the idea of this at face value I am also annoyed by the relative troll mentality.

Furthermore, Franchise Mode continues to gut the experience and immersion that should be the primary focus of the mode itself. There is no living breathing league for you to enjoy – its as stale as the cereal at your grandparents’ house. The ‘News’ section is hidden in the depths of the CFM menu and it’s basically a bunch of crappy tweets from Captain Obvious with a few half-assed tips about the draft class. I don’t understand how this mode continues to be included in the game if they obviously don’t care about it from the revenue perspective. The effort all goes into Ultimate Team and the cash cow that it has become.

Madden continues to be the distant second place in sports games for me as MLB The Show maintains a clear advantage in consistent efforts to improve. Both games are going towards the Ultimate Team/Diamond Dynasty slippery slope, but I still have hope that Franchise Mode will become what I have dreamed for over the years. I doubt I will get this for Christmas… but I can always hope.

Madden Needs A Coaching Carousel

The biggest aspect that seems to be missing from Madden that was one of the most enjoyable aspects in NCAA Football for years is a coaching carousel. Throughout the year without fail all sorts of coaches meet their doom. Whether it is on Black Monday after the final week of the regular season, or just after the halfway point of the season as we saw with Hue Jackson this week (THANK YOU, FOOTBALL GOD!).

carousel

Madden NFL needs to add two aspects to their Franchise Mode if they hope to continue building it up. They need to bring in offensive and defensive coordinators as well as position coaches (some of these can even be fictionalized). Once you bring this aspect into the game it can more easily flow into opening up a coaching carousel like that in the NCAA Football games of yore.

Imagine opening your career as an offensive or defensive coordinator and building your resume after a year or two. Maybe you can take the Bills or 49ers defense from the depths of terribad and build them into a beast with your amazing skills. The unfortunate aspect is that your team is doing poorly and the head coach gets fired in week 12. Suddenly, the ownership wants to bring you up a notch to coach the team and make the big decision on both sides of the ball and determine the depth chart in full. As you make a splash to finish the season with a few wins you might not want to stick with the team you’ve been struggling with. The end of the season comes and the Jaguars have finished a lackluster campaign and you are now their number one target. What do they have to offer you outside of a great defense and some weapons on offense (that aren’t named Bortles… *shudders*). That would be pretty awesome. What would make it better?

I think the next step in making it an experience to build multiple seasons and truly view it as a career mode would be making the role of General Manager something you have to earn. Instead of being the owner, GM, and coach from the get-go, you should be given different offers from different teams as you play through your career. One of those options should be GM/Coach offers (much like what Belichick does and some other coaches have done in some cases). You would pay so much more attention to the draft if you weren’t put in charge of the scouting as just a head coach that had to take the players you got… or deal with players being traded.

Until that day comes, we will have to continue to create and maintain house rules to make our career mode more interesting.

Do you have other ideas for franchise mode? Hit up the comment button to share!

Madden 19 Sliders and House Rules

It’s been a rather busy month or two leading up to the release of Madden 19. That hasn’t stopped me from getting some much needed slider adjustments and tuning done for Franchise Mode.

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Madden has continuously put me in a position where I feel like I should be playing on All Madden for difficulty. The problem with that is All Madden forces you to cheese and play in an un-sim sort of way because the CPU resorts to cheating and thus resulting in the paradox of who cheated who first?… or is it ‘whom’?

Regardless, these sliders are for

Franchise Mode

All Pro Difficulty

13 Minute Quarters

accelerated play clock set to 14 seconds.

Human Sliders

QB Acc – 50

Pass Block – 55

WR Catch – 50

Run Block – 51

Fumbles – 50

Pass Def – 50

Interceptions – 50

Tackling – 45 (I might take this slightly lower as it seems to directly correlate with Run Defense)

CPU Sliders

QB Acc – 50

Pass Blocking – 53

WR Catching – 50

Run Blocking – 100

Fumbles – 50

Pass Def Reaction – 50

Interceptions – 50

Pass Coverage – 50

Tackling – 50

Special Teams

Set Punt Accuracy to 100 all others at 50

Game Options –

Injuries – 10

Fatigue – 70

Min Player Speed Thresh – 45

Auto Subs

Position In/Out

QB = 95/65

HB = 100/95

WR = 94/80

FB/TE = 90/77

OL = 95/70

DT = 100/90

DE =96/84

LB = 96/85

CB = 95/83

S = 98/82

House Rules Are Simple.

You can’t trade for any first round pick without including at least an 80+ OVR player under 30 years old and a 2nd and 5th OR a 3rd and 4th rounder.

No editing players in the draft class with intent of drafting them late in the draft.

Pick as many different plays as you can throughout the game. This will give you a better experience rather than using money plays. It will keep games close and give you a bit more information on which players you have that you might want to keep or let go.

Make your own rules if you have to in order to stay honest and keep the game fresh.

FINAL THOUGHT

Madden 19 is probably my favorite Madden to date. There are some things that need to be tuned and patched, no doubt. However, it is excellent in terms of player movement and is getting better with playcalling, it still has a lot of room to grow, but it is growing.

Also, please don’t user control your WRs. Let the AI make the catches and you will be amazed at some of the great animations. I am about 50/50 on controlling DBs on passing plays.

IT’S MADDEN SEASON!!!!

Lamar Jackson and How EA Continues To Screw Up Franchise Mode

EA recently released a list of the top rookie quarterbacks in their annual hype train countdown to the release of Madden. This year, they slipped up and unintentionally commented on their simulation formula for Franchise Mode.

‘Lamar Jackson could be the most interesting QB to play as in Madden 19. If you sim a lot of games in Franchise, he’s likely not the best pick at the moment. But holy hell, his base ratings make him fun…’ for more, go to the page here.

NFL: Baltimore Ravens-Minicamp

The issue with this isn’t that Lamar Jackson shouldn’t be rated higher or lower than anyone else. It is simply the fact that they reference his effectiveness in Franchise Mode to his ratings. What should continue to worry CFM players is this continuing problem with CFM being tied to overall ratings. This would be like saying that Michael Vick would be fun to play with but he wouldn’t do much for a team in a simulation. I’m not saying that Lamar Jackson is Michael Vick, but he is damn close.

This means that EA has not changed their formula of what is important in CFM. It is still driven by OVR. This means you won’t have any players that are low rated to start become anything close to superstars. It also means that the CPU is actually at a competitive disadvantage. As users, we are able to see certain players with abilities that we can take advantage of – speed, trucking, throw accuracy, hit power, etc. We can turn a 6th round 67 OVR player into an absolute beast. The CPU will either cut the player or never play them in a simulation. Take a look at the practice squads in your Madden 18 CFM – the CPU has some BEASTS that never get a chance to play. Many of us would snap up these players in a heartbeat.

Until EA makes Madden CFM more nuanced and less dependent on overall ratings I have a feeling we will continue to experience a rather mechanical and less organic CFM experience.

The Sprint Button Is Your Enemy – Madden 19

Out of all the buttons and functions that Madden NFL has implemented (even the half-hearted ‘read tackle’ in Madden 18) there are few that have caused the gameplay more quality than the sprint button (R2 on PS4 and RT on XBox One).

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After playing too many games to count I decided to start playing with less use of the sprint button in my games against the CPU. I couldn’t believe how much this little thing changed the entire experience. All those times where I felt that my user controlled player was being cheated out of a presumably big play I realized that it was because I pressed the R2 button either too early or simply pressing it altogether.

A few things happen when you press the R2 button on offense. If you are using a QB on a pass play it will put you into a scrambling mode where your passes will generally be less accurate (this is actually a good thing). The other aspect that tends to drastically change your experience is that it seems to cause the CPU to rush the QB like a beacon. While this makes some sense as most defensive players would start focusing on a dangerous scramble – it feels too much like a homing beacon. This is where the real issue comes into play.

You will notice the biggest issue on offense when you are controlling the running back and press the sprint button. It will cause the defense to essentially speed up and focus completely on the ball carrier. The blocking from your AI teammates will break down faster and it will essentially dismantle your play before it ever gets up and running (no pun intended).

By using the left analog stick and staying away from the sprint button you will see a few things happen. The blocks will be better and the defense will actually react in a way that feels realistic instead of some version of mind reading monsters from Dark Souls.

Where I actually noticed the best function change was on defense. By using the left stick in tandem with the defensive engagement moves, swim moves, etc. it was like a different game. It felt smooth and actually made defense enjoyable!

If you press the sprint button on defense you will see the QB do all sorts of crazy stuff (including intentional grounding that is never called by the atrocious penalty system that hasn’t changed since Madden 96). Every aspect of your defensive experience is generally ruined by using the sprint button. Even the truck stick is better without it!

Give this a shot as you prepare for Madden 19. You won’t regret it!

Draft Logic Must Improve With Schemes and Archetypes – Madden 19

The one question no one seems to be asking is whether EA Tiburon has fixed the broken draft logic prior to Madden 19. As everyone (including yours truly) got jacked about the announcement that Madden 19 would have custom draft classes we seemed to forget that there were quite a few issues under the hood that needed to be fixed before anything was added. Ezekiel-Elliott-Madden-NFL-18-Wishlist

First and foremost, one of the biggest problems that Madden CFM has faced since forever has been lackluster draft logic by CPU teams. A lot of this issue comes from what seems to be a lacking interaction between CPU logic between team needs and coach schemes. If you pay attention in your CFM you will see what we see every year – coaches get fired and players age/retire. The breakdown in Madden draft logic stems from this moment and then snowballs as each draft pick is made.

This means that no matter how great your custom draft class might be, it will most likely be thwarted by an AI that is too stupid to use it wisely.

Coaching schemes to this point haven’t changed how a team fluctuates between coaches. If the CPU controlled Browns were to fire Hue Jackson and his West Coast scheme and bring in someone with a Power Run or Vertical Pass scheme it wouldn’t change their draft logic from the initial setting under Jackson. This means scouting players by archetypes as the user will work nicely if you follow those relative guidelines. The CPU will not follow that same logic if you go by what history has shown us.

It leaves me with a bit of a pit in my stomach as I think about how great Madden could be if the basic functions were sound. Sadly, I have a feeling that we will have to pump the brakes on the hype train as it rolls into the station this summer.

It won’t stop me from creating draft classes that will be focused on OBJECTIVE FUNCTION through fiction rather than subjective replication of potential draft classes in real life. I doubt many people outside of Tennessee Volunteer fans would have given a star or superstar rating to Alvin Kamara prior to the beginning of the 2017 season. That same logic will be present in the NoobTubeTV draft classes for Madden 19.

Creating Your Best Connected Franchise Mode Starts With YOU – Madden 19

As we impatiently wait for the next two months for Madden 19 to release there are some things we can certainly prepare for in the meantime when it comes to this game. This is going to be a long article and I hope you’ve taken your hype pills – because it’s about to get textually exciting!

Franchise Mode Is Draft Mode –

Ever since sports games introduced multiple seasons and franchise mode in general it has always been driven by the existence of a draft. The action of finding new great players for your team is really what drives most people to play this. Sure, there are existing players that you want to use in game – maybe it is simply a rookie that you want to make into the greatest of all time (GOAT)… please be Baker Mayfield in real life…. annnnd I’m back.

The fact of the matter is that you are going to have to police yourself when it comes to creating a draft class. Here are some basic observations and house rules I already have in place to keep CFM as fresh as possible before I get close to installing Madden 19.

Development Traits Dictate Everything

Much like potential ratings of the past, development ratings will continue to be the driving factor in determining if you have made the best selection in the draft. My problem with doing this in Madden is that it is much like drafting Ryan Leaf back in 1998. If you drafted a player with what most people said from simply the athletic ability alone – sure, he might have made a lot of sense. Madden still hasn’t incorporated any sort of real leadership or personality traits. I feel like this is the next step that may never be taken, sadly.

In creating your draft class it will be crucial to be selective if you choose to give development traits that are outside of ‘Normal’. The danger will be in that you will have a leg up on the competition to select any of these top players with low round grades that happen to have Superstar development. This is why I am pushing for a dialed back draft class creation that will start with every player being given a development trait of Normal. It only makes sense for these new players to prove who they are in by showing it on the field and once the CFM engine starts for the pre-season.

Scouting – It’s Still Too Easy

I have set up my own house rules for scouting because Madden still has yet to create a scouting system with any sort of fluidity. This generally leaves most ‘discovered’ ratings to be set in stone. Some players on the news wire throughout the season might have their story dictate an injury or something else that takes them down a notch in development, etc. Once you know this, it becomes easy to pick apart each draft class.

You should still be scouting players based on matching your coach scheme to keep your efforts focused from the outset. After that, it is as crucial – if not more crucial in all honesty to focus on which positions you need to fill with young talent. It is most important for the sake of keeping your CFM challenging and realistic that you full scout each prospect once you open one of their ratings. I truly believe that this will keep you honest within your draft experience as well. Some highly ranked players will scout out terribly, and that generally will stand to pass that they are terrible players.

THIS IS WHY CFM NEEDS TO CREATE SCOUTING DEPARTMENTS AND REGIONAL SCOUTS!!!! (Sorry to yell, but this is something that could be awesome, and I don’t understand why it hasn’t been done to this point.)

Hording Draft Picks… It’s Over –

It’s hard to be honest with yourself once you start finding glitches in games that eventually become a subconscious pattern that you manipulate for your own gains. In a game like Dark Souls I have to say I understand and might even condone it to a point. However, it is still far too easy to trade for high draft picks in Madden.

I believe my house rules from Madden 18 are among the best out there to keep you honest while still maintaining some semblance of running your own fictional world in CFM.

Draft Pick Limitations – You can only hold a limited amount of picks in each draft. The rules for your draft pick amounts are somewhat complicated, but they will make for a better experience.

Maximum of 13 picks in any draft
You can have two first round picks for up to two years in a row
If you end up with three first round picks during any draft you must trade one of them to a division opponent for their lowest pick in the next season’s draft.
You cannot draft two QBs in two consecutive rounds
You cannot draft more than two QBs, HBs, or TEs in any draft

The last aspect we will be covering today involves the draft class itself.

Rookie Ratings Should Never Be Maxed Out (Or Bottomed Out)

It is going to be vital for any decent custom draft class to be balanced with players that have great ratings in key areas as well as poor ratings in key areas. The idea here is that no player should be created in the draft class with a ratings of 99 in any category. This goes for speed and arm strength. The entirety of CFM is really based around development – so why would you create any player that doesn’t need to develop?

It will be important to give some players low ratings as well. There might be a QB you want to create from a small school that has to develop from a 65 OVR into an all time great. That is what CFM should really be about. One of the aspects that Madden 18 finally did a good job of was making it harder to do things like this if a QB had poor accuracy, etc. You need to create low rated players for the sake of your CFM and to give some stories to follow if you choose to pay attention.

There will be more updates on custom draft class guides as we get closer to Madden 19’s release. Stay tuned!

Draft Logic And Custom Draft Classes – Madden 19

As the news about custom draft classes hit me I could hardly stand it. Being happy about a CFM Feature was new to me. Any work on CFM that wasn’t surface level was something I had yet to see. However, certain things take time to marinade and allow logic to creep through instant happiness. Suddenly, I felt the pain of reality and the question hit me like a ton of bricks.

Have they fixed draft logic?

NFL: 2014 NFL Draft

The biggest problem with all Franchise Modes in almost every game is that they are flawed from the outset. The user can see good players and snatch them up whenever they want to when it comes to free agency. Once you get to scouting (what scouting?) and then the draft itself in Madden the AI doesn’t really seem to put as much thought into the most important off-season aspect as it should. It’s generally pretty easy to find hidden gems and such in the draft through the broken scouting system (for reference, take a look at the house rules developed for Madden 18). I have come up with a theoretical fix as we wait another two months for Madden 19 to come out.

Normal Should Be The Default Development Trait

While most of this depends on how often a development trait will change during a season, I would suggest that all players be changed to Normal as well. This will be one of my goals in Madden 19. I have been wishing for custom and shareable draft classes for quite some time. While some of you will undoubtedly be looking for real-world draft classes, I will be editing and creating fictional classes for multiple reasons. The development trait being set to normal is a big part of that. The other is that it will take away a lot of wasted time editing names, schools and such just to create a subjective rating that would be debated and scrutinized. I will be happy to try out a few of those classes, but that won’t be my focus.

Rookies Should Never Have A Default Overall Above 84 In CFM

Rookies are unproven talent. That’s it… period. I will be editing my rookie classes to not only have Normal development traits, but also in a manner that will see an even spread of OVR ratings that won’t pollute the CFM with a bunch of 90-99 players by season three or four.

I will be keeping a close watch on what else is announced in regards to CFM and especially fixes to the logic engine that I fear will still see minimal effort for yet another year.

Stay Tuned

Madden 19 Will Continue To Be MUT Focused

For those of you that joined in my cheers about the initial announcements regarding Madden 19’s Franchise Mode – please don’t get too hyped. If you look at the pre-order bonuses and such, this game is still obviously focused on the cash cow that is Ultimate Team. In being focused on MUT, there are things that quite simply will NEVER change in terms of gameplay. madden 19 cover

If you watch any of the YouTubers or Twitch guys that post pack opening reactions and footage of them playing online MUT matchups you will see that there is good reason for EA Tiburon to keep the game as loose and arcade-like as possible. I will admit, I have watched a few of the pack opening videos from various YouTube personalities and I feel like I am basically watching a hyped up commercial on EA’s Home Shopping Network. I’m not hating on what makes these people happy or gives them YouTube success – keep doing you and get that YouTube money before they decide to find a reason to kick you off the pay platform.

What I find disconcerting is when Madden continues to push a mode that doesn’t encourage gameplay to become more realistic by default. MUT is not and will never be a mode that encourages Tiburon to make Man to Man coverage a true representation of what we see on Sundays (Thursdays, and Monday’s) in the fall. I can appreciate this aspect as sometimes it gets frustrating in any game to feel like you aren’t controlling the actions of the primary character at any given time. MUT has to remain focused on player control and the arcade style that brings the money well after the game has released.

However, why is it that spin moves and jukes from players result in locked animations from tacklers three yards away? Why do we continue to see AI make gameplay decisions that would baffle a 5 year old? It’s a continuing sign of what EA Tiburon has a true problem replicating – 11 on 11 football. Every time you play against a human opponent it becomes a 1 on 1 matchup, not a true football game. Consider this the next time you switch to the DB in coverage during a long pass down the field. Sure, it’s supposed to be a game that you play, but it doesn’t bode well for those of us that want some semblance of real football.

The spin, juke and other break tackle functions in Madden 18 were so overpowered and glitched simply from the interaction and animation system that I stopped playing the game in early December. I played a few MUT games and even won a championship, etc. At the end of the day, I wanted to play simulation football in CFM (OFFLINE) and I was greeted by such an artificially weak CPU opponent that I couldn’t justify booting up the game.

What do you think? Are you a MUT player or a Sim Football purist? Will the history dictate your purchase of Madden 19?