Custom playbooks completely removed from Madden 13

The first problem I see with this is that it presumes that you KNOW what the defense is going to run. And let's be honest here, in NCAA as well as real life, if the offense knows what the defense is running, there is no way in hell that the offense shouldn't put up a ton of points.

Second, I remember an old line from my high school coach when we beat the shit out of a team 55-0. Some people started complaining in the papers (we took our starters out the entire second half), so he said "It's not MY job to try and stop MY offense." Why shouldn't we have the best damn playbooks we can devise and then go at it?

Because I'd rather have a defensive battle that is earned because the two players playing are mixing up their coverages, playing great on the sticks, and locking down each others money plays, instead of force feeding a sub-par playbook to them. Trust me, I have plays that I like to go to, but the guys I played on a regular basis were ready for them. They stopped them by being as good on defense as I was on offense and vice versa.

Wyrmreaver and I have had some of the best defensive games I've ever played and we both used custom playbooks that had been tweaked, refined, and mastered over 8 seasons of NCAA. Didn't matter, we still had two incredible defensive games.

And finally part of it is just laziness on my part. Because of my rather compulsive nature with NCAA, I know that I'll have to spend hours looking for the playbook that best suits what I want to do, instead of just crafting one that I know I want.

After playing the same people many times you begin to get an idea of what they like to run

Yeah but as commish I still have to make the call. So I guess it's my job then. It's cool what you said about you and Wymreaver; NCAA has obviously made huge strides over the year in terms of "money" plays. Nowadays that term is used VERY loosely and just means the best plays. or perception of best plays - people are comfortable with different things. Even the best plays could obviously be meat if the d-line broke through quickly enough.

I admittedly do this. Part of the challenge. I also stopped asking people to report what playbook they were using this season, the only rule was that you had to stick with one basic offensive style. So if people got tired of a certain playbook they could switch it up as long as it was the same look.

Exactly! Which means that you know how to stop said plays as well.

I totally understand that, but I think that we should err on the side of allowing useful features and then relying on the community and members to keep abuse out of the game. I mean, that's why I'm here at TSO. I don't need to worry about whether or not the guys in my league are going to make a cheeser playbook and abuse it all to hell. Especially in a premier league.

And finally, if they do, how long is that member going to last?

Again, I just think it's an artificial challenge that doesn't really improve enjoyment (speaking solely for myself).

Some guys in the Deuce uses custom playbooks. I wouldn't say all the scores were high either. I think Timpegoose and somebody else played a coupld of 9-6 games.

We used CPBs in the E and had some great defensive user v. user games. Speaking for myself, I didn't just choose every effective play in every formation that I run and, no, I'm not LYING.

LOL. O.k., we have one guy. Raise your hand, everybody else who chooses a formation and then leaves out the good plays!

We must be talking about different things. I'm talking when on offense, and you know somebody runs man on every third down, or something like that.

I dunno... I like the discourse here. I frequently find myself on the "wrong" or "uncool" side of arguments and I'm o.k. with that. All I know is, we have some guys who are excellent on offense.. As-is, with the crappy playbooks. Maybe we'll give them a try. I kinda think not. If the issue is brought up or somebody in T1 gets an itch in their panties about it, I will probably bring it to a league vote and see what happens.

We used them in After Midnight last year, and aside from the bugs present in the game, had no issues gameplay wise due to them.

To me I think it's a trust issue. If you feel you have guys in your league you can't "trust" with custom playbooks, that would raise more questions about who is in the league than whether there is an issue with custom playbooks. For example, with the groups in most of the premier leagues I would expect that using something like custom playbooks shouldn't be an issue. Those guys know what is sim and what isn't, or they should. Would I want custom playbooks in a league full of new guys, that's a different discussion.

I like Customs because I can get rid of all the freaking clutter. SMU's book has 18 formations for some reason, even though at most they run 6 or 7 in real life. If the standard playbooks get better at actually replicating the offenses(Oregon's last year was just a copy of Auburn's, even though they are two completely different styles) I would be more willing to actually use the defaults.

I think those are some good points, Helli.

My thoughts are that with the guys I have in The Deuce, I don't really have to police them as much. I did lay down the law from the get-go in NCAA 12 that if you chose to run a CPB, then you better be running a system. I don't want to see guys running 1/3 spread, 1/3 fleXbox One, 1/3 maryland I playbook(man-bear-pig). It worked.

Was my offense more efficient because I had a fully custom playbook? Absolutely. Mine was realistic, though. And I know that's subjective.

As far as filling the playbook with effective plays, I think that highly depends on the difficulty and slider settings you have selected. It was a lot easier to throw the deep ball in the first few seasons that it was in the 5-6 seasons. So the plays that were effective then were not necessarily as powerful after the change. Same thing with running inside, outside, counters, etc. We got to a point where the only way to bust big plays was to set them up. Against users was the same, but I think users will pick up on stuff that you are trying to do and adjust accordingly.

We're not though, I'm just flipping things.

Let's be honest here, if you know, for a FACT that I am going to run man coverage on 3rd downs, then you will be able to find a play that can beat that in a regular playbook. It'll just take you longer to find it through the clutter of the regular playbooks.

And further: If a user is THAT predictable on defense, taking away CPBs isn't going to make them any better. And, hell, even if it did, would you really want to?

Just to clear up the confusion, when we went down to the NCAA '13 community event #1 the team at EA put out a feeler on what we thought of custom playbooks. They explained all the problems with them and how much work it was going to take to fix them. EVERYONE there was adamant about them moving whatever they needed to move around in order to fix CPBs.

I stood firm on the fact that if they shipped without CPBs or didn't fix the issues that people were going to be lining up with pitchforks and torches outside the building.

You're getting a bit tangential on me so I won't respond to all of it.

For me, no. I typically only have 2-3 (maybe 5) plays in an entire playbook that I think are really gonna work for sure against man defense (for example, assuming there's no robber or random zone linebacker there)... and I won't run them more than once. I usually can't even find them all since I change playbooks every year. I feel everybody in our league is like that, they will save a good play for a certain situation then you won't see it again. At least I never feel like I do or feel like I'm repeatedly seeing anything.

I guess when it comes right down to it, I can make the guarantee that I will be at least twice as tough on offense if you give me a custom playbook. Just being honest. I'm not going to put together a playbook that consists of a bunch of trash, I would probably spend 2 days on it and be absolutely a lot tougher.

You start talking about players like Hotrod, Mogriff, MaxATX34, and they'll be 3X better.

It's clear that they have really improved the program. Doesn't matter what they call it, Gamechangers or whatever, the question is, how much time will they give you with the game and how much feedback will they take? Back in the day that was "very little" on both accounts. Nowadays they are genuinely interested in what you guys have to say which is great.

All we basically did while were there was play the game and chat with the devs. We were logging at least 8 hours a day I would think.

It didn't take long before the dev team was latching on to our suggestions. I feel like I (and the other TSO GC'ers) had a lot of influence on some things (recruit weight changes, sorting the recruiting boards, etc) that might not have happened this release had we not told them about it.

One more point before I check out of the thread is that the defensive playbooks and play options are extremely limited in comparison to even the default offensive playbook offerings. I just don't see the need to allow customized playbooks where the only thing being improved is people's offensive game.

I use a defensive CPB as well which is vastly superior (IMO) to the default 3-4 playbook.

Hellisan: The point about money plays is legitimate. I personally used the Boise playbook a lot more than Syracuse in NCAA 11 even though the later was loaded with routes that could obliterate man coverage. I wanted to run an offense similar to what USC does in real life, and the BSU book seemed to be the closest approximation (the USC book hadn't been overhauled to that point).

With custom playbooks, a lot of it simply comes down to having the formations I want as opposed to the plays themselves. For example, I like under center singleback formations with 3 or 4 WR's a lot more than most people. I like to spread a defense out and then run the ball downhill. I also base my 2 minute offense under center, which almost no one else does either.

Unfortunately for me, I also like to mix in the I as well as some Gun stuff. I could get most of the singleback sets I want out of a typical one back playbook like UTEP, but I'm not going to be able to go big and grind a game out on the ground. I need those sets to get that done, along with max protecting on an early down and taking a shot down field.

Again, if the playbooks themselves were less generic and had more variety formation wise, I probably would never use a CB. The New Orleans playbook in Madden is one that I would only change a couple things, but they're minor things. Hell, I'm excited about the Dick Vermiel playbook, since that one is fairly close to how I would want a custom playbook to look. With just those two examples, I'm not that heart-broken over not being able to build my own book in Madden 13 (although I am disappointed that EA took it out as a matter of principle).