roll2tide's Blog - Operation Sports

My Madden Online Experience

I'll try to chronicle as much of my Madden 10 Online activity as I can. This is the first NG version that I've been excited about and I hope that the online experience is top notch.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Bucs @ Bills XSL Week 3

Posted on August 19, 2009 at 02:08 AM.

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Buffalo-The Bucs traveled to Buffalo for their game vs the Bills and coach TheSilverCrow. Right off the bat, avoid this guy if your a sim style player. If your not, then read on for your easy win tips and seek him out.

With M Lynch, T Owens, L Evans, and R Parrish in the mix I knew that this might be a Wildcat kind of game. It wasn't, though I did see a few plays, but it was boring all the same. 4 WR set, owens on a post as the X receiver, Parrish and Evans on drags/crossing routes from the slots all game long. This guy has the post well timed and it was actually tough to stop for a while. Any time he caught me in a bad defense he went to no huddle.

I took the KO and scored first on a ball control drive for a quick 7-0 lead. he scored the 21 points as he had 1 offensive drive and 2 pick 6's. One was a 98 yard jaunt by LB Palmer where he broke 3 tackles and outran the other 8 defenders. I settled down and scored to end the half down 21-14.

I held him scoreless in the 3rd and added a 19 yard TD run by D Ward to tie the game at 21. We traded 4th quarter TD's for a 28-28 tie during the 4th with him kicking off to me with about 3 minutes left. My intention was to move into FG range and run the clock since he had used 2 TO's earlier in the half but Ward broke a 22 yard run for a TD and a 35-28 lead with 1:41 to go.

Knowing what he wanted to do I just sat in Nickel 2-5 Velcro, pulled the FS down tight so that he backpedaled into the Owens post and I manually covered the crossing route on the side. I blitzed the OLB on the offenses right and shifted my line to the offenses left and slanted them out wide as well which created 2 sacks and ate a bunch of time. he made an adjustment but it was too little too late and the Bucs moved to 2-0 with a 35-28 win.

Ward had 15 carries for 125 yards and 2 TDs plus a 42 yard run on the opening drive to set up that score. Leftwich went 14-18 for 259 yards, 3 TDs and 2 picks.

note:I've stopped doing EA Highlights for now because it always cuts out the first part of the play. Hopefully, they'll fix that as Ward had some beautiful cuts in the early parts of some of his runs and I'd love to show them off.

Category: The XSL

Monday, August 17, 2009

Texans get slaughtered NSFL Week 2

Posted on August 17, 2009 at 09:40 PM.

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Houston-Basicly, the opposite of my 1st game in the XSL. I won the game on paper but INT's caused me to get blown out.

I lost this game 41-23 on the back of my 4 picks. The Titans got good pressure all day and they just did a good job of forcing me into mistakes. Once I got behind I made the classic mistake of forcing the ball and things just snowballed from there. Nothing I can but tip my hat to coach DivineK1LLa. He called a great game.

Also, this game really showed me the difference between our teams in terms of overall and individual talent. My OLine got whipped all day, my WRs dropped alot of passes, and my defenders just never could quite make the big plays whereas the Titans looked like a much crisper team with fewer mental mistakes. It could be a long season for the Texans.

Texans drop to 0-2 on the season and 0-1 in the conference race.

Category: The NSFL

Does any aspect of this game work properly?

Posted on August 17, 2009 at 05:42 PM.

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Seriously, I'd love to ask Ian and crew just what it is we paid 60$ for. A working offline franchise? No. Progression, draft logic, trade logic, difficulty settings-all broken. Online franchise? No. Missing features, no draft pick trades, lack of commish control over rosters and game resets, no multi team ownership so you can run a 16 man 2 team per franchise, and a host of other failures leave this feature too incomplete. Online match play? No. All Pro is way too easy and way too short. All Madden costs extra, not many people did it, and the defense still uses 'cheating' instead of improved AI to increase difficulty.

So, EA devs, what exactly about this game works properly? Which feature, specifically, works exactly as you desired it to? Challenge system? Broken. Pro-Tak? The feature that allows a player to break through 4-7 tacklers? Whatever. Gameplay AI? Hah.....has anyone seen the "lost" defenders yet? Sometimes, a random player, usually a LB, is just walking around. I've seen it a few times in replays. I could force it to happen in the demo my calling man coverage, moving the LB kind of far away from his assigned man and switch off after the snap. The LB would just casually start walking across the field.

The passing is improved and the addition of Online Franchise is a good step, but only in terms of the fact that it should've been there 5 years ago. However, the 3-4 is completely broken, the Nickel 2-5 is still way too effective, EA highlights regularly cut out the first part of a play(where the cool stuff happens), and zone defense in general seems like it breaks down way too quickly.

I've already abandoned franchise mode and I'm about ready to give up on online match play which just leaves online franchise.

So, seriously, Ian and Phil......which aspect of this game do you feel is honestly working to your satisfaction? I know you'll never come across this but I think it would get deleted in the forums and at least this allows me to vent.

Category: Madden 10

Sunday, August 16, 2009

The NSFL Texans Week 1

Posted on August 16, 2009 at 02:51 AM.

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Houston-Man, what a great game this was vs the Jets and coach The Goat 1713. It was a high scoring affair but not due to poor defense as much as it was due to 2 patient offensive coaches who let their playmakers make plays. Matt Schaub went 23-28 for 319 yards, 2 TDs and a pick 6 INT. 9 different WRs had at least 1 catch and none of them hit the 100 yard mark. Andre Johnson came closest with 98 yards and a TD on 4 receptions.

Meanwhile, the Jets Mark Sanchez went 18-21 for 258 yards with 2 TDs and 1 INT. He hit 6 different receivers with Chancy Stuckey falling just short of the century mark with 99 yards receiving.

The teams went back and forth the entire game until late in the 4th with Houston up 31-28 and kicking off with 1:14 to go. The Jets moved down the field in small chunks, taking what my defense gave them and not forcing the ball into coverage. Then, with 30 seconds to go this happened:

EA Sports: Madden NFL 10 Video Highlight

Defensive epic fail. I made an effort to score in the time remaining but failed to do so and lost 35-31.

one thing I'm learning is the importance of a good DT(or set of them) and a good Center. The DT/Center matchup can really affect what kind of run game you have, if any. In this game the Jets DT just whipped my C every damn play. Slaton had about 40 yards on 18 carries.

Also, this game played on 12 min quarters with 15 sec runoff. The game was maybe a tad long(sorry, I didn't time it) but it completely took the rushed feeling out of it and, imo, kept things sim late in the game when we both needed a score.

Texans 0-1.

Category: The NSFL

Saturday, August 15, 2009

XSL NFL Bucs Week 1

Posted on August 15, 2009 at 02:20 AM.

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Tampa Bay-Week 1 brought the visiting Cowboys into town with their star studded roster coached by Ironwolf78. The Boyz' outgained us by 57 yards (230 vs 173), had twice as many 1st downs (12 vs 6), held me to 1-5 3rd down conversions, and won the time of possession battle 17:32 to 10:28 with a final score of 27-7.

Horrific loss, right? No. The Bucs defense noticed early on that Romo wasn't throwing to his WR's or downfield at all. He was just hitting Whitten and Barber in the flats mostly so the CB's started sitting on the flats routes and got pick 6's on successive plays to open a 14-0 lead. Barber got the first one and went 52 yards to the house and 11 seconds later talib snagged his and went 22 yards to paydirt.

Dallas got on the board in the 2nd quarter with a 2 yard TD pass to Whitten but RB D Ward answered with a 66 yard burst to stretch the lead back out to 21-7. He had actually gone 56 yards on the previous play for a TD but it was called back for holding so, to me at least, it made the 66 yard run just that much more impressive.

With Dallas in pass mode the Bucs played a bend but don't break defense to avoid giving up the big play and our 3-4 zone blitzing scheme had Romo off balance all day. The Bucs tacked on 2 4th quarter FGs for the 27-7 final.

Bucs 1-0.