League Discussion: Sliders

Play as many games as you can against other users. Use those instances to test things and see how you think we can balance the game. Offense looks to be overpowered, so if you can mess around ways to boost the defense, I'm all ears. I'll be looking to Operation Sports to see if they have any good slider threads for ideas as well.

If you have any thoughts, post them here. Thanks.

Also, our community info to play the game is under the Community forum to test games on Heisman difficulty.

FG length will be reduced as a starting idea. Maybe not as much as last year, it feels slightly less powerful already this year.

Also play CPU games. We want CPU games to be tough, but feel balanced. Users will be expected to lose some CPU games once in a while.

Bueller?

I'm trying a slider set that will make AI games much more difficult. It's expected that the AI will upset owners who aren't prepared.  Also, the sliders are meant to make the pass defense much better. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Sliders courtesy of OS user Tomba.


Game Settings
Quarter Length: Any
Fatigue:50
Game Speed: Normal

Penalty Sliders
(A Must Use)
Offside: 0
False Start: 0
Holding: 100
Facemask: 0
DPI: 0
OPI: 0
PCI: 0
Clipping: 0
INT Grounding: 25
Roughing the pass: 100
Roughing the kicker: 0 

User Skill
QB Acc: 25
Pass Block: 50
WR Catching: 25
Run Block: 25
Fumbles: 25
Pass D React: 50
Interceptions: 25
Pass Coverage: 100
Tackling: 50
FG Power: 75

CPU Skill
QB Acc: 25
Pass Block: 25
WR Catch: 25
Run Block: 25
Fumbles: 50
Pass D React: 50
Interceptions: 25
Pass Coverage: 25
Tackling: 50

Sliders posted above turned out not great. Too many Roughing the Passer penalties. 7 in my game, 6 in x--nike's. CPU drops were ridiculous too. Upped CPU catching and modified a few other things.  Jump in the test league and try them out. Thanks.

Havoc and I played our first preseason game last night.

A couple thoughts -- too many roughing the passer penalties. I think we had 3 in the first half alone.

Also, maybe this is just me not being used to Madden yet this year, but the CBs seemed a bit ridiculous at mirroring routes in man coverage. I took quite a few coverage sacks, and that was after spending the first half throwing picks left and right. Again, dunno if that's a slider issue, or just me needing to get back into Madden after playing too much NCAA.

MeanMrMustard wrote:Havoc and I played our first preseason game last night.

A couple thoughts -- too many roughing the passer penalties. I think we had 3 in the first half alone.

Also, maybe this is just me not being used to Madden yet this year, but the CBs seemed a bit ridiculous at mirroring routes in man coverage. I took quite a few coverage sacks, and that was after spending the first half throwing picks left and right. Again, dunno if that's a slider issue, or just me needing to get back into Madden after playing too much NCAA.

yea way too many roughing the passer penalties... I had 3 and MMM had just 1... ehhh lol

MeanMrMustard wrote:Havoc and I played our first preseason game last night.

A couple thoughts -- too many roughing the passer penalties. I think we had 3 in the first half alone.

Also, maybe this is just me not being used to Madden yet this year, but the CBs seemed a bit ridiculous at mirroring routes in man coverage. I took quite a few coverage sacks, and that was after spending the first half throwing picks left and right. Again, dunno if that's a slider issue, or just me needing to get back into Madden after playing too much NCAA.

Thanks for the thoughts, I need this feedback from everyone.  I'm working on the RTP, according to the different Operation Sports threads, when you up RTP, the pass rush is usually better, but RTP is one of the few penalties highly impacted by its penalty slider. The other penalty sliders, like Facemask don't alter penalties really.

Early impressions of the game when I was playing people in random games was that pass coverage was way too lax. But if I overcompensated, I'll open it up some more.

Gotcha. Honestly, I think RTP was the ONLY penalty called all game. So, if that's the sacrifice we have to make, I'm OK with it. I'd rather have 5 RTP penalties a game than no penalties at all.

Someone get in the community so we can play, I always wanna ball!

I've gotten a little feedback to try and tune the sliders. Every little bit helps.

I played the CPU and my rookie RB had 2 or 3 major fumbles, but my starters didn't. That tells me that ratings matter in the Carry attribute, and is a major part of selecting your RB instead of just speed.  I had a lot of contested drops with WR, but no bad drops like NCAA exhibits where they drop wide open passes. I tried to balance the psychic DBs too.

After 2 preseason games against CPU teams I'd say the running game is still overpowered. CPU usually gets at least 6-8 yds unless you completely sell out and play Engage Eight every time they're not in a clear passing formation. Therefore I suggest lowering CPU run blocking (and maybe USER run blocking as well, not sure about that).

As for the fumbles - I agree, it seems pretty balanced right now. I had a fumble with Michael Turner that happened on a really big hit by the Texans' defender.

I've still seen an occasional wide open drop but those players were low AWR players Michael Egnew & Rishard Matthews. Maybe we could slightly increase WR catching but not by much (max. 5 P).

One more thing we should consider:
With the new progression system the weekly practices are insanely overpowered. If you successfully complete your practice ALL of your players will get 2000 XP per week. That's 42000 XP a season per player (17 wk season + 4 pre-season = 21 weeks. 21 x 2000 = 42000). Thus, we would probably have everyone on the roster rated 85 and higher after a season due to incredibly fast progression.


Is there anything we can do to avoid XP points from practice?

Thanks burnum. XP is set by EA. I can't change it. BUT, EAs goal was to accelerate XP so young players can be superstars. Part of being owner is players regress fast too with a poor training staff that can't rehab their injuries. So teams will have to balance their finances to support a staff that can keep ratings boosted.

Yep, that's what I expected. Thought maybe there was an option for the league GM (something like 'disable practice XP'). Ok, then we'll have to deal with it as it is...

Could we lower the run blocking sliders and/or increase the run defense sliders to stop every backup RB to look like Adrian Peterson???

I played the Texans in my first preseason game and Ben Tate out-Petersoned Peterson, I could not stop him unless I sold out. He ran for close to 200 yards and had a couple long runs where he bowled over 3 or 4 guys.  I wasn't sure if it was just my crappy backups or what.  I'll play my 2nd preseason game and see how that one is.  That was the only issue I noticed from my first game though.

yea same for me in my game against the browneyes

CPU running is completely overpowered. We NEED to adjust sliders to keep it realistic.

I'm trying to level them. I know my defense is good, it's hard for me to judge myself. I'll look at stats and keep tinkering. I lowered blocking a bit already.

Also keep in mind, it may be unfair, but I'm expecting CPU games to be just as challenging as user games. To get that affect, the CPU may have a strong run game to keep the challenge high. Users will lose to the CPU.

Did you change quarter length to 6 minutes? If so, is it only for preseason or will it be for regular season as well? Personally, I'd like it better at 7 or 8 minutes for the reg. season...

burnum81 wrote:Did you change quarter length to 6 minutes? If so, is it only for preseason or will it be for regular season as well? Personally, I'd like it better at 7 or 8 minutes for the reg. season...

With accelerated clock being broken, I moved it down to 6 minutes. If accelerated clock worked as it should, it'd be a longer quarter length.

Oh, I didn't notice that accelerated clock doesn't work properly. What's wrong with it? Usually works fine for me...

boo 7 lol

Coach Davis and the Jets are looking to deal CB Kyle Wilson for a young CB with good hands, will include picks, hit me up.

burnum81 wrote:Oh, I didn't notice that accelerated clock doesn't work properly. What's wrong with it? Usually works fine for me...

It just doesn't run off time in some games it appears.
In one of my games vs the CPU it seemed to work, but in another it didn't.
And for Mustard and Havoc it didn't work making for a long game.
I played Havoc as well and it didn't run the play clock down either.
I don't understand why either.

It is a glitch, it doesn't seem to work in Online user/user league games. Hopefully gets patched!

Thanks for the input RV!

I'm glad it was a close game. CPU games are really meant to challenge people so that they're not gimme games.

I'm open to exploring the slow speed. I pushed for it a couple years ago, but was met with resistance. Most people like the default it appears.  NCAA definitely plays slower than Madden, so it's a bit jarring jumping between the two for me.

Offense was kinda weak in my game week 1 vs Cincy. But AJ Green killed me. Titans don't really have the passing threats. The running game is a bit harder to balance. Prior settings had monster backs doing their best AP impersonations, so I ratcheted it down a bit. I'll look at other CPU games for comparison.

After playing the Colts I've got to say it feels much better than in preseason. The problem of every backup RB looking like Adrian Peterson is probably solved. Good adjustments so far, EDJ...

About going to slow game speed: it would probably change a lot of aspects of the gameplay, so we'd need to adjust sliders all over again. I am not at all opposed to changing game speed but I think we should wait until the next season (to have the 4 meaningless preseason games to adjust).

Good win RV  

I am against the slow speed. I would try it, but I much prefer the speed of Madden to NCAA. I play NCAA now and it feels like everything is in quicksand and plays where i seems obvious I will get the edge get stuffed because my 93 speed running back runs like Ron Dayne. 

I think broken tackles could be lowered. Either that or run blocking made worse. One of the two perhaps. It just seems really easy to run the ball, which I am glad it's easier than Madden '12 where a user MLB could literally stuff every run (See YT in Madden '12). But I ran for 300 yards vs Ken, and I realize my run game and offense is fast and explosive, but both games the running game was wide open. Maybe it's just my games, I haven't looked at league stats much. Just giving a little input on how my games have played so far, I have yet to play the CPU

RV wrote:I would love you guys to look at SLOW game speed. My other 2 leagues use SLOW and I was worried what NORMAL would play like. To me NORMAL kills speed rating, because everyone is fast. It felt like playing on a hockey rink, not football field. I do wonder if playing a user will make it a bit slower since cpu games everything seems faster anyway, but it's just a thought.

I'd love it if we played on slow. Been a proponent of this for years, but kind of gave up talking about it since no one else seemed interested.

I'm lowering run blocking further, and increasing pass rush just a tad.

Thoughts on your games? I know I'm getting pressure with a pass rush, but users are still getting the ball out fast to wide open guys. As far as the running game, I'm not really seeing RBs be monsters, just open holes. Block shedding for Suh was great, but he's a beast.