News: No Additions to Madden NFL 12 Online Franchise, but Partnership Announced

[Paakaa10]

From this news story at the leagueManager website:

Today, via their official EA SPORTS forums, the Madden team announced that they have made no significant changes to Madden NFL 12 online franchise. With this information they have stressed that their focus this year was to get offline franchise correct before they moved to the online portion. While this may seem like a blow to online franchise, I must elaborate on positives here to put this into perspective and hopefully raise the moral of the online franchise community.

Over the past year my work on leagueManager has afforded me the opportunity to meet much of the EA SPORTS Madden NFL 12 management, development, and support team. I've been granted insider access to the development process and seen the stages the game has went through with my admission in to the EA SPORTS Game Changers program and during trips to the EA SPORTS Tiburon studio. Over this same time period I have been in talks with upper level management from the Madden NFL 12 team to work out ways where a collaboration and sharing of information between EA SPORTS and leagueManager could work to benefit the online franchise community.

It is with much excitement that I am able to announce that we have been successfully able to get a working relationship set up that has given the leagueManager team exclusive access to online franchise data and remote procedural calls. This unique collaboration with EA SPORTS, a first of its kind, proves the Madden NFL 12 teams dedication to providing an experience to their fans that hasn't been previously available. The Madden team has always been at the forefront of a new wave of community/developer relations in the gaming world through their leveraging of social media, and this is another step in the right direction in building a completely engaging fan experience. What this all means is that come Madden NFL 12, the leagueManager experience will be brought to an entirely new and innovative level.

Through this working relationship, EA SPORTS will be providing leagueManager with the following:

Full realistic player contract data
• leagueManager will have 100% exact replica contract structures as offline franchise.
• leagueManager will provide leagues the option of running an "NFL-style" real contract based online franchise or the point based contract system that is already in place.
• leagueManager will replicate contract negotiations, cap penalties, player holdouts, and much more to add to the realism of the GM side of online franchise.
•As always, leagueManager will also be able to be used without a contract based system.

Complete tie-ins to the draft process
•Access to all of the controls of the online franchise draft will give leagueManager the ability to have a custom draft console that will enable leagues to run a draft in any manner they please.
•A draft can be run over multiple days to accommodate the busy schedules of owners, paused and restarted at the will of the commissioner.
•Draft pick trading will be enabled and tracked via leagueManager .
•Draft boards will correctly draft for owners who cannot make a draft.

Complete CPU controlled team intelligence
•CPU controlled teams will now have trade logic in place.
•CPU controlled teams will re-sign players needed and cut players not needed.
•CPU controlled teams will bid on free agents needed during the free agency bidding period.

Commissioner controls via the web
•The ability to invite and boot members of your online franchise via the web.
•The ability to add/drop players from any team.

Streamlined access to all online franchise data
•Using the remote procedural calls how they were intended to work instead of the current way they were obtained via reverse engineering, leagueManager will be able to optimize the way you interact with the tool and provide a higher level of user experience.

Adding these incredibly exciting features to leagueManager will only boost the current list of available features that is being upgraded and optimized:

Complete player resign period
•The new resign period will be receiving an overhaul which will engage owners in contract negotiations with their players that are up for contract re-sign.

Free Agency bidding period
•An optimized and more efficient free agency bidding period with a player watch list, trending, and other innovations will take this feature to the next level.

Yearly player awards, weekly player awards, and Pro-Bowl rosters
•All of these features will still be available along with optimizations and new ways to analyze this data.

Full stat tracking for the life of the franchise and opponent scouting
•We will still be tracking statistics over the life of your franchise and some new ways to analyze this data will completely transform the way you scout your opponent. No longer will you be heading in to a game without a clue how to game-plan for your opponent.

Along with the above updates made possible via our collaboration with EA SPORTS, leagueManager will also provide customized league discussion boards and private messaging to enhance league communication and facilitate a more engaging online franchise experience without the technological knowledge needed to set up your own website or forums. We will be rolling out community features that will allow you to feel a part of both the leagueManager community and your individual franchise community.

With all of the above information, leagueManager will continue its mission to provide the most complete and satisfying online franchise experience possibly available. We have formalized the addition of a team of developers and support staff to ensure that when Madden NFL 12 drops, your leagues will be able to successfully set up and run your online franchise using leagueManager .

In the next coming weeks, we will release more details and screenshots of the new updates. We will be piloting the new leagueManager software to a select group of leagues in early August for feedback and optimizations. If you would like to get on the list for piloting the new software, send an email to support@myleagueManager.net.

Follow our leagueManager community team on twitter (DerekJAdams,LM_CaseyMosier,DreDayG35) and like us on Facebook for live-time updates on leagueManager .

note: It is important to note that leagueManager is not receiving any monetary compensation from EA SPORTS to run leagueManager and we are not employed by EA SPORTS. It is a completely fan-driven site and we are using our own time and resources to bring leagueManager to the online franchise community.

[Paakaa10]

And a link to the original EA SPORTS forum post from Community Manager Justin Dewiel:

Hey guys, Justin Dewiel, your EA SPORTS Community Manager for the Madden NFL franchise, here with a short update on where we currently are with Franchise mode, and a look at where we’re heading. So many times throughout the year I get the pleasure of revealing features that you, the community, have been asking for.

Revealing our Offline Franchise mode feature set was one of those days. It’s no secret that our Franchise mode was lacking features that our fans expected. This community feedback was the #1 reason behind the renewed focus on Franchise mode in Madden NFL 12. For those of you who missed all of the details on the improvements/additions made to Offline Franchise, you can catch up on everything by clicking here: http://www.ea.com/madden-nfl/1/franc...uperstar-modes. I feel confident in saying that you’ll be impressed with the experience this year and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Since we revealed the details of the Offline Franchise mode, the most requested question has been, “What upgrades have you made to Online Franchise mode?” We set aggressive development goals for Madden NFL 12 – from the improvements to Offline Franchise and Superstar modes, to the complete overhaul of visuals, addition of custom playbooks, a new collision system, our yet to be discussed Online Communities feature, and more. When it comes to the tight schedule of an annual development cycle, we have to make tough decisions, and it became apparent as we continued to work through our campaign that there was no way to deliver a deep, fully connected Online Franchise experience that you deserve this year. Therefore, there will be no additions to Online Franchise mode in Madden NFL 12.

That said, I can say with absolute certainty that delivering a feature-rich Online Franchise mode is a top priority for the Madden leadership as we move forward. It’s crucial that we transform how and where fans interact with our games and each other. Modes like NCAA Football’s Online Dynasty or FIFA 12’s Football Club are leading the way in building connected experiences, and you can expect that the Madden NFL franchise will aggressively work to meet and exceed your expectations for Online Franchise.

Community is the heart of everything we do at EA SPORTS. We hope you’ve felt represented in everything from the Madden NFL 12 Cover Vote to the new features in this year’s game. Bringing passionate fans together, like you, is the focus of Online Communities feature that we’ll detail on July 25th. We’re excited about sharing more information soon and seeing what you’ll create.

As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

[morsdraconis]

Wow, Madden is REALLY dropping the ball with their decisions for their Online component.

[JBHuskers]

Especially after promising they'd be in for Madden 12 a year or so ago.

[gschwendt]

Yeah, I personally won't be purchasing Madden until their Online Franchise is upto par with NCAA's Online Dynasty. A large part of that is because I prefer college football but the first year OF was in, I participated in one and it was sad at how poor the CPU was. Sucked all the life out of it.

[morsdraconis]

So, now it's absolutely nothing to online franchise and absolutely nothing to Superstar mode and, from everything I've seen, the additions to Franchise mode don't exactly have me excited either.

[skipwondah33]

Makes not a bit of difference to me. I'm in Madden leagues and still prefer the old League Daddy method for Madden. That is good news though with League Manager. In the OF I am in I use it for some statistical things. It's a very useful site.

All I cared and continue to care about are the gameplay fixes that were needed. NCAA serves my purpose for the online dynasty portion.

G the computer is unrealistic in all football games. In both games they do unbelievable things on the highest difficulty level.

[oweb26]

So, now it's absolutely nothing to online franchise and absolutely nothing to Superstar mode and, from everything I've seen, the additions to Franchise mode don't exactly have me excited either.

Exactly, Nothing They say at this point can justify full retail IMO.

[JeffHCross]

So, now it's absolutely nothing to online franchise and absolutely nothing to Superstar mode and, from everything I've seen, the additions to Franchise mode don't exactly have me excited either.

Understandable, but the additions to Franchise are huge for me, as a former Head Coach 09 player. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on Madden this year, more so than in the past.

Actually, after thinking about it for few hours, I'm glad that they didn't rush the new features into Online Franchise. Now, OF should have at least been improved since the last version -- they're not much reason for it to not at least be better than it was -- but I can totally understand not putting some of those new offline features into Online. In fact, when they were first announced I didn't see how they could possibly be put into Online Franchise. Stuff like the real-time free agency would be a nightmare online.

[NatureBoy]

Especially after promising they'd be in for Madden 12 a year or so ago.

That's what I was thinking as well. I thought that was the reason it wasn't touched last year. I won't be playing in any OF this time around.

[CLW]

Wow HEAVILY considering cancelling my pre-order. It is simply INEXCUSABLE to not have 100% of offline dynasty/franchise at least an option to turn on in an online dynasty/franchise.

[Paakaa10]

I know that people would rather that the Madden development team took the time and money to implement everything in Online Franchise on-disc themselves, but Derek Adams really has created an incredibly useful Online Franchise management tool with leagueManager. Here's a YouTube video put together by a fan of that service today displaying some of the things you can do with it:



Does it suck that Online Franchise will be unchanged on-disc? Absolutely. I can't argue against that.

Would I rather have had Online Franchise improved with offline Franchise being untouched from last year? Absolutely not. Offline Franchise sees significantly more use--though I know part of that is the disparity of quality between offline and online--and offline Franchise is more sustainable over the long run versus relying on other users in the average league.

Am I willing to accept an improved offline Franchise in Madden NFL 12 and consider using leagueManager--especially now that they have extra access through EA--for my Online Franchise purposes? Definitely.

But if Online Franchise remains untouched on-disc for Madden NFL 13, then that's inexcusable to me.

[morsdraconis]

There's no real way to have a TRUE Free Agency period and the CPU is dumb as rocks when it comes to drafting. Those two things, alone, COMPLETELY ruin Online Franchise and there's nothing an alternate site can do to fix that.

[ryby6969]

It is already inexcusable because we were told 3 years ago it could be updated on the server because of how it was built. Why is it that they half-ass a feature, and leave it untouch for two more years but add in features like Game Flow and whatever the announcement will be on the 25th? That is just not prudent business practice IMO. Why add new "features" when one you have recently added is still not complete? And then to add insult to injury, you have lied for 3 years about being able to "fix" it at anytime. I understand that they gave us a "workaround", but what about sliders? I should not have to use a seperate website just to get the experience I was PROMISED over 2 years ago.

I think it is becoming very clear why certain associates felt now was the time to leave. Ian would have been absolutely hammered this year had he stayed because he was at the forefront of OF. What is really sad is this takes away from what looks like is going to be a really good game. But I will not purchase it again this year because I hate playing the computer and I feel like I have been lied to.

/end rant

[SmoothPancakes]

Learning this news, seriously throws into question whether I will still purchase the game or not. I never bought Madden 11 until I picked it up last month just to whore the achievements on it, only owning the game for a mere 5 days. I was planning on this being a release day purchase, but now, this very well could go the route of Madden 11, which makes me sad, because I was really looking forward to Madden 12 and a full year with it.

[skipwondah33]

The league manager site is actually a surprisingly nice feature that gives you alot of what the game doesn't. Though it still doesn't give you every feature I imagine that will change since they now have an official relationship.

Like Ryby said playing the CPU sucks but the one franchise I am in we carry 32 teams so every game is a use game

[JeffHCross]

Last time I played Online Franchise, the sliders didn't seem to affect CPU play at all, and we regularly had 70+ point victories. Has that changed? I guess that was Madden 10 with the original OF.

[skipwondah33]

Last time I played Online Franchise, the sliders didn't seem to affect CPU play at all, and we regularly had 70+ point victories. Has that changed? I guess that was Madden 10 with the original OF.

Not sure ive never tweaked sliders. I do know they play differently offline than they do online.

[CLW]

What's odd is that this "one man shop" has been able to create a website that helps bring in some offline elements to online franchises but EA (a multi-billion $ company) cannot?

Seems very odd especially considering that they claimed (as mentioned above) that it would be easy to update online franchise b/c it was on a server and not a disc.

My take, is that EA thinks it can get away with the current features (and this online announcement that is going to "change the way we think about video games" translation season showdown 2.0 for madden?) and then hype the hell out of well you want it you got it 13 online franchise = full blown offline franchise 4 years after the fact.

I'm sorry that is ridiculous and unless the demo just blows me away I am probably going to cancel my order on Amazon.

[Paakaa10]

Link: http://www.destructoid.com/preview-m...2-205670.phtml

Quote from part of story that applies to this thread:

Perhaps disappointing to some, the online franchise mode has been largely unchanged from last year’s game, though I was assured the rest of the modes have seen “substantial upgrades,” including the previously ignored offline franchise mode. A bit of good news for future Madden games, Dimento mentioned that the team is bridging the gap between the online and offline franchise modes, which means that new feature implantation will no longer have to be done two separate times, hopefully meaning the two modes see simultaneously advancement in the future, as opposed to one always seemingly being left out in the cold.

One addition to online connectivity is online communities, which are going to be formally announced and detailed July 15. Dimento could only describe them as “a way for gamers to really get together and play Madden the way they want to play it, with the people they want to play with, adding that social aspect that’s been so huge. This is our answer to that, and how we’re going to capture that audience.”