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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The last aspect we will be covering today involves the draft class itself.
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!
As we near the NFL Draft in a matter of days it is starting to leak out of the rumor mill that Madden will be focusing on ramping up the quality of Franchise Mode. Hopefully this means we can expect a bit more depth in terms of how the mode is represented in a few different ways.
Because EA is the Johnny Manziel of sports game developers.
They have tried to change how free agency works from the Auction system a few years ago to making offers before advancing and hoping the guy you wanted chose your low-ball offer. Between bad financial logic and worse player and team logic – Madden hasn’t exactly been a beacon of realism for wanna-be GMs.
They must find a way to push gamers in this mode to eventually spend their money on veterans without looking at every 28 and 29 year old player like they are going to become Stephen Hawking at the age of 30. Yes, there is certainly a youth movement in the thinking of NFL General Managers. Yes, this means that drafting top talent over keeping ‘aging’ players is a common strategy. It doesn’t mean that Madden should get a pass in making players in their late-20s and early 30s relevant in Franchise Mode.
On top of the age nosedive in terms of player ratings, the other aspect that needs the most help in Madden is the Draft and Scouting.
Scouting has quite simply been a lazy effort by the developers. It isn’t difficult to find the superstar players later in the draft. It isn’t hard to find the busts in the first round. By the time you figured out the scouting dynamics in Madden 17 you were more than okay with the point reversal in Madden 18 that was supposed to make that aspect more challenging. All you need to do is look for the first rating to be a B+ or higher and you are on your way. It’s not rocket science… and that makes for an insanely boring experience that is arguably one of the most involved and talked about in all of sports.
They must address the lack of immersion in our experience week by week. There is ZERO immersion in Franchise Mode from an overall league perspective. There is no feeling for the salary cap when it comes to managing the team. There is no excitement in Franchise Mode… NONE. The Super Bowl has been the same stupid celebration and musical experience for years.
Madden 18 was the final straw for me as a Madden fan in a lot of ways. It was the only Madden I have stopped playing before the Super Bowl was over. It says more about the staying power of Franchise Mode than anything else.
Madden Ultimate Team has killed what made Madden a fun experience for those of us that don’t enjoy online sports gaming. I am hoping that Madden 19 will make good on their chance to convince me to buy this game as a pre-order for the sake of giving my annual guides for all of you out there.
After more than a few years playing through numerous Franchise Modes in Madden, MLB The Show and NBA 2K it is apparent to me that the only truly important rating for a young player in Franchise Mode is ‘Potential’. It is also one of the more argued about topics on sports gaming forums as well.
I have found that in simulating multiple seasons of MLB 18 (as well as older iterations) that the primary decider for a player becoming a superstar is potential. It often has nothing to do with performance or statistics – take a look at the performance of some older players like Nelson Cruz as you play through a few seasons. While they are still performing at a high level, they will suddenly see a huge drop off in ratings like contact and power as they age by a year… even if they hit 50 home runs the season before.
I have noticed that players with A potential are almost certain to be a lock for being s superstar in all three sports games. Madden has a bad habit of making their franchise overall rating system as broken as anything else they put a number on in terms of ratings.
In the end, my view of the Potential Rating is not that it should go away completely. I believe it needs to be molded to fit each game and sport. Players generally fit into a few different categories of being high potential. While Andrew Benintendi is no doubt a top level young talent, I don’t see him the same way I see Aaron Judge. I believe that potential needs to be weighed more towards player type and player role in all sports games.
It shouldn’t be as simple as saying Player A should be a 99 Overall and Player B should be a 91 Overall in terms of potential. There are some truly once-in-a-generation athletes like LeBron James that defy almost all limitations and are great at almost every aspect of their respective sport.
While a baseball player might look like a 5-Tool prospect, the reality of this is usually that they will be more like a 2 to hopefully 4-Tool guy. As we play through more seasons of our favorite sports games it becomes easier to focus on the potential rating as the most important number by which we judge a player… unless you are talking about age… quite possibly the most lopsided and biased determiner of ratings decline in any version of a sports game.
Although we are able to edit the ratings of players manually in many of our Franchise Mode experiences, we shouldn’t have to take over where the number crunchers have failed us. It is really as simple as applying a new descriptor to each player that highlights their role to a team. This should be a fluid and dynamic description that also serves as a way to lift morale for players on the team. I would like to see the death of potential ratings as numbers and have them become more in-tune with how we look at the changing landscape of players in every sport.