neugey

For those of you who saw Twitter trending on #NFLdropEA this weekend and not in the know … if you are wondering what Madden did to draw such ire that there is now a mass movement to get the NFL to cancel their exclusive rights deal with EA, here is a quick summary. If you care about the NFL or its future viability, you should really know about these events. These are 21 current reasons (in no particular order) why Madden should be dropped by the NFL as its sole licensed simulation football game:


1. Madden is not a simulation game. The Madden 20 championship, which is supposed to be the height of competitive play, awarded 6 figures in prize money and a bejeweled belt to the grand champion of the tournament. A player who NEVER even passed the ball in the championship game, or the entire tournament, earned the prize! How is Madden simulating football when it’s #1 player never passed the ball last year? It’s utter hypocrisy!


2. In spite of #1, the NFL and EA agreed on a 5-year extension to their exclusivity deal, which assured that EA is the only company that is permitted to make an NFL-licensed simulation football game until 2025 (2026 if certain financial targets are met). EA pulled the wool over the NFL’s eyes (or simply flashed enough dollars) to continue to make the game they have proven over the last decade they can’t really make. This endorsement of EA by the NFL is really hurting the brand and ruining goodwill for NFL fans who love video games! America is a free-market, and the gaming marketplace is one that stagnates very badly without competition.


3. EA Sports employees have blocked many people on Twitter only because those persons offered actionable, constructive criticism of the game. Several of these people were former “Gamechangers” … a program EA used to have that was supposed to be a gamer steering committee of sorts. Over the 2010’s, this program was gradually neutered and delegitimized; it is now basically a closed circle of persons who do nothing but go on stream and hock Madden’s card packs and DLC.


4. EA Sports employees have openly criticized the football gaming community – their own customers! – on Twitter. The community have been called “clowns” or “young bucks” for offering critique or suggestions. They’ve created a divisive and holier-than-thou attitude, telling customers to “try again” when responding to a fair criticism.



5. Misconduct by professional Madden gamers is often not properly or promptly addressed. Racists slurs including the ‘N’ word have been used by championship contenders, and the discipline measures from EA are often very minor or very delayed.



6. Madden 21 just earned a 0.4 out of 10 Metacritic user score. That is among the worst user scores on a game not just for sports titles, but in video game history! The consolidated review score for professional critics is down to 62 out of 100. That is a really bad score considering the professional game media tends to inflate major sports titles scores substantially.


7. The game is riddled with “money plays” that are virtually impossible to stop, and “nano blitzes” that can instantly sack a QB before making even completing his dropback. Because of the glitchy gameplay and the meta, less than 5% of any playbook is even usable if you try to play Madden. Again, that makes Madden a lousy simulation game.


8. Relating to the #FixMaddenFranchise tag that was trending in recent weeks, the Franchise mode of gameplay has been badly neglected for the last 10 years. Many features of this game mode have been removed from this game mode, without any explanation and never to return. In the 2000’s, this was the mode upon which Madden built it’s empire and is still the most popular mode by far among longtime fans. But now it’s in shambles, because EA neglects that mode in favor of Madden Ultimate Team and other modes that are monetized and force the customer to spend additional real-world money on card packs or DLC.


9. The Ultimate Team mode is a gateway to get players, particularly minors, to spend extra money on the game and open virtual packs to gamble for highly rated player cards. In recent editions, particularly Madden 21, Madden has tweaked the marketing to go harder and harder after minors, using comic-book/WWE/Pokemon styled art, coloring and verbiage.


10. Madden 21, like recent Madden games, launched with huge bugs. Sometimes the game will break and all the players will have rainbow-colored helmets, or have the wrong uniform. There is even a bug in which all the numbers and yard markers disappear from the field and you cannot get them back without restarting the game.


11. Madden is renowned for having arguably some of the worst online connectivity issues in the whole gaming industry. “Desync” errors occasionally interrupt online games at random. “Disconnect glitches” also are a continual problem and have already been reported in Madden 21. The disconnect glitch is a major cheat as some players are able to find a way to quit out of a game in such a way that they get the win and the opponent gets the losses, regardless of who was winning at the time.


12. Madden has a highly toxic culture in their competitive community. This was no more evident than during the tragic Jacksonville shooting in 2018 at a Madden event that resulted in 3 deaths. The gunman was a gamer who had serious mental health issues but clearly the horrible tournament culture also escalated his depravity. After about 6-10 months after the tragedy, the shock eventually wore off and the community went back to being just as cut-throat and nasty as it ever was.


13. Madden 21 recently had a terrible launch, one of the worst major game launches of recent memory. A lot of customers were frozen and couldn’t play major sections of the game at all. Some customers who had pre-ordered extra content had major delays in receiving the content. Some are still waiting now for EA to sort it out apparently.


14. Morbidly expensive DLC content and packs. It’s not unusual for EA to sell a bundle of packs that you would need to pay $100 real-world currency for. Unless you luck out and manage to pull an amazing card, you’ll often be left with cards that might be worth $5 at most, looking at it objectively. Also take note that the game resets every August and none of these purchases carry over to the next Madden version. It’s highway robbery, but one that EA gets away with due to the need for highly rated cards to be used for the Madden competitive scene and tournaments.


15. Madden 21 and recent versions have had extraordinarily ball physics bugs that show up occasionally. One is where a football rests on a players helmet and no player can retrieve it. Another is where players can only kick the football around like a soccer ball. Another one has the football bouncing a hundred feet in the air after a simple pass deflection. A lot of this is due to the fact that EA made the terrible decision years ago to switch Madden to the Frostbite game engine, which was developed primarily for first-person shooting games, not sports.


16. Madden 21 seems even worse than ever with regard to player models warping and shifting through one another with regularity. It’s common for a defender to morph right through an offensive linemen in order to sack or tackle you. It’s even more common for a runner to pass right through a defender’s body part and keep on running without being affected or stumbling. Conversely, you can get tackled by a player who was many inches away from actually touching you.


17. Madden has gradually taken away a player’s controller skill and is more dominated by the graphic animations that happen to get selected by the game during a play. Player ratings have much less meaning as well since the game often boils down to which player animation is triggered at a key time.


18. Core elements are missing from presentation. No coin toss, referees, cheerleaders or mascots. These used to be available in Madden or other classic football games, but were gradually removed.


19. Ball trajectory is way too low in Madden 21, and has been for the last several years. Even when you lob the ball, it doesn’t loft high in the air at all. This makes common passes such as fades impossible to execute in the game. This is absurd considering past games dating back to the Sega Genesis era often had lob passes with proper height and arc.


20. Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment(DDA) is a conspiracy theory of sorts, but one that carries some weight. The idea behind this is that EA will script game events (like a fumble recovery for TD) at various times based solely on trying to retain player interest. They are theoretically making events happen in the game outside of normal player skill and game mechanics to try to make a player not give up on a game or play again right away or get addicted to the gameplay. The proof hasn’t been substantial enough to stick to EA yet, but if proven someday it will result in major controversy because you should not have a competitive sport for real world money being played out where the game itself is sporadically rigging outcomes and taking wins/losses out of tournament competitors’ hands.


21. Madden has drawn criticism in recent years for adding new game modes that almost no one anticipated or asked for, instead of working on fixing/improving the game moves that are already popular and need attention. Examples of this over the last 5 years are Longshot, Face of the Franchise, and (this year) The Yard.
Sorry for the long read, but it needed to be said. If this isn’t enough to convince you to pick a side, I’m not sure what is.

frydaddy

Yep. The game hasn't gotten any better in the last 10 years. You pay $60 a year for updated rosters and jerseys. When they do try to introduce new mechanics the result is a buggy mess. I finally quit buying it in 2016 and I haven't missed it. The Madden franchise is just one of many sins that EA commits against the gaming community. They abandoned quality for quantity and the ability to dupe people (mostly kids) into spending hundreds of dollars through microtransactions with most of their titles. A practice that some countries have officially categorized as gambling and therefore illegal since a large portion of their target audience are children. I started boycotting all EA titles in 2017 and I encourage any and all gamers to do the same.

Mais forte do que a morte

dizzle88

My favourite Madden was 07 for ps2/xbox.

As soon as it went Next Gen and they started caring about Graphics more than gameplay I quickly fell out of love with it.

Now I watch stream videos and find myself perplexed that people pay all that money for such a terrible looking experience.

The running, catching and tackling animations are just laughable.

To the point where I'd rather spend to get an old gen console and a copy of NCAA / Madden 07, than buy a recent Madden.

RaginCajun83

Haven’t played the game in years, good info about this years game though

Rugby Saint II

Pong is a much better game for you gamers. Give it a try sometime.

rezburna

All this.

Vrillon82

I played alot of Madden in recent years and its only bad online, but thats where I prefer.

Adding to the championship EA does, what really makes me question the whole competition is how many of these players do things that look like I and many others was beating at times when playing online. Then all the matchups in those competitions usually end in blows outs or 2 score wins at the least, the competition format or how players get to that point seem a little sketchy, even though im not the best or even could ever be aggressive competitive player in Madden, it just seems some of those players are weak at best in comparison to alot of others i have ran into in recent years.

The DDA is certainly real, use to be a huge argument I had in 20, (never played 21 as it seems the same as 20 and 19). But their is too much computer simulation to ever make a fair competitive game between 2 players, hence the reason for why the madden competitions seem so crap. Its not just computer simulation as much as it is the BS abilities some uncontrolled CPU's can have in the game. Then their is alot of it where the QB will be the reason you lose despite doing the right thing. Like over throwing a wide open WR, Inaccurate pass (which last season Baker Mayfield did alot of on Madden), on top of all the exploits that completely is broken like Gale Sayers for example.

I use to do alot of Drafts, you be surprised how much 2-3 players coming up or not coming up was going to make or break how your games would end up going.

What I never quite understood but never saw enough competition videos is why certain plays like Mesh, TE Attack, or WR Screen never got any use?

Latest article
http://www.bubblews.com/news/2154835-is-the-nfl-trying-to-manufacture-another-dynasty-like-we-saw-with-the-patriots