Madden: Editing Player Ratings in Franchise - Need Your Thoughts

[falconfansince81]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hova57

overall it seems everyone is in agreement that if the progression and regression worked like its suppose to taking age, talent level and contracts into consideration they would be cool. on the other hand from online perspective having the commish be the rating czar is acceptable alternative.

wholeheartedly agree with everything (except the last sentence), madden NEEDS a dynamic progression system and even more importantly SEE those player specific ratings really separate the great ones from just the average ones. as far as an online franchise commish playing ratings czar would just cause too much controversy in our leagues lol.

getting to the root of the problem rather than just applying another band aid is what needs done, otherwise i wouldn't even bother wasting anymore time on it if its something than cannot be fixed. im sure this is much easier said than done, but if its not going to work i'd rather see resources invested in other parts that can be fixed.

[TreFacTor]

I'm a lifelong franchise player, and I really only want the ability to edit the rosters prior to starting a franchise. Once the franchise is started I don't really change anything with the exception of player names. I feel that Madden has needed a "map editor" of sorts for a long time, but simply being able to edit players and rosters isn't enough. Does the offline franchise player deserve a "GOD Mode"? If they want it, I see no reason why not. It should be an option that can be toggled on and off like any cheat. The issues with corrupted saves and crashing should be a warning to players that they did something that wasn't intended, and the users should backup their saves regularly. I would take it a step further, and allow the user to change schedules, random weather, hire/fire coaches, promote coaches. There needs to be a practice squad even if the players are generic so that players on IR can be moved on and off the depth chart. We need full create a player control with more options for skin, face, body hair.

i know that seems like a wish list for M12 for franchise additions, but the majority of them were features that used to be in the game, but are missing, and all are roster related. (with the exception of schedule making and weather). The rosters are really the tip of the iceberg, but it's a start I guess.

[mkeller25]

First off Ian let me just say how impressed I am with your guys' continued commitment to involving the community in the decision making process. I cannot say enough how much that means to me as a hardcore fan.

Now, I think everyone here is missing the point and running wild with your guy's open invitation to suggestions for how to remedy the problem so I'll be as specific to your questions as I can Ian.
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Solution:

1. One person, a "power user," (whether offline or online) in control of all player editing aspects.
2. Only editable during offseason prior to contract time. That way if players manipulate players overalls, their contracts would follow suit IF their contract was up. By limiting the time to edit players to one point in time, you eliminate a lot of the cheesing aspect of it I would think.

Player editing aspects that need to be controlled by the power user during the one point in time of editing during the offseason:

1) Basics - Name/info, position, number, gear.
2) Potential. I'd prefer if this were numerical but A-F is fine if thats all you've got.
3) Additional Progression Pool - This is complex so I will explain below but essentially no 1 team's players can be edited past a certain, predetermined number of overall points. This fixes the issue of the game crashing due to a team not being able to resign players.

Essentially I'm suggesting you guys look at your current progression system and look how many overall points each team progresses each season. Obviously this system does not cause the game to break now so using it as a benchmark is a good start. If you look at those numbers and look at the type of numbers that would cause your system to break you can come up with a safe number to work with. Let me explain how it would work in detail.

Okay so basically the current progression system would still work as normal but, in addition, the power user would have the option to tack on additional progression where they see fit but pulling from a team specific pool of predetermined overall points (lets just say 20 for now.)

So each team has an additional 20 overall points to distribute to their players IF the power user determines a team worthy of those additional points - not all players teams are worthy obviously. Remember its only in control by 1 user as well so its not likely that all teams would receive all 20 points anyways. In a lot of cases it would just be 1 team that receives all 20.

The 20 points could be distributed however they like among the players, I think the obvious exception being the physical categories of player attributes. For example speed/acceleration/throwing power/strength etc etc could only go up 1 point per season. That way you don't have every player in the game a 99spd because you know that would happen. The 20 points could be spent all on one player if they wanted (i.e. that HB with 96trucking and C potential but is only 65 overall can now be A potential 85 overall) OR they could be evenly distributed and of course anything in between.
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The overall specific intent would be to fill in the holes that are naturally left behind by the generic in-game progression system. The idea is to give everyone additional flexibility, not make them God. Making them God can break the game as you already stated. Giving them additional tools to customize their experience should be the focus.

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Other ideas:

Limit additional progression during aforementioned one point in time editing to players who were top 5/10 at their position in a statistical category like passing, sacks, tackles etc.


Thanks again Ian.

[GlennN]

First of all, thank you for even asking. I appreciate that you even would solicit our opinions on this. I would like to just be able to edit in the offseason. I would especially like to be able to edit players in the draft pool - names, ratings, physical attributes, etc. Also, I would love if the limitation on draft picks, and the requirement of having a "minimum" number of players at certain positions, could be removed.

[rootofalleli]

There are a few reasons why I would want to edit players, mostly based on the condition of the draft classes.

1) Position changes: If I want to move a drafted DE to OLB, his terrible coverage skills will be an issue. Draft classes are filled with 220 lb, 65 STR OLBs though, which seem like bad fits in a 3-4. Similarly, I'd sometimes like to move a speedy QB to RB or WR (this happens IRL!), but the skills aren't there.

2) Special teams: drafted players rarely have any special teams abilities. Offensive players can't tackle and defensive players can't block.

3) Appearance: In years past, I enjoyed adjusting players' appearances. Sometimes I'd add 5-10 lbs to an undersized lineman every year, or subtract a little from a chubby one.

Points 1 & 2 are things that could be fixed in future years' draft classes. Point 3 is just me...

Thanks for listening! And guys, please try to keep it simple + stay on topic.

[Joborule]

Good discussion and points in this thread. Don’t have much to add aside from my $0.02

Quote: Originally Posted by Ian_Cummings_EA

Please comment and be specific about what exactly you NEED to edit. What is your overall specific intent with wanting to edit these players? Are there certain time frames we can lock it to? Are there certain specific changes you could only be allowed to make instead of full league-wide control? By reducing the amount of variables we can look into finding ways to make this happen. Unfortunately allowing the user to set every player in the league anytime from a 0 to a 99 is not going to be an option because of all the instability it will cause...and we just don't have the testing man-power to ensure that the mode won't start crashing all over the place.

I would be the type of offline franchise player that would be hands off for the most part and let the environment control player development. The only purpose in me using the players edit would be to tweak equipment and appearance outside of head shape and skin tone.

Although I would be fairly basic in my use of player editing, I'm strongly in favour of full open endless and allowing the user as much control as logically possible. If players want to adjust any attributes for any reason for any player, they should have the ability too. So the issues that can create system errors should be addressed if possible so then people can adjust a player from 0 to 99 if need be. It's all about full control and customization, cause you can never go wrong with that.

Quote: Originally Posted by Ian_Cummings_EA

• There are countless "cheesing" things that the user can do like dropping your player ratings right before the off-season, signing him to the cheapest deal possible, and then setting him back. • Your save file can easily be rendered non-functional if you change enough CPU team's player's ratings where they can't re-sign any players. At this point the mode typically crashes or hangs and won't be recoverable from. • We also don't display that potential rating in the edit player screen now, and if you were to edit the actual player's overall rating to be higher than his potential rating, the game has a chance of crashing in many different spots. We'd have to add it in and always force it to be higher than the OVR I guess.

In RE to cheesing and setting player attributes low for favourable contracts, I see that as a non issue since it's offline and doesn't affect anyone but the user. If we're going to be able to adjust player’s potential, within franchise mode, I don't think it's worth the effort to implement limitations. Adjusting a player attributes defeats the purpose of natural progression and letting that player performance dictate a player progression. If we're going to go down that road, then the worry of cheesing is fairly moot because editing player ratings is already unfair technically.

Plus, if it's going to create issues with cheating on contracts, then it seems that the contract logic AI is part the issue here due to what you posted as the second problem. As mentioned, player contracts pricing shouldn't be based on attributes so much, and should take much more consideration into recent player performance. There are examples of players who had a great season on a contract year and ended up getting a nice pay day, while there are players whose play may have dropped off, and their salary drops. If a player has high attributes but haven't proved to be worth what their attributes indicate, then that should factor into their price tag. Just because someone is a 99 overall QB, doesn't mean that they should be Peyton Manning money. And what about players that take a price cut and go below their market price tag? There should be other factors that can impact player salaries, but player performance is a big part of it, rather then attributes weighing so much.

BUT, thinking about this while typing this out, a player that has great attributes should get a good chunk of change still since they have 'potential' to be a impact player, regardless of player performance. Look at the deals these rookies are getting and they haven't proved anything yet. Unless a player recent performance leaves more to be desired, a good player should get a good salary still. So I can see why the editing of player attributes could be a problem.

On the potential/overall issue, I'll echo what was said by another poster on the potential rating should be more of a soft cap and not a hard cap. The problem that can occur if a player overall rating is higher than the potential ratings should a design flaw IMO. Potential isn't the end all, be all. Players can exceed and play far beyond their expected potential, and this should be reflected. The potential rating should be moreso a number and give an outlook on how the player could do.

[franch1se]

for me, why not? Who cares, its our game let us do whatever we want (offline of course)

I would like to edit appearances mainly. Especially after the NFL Draft using imported NCAA draft classes. Example guys coming in with Dreads who shouldn't or being able to give guys dreads and change faces etc. However, I would rather have FULL ROSTERS (like Head Coach, also choose the active gameday roster) with a WORKING IR

[GoJayzGo]

Quote: Originally Posted by jnes12eaglesfan

Seems like you are stuck between a rock and a hard place with this. For me, I don't feel the need to change player ratings in franchise mode. I edit player ratings in a separate roster file. In franchise, I view it as a simulation, so I just let the progression system work on its own. I edit equipment and things like that, but not player ratings

I usually do this also but I would like to be able to edit the ratings of my NCAA draft classes, since the import system is awful and players come in with wack ratings. It would be nice if offline franchises allowed us to edit the NCAA draft classes to get the more realism from that option. Outside of that I really don't see a need to edit player ratings.