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Madden 2004 - Sim Franchise Owner?
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an extremely in-depth interview with Madden 2004 producer Jeremy Strauser, courtesy of Sports-gaming.com. One of the more interesting confirmations is of a new 'Owner Mode' for the seminal sports title, described as "....comprised of setting prices, staff, assistant coach, training staff, facilities, building a new stadium. All that has a symbiotic relationship with prices, attendance, performance, and wins and losses." Strauser even says that the programmers/testers "jokingly called the game 'Sim Owner'..", but it's clear the main concentration is still on the actual football, including making online play fairer.
Til Madden '04 comes out, I've been obsessively playing Championship Manager 4, a football* game with similar concerns...
linky
*if by football you mean soccer
That's not a cost item, is it?
Oh, you mean "Bribing and blackmailing the mayor to build you a new stadium," right?
"This team's gonna be the Chattanooga Choo-Choos next year, ifn ya don't build us a new stadium!"
Sports politics, gotta love it.
We have rules to the extent that we limit play selection (for guys who want to go for it on their own 7-yard line on fourth down). Gamers won't be able to select offensive plays in certain situations. We'll also restrict the guys who like to move players around. Those guys who take a WR and put him at TE and move him way out in a formation, or a guy who uses fast wide receivers on the defensive line. It's the non-standard stuff the game is going to restrict. But the game has some real creative guys and I have to hand it to them. They are really good at exploiting every aspect. What we try to do is take out stuff we can't normally see in a football game.
While I love this game, I also don't feel comfortable when I hear these things that I interpret as arbitrary tweaks to cover up faults in the system.
For example, a local Econ professor did some research on decision-making and figured out that most teams are punting way too much. I chalked it up to traditional football thinking, and over a beer, he told me a little anecdote. Apparently in an old Madden game, gamers were going for it very successfully on 4th down(1). Once Madden heard about this, he thought it was "horrible" and the game engine was claimed to have been tweaked to make converting 4th downs artificially harder.
And why not play a WR as TE? There's Teyo Johnson drafted out of Stanfurd who's doing just that, IIRC from a Sporting News article. And it's not a stretch of my imagination to see Tony Gonzalez as a decent WR. Heck sometimes I draw up plays just for him so that I don't have to go and invest in an extra player....
When the developer says that he wants to restrict non-standard stuff, I simply don't feel comfortable. Admittedly they have done a great job in letting Michael Vick lead the league in my 2002 franchise running (well almost) and passing (rating-wise) but I think that basing player behavior on NFL teams is a less optimal result than I would prefer.
(1) In The Hidden Game of Football by Carroll, et al, the success rate on 4th down is quoted at 49% (p.23, revised ed.)
I play simsports online, franchise mode has been slowly moving to simsports, even so much as being able to randomly create every player in the league with names, stats and progression, and assign him to a team.
(World Series Baseball 2k3, College Football 2k3)
The questions as you move into realism is, do you start having "injurys" via courtdates? Do you have teams relocate? Add how Sportswriters, and Fans feel about you? Your players?
Sure, it would be a blast, but when is enough?
I feel as though if you have Randy Moss on your team, you should lose him for 3 weeks for his court dates.
It's only fair. The Vikings must deal with that, you must too!
http://use.perl.org
Why don't they just program in realistic consequences for making dumb decisions? For example, you wouldn't play your WR on the defensive line in real life because they would be too tired to play offense, wouldn't have the skills to get around a OL, and would probably get mauled and possibly hurt because they would be giving up about 100 pounds. Certain players could excel out of position though...for example Leon Johnson the backup RB for the Bears played QB in high school and I think for a short time in college. He should play QB better than say Curtis Martin who never played QB and has only thrown 3-4 option passes ever in the NFL.
Of course, all of this would take research and work, and it's a lot easier to be a lazy programmer and just say YOU CANT DO THAT. I realize that all the players have a passing/running rating etc. They never seem very realistic and maybe they should use a more robust system to rate the players.
I remember NFL2k1 use to let you play everyone out of position but they were more likely to get hurt. Seems like a fair enough trade off.
I might actually purchase this game. I've never liked the Madden series. But this sounds interesting. (I personally love the idea of black mailing the mayor of cities to build me a new stadium).
- Not enough special options. You cannot run a proper play action pass, draw play, or reverse. An option pitch would be neat as well.
- Cannot use custom playbooks for audibles. I've just started using audibles regularly, and this one REALLY frustrates me.
- Can't send players in motion.
The problems with the defensive playbook are worse. It's really hard to test defensive plays designed for specific situations, there needs to be a way to set the play for the opposition in practice and testing (applies to offensive plays too). With custom defensive plays, pretty much all minor audibles, such as line and LB shifts, do not work.A few other things: switching players on defense is my #1 cause of blown plays. I think what is needed is an option to set a delay between when your player icon switches to a new player, and when your control switches, say half a second. That way you wouldn't accidentally move a player in good position the wrong direction because you thought you were selecting someone else. Maybe better AI in player switching is needed as well.
All in all I'm looking forward to 2004. However, I'm worried that the lack of press concerning the playbook editors (one of the reasons I started my site is that there does not seem to be any similar sites sharing custom plays!) means that there will be little improved in this area.
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
Wow, great! Owner Mode!
I've only been playing games like this for years and years already, most of them text-based and many of them free.
If EA handles hardcore management the way they've handled their "sports sims" over the last few years (the degredation of their NHL series in particular is sickening, considering how dead-on it used to be), I imagine they will turn off all kinds of people from managing sims for years and years to come.
Here are some of the best-established sports management sims still out there (for those curious):
EastSide Hockey Manager **http://eastside.peliplaneetta.net/**
Front Office Football **http://www.solecismic.com/fof/index.html**
Out of the Park Baseball **http://www.ootp4.com/**
And of course the ever-revered Championship Manager series (fun fact, the man responsible for EastSide Hockey Manager is now working on a commaerical hockey manager product for the company that brought you Championship Manager).
I always have infinitely more-fun with managerial sims than the normal mainstream action-based sports games, and hopefully there's enough of a base there to ensure there will be many management sims for years to come...
-- Primis.