EA Sports released new information revolving around the online mode Connected Franchise for Madden NFL 15.
In the past few years, American football fans have had the opportunity to play with their friends in Connected Careers, which allows players to control the whole team as a head coach or owner as well as play as one player in the same league as friends doing the same thing.
The issue with Free Agency in previous Madden games was that some players wouldn’t sign a contract, even if the amount and length of the contract was what they wanted, leaving Madden players either overspending on players or giving up entirely without any justification. To counteract this, Madden 15 will now show team needs and player interests as visible factors when picking up players from Free Agency. This new knowledge will make it more clear when a player refuses to sign a good-looking contract and why.
Madden 15 will also feature a completely random draft class for each offseason, meaning that all college players looking to enter the NFL Draft will be generated randomly for that offseason. To sweeten the pot, the randomization will also differentiate the ability of players coming from it, so each round of draftable rookies will statistically be different each year.
Owner Mode is also being made more difficult this year. Even in previous Madden games, the fiscal side of Owner Mode allowed players to influence the price of merchandise, food, and tickets in order to earn profit. However, the old fiscal handlings were only influenced by if the stadium’s team was winning or not. This year’s game will require potential owners to micromanage more often, as the size of the market and the stadium will limit the amount of money that can come in, no matter how much the team is winning; and the only way to make more money then is to upgrade the stadium altogether.
During the offseason, players expected that their team’s members would statistically degrade a few points due to the downtime, but there was never any rhyme or reason behind it outside of assuming that the downtime made the team members work less. Now, Connected Franchise will include a Progression/Regression Recap screen that shows why team members better or worsen during the offseason, and this recap screen will also cover information gathered during the regular and postseasons as well.
The other big change to Connected Franchise is the ability to have multiple commissioners in each Connected Franchise. That way, more than one person can simulate the week instead of having to wait for the commissioner to get home from work in order to play the next game.
There are some other changes featured in the official EA blog post, including changes to the Pro Bowl, CPU-controlled teams randomizing alternate uniforms, and the ability to simulate multiple seasons in one go, so take a look and field any thoughts or excitement for what’s coming in Madden 15 later this month.