Madden 13: Online Franchise Features Wishlist

We had this discussion last year and expected many improvements for our favorite Madden mode, online franchise. A month or so before release we got the news online franchise would have no new features. Instead, there was an expansion of features for the offline mode, which EA has said statistical data shows them more players prefer offline franchise mode. We were promised last year, prior to many of the developers leaving EA Sports, that online franchise would get some attention in the coming version. There has been no news thus far on features for Madden 13. Last week, EA hosted the Madden community day at Tiburon in Orlando, Florida. Many of the EA Sports "Game Changers" were invited to attend. I follow many of these guys on Twitter and due to a NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) they are not allowed to talk about specifics at this point. I did notice an exchange that one of them liked the direction development was headed with online franchise. That may at least indicate something is being done.

I wanted to recap some of the ideas many of us have discussed here and what we would like to see in Madden 13 online franchise. I won't discuss general improvements to the game such as better penalty AI (pass interference?), ball trajectory (no LB's jumping up to block a ball 10 ft in the air), and the numerous sound issues with player names and so forth. These are strictly online franchise improvements.

Trade Draft Picks - This is a pretty basic feature. Players should be able to trade draft picks just as they trade players in the game. This should include draft picks for the upcoming draft. If the guys at XFN and League Manager can do it, this should be something EA should easily be able to include.

Free Agency/Franchise Tags/Salary Cap - This feature is a little more hardcore than the typical Madden player may want to deal with but in my experience online franchise players are hardcore players. Anyone who is willing to make scheduled game times several times a week wants the most realistic franchise experience possible. Free agency means nothing if any player can be signed with no contract negotiations or cap to address. All of these features go hand-in-hand.

Dynamic Player Ratings - Dynamic player performance is something that was included in a per game basis. If your HB fumbles 1 time early in the game, they are more likely to fumble again. To be honest, I really did not notice a huge difference from this feature. I would like to see players attributes improve on a weekly basis as their performance rises and falls. The offline franchise mode is supposed to all ready include this, but I didn't play it to find out.

Practice Mode with Franchise Team - No more creating a custom team and editing player attributes to get a replica team set-up for practice mode. This takes hours to do and is just a pain in the ass every time you have a draft and want to try to keep a practice team going to try to get a few extra snaps in with your new rookie to figure out if they are worth starting.

Realistic Draft Classes - This one may be a technical challenge. If there was a way the developers could provide the game a random draft class generator with a name generator and a range that attributes could be with the chance of having "x" of A potential players for a position and "x" number of B potential players, then every franchise could be different. I am not a programmer so I have no clue if the game would have enough room to store something like this. Then being in more than one online franchise would give you a different experience with the various draft classes. No more guides such as the ones we have made as it would be impossible to identify the complete draft.

Gamecast Screen / Franchise Hub - I love the idea of being able to stream live game footage but I think having a PVR is the only way to do that for the foreseeable future. How cool would it be to have a schedule posted of Live e-Athlete games on a certain night just like Monday Night Football but with our own franchise. Unfortunately, I think the closest we will see is a Gamecast screen similar to Fantasy Football or NFL.com has during live NFL games. You could see the current score, who has the ball, and the result of the most recent play.

Auto-Advance/Commish Tools - Allow more than 1 commish. All the league to set a specific advance time or have tools to advance the league from the website. We know NCAA Football has this so it can be done. More tools to move players, adjust rosters and player attributes, and communicate with league members.


There are a few more features some of us have discussed that don't come to mind right now. Post them up!