Hey Madden fans! I am Larry Richart, one of the designers on the central gameplay team (we work on both Madden NFL 10 and NCAA 10). Playbooks for both games are handled by myself and Anthony White, so this week I wanted to take some time out and describe just some of the improvements you can expect to see in Madden NFL 10.
Over the years we have continued to add more and more team-specific plays, formations, audibles, and the like, but one of the biggest things that we hadn't nailed was that the CPU teams didn’t play the same way that they do in real life. For example, when you were playing against the Vikings they wouldn’t utilize RB Adrian Peterson enough and would quickly abandon the run for the pass. Knowing that well over half of our audience plays offline games exclusively (mostly in Franchise mode), this year we made it a point to concentrate on getting teams to call plays that focus on their best players (while still differentiating team playbooks with unique team specific formations and plays). For some teams like the Vikings and the Falcons, that may be through the running game, while others like the Patriots and Saints, you obviously expect them to air it out a lot more.
To accomplish this, we used our Play Designer tool to totally re-vamp the "AI Groups" to change the way the CPU calls their plays. An "AI Group" is basically the same exact concept of a bucket of plays a team takes into the game geared around game situations. These situations include all the normal football situations like 1st and 10, 2nd Short/Medium/Long, 3rd and Short/Medium/Long, 4th and Short/Medium/Long, Goal Line, and many others. The AI Groups also cover all the “Special” situations like Special Teams plays, QB Kneel Downs, Conserve time (No-Huddle plays), Waste Time (when CPU is ahead and tries to run the clock out), and Hail Mary calls. In previous years, you'd see a much more generic smattering of plays in an AI Group - many of them would be balanced right down the middle between run and pass across all plays. The Head Coach 09 team did some great work and added some deeper support to tag exact plays and the percentages they should be run per situation. We zeroed out all of our previous situational numbers and started from scratch - making sure the CPU picked from a more team-specific subset of plays (no reason to have all those generic HB Dive plays in there if teams don't run them often).
Let's pick the Vikings for example. After researching the Vikings by watching all 16 regular season games, we found that out of 440 total first down plays, 271 (62%) were runs. With that in mind we really wanted to emphasize that the Vikings like to run the ball on first down and with arguably the best back in the league getting the ball, who can blame them! We set the Overall Run percentage in Madden NFL 10 to that exact number. Of the 271 run plays, 64 runs were outside (22%). So 78% of the time in Madden NFL 10, you can expect the Vikings to be bringing it downhill right into your face.
"What if Peterson gets injured or traded?" you may ask. A really cool thing built into Adaptive AI (which was first detailed here) is that the team will re-evaluate itself constantly - so if for example if the Vikings no longer have a feature back like Peterson, they will adjust accordingly (and likely start running the ball much less on first down).
The Vikings will deliver a heavy dose of Peterson in Madden NFL 10. You will be in for a long day if you don't come up with a good strategy to stop the run.
Another example we'll showcase is the Colts. Again, researching their playcalling percentages on first down, they are more of a passing team with Peyton Manning (56% pass on first downs during the regular season) we set their Overall Pass percentage to exactly 56% for First Downs. When we dig a little bit deeper into this same group (1st and 10), it should also be known that they have 8 different run plays that they'll choose between. Of these 8, 6 of them are stretch plays. Having this ability to choose the play type per situation really is what sets the teams apart from each other.
Peyton Manning and the Colts are as dangerous as ever and will keep you guessing all day long.
These are just two extremely small examples in the grand scheme of things - we did this for every single team and every single AI group. The Eagles called play action passes 29% of the time on 2nd down, so you can expect the same in Madden NFL 10. The list goes on.
With all this focus on CPU playcalling and getting teams to play like they do in real life, we have also spent a large amount of time in differientiating team playbooks and giving them unique formations and plays. These new formations and plays directly tie in with our improved AI groups and CPU playcalling. We have bumped up the percentages of the newly added plays to be called more frequently by the CPU. Our goal is to have our CPU teams running a similar offensive style that the teams do in real life.
For example, the Patriots primarily use Wes Welker in the slot in 3+ WR sets. With that in mind, we created 3 new formations (Singleback Doubles Patriots, Gun Wing Trips Wk, and Gun 5WR Patriot) that have Welker lining up in the slot. In previous versions of Madden, the WR2 always lined up on the outside while the WR3 lined up in the slot. You had to use packages or substitutions to get him into that position in the past, whereas now they will just have this setup by default.
We have also added new formations for various teams that have the WR1 and the TE1 lining up in the slot as well. So don’t be surprised when you play the CPU and guys like Greg Jennings, Hines Ward, Steve Smith and Dallas Clark are lining up inside against you.
Here is a small snapshot of all the Patriots passing plays (notice there are 222 total!). All the formations and plays shown below are new this year and make playing the Patriots difficult to defend. Make sure you are aware of where Welker lines up because if he gets one-on-one coverage on a linebacker or weaker corner back in the slot, you could be in for a long day!
All in all we have added 35 new formations and over 1000 new plays. Among those new formations is of course the Wildcat, which we have mentioned in a previous blog (here). We have 13 different variations of the Wildcat spread throughout a variety of playbooks including the Cardinals, Falcons, Panthers, Browns, Chiefs, 49ers, and a few others.
New formations in action: New England Patriots Gun Wing Trips Wk-Stutter Curl Seam vs. Nickel Odd Split-Cover 3
For the defensive side of the ball we have again concentrated on CPU playcalling and getting teams to play like they do in real life. When playing teams like the Ravens and Steelers you will definitely feel the pressure as a QB and will have to be ready for the blitz coming at you from a variety of angles. We have also added two new formations, the 3-4 Predator (which is a 3-4/4-3 hybrid set that has the ROLB on the line in a 3 point stance- think Terrell Suggs/Joey Porter) and the Nickel Odd Split set. With more and more NFL teams using the 3-4 as a base defense now (13 teams in Madden 10 will have a 3-4 base defense) we felt that it was important to continue to improve the functionality around the 3-4 and make it much more applicable to real life.
New formations in action: Cleveland Browns Flash Trio vs. Arizona Cardinals 3-4 Predator
Hopefully you have enjoyed the blog and have a better understanding of how we try and learn from our previous mistakes and constantly are looking for ways to improve our game.
- Larry Richart
Designer, Madden NFL 10