Madden NFL 18 Wishlist

NFL getting close to the end of the 2016 NFL season, A new year, a new football season. Madden 18 has RSVP’d for E3 2017 and will be out just in time for the start of the 2018 NFL season.

Can’t wait to get back on the gridiron? We hear you. But before you head out to play in the big leagues, spend some time here in training camp learning about all of the game’s new features.

                           

Franchise:

- Cut/Practice Squad based off low overalls - Cuts in franchise mode have been a big problem for years in Madden. The problem is that the other 31 CPU franchises cut players or put them on the practice squad based off of overall and not based on position or where they were drafted. If you start a Madden 17 franchise and look at the practice squad list you’ll see a couple of names that shouldn’t be there. For example, a guy like Su'a Cravens. The former safety out of USC who was a 2nd round pick and now starts on the Washington Redskins. There’s also Kenyan Drake the 4th round running back out of Alabama. With Lamar Miller gone and the only running backs on the roster being a 30 year old Arian Foster and a Jay Ajayi who has battled knee injuries since college, you probably want to keep Kenyan Drake. Another example is Malcolm Mitchell, the receiver out of Georgia taken in the 4th round by the Patriots. New England has only taken two receivers in the 4th round or earlier since 2010, so I think Belichick sees something in Mitchell. The point is that the CPU needs to account more than just the overall. They are letting go potential building blocks for the franchise.

- Practice Mode Upgrades - Practice mode has become one of the best features in Madden franchise, but it still needs a few tweaks. The first thing to add is actually using practice squad players in practice. Practice squad is one of the new additions to Madden franchise. You can develop rookies and second year players without having to use a spot on the 53 man roster. While you can see who is on your practice squad, you can’t do anything with the players. In Madden 18 when using practice to gameplan for the upcoming game, you should use the practice squad players in that practice. Another thing to add is non contact jerseys for quarterbacks. In this year’s madden, QB’s can get destroyed by defensive players during practice. This is simply unrealistic. Quarterbacks are the prized possesion of an organization and aren’t allowed to be touched in practice.

- Edit Draft Classes before the Draft - As we all know by now, Madden lacks actual draft classes for franchise mode. They have done a great job with coming up with generated players, but it just isn’t the same with not having the college rookies come up into the NFL in your franchise. Now I know that Madden isn’t going to have the actual draft classes in the game anytime soon, and the NCAA Football franchise isn’t returning in the near future, but I have a solution. One thing that NBA 2K does really well is draft classes in their franchise mode. You can still use generated ones that are created by NBA 2K, or you can download a class from the community creations. This allows for guys like EmbraceThePace to build amazing, authentic NBA draft classes. Madden needs to steal this idea. If you give the ability for people to create prospects and build draft classes, and allow the user to download it before the season starts, it would make franchise that much more fun. It would be amazing to do a 49ers franchise and build my team around DeShone Kizer, instead of random generated QB out of Stanford.   

- Snap Count limits - Madden 17 took a step in the right direction with their big decisions inside of connected franchise mode and the ability to bring a player back early from injury, and run the risk of that player getting re injured. I want to take it one step further. It’s unrealistic for a player to return from injury three weeks earlier than they are supposed to and be able to play the entire game at 100%. This is why most teams use snap count limits. Going into the game, the coach has set a certain amount of plays that player will play in the game. That way you’re easing a player back into the game, and it will decrease the chance of a re injury occurring.

- Player Emotion - One thing that Madden franchise mode still truly lack is player emotion. EA took baby steps when they tweaked the contract negotiations so you can actually see what the player doesn’t like about his contract, but once again, I want to take it one step further. We need to see more emotion and interaction from players. If a player gets benched and they feel that they should still be the starter, let them voice their frustration to you. If you franchise tag a player who feels he should be given a contract as one of the highest paid players at his position, have them threaten to miss games and holdout until a deal is done.   

New Modes:

- Online team up - The one thing that keeps me playing NBA 2k on a yearly basis is the my park and pro am feature in the game. You team up with several of your fellow friends and work together as a cohesive unit to battle against another team full of users. Madden used to have an online team up mode, but it was removed after Madden 25. EA please bring the mode back.  

- Improve career mode - This is just getting sad at this point. In 2016 you have to have a career with some story. It’s inexcusable not to. NBA 2K has dominated the player based mode for years with an interesting story that changes from year to year. Now Fifa 17 has incorporated the story-based career mode with the Alex Hunter story. Madden’s career mode doesn’t have anything. You can be an instant starter by the first game. You don’t have any interaction with the team, opposing player, the coach, the owner, nothing. There’s no true incentive to play the career mode unless you want to see your player hit a 99 overall and break all the NFL records. If Madden 18’s player career mode doesn’t have a story or something new for the player career mode, they might as well just do away with it.