Madden 17

[fletcher21]

Ratings are weird this year. We all heard about Dez Bryant being mad about his 90 rating. I started a franchise as the Vikings. They are only rated a 79. First game was in Tennessee, and the titans had a higher rating. Seems weird, since the Vikings are for sure a top 10 team in the league, but receive no love on madden.

I'm finding 17 way harder against the ai than 16 was. Nice challenge.

[Danimal]

It's been so long since I played my XB1 but how do you save screen shots?

Press the home button quickly 2 times, then Y.

Thanks!!

[Danimal]

Ratings are weird this year.

By weird do you mean more realistic? Because ratings have been an issue for years, at least this year they attempted to make them better and not every guy is 85+. Personally I love how different the players are.

[Danimal]

Terry you starting a league?

[TCrouch]

Yeah, I answered your XBL message last night. You should check those when you send them!

[Danimal]

Really, I didn't see a notification sorry.

I played my first franchise regular season game as the Bears against the Texans and lost 34-0. I don't think I've ever been shut out in a Madden game. The Bears are terrible their secondary can't cover anyone. I had -3 offense at halftime. Every time I dropped back to pass I was under pressure within seconds. It was frustrating and fun at the same time.

[TCrouch]

Yep, different teams can play very differently. I've had some good games and been smoked some games, so I'm never quite sure what's going to happen.

[Danimal]

Yep I'm not sure if I will win a game with the Bears. Their CB's are so far away from making a play on every pass that even switching to them and trying to do it manually is impossible. I set my season goal for 8 wins, haha no way.

[dbdynsty25]

-Removed-

[MizzouRah]

Well I'm 0-4 with the Chargers, but we signed papers on a new stadium in St. Louis today! Get your St. Louis Chargers gear today!

I'm totally in love with play in the moment.

[Diablo25]

10spro and I just played a head to head MUT game. He beat me 14-0. I had 3 (?) turnovers that killed me. That and I'm just not that good

[10spro]

10spro and I just played a head to head MUT game. He beat me 14-0. I had 3 (?) turnovers that killed me. That and I'm just not that good

Loving MUT, the low chemistry teams as you build your season on with bronze and silver players, the challenges...Tight game man, those INT's were the difference.

[Danimal]

Played my 2nd franchise game against the Eagle expecting to get thumped, won in over time 26-23. The Eagle scored first in Ot with a field goal and I won it on a Cutler pass. Things that really stood out to me this game.

- I had time to throw, with Clowner and Watt I have no time against the Texans. Perhaps those guys are a bit too strongly rated idk. However the time in the pocket was at least workable.

- The Eagles came out and ran 7 straight time, SEVEN. I can't recall a Madden game ever doing that. I had to adjust my defense and shut that down.

- Langoford fumbled 2 times in critical situations and after the game he regressed 2 points... Nice.

- White also was stripped going in for a TD.

Was an enjoyable game which had me air high fiving no one.

[Zeppo]

I've been fooling around with ultimate team as I'm trying to get a handle on the gameplay. The solo challenges are fun and provide little bite-sized chunks of madden. I am starting to really enjoy the fun factor of the gameplay, but a few things still bother me, such as on WR screens the wideout will come running, leaping, flying back towards the ball to make the catch, thereby entirely nullifying the effectiveness of the play - it's happened just enough times to make me wary of wanting to call that play.

That said, I really like that they have defenses auto-flip - this has been a glaring issue for me for, like, ten years or so. I also really like how the coaches choice defenses wait until the O selects a play, thereby allowing it to choose D personnel correctly. Another huge improvement that has taken far too long to be made.

The kicking is still a mess. It's too easy offline, and online the lag makes it nearly impossible (I've only played one online game, so maybe it was just that connection). Also I had one game where each team blocked a PAT on consecutive scores. That's a bad sign to me. I like that blocks are now possible, but it doesn't appear to be well balanced. Squib kick-offs are still just as broken as they've ever been in Madden. It's always the first guy it gets close to who easily grabs it and ends up taking no time off and getting tackled at, like, the 40. Not the purpose of a squib kick!!!!

(Side note - I ran a fake FG run play on a PAT and it gave me zero points - commentary said "he ran out of bounds" when I was no where near the boundary - is this a rule now that they've put the PAT kick try further back? It's not a rule as far as I know, but I'm not sure.)

Ultimate team is not bad but wow, the auction functionality is downright primitive and awful compared to FIFA. No "compare price" option? That's a no-brainer, essential tool for buyers and sellers alike! No way to "re-list" unsold auction items? You mean, I have to go back and search through my Item Binder all over again to find that handful of useless crap I already sifted through to put up for auction? No way to "clear sold items" from the My Auctions/Bids page? What a cluttered mess! And why do I have to get a notification every time I've been outbid? After one session of trying to get a couple of positions upgraded, I had like 70 new messages. What that means for me is I will never go to messages again, such a waste of time. I just don't get how they can fail to have anything close to the relatively elegant system that exists in FIFA for the auctions.

Otherwise, besides the one H2H MUT game I played resulting in a quit with about one minute to go, I still think I may end up playing an online game in this mode from time to time. But if the quitting gets out of hand I don't think I'll be able to take it.

But just in terms of gameplay, I do find it fun as hell. I still feel defense is 90% play calling and watching what happens, but there are probably just enough open field tackle situations to keep me more involved after the snap. I am certainly not capable of playing D as a LB or Safety like Terry - I've tried and I can't do it!

And I may be in the minority but I'm already getting tired of the commentary. Too jokey, too "fake smile" sounding. Don't "doff your cap" ass hole, just tip it because they mean the same thing.

If I felt like I had more time to play online games with you lot, I'm pretty sure this would be my favorite Madden ever, and that would be saying something.

[TCrouch]

Only weird part to me is I've had zero lag in all of the online games I've played, including the kick meter. Different people, different connections.

They DID make a change this year so that if you're playing a person with a worse connection, only that person will feel it. The better connection will still get clean gameplay, unlike years past where both players suffered. So if you're seeing a laggy kick meter...

[10spro]

I'Ultimate team is not bad but wow, the auction functionality is downright primitive and awful compared to FIFA. No "compare price" option? That's a no-brainer, essential tool for buyers and sellers alike! No way to "re-list" unsold auction items? You mean, I have to go back and search through my Item Binder all over again to find that handful of useless crap I already sifted through to put up for auction? No way to "clear sold items" from the My Auctions/Bids page? What a cluttered mess! And why do I have to get a notification every time I've been outbid? After one session of trying to get a couple of positions upgraded, I had like 70 new messages. What that means for me is I will never go to messages again, such a waste of time. I just don't get how they can fail to have anything close to the relatively elegant system that exists in FIFA for the auctions.

I agree with you here. And it's been like this for the past 2-3 years that I have been playing MUT. Fifa got a huge advantage in this department, heck they even added an app whee you can get access to your auctions. I don't have the time to bid for every 100 points either, so I usually just go straight to the 'Buy Now' option and if the price is right, I go for it. The compare feature would have been nice indeed, but to be fair here, not even HUT is in the same category like Fifa. Slow, clunky bidding menus seem to plague both franchises.

And as you mentioned, do we really need to be notified via email whether we got outbid every single transaction?

Just enjoying a lot, the challenges. My only gripe is that my receivers tend to drop a lot of easy passes. Not sure if that's the same case with the other modes as I haven't touched even 'Play Now' or whether it's because my MUT is built with Bronze and Silver guys. No issues with the kicking meter in online games here.

[Aristo]

One thing I found in MUT that helps a bit is hitting LB when looking at a card in the binder. It will bring up all of the current auctions for that item. I then sort those by number of bids, which gives me a vague sense of what it's going for. It's not perfect, but I've found it useful.

I never look at messages. They are a complete waste.

The entire Auction House could use a reworking, but I've not had problems buying and selling there. I never play FUT, but I can imagine it is light years ahead of MUT. Weirdly, HUT is worse, but has some features I wish MUT had. I think they ought to streamline their Ultimate Team modes to be mostly the same across all titles.

And I would kill for a good MUT app on iOS.

[Danimal]

I haven't seen many blocks at all. I think my first game in the trial I had a blocked field goal followed by a block XP and I was thinking oh no. Since then I haven't seen one and I've gotten a roughing the kicker 3 times trying to block a punt so there is definitely a risk / reward factor

[Sudz]

MUCH better than 16...and 16 was a solid game.

though...I've played 10 games as Dallas and Romo has only been hurt once....

[fsquid]

Well I'm 0-4 with the Chargers, but we signed papers on a new stadium in St. Louis today! Get your St. Louis Chargers gear today!

I'm totally in love with play in the moment.

Play in the moment is too sporadic for me. After I convert that 3rd, I want to keep playing offense!

[Wilk5280]

The weekly commentary updates are a nice touch. Playing as the Broncos they talked about how Sanchez squandered his opportunity to rejuvenate his career. Jesus, living in Denver that's all sports talk radio talks about 24/7 and now I can't even get away from it in Madden :p

[fsquid]

The weekly commentary updates are a nice touch. Playing as the Broncos they talked about how Sanchez squandered his opportunity to rejuvenate his career. Jesus, living in Denver that's all sports talk radio talks about 24/7 and now I can't even get away from it in Madden :p

This Memphis fan is glad that Sanchez is squandering it!

[fletcher21]

I'm loving this game. The ONLY thing bugging me is the run/pass glitch which is a 100% game breaking bug. Ea knows about it, and will be patching it. Hopefully soon, because it's just not fun knowing 100% whether or not the ai will be running or passing before the snap.

[fletcher21]

Looks like I'm in the dreaded limbo where all pro is too easy, while Madden is too hard.

[Diablo25]

Looks like I'm in the dreaded limbo where all pro is too easy, while Madden is too hard.

Can't you set it to Madden and then adjust the sliders to just above Pro?