With a closed beta, there’s only so many hands that get to touch Madden 24 before its release on August 15. The second beta was shorter but did provide gameplay updates from the first beta. With that in mind, I wanted to put together some of the biggest concerns OS folks have so far as it relates to Madden 24 gameplay. This will encompass mostly the second beta, with some notes made about changes people felt were for the worse (or at least felt different to them) from the first to second beta as well. I’m not going to cover everything either, this is really just about taking note of the negatives that were mentioned multiple times rather than turning this into a laundry list of negatives.
Madden 24 Gameplay Concerns
What’s An Elite Pass Rusher?
What’s come up a lot during the second beta is a feeling that pass rushing, especially from the elite edge rushers of the world (Nick Bosa, Micah Parsons, etc.), is just not there. People overall are positive about the blocking upgrades and the improved enjoyment when running the ball, but QBs simply have too much time right now. This issue folds into the next one I’ll talk about as well, but the point is that dominant edge rushers are not winning their one-on-one battles enough right now. If you can’t reliably count on your dominant edge rusher to create chaos or at least draw consistent double teams, then you’re going to be in for a bad time this year in Madden as of now.
On top of that, while I would guess in the real NFL that simulated pressures will become even more popular this year, as of now the modernization of the Madden defense is not on the level where I would feel confident trying to mimic the real NFL and tweaking your schemes to fit that style where you’re creating all these simulated pressures to then just send five while hoping the offense respects the chance that you’ll bring an even bigger blitz. Instead, right now I think the opposing QBs in Madden would welcome these blitzes in many cases.
And, to be clear, it’s not about getting sacks here necessarily but just the overall time a QB has to make a decision is excessive. It feels even worse because QB contains don’t feel as great and QBs in general are able to get out of the pocket much better than they could last year. EA probably went too far last year nerfing a QB’s ability to escape the pocket, but now it feels like QBs are going to have time in the pocket, the ability to escape the pocket, and then also roast your defense when they finally get rid of the ball.
Modernize The Pass Defense, Please?
Why the concern is so great is because pass defense still doesn’t feel especially modernized or up to the task of dealing with modern passing attacks. Corner routes, crossers, curls, outs, drags, rubs, picks — it’s really a cornucopia of choices the QB has right now to shred defenses because defensive backs just can’t keep up with receivers. The separation feels too great all over the field, defenders don’t have enough contextual animations to cope with and recover from things like rubs/picks, and there just are not enough options right now to deal with it all. Part of this is the AI and the lack of reaction — you can only click on to so many players — but it’s also just the fact that as a coach you don’t have enough tactics to pull out to deal with the modern NFL spread offense.
In the end, I don’t think there’s going to be a great solution here because as a coach I just don’t think you have the optionality right now in this game. So the “cheat” or balancing act is going to be how good do you make AI defenders at “cheating” like we’ve seen in old Maddens where they basically turn into mind readers.
That said, I do think it’s a nice addition in the beta to be able to see during every moment what the AI defense is doing during a play, so you can at least try to understand why the AI is making the choices it does (I assume this is something EA has had in order to make changes on their end, but now we as consumers can at least visually see the same thing in practice mode).
The good lad GutFoxx explains this new addition in-depth here (or look above). In a sense, it will help you “break” the game, but it also will help you understand what defenders are doing and how their coverages are actually programmed so you can maybe help come up with some defensive ideas as well. Conversely, it might just drive you crazy because you’ll just see more that the AI defenders are not properly understanding down and distance or why they’re covering over the top when they should be worried more about the sticks and so on.
Either way, until EA starts respecting the defense and updating it enough to keep up with the modern offenses, there’s going to be some problems here. With a better pass rush, maybe that would make it so AI defenders don’t need to cheat as much to balance things out, but it’s hard to tell as of now since both were out of balance in the second beta.
AI Still Can’t Quite Be Trusted
To some extent this AI issue ties into the other two in that you just can’t trust a lot of the AI defenders. If you want to get pressure with your elite edge rushers, then it more comes down to you clicking on. However, you also can’t trust the secondary, so do you click on there and try to take some stuff away over the middle of the field instead? Pick your poison is absolutely a fair motto in today’s NFL when going up against a lot of the great offenses, but it shouldn’t be the user motto in terms of who you have to control on defense to have an impact.
Beyond those elements, the AI’s 2-minute drill can still be dodgy at times. I don’t feel the need to really go too in-depth here because this has been an issue in Madden for years, but basically it still feels like at times they don’t understand how to use their timeouts properly and still will let the clock expire for no reason.
Presumably Will Be Fixed?
There’s not much of a need to spend a lot of words explaining these, but basically we as a community are assuming/hoping fatigue will be improved. Running backs are not being rotated enough and same goes for other positions. There’s no need to have a deeper team (minus injury concerns) if no one is going to get tired and need a sub. On top of that, input lag for online play did feel improved but still not at the level it was last year. This one does feel like it will be ironed out before launch as it’s not usually an issue in Madden games.
Franchise Longevity Notes
Two quick franchise mode notes to end this (yes, I lied, it’s not all gameplay) but it’s good to see that franchises are not bricking once you get 10 years in like we’ve seen in prior years. However, the salary cap still seems very suspect after a certain number of years as most teams have far too much cap space and it makes free agency deeply uninteresting.
Bottom Line
It feels like people were a little more excited for the game after the first beta than the second beta, but I do think a lot of that comes down to the tweaks to the pass rush and defensive coverage. It just felt like easy mode for offenses (especially online) during this second beta. If EA can re-balance those two elements, it should fit more nicely with the positives people have right now for the more enjoyable run game and the overall better blocking we’ve seen. I do think we’re in for a year of a very strong pass attack and mobile QBs being more meta this year even if things get re-balanced, but I also think there’s a much higher chance for people to vibe with the Madden 24 gameplay if the pass rush and pass coverage are at least tuned somewhat well.
