OS Reaction to First Madden 24 Gameplay Video

By

Chase Becotte

EA showcased the first gameplay footage from Madden 24 yesterday, and while many of us were in the beta, this was the first look at gameplay for many others. With that in mind, OS members have been chatting about what they like and don’t like from the footage. I’m going to cover some of those thoughts and also sprinkle in a couple of my own in the process.

Off the top, it should be noted that while I have no issues with comp players and all that, how they play and how many at OS play is not the same. So with that in mind, it does make looking at the footage a little tricky at times. However, it’s not bad to see two high-level Madden players going at it because you can see how the meta is changing in certain places and also see what’s not working as well from the prior game. You can also maybe guess what will now be meta (at least early on) based on some of the successes here.

With that in mind, some things that stood out to me that we’ll tackle more below:

One thing that was almost universally praised by OS was the fact that knockouts and drops were happening a healthy amount in this video. For those who don’t know, high-point passing was especially powerful last year, and while this year it’s definitely in your best interest to “user” to go attack the ball whether on offense or defense, the defense needed a little extra help in these situations. During the beta, we saw both effective knockouts and less effective knockouts, and it seems like EA has leaned back towards giving the defense a chance in these 50/50 scenarios.

On top of that, in the beta Cover 0 was actually an option some of the time because press coverage was overwhelming to a degree that was silly. It’s not that corners shouldn’t be able to press, but bad corners shouldn’t be able to press top-end receivers with no help over the top. CM Hooe hits on both elements here:

It was promising to see a fair number of catch knockouts and elite receivers punishing press coverage with no safety help. Heck I saw a couple times that mid receivers like MVS were breaking free against press-zero, but the Chiefs user didn’t see it.

I do think there is a bit of “cheating” happening with some of the two-man interactions (see: slight warping) as I can see in the video a couple times where a DB makes up a little bit of extra space at the very end of the play to get into position. However, it doesn’t feel like “psychic DBs” are happening in these situations as their reaction times look normal — it just looks like the animation system having to work a certain way so the defensive back gets pulled into an animation at the last second.

Regardless, PhillyPhanatic14 sums up the thoughts of most on OS:

I think knockouts being at this level is encouraging. It shows they resisted the casual feedback in the beta because a ton of people were whining about it during that.

Look, it’s Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, they’re good at scrambling. And, frankly, more and more teams are looking for QBs who can create and get out of the pocket. On top of that, QB scrambling was basically not a thing last year and that’s silly. It was overpowered before, an maybe it will be again, but EA has to figure out a way to keep it in the game and work on balancing it from there, not making it a non-factor.

Still, Becanes posted what I also felt a lot while watching the video:

Dude keeps rolling out with Josh Allen and hitting corner routes. Not liking that.

Part of the issue seemed to be that QB contains that perhaps used to work were not really working very well now. Both these players were concerned about the QB and it was leaving some things open — but that should happen. What shouldn’t happen is the contain not working so you’re not stopping the scramble (your plan) or the corner route then. Pick your poison is absolutely the motto in today’s NFL, but when you scheme to take something away, that scheme should work. After all, forcing your opponent to adjust and beat you based on what you’ve called is all you can do.

If zone defense is somewhat improved (as it appears) perhaps we just need to find new calls/adjustments to contain the QB better, but I do think part of it also plays into the edge players not quite doing their jobs and that more comes down to AI as you can’t user all the edge players all the time.

On top of that, there just wasn’t much of a pocket that formed or that felt like something you would move around in a lot most of the time. Here is sva91 with the general feeling from OS:

I just hate how there’s never a pocket in Madden. It’s all about rolling out it seems. I loved moving around in the pocket in 2K games.

Stepping up and making subtle movements in the pocket was a strong point of old 2K games, but it’s generally been a weakness in Madden games. During that old era from Madden 2004 (Vick) when both series were popping off, Madden’s calling card was the QB scrambling and Playmaker controls that were awesome and fun, but I think they also are a good stand-in for the general EA philosophy of what’s usually prioritized. We did see a coverage sack and a blown assignment late by an offensive lineman that did lead to a couple QB pressures, but that only doubles down on the point that it seems like staying in the pocket seems risky versus just scrambling after the snap.

I don’t have anyone in particular to mention here from OS as it was just a general continued praise for the run game. That said, there was a mention of the running lanes maybe being too open up the middle down in the red zone (for QB draws), and there’s a weird touchdown run where a ball carrier should definitely get tackled by one of the 4-5 defenders in the area. In this situation, the defenders sort of run into each other as the ball carrier runs into the back of the offensive lineman. It looked like an old legacy issue of sorts where the AI defenders get their pathing all messed up when the ball carrier smashes into the offensive lineman and the defenders don’t make the arm tackle.

The AI “learning” was also mentioned — as you call the same plays over and over, the defense will get wise — but I’m with PhillyPhanatic14 in that I also didn’t feel like the play EA highlighted was a great example of it:

I watched the plays with the same run called 3x in a row…They tried to highlight it as the adaptive AI, and I’ve seen that in this thread, but watching it back it’s not really the AI making a better play. The LB that made the hit on the 3rd play got blocked by the TE on play 1. He got blocked by an OL on the 2nd play. And on the 3rd play the TE who blocked him the first time just ignored him and sprinted up field into no man’s land. The LB read the play the same all three times, he just didn’t get blocked the 3rd time. It was product of a missed block/bad blocking AI – not the defense suddenly knowing the play. This “feature” has been a back of the box staple for Madden in probably 5 different games over the years and I am still skeptical whether it will work. This is clearly not evidence of it working like they’re trying to say it is.

I’m always hopeful this sort of stuff will work, but it’s something that shouldn’t really need to be highlighted. The AI should learn to read what you’re doing because then countering is really fun as well as you maybe fake the toss and go deep, or do a naked bootleg, and so on.

Still, QB draws, screens, inside runs, outside runs, and all that look like they’re viable and feeling like you can open up the playbook is always a relief because sometimes in Madden it really does feel like only certain play types work and others are just never worth considering.

It’s something that wasn’t there in the beta, and it’s something that wasn’t here in this video. In online games, there are always fewer penalties and I do get why because comp players especially don’t want to feel like a dice roll screwed them, but man we’d love to see some penalties. It’s part of the game, and while we have sliders for offline (that hopefully work), penalties should have some role in an NFL game.

Wrapping up, I think canes21 has the general consensus for the OS crowd so far:

Given who is playing the game, it did not look as bad as I expected. The gameplay changes were on display more in this showing than they were in the beta in my experience, which is nice.

There are still parts that are clearly Madden and not NFL football, but overall it looks like an improvement over 23 which was an improvement over 22 which was an improvement over 21 which was a significant improvement over 20. Maybe the year-over-year improvements are not where I wish they were, but the series has been making good progress since making the move to the current generation of consoles and it looks like that is going to be true this year as well.

Now if EA can really polish up franchise mode and put the AI in a good place, we’ll have a potential great game. Mods may get us near that this year, but I really hope moving forward EA puts a much bigger emphasis on improving the AI and CPU play.

Especially on the gameplay front, this is my general feeling as well. I wish progress in certain areas was happening more quickly but I think yesterday’s video was a sign they’re still moving in a positive direction.