Post by OverTheEdge on Jun 7, 2009 17:43:19 GMT -5
Some good and bad news regarding Online Franchise, posted by a popular Sports video game blog;
Obviously I’m incredibly excited about Online Franchise. I was able to talk to various members of the Madden 10 team in order to find out more about the mode. After how much I got caught up in Online Dynasty in NCAA Football 09, when I never have traditionally been a dynasty player, I know this could have similar impact for Madden.
The number of user controlled teams can be 1-32. So you can even run an online dynasty on your own if you wanted to take advantage of the web or mobile functions. Owners can be added or dropped at anytime with the CPU controlling any other teams. I did ask whether a user could control more than one team but the answer was uncertain so in all likelihood that is a no.
Many of the features of the traditional franchise mode do transfer over to Online Franchise. Injuries and player progression should be handled the same way as offline. Drafts can be completed on the web or the console. The online franchises can go for as long as 10 years.
Unfortunately there are some aspects of Online Franchise such as the weekly recap show that do not carry over to the online side. The importing of an NCAA Football roster will only be available to offline franchises. And player movement is an area of the mode that is not structured so I’ll go into that further.
The biggest issues I discovered will be the lack of contracts and salary cap as well as the lack of trade logic with CPU teams. Those are very complicated areas and they were simply unable to get them implemented in time. This means users will have to come up with their own system to complete those functions. The Madden team is well aware that these are serious downfalls to the mode so while they are attempting to get in some options to make free agency and trading with the CPU possible within franchise.
Essentially that means granting the commissioner power to hand out free agents and approve trades. This way organized and committed franchises could operate their own free agency and trading system out of forums and then have the commish push the transactions through. Certainly this is not ideal but at least makes those things possible.
It is the people who randomly join franchises that seem likely to either encounter a negative experience or EA will have to offer the option to turn it into a quasi season or league by locking player movement outside of user to user trades. Unlike Online Dynasty in NCAA Football which requires an invite there will be the ability to join random Online Franchises in Madden. Given this news I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better to have them be solely invite based like NCAA.
On a positive note Online Franchise is being run server side rather than from the discs. That means there can be fixes, updates, and additions even after release of the game. Those things wouldn’t have to go through the normal patching process either because of it.
Despite the couple drawbacks they really got in a lot more than most people would’ve expected in just the one year. As we are seeing, Online Franchise has elements to it that make it more complicated than NCAA’s Online Dynasty. Hopefully they’ll provide the support they are saying is possible up to and through release to make the mode as good as it can be in this first year.
The number of user controlled teams can be 1-32. So you can even run an online dynasty on your own if you wanted to take advantage of the web or mobile functions. Owners can be added or dropped at anytime with the CPU controlling any other teams. I did ask whether a user could control more than one team but the answer was uncertain so in all likelihood that is a no.
Many of the features of the traditional franchise mode do transfer over to Online Franchise. Injuries and player progression should be handled the same way as offline. Drafts can be completed on the web or the console. The online franchises can go for as long as 10 years.
Unfortunately there are some aspects of Online Franchise such as the weekly recap show that do not carry over to the online side. The importing of an NCAA Football roster will only be available to offline franchises. And player movement is an area of the mode that is not structured so I’ll go into that further.
The biggest issues I discovered will be the lack of contracts and salary cap as well as the lack of trade logic with CPU teams. Those are very complicated areas and they were simply unable to get them implemented in time. This means users will have to come up with their own system to complete those functions. The Madden team is well aware that these are serious downfalls to the mode so while they are attempting to get in some options to make free agency and trading with the CPU possible within franchise.
Essentially that means granting the commissioner power to hand out free agents and approve trades. This way organized and committed franchises could operate their own free agency and trading system out of forums and then have the commish push the transactions through. Certainly this is not ideal but at least makes those things possible.
It is the people who randomly join franchises that seem likely to either encounter a negative experience or EA will have to offer the option to turn it into a quasi season or league by locking player movement outside of user to user trades. Unlike Online Dynasty in NCAA Football which requires an invite there will be the ability to join random Online Franchises in Madden. Given this news I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better to have them be solely invite based like NCAA.
On a positive note Online Franchise is being run server side rather than from the discs. That means there can be fixes, updates, and additions even after release of the game. Those things wouldn’t have to go through the normal patching process either because of it.
Despite the couple drawbacks they really got in a lot more than most people would’ve expected in just the one year. As we are seeing, Online Franchise has elements to it that make it more complicated than NCAA’s Online Dynasty. Hopefully they’ll provide the support they are saying is possible up to and through release to make the mode as good as it can be in this first year.
It REALLY sucks that there's no importing of draft classes allowed for online franchise. And no salary cap and weekly recap videos is a huge bummer too. But, the fact they'll be able to make updates and fixes for this mode is good. Plus, up to ten years of a league is good.
That doesn't really bother me too much, as I usually--and by that I mean always--keep the teams the way they are. The lack of recap videos is pretty lame though. It'd be so awesome to see highlights from all of the games that were played.