June 4th Madden Gameplay Reveal

[jaymo76]

I've seen some people start to go a little crazy about the demo date. What's the rush? The only reason the NCAA demo date dropped so soon was to block the wrath over the lack of Infinity. Their demo came out too soon imo.

Releasing the demo 2 weeks in advance or even just one week allows people to experience the game, get excited and go out and buy the game. If you have to wait too long you have probably stopped playing. Either way I am fine with later demos because the build is often newer. I get so sick of hearing about how demos are older builds and the bugs and problems are only related to that. Then wait a little while longer, get a cleaner demo and come out with it later.

Quite frankly there is almost no evidence that demos help games. I personally think sleeper/unknown games can benefit from demos if their product is good. Bad demos kill sales and AAA titles probably aren't affected too much. The Show 12 didn't even release a demo this year.

Personally I get the feeling that the Madden team is in no rush to release a demo because I suspect the first reaction by many will be that they don't see the infinity engine changing gameplay. I must admit MOST of the gameplay footage looks pretty much like Madden 12 (which wasn't a bad thing IMO). I actually think Madden would be better served NOT having a demo. On a side-note I see there is speculation that in CCM you cannot change the cpu uniform. That is just bizarre if that's the case. Talk about killing user CUSTOMIZATION.

[Rudy]

I really don't understand some of the limitations and restrictions this year. I don't get the no edit rosters in CC mode. Makes no sense why they couldn't fix that easily.

[JeffHCross]

I get why some things might not have been editable ... like ratings and the like ... but equipment? Numbers? Don't get those.

My only guess is that Online Dynasty has to go out of its way to upload every single piece of data that you change. Maybe that's what's missing ... they just have no way to upload an edited roster at all. That's the only reason I can think of. If that's the reason, no edit uploads at all, no, that's not so easy.

[Rudy]

But you can use the Donny Moore weekly roster updates which have edits in online franchise. If that franchise has changes then why not allow edits for user rosters? Wouldn't they both have the same effect?

I think they don't want edits to the rosters because if some kid goes and jacks up his team to 99s across the board it might break something with their progression system. Just a guess but I'm wondering if some strange edits could cause bugs or problems with the AI in this area.

[Rudy]

double post.

[jaymo76]

But you can use the Donny Moore weekly roster updates which have edits in online franchise. If that franchise has changes then why not allow edits for user rosters? Wouldn't they both have the same effect?

I think they don't want edits to the rosters because if some kid goes and jacks up his team to 99s across the board it might break something with their progression system. Just a guess but I'm wondering if some strange edits could cause bugs or problems with the AI in this area.

I just don't think the Madden team shares the idea that "this is our game and we can play it as we like." Basically in two years they put together this new mode to play and this is how they believe people should play. It sucks for people like myself who love customization and offline play.

[JeffHCross]

But you can use the Donny Moore weekly roster updates which have edits in online franchise. If that franchise has changes then why not allow edits for user rosters? Wouldn't they both have the same effect?

One is controlled by EA, and is contained in the backend database. The other would be a unique amalgamation of everyone's edits and would require the system to upload each individual change. More the point, it would require stability and confidence testing for every single change. That, if anything, would probably be what they ran out of time for.

Again, that's totally a guess on my part.

[jaymo76]

[Rudy]

Nothing new there. Just a recap.

[jaymo76]

Nothing new there. Just a recap.

Yup, but I must admit that the Kinnect application sounded kind of cool. I don't have a 360 so it's irrelevant but it did sound interesting.

[Rudy]

Some stuff sounds neat but it doesn't apply to me so I ignore.