Gaming: Continuing Realism Problems with the Madden Franchise

A few tweaks would go a long way. 

Madden 25 (and previous incarnations) is a great video game. I can spend hours playing this game without interruption. But no matter how much I enjoy playing the game, I cannot get past the feeling this game still doesn’t know if it wants to be a realistic simulation or an arcade game.

I know EA Sports markets this game as a realistic simulation, minus anything that might anger the NFL. But it just feels a little too much like an arcade game at times, failing to maintain the realism and letting a little too much light reach behind the curtain.

The first issue with Madden involves the passing game — curl patterns are too easy to complete against man to man defense. While they can be more difficult against zone defense, they are incredibly easy against almost any man defense coverage. Against a man defense, it is almost guaranteed the defender will be 5 yards off the receiver when the receiver plants to turn around for the curl. It doesn’t matter if the defender in in press coverage with safety help or if the receiver is double covered. In man coverage, curl routes are almost unstoppable.

This is incredibly aggravating as a defender and feels almost like cheating as an offensive player. I know there are ways around this when the defense is controlled by a human, but it ruins the realism of the game to go to such lengths to prevent simple things. I know that having a defender sitting on the curl route could lead to more long passes being completed, but this is how it works in real life. How amazing would it be to see this happen in the same fashion in Madden? A receiver running several curls play after play only to lose the defender on a hitch and go for a wide open touchdown.

Another significant issue in Madden is pass rushing is both too difficult and too easy. I know this sounds confusing, but it is true. At certain times in the game when the game is close, it can be maddeningly difficult to get to the QB, especially if the QB is controlled by the CPU. The CPU controlled QB will wait to the last second to get the pass out, preventing the sack.

However, in the same game with the same players, if the offense is way behind, it can be oh so simple to get to the QB on several snaps in a row. The CPU QB will not leave the pocket, attempt to scramble, or throw a questionable pass until much later in the game. For mobile quarterbacks, they do tend to scramble a little sooner, but it is still unrealistic how infrequently the CPU QB will attempt force a pass or throw the ball away under pressure. It is not that far-fetched for one defensive player to sack the computer QB 6 or 7 times in one game.

A medium ground needs to be found. One where the occasional sack can be made but only a once in a lifetime player can have multiple 6 sack games in a season. Anything else is just too unrealistic.

Another tweak that would greatly improve the gameplay actually has to do with menus and information. On load screens as the individual games are loading, list the injury information for each team. Why should I have to drive into the numerous levels of sub-menus to find this information for my opponent when I have 20 seconds of loading time where this information could be displayed. It would be like a legitimate pre-game show on CBS or Fox, displaying information about the weather, the injuries, and the upcoming game.

Another tweak that would also help on the field is formation based substitutions. This is a tough one to talk about because Madden used to have this in previous iterations. You could substitute your pass rushing DE in the dime package and your speed RB in your 4-wide shotgun formation. It simplified play calling to do this one time in your team menu before games even loaded. While I understand the ability to do this on the fly in game, it doesn’t always map correctly based on the depth chart. Why make it close when I can have it my way?

The last non-gameplay tweak I would love to see is tendency statistics. This would help improve the play in so many ways. First, it would make the game seem more realistic, identifying tendencies for my team and teams I am about to play. I can see what the other team prefers to do and adjust accordingly. I can see what I like to do and alter my gameplan or play calling if I realize it is stagnant. Track the tendencies of run vs. pass on specific downs, blitzes, man vs. zone coverage to provide a realistic understanding of the opponent.

Imagine loading a game against a human opponent online and during the load screen you see a quick summary of your opponent’s tendencies. He throw 80% of the time on 1st and ten. He loves to blitz on 3rd and short and 3rd and long but rarely blitzes on 1st or 2nd down. He plays man coverage in run situations and zone coverage in pass situations. This is a small amount of information that makes the game feel real while also providing some modicum of a scouting report on the opponent.

Another gameplay issue that is completely mind-numbingly painful to see occur is the ability of the offense to change personnel in less than 1 second. At the end of the half of the game, if I go to the play calling menu and change formations and personnel, once I select the play, everyone is magically on the field for the next play.

If I don’t have any timeouts, with the clock running I can go from a 4-wide shotgun formation to a 3 TE running formation in one second. Yes it will take some time for my team to run from the huddle to the line of scrimmage. However, it is not as much time as it would take to run my personnel from the sideline to the line of scrimmage. This is even more upsetting when the clock is running and I am trying to kick a game winning or tying field goal without a timeout. I can switch from my shotgun formation to a field goal formation and it can take as little as 5 in-game seconds from play’s end to field goal snap. A little more realism in this arena would provide real difficult decisions for the player as the game is on the line.

The last and likely largest issue with Madden is the QB completion percentage. It is way too high. As a matter of fact, this might be the single most angering, controller destroying fault with the Madden franchise. EA Sports has tried to solve this problem over the years, most notably with the Vision Cone of Madden ‘06. While it was admiral the attempt EA Sports was making with this feature, it was not well implemented and nearly ruined the game.

However, it is still a fact that the QB completion percentage of either the CPU or human player is unrealistically high. I have played against the Browns where Brandon Weeden finished the game 31 of 36 with 2 TDs. I played a variety of defenses including man, zone, hybrid, 3 deep, 2 deep, and blitzes. That is completely, without a doubt, unbelievably unrealistic. It is a mockery of everything any Browns fan knows about life. But it happens all the time in the game on all difficulty levels. It is a problem with a solution that may ruin the game for the less capable player. There needs to be more incomplete passes for both CPU and human QBs.

Perhaps defensive backs play closer to the receiver. Possibly make the QB have to lead the receiver on all passes, not just specific ones where the coverage is tight. Perchance there is a significant drop in completions for QBs on the run (especially when holding sprint). Maybe weather should actually affect the play on the field, whether it be rain, wind, or snow. What if, instead of implementing the vision cone, once the QB leaves the pocket or scrambles part of the screen becomes fuzzy or the camera zooms in so as to imply the QB’s vision is affected.

Any number of options or a combination of several could work. But one thing is certain, something needs to be done to improve upon the realism of the completion percentage of all QBs.

Madden is a fun game. It is a pretty good game. There are few bugs and playing online or against the computer can be entertaining. However, if the true goal of the game is to serve as a realistic simulation, improvements have to be made to the game to prevent illusion from falling apart with each passing completion.