Knee Jerk Reactions and Poor Communication; Why Madden 20 Needs to be Different

Coming out of the beta, one of the commonly heard complaints was that QB's seemed to "wind up" for throws, even those that were shorter in distance. This led to people immediately calling for it to be "fixed" by the development team. A feature that had been touted by EA as a more realistic representation of QB release times was already being challenged after three days of beta game play. This situation is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in the current player/developer relationship when it comes to Madden. While it's easy to look at the players as the root cause of this unhealthy relationship, the development team must own a piece of it and do their part to improve it. 

Patch and Burn

Sometimes people are gluttons for punishment. They will ask for something they think they want only to find themselves upset with their desires shortly after. When it comes to Madden, patching is a polarizing topic that has caused so much angst within the community. People are quick to ask for them, but also quick to condemn them after the fact.

Think about this for a second. It only took three days playing the beta for people to be convinced that the whole "wind up" mechanic was broken because they couldn't understand why a drag would take so long. The issue here is that perception doesn't always meet reality, and what they perceived to be the QB winding up similar to a deep pass was their QB resetting his feet to pass in the correct direction. This supposed "bug" started to gain steam through social media, so much so apparently EA decided an article explaining what was actually happening needed to be written. In truth the mechanic was working as EA designed, but how is the community supposed to know this is how it was designed?

Communication is Key

Friday night a "Gridiron Notes" article was posted in regards to QB animations. Inside this article was an interesting tidbit that explained how the "wind up" mechanic worked and why some throws took longer than expected. It turns out that throws in the middle of the field, no matter the distance, are faster than throws to the outside, especially those to the off hand side of the QB. This increased time was to allow for the QB to reset his feet in the direction he was throwing, something that upon learning many people greatly appreciated. The issue is that most people didn't know or still don't know about this new feature.

Not knowing is part of the bigger problem at play here. As of writing this article the only EA reference to that "Gridiron Notes" article came from a tweet at 10:30 pm on a Friday from community manager Kraelo and then a single Saturday afternoon tweet by the EA account. This seems like it would be a bigger deal, but the information is still hard to come by. 

The reality is that EA needs to do a better job of conveying information to it's player base. It is fair to say this mechanic could have been explained better in previous "Gridiron Notes", however it's also difficult to explain in detail every possible pain point for players before the players even identify them. What needs to happen is a balanced approach between being proactive and reactive in terms of new mechanics. 

EA should identify potential pain points in mechanics and get out in front of them before the players interact with the mechanic. The "Gridiron Notes" series is a positive step forward in communication from the development team, however more of a proactive approach would go a long way in preventing some of the player angst about new mechanics. As mentioned, you won't be able to get in front of everything. In those cases, it's important to have a temperature on the community and know when it's time to get an explanation out and do so in a quick and broad manner. 

Keep Calm and Madden

As a player, I try to hold back from making definitive statements but rather ask questions. I think as a community we could do ourselves a favor by asking the developers if something is supposed to act a certain way, over proclaiming something is working incorrectly. This can reduce a lot of the angst we have seen, but also prevent a lot of the mob mentality patches that the community has grown to despise.

As the other half of this problem, the developers need to do a better job at predicting pain points and getting out in front of them. They are staffed by plenty of former players, and have access to enough current players, that they should have a petty good idea of where the community may get hung up. In those cases where they couldn't predict the issues, it's important that information gets disbursed in a way people can easily find and understand it.

In the end, we all want Madden to play well and be enjoyable. If both sides do their part to make each other's lives easier I believe the experience can be more enjoyable for everyone involved. 

So what do you think? Let me know on Twitter @T4Verts!