Hey Maddenites, Romo back with another installment of the franchise blog. I have been a few sites reading some of your feedback and I am pleased to see you guys are really digging the game this year. We put a ton of effort into it and it’s good to see it’s paying off.
I wanted to spend some time in this installment to talk about one of the major changes in Madden Franchise Mode. The progression system was tweaked this year and I wanted to give you guys some insight on how it works and what you can expect.
So if you didn’t know progression is the system that drives the ratings of each player from year to year. The players in your franchise will increase, decrease, or stay the same every year based on how well they perform. In previous years, each player progressed regardless of how they compared to others in the league. In other words, it didn’t matter if you were the number one back in the NFL or the fiftieth back in the league based on stats. You progressed solely on how you did against yourself. This system was good, but we felt we needed to account for how you compared to other players at your position.
Most gamers will recognize the players overall as the standard for progression. If a guy is a 90 has a good year then he will be a 91 or higher…pretty straight forward. What they don’t understand, is that every rating has a weight that drives how much the overall will go up. For example, a running backs carry rating is worth more than his catch rating. So if a running back gets a ton of catch points he won’t progress as much as if he were to get points in his carry rating. The reason this is important is that we actually take the number that the player will progress by (either up or down) and apply it evenly over all of the key rating to get them to the correct overall based on position.
So how can I progress my players you ask? Well simply put the best way it to play them! The better a player is at his position the more chance you will have at getting his ratings higher. You will only see the effects of your yearly progression in the following year in the off-season. There you can view the effects of your progression as well as any bonuses you are getting from your coaches and staff. You can also progress your player during the season by running each player through the drills. The better you do there, the more chance you have at creating a workhorse or a stud. You don’t have to actually do the drills to progress; it’s just another option for those gamers that like to really tweak the type of players they want on their squad. You can think of the drills as weekly progression.
All in all progression will always be a work in progress. It is very hard to get progression like everyone wants it. It’s more of a balancing act and I feel this new system does just that. It finds a good balance of player ratings not going too high and not dropping too low. We feel it’s important to get that mix right and we feel we pulled it off this year. Sound off with any questions and I’ll try to answer most of them as I can. Happy Maddenoliday!
-Romo