E-5: Madden developers promise needed change to franchise mode

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Will EA make necessary changes to franchise mode in Madden 21? Or will fans have to wait another year?

Over the last several days, Madden 21 has been trending and not in a good way.

In EA’s latest update to their gridiron notes series, the Madden 21 developer team released what gamers can expect from Face of the Franchise and ‘classic franchise mode’. And while FOF received several updates and the addition of several celebrities, franchise mode did not.

Everyone: Please fix franchise mode

EA: pic.twitter.com/tXvH9yI7YU

— Justis Mosqueda (Day 114) (@JuMosq) June 30, 2020

Which led the gaming community to drop the #fixmaddenfranchise hashtag.

After all, EA has said for years they were going to listen to the fans and help make franchise mode great again. But like many promises, this one remained hollow at the core. Here’s a look at the minimal updates EA has made to Madden 21’s franchise mode.

• The new X-Factors make their way into Franchise. More details on X-Factors in Madden NFL 21 coming soon!
• Franchise has an expanded Wild Card Playoff round to match the real-life NFL which now features 3 games for each conference instead of 2.
• Updated all rookie contract amounts to be more authentic to the actual Draft rookie contracts for all 7 rounds
• Retuned every position’s available Abilities to better consider in-game effectiveness of the ability and archetype authenticity. Also made the 2nd ability unlock for most positions 85 OVR (was 80 OVR in Madden NFL 20.)
• Fixed multiple cases in logic of players considered for a Dev Trait upgrade at the end of the season not checking the correct stat types.
• Updates to all team back-end depth chart philosophies so they match the team’s scheme.
• Added position-specific Offensive Lineman archetype progression buckets for OT, OG, and C to capture variance in OVR formulas based on positional expectations. Previously, all OL were pulling from the same progression bucket.
• Fixed issue where defensive playbooks and schemes for our fictional coaches would be misaligned (e.g. 3-4 playbook with a 4-3 scheme.)

Once the #fixmaddenfranchise started to trend globally, EA had no choice but to do damage control. This was the statement released by executive producer Seann Graddy:

An update from Executive Producer Seann Graddy pic.twitter.com/RFpco0KNH1

— Madden NFL 21 (@EAMaddenNFL) July 2, 2020

Like with anything, all anyone wants to see is change. And with Madden 21 set to release on August 28th, I find it extremely unlikely that fans will get the type of changes they desire. But that doesn’t mean short-term fixes can’t be added with patch updates and other means. What seems most likely, however, is that diehard fans of franchise mode won’t see real change until the next generation of gaming. And even then, with EA starting–for lack of a better word from scratch–the changes fans really want probably won’t be implemented until Madden 22 and beyond.

But in less than a week, the Madden gaming community made their voices heard. We waited nearly a decade for franchise mode to be great again. I guess one more year won’t hurt.

Want to see Dolphins’ QB Tua Tagovailoa in Madden 21? 

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