Madden NFL 21
Madden NFL 21 Franchise Mode Update (2 of 3) Arrives January 7 - Full Details Here (Update #3 Arrives in March)
EA will be releasing their second of three franchise mode updates for Madden NFL 21 very soon tomorrow, January 7, along with the latest patch to address zone coverages. Check out the latest blog, sent to us from EA, on all of the updates that are set to arrive in franchise mode. The team has also sent us some details on the 3rd franchise update, which is scheduled to arrive in March.
Hey Franchise fans!
Today we’re going to be taking a look at the second set of updates for Franchise mode in Madden NFL 21! As we said in our previous post-launch update, a priority for our team is that these features work both in new and existing Franchises.
CPU QB Draft Logic Improvements
When teams draft a first round quarterback in real life, it’s a sign of commitment from a team to a player saying “we think you can be, or now are, the face of our organization.”
As a part of our next update, we have added new logic checks that CPU teams will use to guide whether they should even be interested in drafting a QB when they’re on the clock in Round 1. Now, teams will evaluate their roster and previous draft picks of the last two years to keep teams from replacing players too soon.
DEV NOTE: This feature came directly from community feedback around situations where rookie QBs ultimately got replaced after their first season due to their OVR being lower than an incoming prospect. Embracing the authenticity of teambuilding and player development, teams now consider their incumbent starters as a piece of their future to give runway for those players to reach their full potential. Now, teams will consider previous investments to influence their future selections.
Logic Details
When a CPU team is on the clock, they will now de-prioritize drafting a first round QB if:
- Their current starting QB was a 1st round pick in the last two Drafts
- Their current starting QB was a 2nd/3rd round pick in the last two Drafts
- And has a Normal Dev and 72+ OVR
- And has Star or higher Dev trait
- Their current starting QB is a 94+ OVR
- Their current starting QB is 87+ OVR and 32+ years old
- Their current starting QB is 74+ OVR and < 29 years old
- Their current backup QB is a Star or higher Dev Trait and < 28 years old
Lastly, if a team’s current starting QB is over 35, the team will consider drafting a replacement.
As always, whether the team actually does draft a QB is dependent on many factors, and like real life, there can still be times where a team decides a player is just too good to pass up depending on the situation. The Draft is full of surprises!
Commissioner Controls: Undo FA Signings – Offseason Only
Commissioners are able to undo FA signings in the offseason directly through the transaction log. Simply click on a signing and revert it to send the player back into the free agent pool.
Commissioner Controls: Team Override Settings
Giving commissioners of leagues the ability to turn on/off or allow users to keep individual settings for Heat Seeker tackling, Ball Hawk, and Switch assist – one of our top requested commissioner requests, this creates a way to level the playing field regarding assist features.
Commissioner Draft Tools
Commissioners will now be able to assign autopilot during the draft, along with pause/resume functionality. This way advancing to the next user pick will skip any player who is on autopilot. This has been a top community request for a number of years now.
Commissioner House Rules: Play Cool-Down and Repeat Play Limits
After these settings made their debut last year in MUT/KO, House Rules became one of the most requested features for franchise players and we are incredibly excited to bring them to you. Take control as a Commissioner and dictate how many times a play can be called in a game, and how long a player must wait before calling the same play again.
Commissioner Setting – X-Factor Customization Restrictions
Commissioners will be able to determine who is able to edit abilities on players through the X-Factor Customization tools we enabled in our previous continuous development release. The settings are Commissioner only, Any User, or None, responding directly to multi-user league feedback.
We also wanted to share with you our final updates coming to Franchise mode targeted to arrive in March.
Trade Logic Improvements
We are focused on delivering improvements to player and draft pick evaluations to create more rewarding and authentic trades for Madden 21 that we will continue to build and improve upon in the future.
DEV NOTE: To move forward on improved trade logic, it was important to acknowledge there wasn’t a magic quick fix. As a team, we’ve reevaluated everything about our previous trade logic with the goal of improving realism and fun of interacting with the trade system using a few key goals: Establishing new baseline scales around player and draft pick values by reconsidering every factor and modifier that is currently used in trades, resolving top community exploits around AI trades (like elite offensive linemen for late round picks), and looking for opportunities to improve or add new AI considerations when evaluating offers from teams. We’re excited to discuss more about how we are bringing all of those things to Madden 21 in the next Deep Dive!
Franchise League History
We are adding a new tile where you can see the Super Bowl and key award winners from each year of your franchise. This will include how many times a team has won the Super Bowl in the franchise, along with MVP, Coach of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Rookie of the Year, and Super Bowl MVP.
DEV NOTE: For Madden 21, this will track every season in your franchise from the season this is added and forward. Any history prior to the addition of this new feature will not be accessible as we previously did not save off Super Bowl scores among other things upon the start of a new league year. Any new league will have every season played tracked, however.
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Its one EA title for another, but to me NHL is more rewarding, and is more of a challenge.
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https://twitter.com/eamaddennfl/status/1346853414337212417?s=21
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Agree. I love that they are adding this now but I have lost interest in M21
Commish tools is a nice add, late, but better later than never.
Fixed zones tomorrow and maybe I can finally start a real franchise.
At least people won't be asking about where the update is in February.
Yeah these are things that will make franchise more fun, especially some of the March stuff, but gameplay has to be better and the next gen versions of the game need to stop stuttering and dropping frames. Right now, this is just nice future stuff to be enjoyed if M22 fixes the major flaws of 21.
In my first season the Jets were a 3 seed and beat the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs lol. Need I say more.
It's tough for sure.. seems like with any sports game we have to wait months and keep starting our franchises over after each title update. I'm happy they are continually fixing things but it takes some of the drive to play the game away for me after fixing things months later. Not to mention once you have some good sliders for the way you play, those have to be tested and tweaked again post patch.
Commish tools is a nice add, late, but better later than never.
Fixed zones tomorrow and maybe I can finally start a real franchise.
Agreed. Also fix the cpu QB drop back issue. We’ve been dealing with this long enough. I would love if cpu QB’s played like they did at release. Was it perfect, no. But it was the best I’ve seen in a very very long time.
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We are adding a new tile where you can see the Super Bowl and key award winners from each year of your franchise. This will include how many times a team has won the Super Bowl in the franchise, along with MVP, Coach of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Rookie of the Year, and Super Bowl MVP.
This is actually a cool feature for franchise players. I only play offline franchise, i love the idea of building a winner up. Currently started a Jaguars franchise in M20 trying to turn them from 1-15 garbage into a contender, but would also love to see how the league history looks as far as SB titles and awards, so I do think that's a cool feature.
But these franchise updates are definitely targeted towards online connected leagues not so much towards the offline people, as we don't need the commissioner controls like groups do
LMAO, Jets were number 3 Seed.. this year in real life, they are 1-15. lol
But these franchise updates are definitely targeted towards online connected leagues not so much towards the offline people, as we don't need the commissioner controls like groups do
It sucks that information from before you begin your Franchise won't be a part of it, but this addition is very much appreciated. It's also a bit of a pleasant surprise. IIRC, this wasn't part of the Franchise roadmap they released over the Summer.
I agree. While they are welcoming features, it is too late in the process. I originally wanted to rent Madden at the very least. If all these major updates would have been ready at launch of next gen, it would be a different conversation. Even though it doesn't require a restart, I would still feel pressured to restart i would've want good draft logic from the jump not when I'm in year 4 and still affected by bad logic.
I just want whatever is done for Madden 22 franchise to be ready day 1. That service approach doesn't fit an annual sports title. Its one thing if you want to add more content to online modes throughout year. But. I want the core modes to be done at launch. I don't want to feel like I have to wait to start a mode
In my year one, Chicago beat the Saints, Packers, Seahawks and Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. Is it possible? Sure. Would I bet even five dollars on it? Not unless that five dollars would get me millions.
:boxing:
Trade Logic Improvements
We are focused on delivering improvements to player and draft pick evaluations to create more rewarding and authentic trades for Madden 21 that we will continue to build and improve upon in the future.
DEV NOTE: To move forward on improved trade logic, it was important to acknowledge there wasn’t a magic quick fix. As a team, we’ve reevaluated everything about our previous trade logic with the goal of improving realism and fun of interacting with the trade system using a few key goals: Establishing new baseline scales around player and draft pick values by reconsidering every factor and modifier that is currently used in trades, resolving top community exploits around AI trades (like elite offensive linemen for late round picks), and looking for opportunities to improve or add new AI considerations when evaluating offers from teams. We’re excited to discuss more about how we are bringing all of those things to Madden 21 in the next Deep Dive!
Franchise League History
We are adding a new tile where you can see the Super Bowl and key award winners from each year of your franchise. This will include how many times a team has won the Super Bowl in the franchise, along with MVP, Coach of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive/Defensive Rookie of the Year, and Super Bowl MVP.
DEV NOTE: For Madden 21, this will track every season in your franchise from the season this is added and forward. Any history prior to the addition of this new feature will not be accessible as we previously did not save off Superbowl scores among other things upon the start of a new league year. Any new league will have every season played tracked, however.
Seen a franchise where the bengals took a qb in the first rd. Madden logic smh
Yup, month changed from the draft they sent us. Updated. Thank you.
And of course the gameplay. Movement running the ball is just.....blah.
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Hopefully with the trade logic overhaul CPU teams will trade and offer my team trades especially during the draft.
I'm surprised free agency logic hasn't been addressed either. I see too many instances of running backs and quarterback signing to teams that don't have a need. A team will sign a running back that is 92 ovr even if they have a 91 on the team. I've also seen quarterbacks gets signed in free agency when they have a clear cut starter but will sign one that is one ovr higher for huge contracts that really messes up CPU team building. The same QB logic really needs to apply during FA as well. I've seen teams with 3 qbs that all within 1 ovr point of each other for 10m+ a year.
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Still boggles my mind that we're only getting these crumbs because of a massive social media movement that made the game and company look bad. At least we're getting tiny morsels over nothing but man, some new static screens, behind the scenes tuning on wonky CPU logic and surface level player control customization is not really the rebuilding of franchise that it needs.
Unless some QB’s OVR ratings are changed to not meet the template levels, teams we know that are in the hunt for a new signal caller, may not start the Franchise off correctly because some QB’s OVR’s will prevent the AI from going forth.
I know Eagles is a team where QB has to be edited outside the outlines so they will be looking/considering
Curious who are other teams.
- Jets???
- Lions???
- Panthers???
Just spitballing some teams where currently rated EA QB’s on these teams may prevent the AI from moving further.
Arizona and Kyler Murray. Dallas and Steve Walsh. Teams not functioning properly?
Still a long way to go but man wish these updates were in Madden 18 or 19 so we would be further along in an improved Franchise Mode by this point.
Arizona Cardinals have a bad roster in the game, end up with a Top 10 overall pick 3 years in a row. They pick a QB every time because the best one falls to them and they're too much of a 'can't miss prospect' and the NFL is wacky and unpredictable.
I didn't say it was unprecedented in real life, just knocking them for literally saving face in the case that what they implemented doesn't function properly.
Also, I highly doubt the circumstances that lead to those QBs being drafted would be replicated and acknowledged in Madden.
Also, also, Steve Walsh was selected in the Supplemental Draft, something that's existed in the NFL since before Madden was created that's not even in the game so...
When i go to undo a free agency signing it tells me it cant be completed at this time and sends me back to the main menu.
In this years draft the bengals drafted QB Trey Lance with the 5th overall pick.
When i go to undo a free agency signing it tells me it cant be completed at this time and sends me back to the main menu.
In this years draft the bengals drafted QB Trey Lance with the 5th overall pick.
Awesome! So literally nothing was fixed.
When i go to undo a free agency signing it tells me it cant be completed at this time and sends me back to the main menu.
In this years draft the bengals drafted QB Trey Lance with the 5th overall pick.
Don't get your hopes up. I saw someone else post that the Bengals took a QB with their 3rd overall pick in the next years draft. It's not fixed. Perhaps this is caused by custom draft classes?
Thats my point. They may have it like that too. From what there saying. I mean the same thing was done to Josh Rosen wit the K.Murry Draft..I just hope its like that with all positions..But if this is not it then its all bad. I dnt knw yet i dnt have the game im glad i waited..
Josh Rosen wasn't going to be the rookie of the year until he got hurt though. There's no universe where Burrow isn't the QB1 in Cinci next season.
Are we sure those testing are playing with the patch?
Are we sure those testing are playing with the patch?
The patch comes out today I believe.
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Yeah I’m guessing the patch will be out around 11am est like normal.
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After you play a game post patch please post your thoughts.. I always trust your opinion as we have similar play styles.
I'll probably keep my sliders but default the pass coverage stuff. I'm guessing pass rush still needs a boost and so on.
EA needs to make this happen ASAP. I spend A TON of time just setting up my franchise (custom/edited/realistic rosters/player ratings, custom coaches, custom draft classes etc etc) I do all of this BEFORE I even start my franchise. That can take 3 weeks to a month sometimes (considering I have a wife, 3 kids and a full time sales job working 60-80hr weeks sometimes). I truly take my time on franchises. If they can somehow port people's franchise's(online and offline) to the next year's game, that would be a major game changer for the SIM community. My brother still talks about our franchise we had on Madden 19, we were about 10yrs deep and had all sorts of custom player's from our NCAA14 draft classes that I created. It was so much fun. He almost wants to go back to it.
In it, the Chargers drafted a QB in the first round, in the 2021 draft. He was a 78 overall, hidden dev. But, the Chargers continued to start Herbert.
And, the Chargers would refuse any trade offer that you put together for their drafted QB. Even into his third season. At that point he was an 81 overall superstar dev back up QB.
In the end, Chargers let him walk in free agency after 4 years, and the Eagles signed him to be their starter. Wentz is now rated around 73 overall and is the backup.
Totally wasted early first round pick by the Chargers. No way would it play out like that in real life. I hope that eventually Madden adds a player hold out feature. Because clearly, this QB would not have sat the bench for four years without demanding a trade in real life.
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The way the notes are written, it seems that way, but we'll find out.
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Wasn't the zone coverage issue a NextGen exclusive? Seriously I thought it was a new problem that current gen didn't have.
Not for me at least. I just updated my game and it updated to patch 1.21, not 1.22 🤦*♂️
Looks like next gen only.
They're not gone, just let them finish working on franchise and the update and they'll be back.
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The QB drop back glitch is a huge one!!! In my opinion it’s the only thing keeping M21 from being the best by far out of any other Madden. It really is a shame it was broken after they had it playing so well, and has basically been ignored since.
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In it, the Chargers drafted a QB in the first round, in the 2021 draft. He was a 78 overall, hidden dev. But, the Chargers continued to start Herbert.
And, the Chargers would refuse any trade offer that you put together for their drafted QB. Even into his third season. At that point he was an 81 overall superstar dev back up QB.
In the end, Chargers let him walk in free agency after 4 years, and the Eagles signed him to be their starter. Wentz is now rated around 73 overall and is the backup.
Totally wasted early first round pick by the Chargers. No way would it play out like that in real life. I hope that eventually Madden adds a player hold out feature. Because clearly, this QB would not have sat the bench for four years without demanding a trade in real life.
As a Charger fan, I got to agree. That would make Charger fans storm Spanos office like Capitol Hill.
Too soon?
https://www.ea.com/games/madden-nfl/madden-nfl-21/news/gridiron-notes-madden-nfl-21-january-title-update-1-7
Includes the gameplay fixes.
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During maintenance testing an issue was found with Cloud Franchises.
The team is working to address it, but until it is resolved, Cloud Franchises will remain gated.
We will continue to update.
PS4 and (I think?) PS5 as well:
Top is what started after I checked for a PS5 update, bottom for PS4. I'm sure nothing will go wrong with this.... :y6:
Also, their twitter has posted that the updates are live.
This thread is convoluted with so much other stuff.
Top is what started after I checked for a PS5 update, bottom for PS4. I'm sure nothing will go wrong with this.... :y6:
Also, their twitter has posted that the updates are live.
Mine is updating to 1.22 right now as well on ps4.
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Since they couldn't figure how to fix draft logic i had hopes they could muster a fix for QBs. Guess not.
I was excited to see this thread as I thought we'd have a 2021 surprise and get some gameplay updates but I guess not. Still not playable or enjoyable no matter how hard I try.
Guess I'll shell out another $60 for the next version and hope they did some more development.
Honestly with the state the CPU is in its pretty discouraging how little they've done to franchise after all that hoopla early on. More like a kick in the *** really.
I feel like that can happen after a patch, until that first game get burnt in.
You can also edit mouthpieces for incoming players in the draft, including draft classes that you import.
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Edit: I should make it clear I edit him back to normal after the draft lol. I made the mistake of not doing that once and I checked the stats 3 games and realized my mistake when he was going off for 15 tds in 3 weeks.
Umm, what physics? Madden just has animations.
Is this next gen?
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Pretty ridiculous that my team wins the SB, QB wins MVP and breaks numerous records, and doesn't make the Pro Bowl.
Happened to me as well. Inexcusable crap.
Every year I have to make rookie QBs punters, trade for them, then convert them back and trade them to teams who would realistically draft them.
Are we sure this just isn't injury related? Burrow is on the injured list so Finley is the starting QB. It could be that the logic works but only as long as all QBs are healthy.
I did the same as you and the Bengals drafted Zach Wilson whilst the Cowboys drafted Trey Lance. Each team has their starting QB on IR.
Pretty ridiculous that my team wins the SB, QB wins MVP and breaks numerous records, and doesn't make the Pro Bowl.
It used to appear in the individual player cards under their XP gain history even if it didn't show them on the actual pro bowl roster. Are you seeing any mention of it in there? I haven't looked at it in this year's game.
Every year I have to make rookie QBs punters, trade for them, then convert them back and trade them to teams who would realistically draft them.
Im so happy im not the only one who does crap like this. Its such a pain. NBA2k isnt perfect but its so much easier there, where I can just very quickly switch to a team or turn on force trade to fix things.
So many people would enjoy Madden so much more if it had the roster control of 2K. If they added this to '22, they'd barely need to add anything else to make it worth buying imo.
I enjoyed 20 and am still playing that instead
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I did the same as you and the Bengals drafted Zach Wilson whilst the Cowboys drafted Trey Lance. Each team has their starting QB on IR.
Possibly - I actually never thought of that
I did the same as you and the Bengals drafted Zach Wilson whilst the Cowboys drafted Trey Lance. Each team has their starting QB on IR.
That's probably the issue.. I always start my CFMs with preexisting injuries OFF and even before the last patch the 2021 real draft class draft in my CFM was pretty spot on, except for maybe the Giants drafting Zach Wilson.. the Jets actually took OL Penei Sewell and are sticking with Darnold.
Really? Lol I played a game on next gen and thought it played good ( In Madden standards).
With every update for every sports game, for a certain percentage of people playing the game, gameplay is perceived to have been messed up. I would consider this a Law of videogaming now.
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Oh, okay. Thanks!
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Same here. They took justin fields in the first rd. So much for that new qb draft logic
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No I just played two games, XSX.
Yes franchises are still down at least on CPU. EA has no comment at this time.
New one I just started to test it: