Franchise Thoughts Madden 13

My first attempt at franchise (I refuse to call it CCM) in Madden was very bittersweet. I chose the online option and set up a one person league just so I could take advantage of the server side fixes for some of the franchise issues. This will come back to bite me in the *** later on.


SETUP

All of your settings must be keyed from scratch in a new franchise. It does not import your difficulty level, sliders, auto subs or any other options from your profile. Not a big deal but it would be nice to save time. I used EA’s Game Face to upload myself into their site and download me into the game as the new Dolphins coach Rudy Dolphin. The game face isn’t perfect but it’s not bad. My wife joked earlier that I looked too young. The game automatically fires Joe Philbin and it’s the top story for the news. There were 9 stories right away and one week I saw 12. The twitter feeds are interesting as well. Some guys take shots at moves while other trades are speculated about.





MENUS

The menus in franchise are not very intuitive. You use the r-stick to cycle through the main options which isn’t a big deal but the far option in the top right corner is “More” and that’s where a lot of the key stuff is tucked away within 6 subcategories – like signing free agents, setting depth charts and checking out salaries. This should be broken out and made a little easier to find and navigate imo.


SALARY CAP

One of the historical problems with Madden’s franchise mode is the cap is usually too high making it easy to sign guys. This year is no different. This is because past bonuses are not reflected into your cap or future cap. When starting with Miami there was no dead money on the books for 2012 or 2013. We actually have quite a bit. Instead of being tight against the cap I had $14 million to spend (I believe). EA has also failed to update Vontae Davis properly – he’s on the Colts but Miami does not have the Colts 2013 2nd round pick while other future picks are correct. Anyways, I used that cap room to go sign Kellen Winslow and Plaxico Burress. I normally like to run a true-to-life franchise but Miami sucks in real life so I needed to spice up my offense. One thing that bothered me when I signed these guys was there was no negotiation at all. No multi-year offer, no signing bonus, no negotiating salary. Either you chose to sign them at the listed one year salary or you didn’t sign them at all. Furthermore, way too many free agents are over-rated. EA only seems to re-rate active players. There is a reason many of these guys are unemployed but quite a few guys are rated 80+. Need better backups at safety, LB and OL? No problem. Free agency is littered with guys better than your starters at many spots. I used this to make further upgrades to my depth.


PRACTICE

I set my team up, signed some free agents, changed the schemes at each position (pocket passer QB, balanced LT, etc) set my depth chart and got into the pre-season. I ended up doing three practices which occur before each game. You have to do this if you want to build XP for your coach and improve yourself. I wish you could just sim the practices and get some XP and I’m not a big fan of this new RPG element. I am not going to choose the practice options that last half a game or a full game. They just take place in a practice bubble and your opponents are 100% generic (QB, RB, WR, etc.) with no announcers or anything. It should at least be my first team offense against my first team defense. So why would I want to waste a lot of time on those scenarios when this is a pretty boring mode? Plus the game is set to GAMEFLOW after every play! I have to constantly choose full playbook when I pick my plays. You can’t even use Ask Madden. I only chose the 4th quarter scenarios so they didn’t take too long. I was one for three. Tannehill threw too many picks lol!


PRESEASON AND TRADE BLOCK

I simmed the first two preseason games. Apparently Odrick got hurt but Daniel Thomas and Tannehill did well and made the list of news stories. One thing I liked for every week of preseason, there are certain players on the trade block. While this is unrealistic it does make it fun and interesting and I like it. After signing Kellen Winslow teams were trying to trade for Anthony Fasano even though I wasn't trying to move him. Many of the offers were draft picks – some from 2014! He’s my only blocking TE so I declined the 4th rounders and other offers. I tried trading Reggie Bush to the Packers for a 3rd rounder but they declined. I also bid on a few players I liked that were on the trade block. Delanie Walker (TE, 49ers) was up on the block and I decided to offer my young benched 3rd rounder Michael Egnew along with next year’s 5th rounder for him. Beware, you only get one crack at the trade! I don’t mind this but the cpu takes the best offer and moves the guy. They declined my offer and Delanie went elsewhere. Where I don’t know because there is no transaction log in the game. The next week James Jones (WR, GB) came up on the trade block and I offered a young WR and a 4th round pick next year and GB took it! Now I’ve got Plax and James Jones as my starting WRs.

UGH - ONLINE SERVERS
Now I’m at the third preseason game, I’ve signed guys, set up everything I like, performed one of the cut days and then EA’s servers crap out. My franchise is toast. I never saved anything. I thought the mode auto-saved every time you advanced each week but apparently not. Never will I ever fall for EA’s online franchise mode again. I wanted to be able to get the quick fixes on server side updates but it’s just not worth it to lose the time you invest in this. It was fun but now I wasted almost 1.5 hours and have to do it all over again. Ugh. Maybe I'll try trading Reggie Bush straight up for James Jones next time.