Personally, I would love to see the NCAA title get picked up by 2K Sports. While I am not a basketball fan, the presentation of the games is amazing and something that I think the American football titles are lacking in.
I would say there are less fanboy's on this site than others. A lot of people misinterpret our constructive culture and disdain for negativity as being fanboys. To each their own.
In real life, 2 man under is a good defense to call because you have a better chance of your man staying close to the WR than in any other type of formation, while you have safety help over the top. In madden it's the same thing but it can be beat, especially if your cover corners don't have the best man coverage ratings. The thing about defense in madden and IRL is it's about adjustments, it's about catching your opponent off guard with things. You have to know your defense in and out first of all and what they are strong in and what they are weak in. Naturally I'll take the Jets. They are good in the CB area so naturally I could play more man to man than most because I have good man cover guys. But it's important to break trends. Just like any madden player or even in the NFL, normally one would expect man in 3rd and longs...switch it up just to give a different look for your opponent. If you play a shit load of cover 2 or 3 on 3rd down and your opponent is killing you, then try a possible man coverage to show him a different look, or a different type of zone play. Also know what your opponent does. It's harder to do in online random play but in a league, I look at a teams stats...and if I see him favor his #1 WR, I'll give him manual safety help. Or if he likes his TE a shit load, I'll again have my LB cover and offer help with him. Even when using blitzes, switch it up! don't just use a man blitz...because if someone knows you bring pressure and it's just man, they can hot route a guy to run a route in the space you left open. Use zone blitzing concepts as well. People expect to shut down guys with one or two plays...it doesn't work that way.
I would be curious how those two guys would do playing against some of our better players at TSO ? Not sure all the guides in the world can stop you from giving up 28 a game in TMFL
BTW, I think the whole "you don't know how hard it is to make a game" argument is weak. No, we are not programmers and yes, some things we cannot understand. However, we do play other games and can draw relative comparisons. We can see the AI in NBA and want that in our football games. We can see the play-by-play in numerous other games that is far better and want that too. We can also see its sister franchise (NCAA) implement some things better than they do (and vice versa). I think its important to have those views and constantly pressure the devs to emulate those things. If we all just threw our hands up and said, "Oh well, we don't know what's its like" and bought the game anyway, what incentive would they have to improve every year?
I know jack of programming but I don't think you can compare apples to oranges just because they are both fruits. NBA has 10 guys on the court and they mostly try to avoid running into each other full steam, so the collision detection cannot be as hard to get right just off of the volume of collisions on every play. In regards to the commentary most TSO members I know would agree the football games have the worst commentary / presentation when compared to 2K or FIFA. We all would love to see that stepped up but it is just window dressing , give me better on field results and they can have good old J.R. and Jerry Lawler in the booth for all I care.
Ok at best , but again apples & oranges. In soccer you are not purposely running as fast as you can to a guy with attempt to wrap him up and hit him hard. Also don't have 9-13 guys crashing into each other at the start of every play. Soccer also has periods of many min of play without stoppage , vs a few seconds. Now with all of that said I would love to see the FIFA team branch over to help the football teams , could probably improve the game mechanics I bet. But to get back on thread topic , I may have stopped playing crappy defense finally
The number of players on the field has less to do with AI than most people think. In soccer, the action follows the ball, just like baseball. It's possible for GKs to never interact with live balls as long as the opposing team does not have a shot on goal, as an example. When the ball is in the offensive third, the defenders of the attacking team are literally doing nothing but watching. In football, all 22 people on the field have a job to do as soon as the ball is snapped. That job changes dramatically based on interactions that take place throughout a play. The extent of FIFA's collision detection is the interaction between a WR and a DB during a route. Obviously there are interaction that go above and beyond that on every play in football. You simply cannot compare the AI and collision between the two titles as a whole. It's literally two completely different realms of physics
