Madden 15 News

[majesty95]

I'm going to keep a list of all the Madden 15 news items that I find in this thread. I'll also post any videos that get put out to help carry us towards the release. If you find an article, video or other news tidbit that you think others should see, feel free to share it also and I'll update this post with it.

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Madden 15 - War in the Trenches

The Madden dev team made a focused effort to improve line play this year. As you can see in the video, offensive linemen are now better at picking up blocks and even double teaming. On the defensive side, new line animations give you unprecedented control over your D-linemen. It remains to be seen how this actually takes shape in the game, but it is an area that has been long overdue for an overhaul so any improvement will be look upon favorably.

Madden 15 - The Gauntlet

The video for the gauntlet isn't great but it does show some of the drills included in Madden 15. My favorite is Oklahoma. I remember that drill all too well from middle and high school football. These drills will be fun to play at first but I wonder if they won't just be novelties whose new shine wears off quickly and is easily forgotten about.

Madden 15 Gameplay Footage

Smitty from The Sim Standard clan captured some "alpha' footage of Madden 15 from E3. The footage features the 49ers and Seahawks. I will say that it looks pretty good visually and that the movements seem much more refined. You can definitely see the linemen pulling and getting downfield for blocks. I didn't notice a whole lot of improvement defensively and it seemed pretty easy to run the ball but its an early build and a small sample size so I'll hold off on passing judgement. I will say, though, that I'm not impressed with the play calling screens. At all. Those are going to take A LOT of work getting used to. Poor design choice in my opinion.

I'll keep you guys posted as I find more news and info on Madden 15. Again, feel free to add anything hat you find as well. Let's feed each other as much quality Madden 15 info as we can to hold us over until August!

 

[majesty95]

Madden 15 Top Player Ratings
Top 10 Rookies

1. OLB JaDeveon Clowney, HOU - 83 Overall
2. OT Greg Robinson, STL - 83 Overall
3. OLB Khalil Mack, OAK - 81 Overall
4. OT Jake Matthews, ATL - 81 Overall
5. WR Sammy Watkins, BUF - 80 Overall
6. SS Calvin Pryor, NYJ - 79 Overall
7. DT Aaron Donald, STL - 79 Overall
8. SS Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, GB - 79 Overall
9. RT Taylor Lewan, TEN - 78 Overall
10. QB Blake Bortles, JAX - 78 Overall

Top 5 QB's

1. Peyton Manning, DEN - 98 Overall
2. Aaron Rodgers, GB - 98 Overall
3. Drew Brees, NO - 96 Overall
4. Russell Wilson, SEA - 93 Overall
5. Tom Brady, NE - 93 Overall

Top 5 HB's

1. Adrian Peterson, MIN - 98 Overall
2. Lesean McCoy, PHI - 97 Overall
3. Jamaal Charles, KC - 97 Overall
4. Matt Forte, CHI - 95 Overall
5. Marshawn Lynch, SEA - 95 Overall

Top 5 WR's

1. Calvin Johnson, DET - 99 Overall
2. Brandon Marshall, CHI - 96 Overall
3. Andre Johnson, HOU - 95 Overall
4. A.J. Green, CIN - 95 Overall
5. Dez Bryant, DAL - 94 Overall

Top 5 TE's

1. Jimmy Graham, NO - 97 Overall
2. Rob Gronkowski, NE - 96 Overall
3. Vernon Davis, SF - 94 Overall
4. Jason Witten, DAL - 93 Overall
5. Greg Olsen, CAR - 88 Overall

Top 5 OL

1. Joe Thomas, CLE - 98 Overall
2. Evan Mathis, PHI - 97 Overall
3. Josh Sitton, GB - 97 Overall
4. Trent Williams, WSH - 95 Overall
5. Joe Staley, SF - 94 Overall

Top 5 DE's

1. J.J. Watt, HOU - 99 Overall
2. Robert Quinn, STL - 97 Overall
3. Cameron Wake, MIA - 96 Overall
4. Calais Campbell, ARI - 96 Overall
5. Cameron Jordan, NO - 93 Overall

Top 5 DT's

1. Ndamakong Suh, DET - 97 Overall
2. Geno Atkins, CIN - 96 Overall
3. Gerald McCoy, TB - 95 Overall
4. Kyle Williams, BUF - 95 Overall
5. Jurrell Casey, TEN - 93 Overall

Top 5 MLB's

1. Patrick Willis, SF - 96 Overall
2. Navorro Bowman, SF - 96 Overall
3. Luke Kuechly, CAR - 94 Overall
4. Derrick Johnson, KC - 91 Overall
5. Jerod Mayo, NE - 91 Overall

Top 5 OLB's

1. Von Miller, DEN - 96 Overall
2. Aldon Smith, SF - 96 Overall
3. Justin Houston, KC - 93 Overall
4. Lavonte David, TB - 93 Overall
5. Robert Mathis, IND - 93 Overall

Top 5 CB's

1. Richard Sherman, SEA - 99 Overall
2. Darrelle Revis, NE - 97 Overall
3. Joe Haden, CLE - 95 Overall
4. Patrick Peterson, ARI - 93 Overall
5. Vontae Davis, IND - 92 Overall

Top 5 FS's

1. Jairus Byrd, NO - 96 Overall
2. Earl Thomas, SEA - 95 Overall
3. Devin McCourty, NE - 94 Overall
4. Eric Weddle, SD - 94 Overall
5. Charles Woodson, OAK - 86 Overall

Top 5 SS's

1. Kam Chancellor, SEA - 93 Overall
2. Troy Polamalu, PIT - 93 Overall
3. TJ Ward, DEN - 91 Overall
4. Eric Berry, KC - 90 Overall
5. Reshad Jones, MIA - 89 Overall

Madden 15 Player Ratings by Team

EA finally released player ratings for every player on every team. You can view them by downloading the Excel spreadsheet which can then be sorted and scrolled however you would like. You can also jump directly to the ratings for your favorite team by clicking one of the links courtesy of GOMADDEN.

Atlanta Falcons
Arizona Cardinals
Baltimore Ravens
Buffalo Bills
Carolina Panthers
Chicago Bears
Cincinnati Bengals
Cleveland Browns
Dallas Cowboys
Denver Broncos
Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers
Houston Texans
Indianapolis Colts
Jacksonville Jaguars
Kansas City Chiefs
Miami Dolphins
Minnesota Vikings
New England Patriots
New Orleans Saints
New York Giants
New York Jets
Oakland Raiders
Philadelphia Eagles
Pittsburgh Steelers
St. Louis Rams
San Diego Chargers
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tennessee Titans
Washington Redskins

 

[majesty95]

Madden 15 Connected Franchise News

This is the the part most of you were waiting for and EA finally released info on Connected Franchise Mode for Madden 15. The biggest changes/additions this year are "Game Prep" and player "confidence."

Game Prep replaces practice mode in franchise play. Essentially, it lets you choose between focusing on XP for your players or on your team's confidence. The idea was to allow rebuilding teams to focus on building up their young players through XP while contending teams would focus on confidence and try to play at their highest level each week. This will be interesting for online leagues like ours as guys can choose different paths for their teams. Now, if you choose a team like the Jaguars, you can either try to ramp up their confidence quickly to try to get them to outperform their abilities (and earn performance related XP) or you can focus exclusively on XP and try to build up future stars like Bortles more quickly.

The team at EA also changed how XP is applied to players. No longer do you have to buy each individual trait one-by-one. Now you can select all of the upgrades that you want to buy and purchase them in one step. That should help simplify things.

The NFL draft has also been touched up as draft classes are now completely random. No longer will you run the risk of having the same draft class in your offline franchise as you do in the league. Each and every player in the draft class will debut at random. This means, supposedly, that their ratings will be random as well. So, there should be no more draft "guides" that people can use to cheat. Very welcomed for those of us sim leaguers.

The last feature that may be of note is that you can now fire your head coach, scout or trainer during the season. Nothing was said about how that would affect your team's confidence should you choose to do so. Also, it is interesting that only these three positions were identified. According to the screenshot earlier in the post, we now have position specific coaches. I just wonder whether those "coaches" can actually be hired and fired of if that will be CPU controlled and more or less "window dressing."

There were a few other more minor feature changes/tweaks that were announced as well. You can read all about them in senior designer Josh Loman's post on the EA Sports website. So what do you guys think of the changes/additions? Good news for leagues?

 

[BigTexas18]

Tyrone didn't make top 5 OL? C'mon now...

 

[DarkParadox21]

Glad there giving my boy Gerald Mccoy a good rating. It's usually a struggle playing as the Bucs but seeing his rating makes me feel a bit more confident.

 

[Futuriistiics]

What's going on with the lack of news concerning Connected Franchise Mode? Are they even going to do anything different at all this year? I thought they'd have at least posted the results of the fan-made Relocation Uniform/Logo/Name design contest

 

[majesty95]

What's going on with the lack of news concerning Connected Franchise Mode? Are they even going to do anything different at all this year? I thought they'd have at least posted the results of the fan-made Relocation Uniform/Logo/Name design contest

We're still a month away. I'm sure it's coming. Plus, I don't know what else they can add to CFM. It has pretty much everything. Just improve the sim engine and give more control to commissioners. What else is missing?

 

[Futuriistiics]

We're still a month away. I'm sure it's coming. Plus, I don't know what else they can add to CFM. It has pretty much everything. Just improve the sim engine and give more control to commissioners. What else is missing?

I'd like to see them fix the way using a Player character works most.

• Allow you to disable simming between when your player is on the field and not. It just doesn't feel like a complete game because you never see what's going on on the other side of the ball. So you might be a QB and drive your team down to take the lead with 1 min left on the clock, and then the CPU sims to win over the next minute (which to you happens in just a few clicks if you progress it play by play), and it just kills the immersion for me. They've had it so you 'watched' the cpu play when you weren't on the field in the past, and I think they should bring it back with an ability to either enable or disable it for people who want to see the whole game unfold and for those who only want to play when their player is in
• Also, the sim stats when it does sim in those situations are completely off and unrealistic. In addition is the time of possession skewing, with the cpu usually running a play like every 4-8 seconds of game clock, and the player always having the ball 2-3 times longer than the cpu
• I think I heard they were adding it, but player lock was something they needed in the past 2 games, because unless you were a QB or HB, you were unable to have the camera focused on you for the most part. That usually really killed it if you were a WR, CB, S, or DB that usually plays at the edge of the screen. In past games, the camera was always shown from in front of your character for a more realistic feel
• I'd also like to see them add a feature in which the 'Coach' called the play instead of the player like they used to have in like 08, 09. As it is now, it's the simplest thing to call plays that focus on your particular player. If a QB, you're going to pick pass plays, HB run plays, etc. I get that a lot of people will want the control to pick their own plays, I just wish they kept the ability to have the coach or coordinator pick plays for realism sake and for the fact that it'd make it feel like you had to play your position in all it's aspects, not just pick plays that'll boost your stats the most. Like back in the day, I used to play a WR in SuperStar mode, and you couldn't just call deep pass plays all the time; if the team called a run play, you had to know how to block too.

Besides the player mode stuff, I'd also want them to improve the relocation process. It was stupid and buggy enough on M25 that I never really used it. I'll give them props for somewhat realizing most people didn't like the names, logos, or uniforms they came up with for the relocations and decided to have a contest to design your own, but they could've just kept the complete user-control method like before and improved it, rather than start over from scratch and have to take the next 2,3, or 4 games to get it right, if they ever do at all.

 

[majesty95]

Just updated the first few posts with all of the player rating info and the details on connected franchise mode. Tell us what you think!

 

[Futuriistiics]

Just updated the first few posts with all of the player rating info and the details on connected franchise mode. Tell us what you think!

I like absolutely everything they did, though I'm disappointed the Player mode wasn't mentioned except to say you won't be on the field for punt/field goal blocks. Hope those redesigned uniforms look better in game. The Bulls logo looked cool, though Brooklyn Bulls is still weird, but maybe that actually has something to do with the city? And I hope the other less annoying relocation bugs are fixed also (endzone logo's of old city being in new city if you relocate and keep old name, and LA being initialed 'CA' to name a couple I'm dealing with now.)

I will say, I hadn't really been exited for a new Madden outside of getting to start a new online league, but this announcement has made me excited for the game itself, whether it's to play online or offline, but mostly just to play video game football.

 

[majesty95]

I like absolutely everything they did, though I'm disappointed the Player mode wasn't mentioned except to say you won't be on the field for punt/field goal blocks. Hope those redesigned uniforms look better in game. The Bulls logo looked cool, though Brooklyn Bulls is still weird, but maybe that actually has something to do with the city? And I hope the other less annoying relocation bugs are fixed also (endzone logo's of old city being in new city if you relocate and keep old name, and LA being initialed 'CA' to name a couple I'm dealing with now.)

I will say, I hadn't really been exited for a new Madden outside of getting to start a new online league, but this announcement has made me excited for the game itself, whether it's to play online or offline, but mostly just to play video game football.

Hopefully it excites you into getting a PS4

 

[Futuriistiics]

I'd like to see them fix the way using a Player character works most.

• Allow you to disable simming between when your player is on the field in and not. It just doesn't feel like a complete game because you never see what's going on on the other side of the ball. So you might be a QB and drive your team down to take the lead with 1 min left on the clock, and then the CPU sims to win over the next minute (which to you happens in just a few clicks if you progress it play by play), and it just kills the immersion for me. They've had it so you 'watched' the cpu play when you weren't on the field in the past, and I think they should bring it back with an ability to either enable or disable it for people who want to see the whole game unfold and for those who only want to play when their player is in
• Also, the sim stats when it does sim in those situations are completely off and unrealistic. In addition is the time of possession skewing, with the cpu usually running a play like every 4-8 seconds of game clock, and the player always having the ball 2-3 times longer than the cpu
• I think I heard they were adding it, but player lock was something they needed in the past 2 games, because unless you were a QB or HB, you were unable to have the camera focused on you for the most part. That usually really killed it if you were a WR, CB, S, or DB that usually plays at the edge of the screen. In past games, the camera was always shown from in front of your character for a more realistic feel
• I'd also like to see them add a feature in which the 'Coach' called the play instead of the player like they used to have in like 08, 09. As it is now, it's the simplest thing to call plays that focus on your particular player. If a QB, you're going to pick pass plays, HB run plays, etc. I get that a lot of people will want the control to pick their own plays, I just wish they kept the ability to have the coach or coordinator pick plays for realism sake and for the fact that it'd make it feel like you had to play your position in all it's aspects, not just pick plays that'll boost your stats the most. Like back in the day, I used to play a WR in SuperStar mode, and you couldn't just call deep pass plays all the time; if the team called a run play, you had to know how to block too.

Besides the player mode stuff, I'd also want them to improve the relocation process. It was stupid and buggy enough on M25 that I never really used it. I'll give them props for somewhat realizing most people didn't like the names, logos, or uniforms they came up with for the relocations and decided to have a contest to design your own, but they could've just kept the complete user-control method like before and improved it, rather than start over from scratch and have to take the next 2,3, or 4 games to get it right, if they ever do at all.

Wanted to give an update on this since I've been playing M15 for a couple hours now (for PS3)

• Still doesn't allow you to watch the cpu play instead of supersimming as a player in CFM when you're not on the field, but it doesn't bother me as much because of the point below
• The sim stats so far look more realistic, notably the Time of possession for the cpu team. Instead of showing the cpu run a play every 3-4 seconds of game clock, now it's varying times between about 10-20 seconds, which is more realistic since that's about how long a human player would take without accelerated clock
• They don't have player-lock camera or a defensive perspective camera like a heard for New Gens, but they do have an improved Wide view, Pre-snap wide view, and my favorite, "All-22" camera angle that makes sure everyone on the field is visible, so you can actually see your player as a WR or CB, or even if you're throwing a checkdown towards the sideline as a QB
• They don't have a feature allowing the coach to call the plays when you're playing as a passer, which I'm disappointed about, but didn't really expect (don't know if anyone else even cares about it but me), but I've been able to deal with it by setting playcall style to Gameflow and just picking the "Gameplan" play most times to give it a semlance of the feature I wanted
• And lastely, the relocation process, while still not perfect, is at least better. A lot of the names still sound stupid, half the logos I don't really like, but I'd say most of the uniforms are doable for me. A big improvement over all 17 cities having same exact uniform stlyles with small color variations

- Again, this is all from the PS3 version