My Suggestions to Improve Madden Ultimate Team

 

Script:

If you saw my last video on what I like and dislike about MUT 18 so far, good, thanks for watching guy. This video builds on that one so you might want to check that one out first. And if any EA guy is out there and you’d rather read than listen to my shrill voice go through it. I’ll put the script on my website and link it below.

Off the bat it’s crazy the amount of suggestions I’ve had in old vids that have made it to the actual game of Madden. Outside of the standard glitches and balance needs I and many others have mentioned, in past videos I’ve asked them to add Draft Champions, Salary Cap, Objectives for yards, ID the Mike, A casual MUT H2H mode (which they ended up removing) and many others. Just go back and watch my old suggestion videos. It’s kinda neat. So we know they’re listening to the community’s feedback, which is really nice and hopefully they continue to moving forward.

But on to the suggestions and ideas for things they can do going forward:

Give us something to do in game outside of grinding solos or head to head. Remember when we could make throwback packs, or random packs through trade in sets? We got flashback packs now but there are only a dozen players or so there. And they constantly raise the price of them as the player prices decrease. That’s a shitty merchant. For examples of things to do outside of grinding solos and head to head, look at what MLB The Show did with their conquest mode. It’s a part of their solo grind but it’s not 100% focused on baseball, it’s a game of Risk mixed with baseball. Very innovative.

Don’t copy that exactly but Madden needs something like that. I’ve suggested in the past a card game with binders and the cards we have in it. Some sort of 501 where you and your opponent/the computer play out cards and whoever has the last card to get to 501 without going over wins. Maybe a blackjack or poker clone. I could think of 10 card games off the top of my head with varying depth to put in this game. And it doesn’t necessarily just card games, you can mix in other game elements to help flesh out the depth of MUT. And we’ll get into that in more depth going forward.

Quicksell sets need to come back. Gold and silver masters were really nice. Something new to drive up the price of pack trash is needed.

Look at what youtubers are doing that get good views and try and incorporate it into your game. I think the obvious choice is to put a spin the wheel type pack in the game. Where you buy a roll of the wheel and it has various options on the wheel. Then whatever it lands on you get. Similar packs were in the game in the past and they were decent, you just need the wheel animation to make it cooler. And have random rewards on the wheel. So like one spot instead of just a pack, make it dynamic, like a picture of 90 Antonio Brown.

Another thing that’s pretty big on youtube is trivia. A trivia mini-game would be nice. Look at muthead’s trivia game for inspiration on something to do. Muthead also had raffles and currently has pick’ems that are fun to enter for some. I guess the pick’ems are similar to your predictor sets so you kind of have that covered. But I will say Madden 15’s Coin Up promotion where you can sell the bets was far superior to predictor just because of the fact that someone can go all in on one.

How about some loading screen flavor like something as stupid as watching your cards vs. your opponents vibrate on a virtual representation of the old electric football game as a loading screen. I think that would be cool to see and a nice change from the static images we get now. Lot of things you can do with loading screens.

A mini-game where you try to throw cards into a hat. If you get a card in the hat you get a reward like an elite player pack or something. Needs to be a game that’s tough to automate though. And any missed cards you lose that card.

But I think there needs to be a “tentpole” event in this game. The biggest happenings in Madden is the launch, Christmas and the Super Bowl. I think EA should aim for some huge update every year the Monday after the Conference Championship game to coincide with the hype around the biggest game of the year. You need something to get back on to video game blogs and not just the standard “Madden Predicting the Super Bowl” type stuff we get every year. As to what that tentpole event is, that’s on you but I’ve provided the idea of a Tavern Brawl type of game mode where you vary the rules every week.

Moving on, I would institute a weekly schedule highlighting each mode. This is directly stolen from Tuesday night drafts last year:

Monday for MUT Squads bonuses to coins. Like a double reward day or some other draw.

Tuesdays are TOTW so kind of a big content drop already and that’s probably enough.

Wednesday should be Salary cap bonuses similar to MUT Squads Monday

Thursday we can something similar to Tuesday night drafts again. But the drafts in 18 are already stacked with high overalls so do a half priced draft day or something. This should be the day each week you update draft champions.

Friday-Sunday is Weekend League so the focus in already on H2H.

I think Play a friend needs a coin reward. Maybe like 2,000 coin reward for each game played with a limit of twice a day. Just some incentive for us to play our friends online.

Pack animations need to improve. For such a central part of the game they have such little payoff even if you pull a stud. FIFA has walkouts, I’ve suggested in the past you have real life highlights of the players when you pull an absolute beast. Like Sean Taylor destroying the punter.

More coaches to provide boosts for specific positions. I think there should be a ton of items in the game to help boost your team, you should be able to customize everything. Like say you get long cleats from nike, you get plus blockshed but lowered agility. Now I’m not sold on the lowered stats but maybe a mix would be good. As for customization of the uniform in general, I only want it if it affects stats but I know others would like it just to have it.

Chemistry needs a big improvement. For example chem boosts to guys for the colleges they went to or states they were born in. But I know they said they don’t want chem boosts to affect competitive Madden too much, which I think is terrible for many reasons but I won’t get into that right now.

University jersey’s are wanted in MUT. You got it for longshot this year, get as many as you can for next year.

I still think a Tavern Brawl kind of mode where the developers change the rules on a weekly basis would be cool. Like one week is 7 on 7, the next is pauper mode where you can only use silvers, next is low gravity, or no running, or no passing, next is gameplay sped up 50%, WRs at all positions, Vision cone or the other power ups from the past, college OT rules, basically a permanent mode kind of like Most Feared Enraging but different things each week. Make it casual so 2 minute quarters with a pack reward for the first game won or something. More for fun than rewards. Can be with pre-built teams or ones that we need to assemble on our own. For example, rebuilding teams and squad builders are pretty huge on youtube. How about some sort of themed squad week? Like all-time Texas Longhorns against all time Oregon Ducks. Or maybe a pick your college week.

How about a gotta catch them all set? Collect every core card in the game and you get some sort of insane card like the first 99 overall card. I don’t think that set should come out until January though since some core elites are still pretty pricey and a 99 at some positions right now would break the game. Could do something similar for silvers and golds but that’s very close to the gold and silver masters of previous years, which I really liked.

How about being able to set your coach adjustments outside of a game in MUT? It’s a minor quality of life fix. But being able to set kickoff and kickoff return would be nice too. Along with other substitutions for specific formations so you don’t have to do it at the start of every game. Again, kind of minor but a quality of life thing.

Practice Mode with the MUT Team would be nice. Would be kind of cool to import a friend’s MUT team to practice against.

Rent a players were nice, I’m not sure if the community would accept them seeing as how much we hate limited use cards so probably best not to poke the bear with rent a players but I think overall it’d be pretty neat. Talking about the bear, it’s weird how angry so many people are, like not just dissatisfied, but downright angry at a game they can easily discard. Glad I’m not a Madden dev right now.

Moving forward, I heard you got a new economist at EA for the market this year. When I played Eve Online, their economist put out a quarterly report on the market. Something similar to that would be really neat to see for MUT. Google it if you want to take a look at some of them and the stats that he provided.

Next, allow local multiplayer for solo challenges. Like if you want to casually play the game with a friend on the same console, let us. Not sure how high on the priority list this should be though since it’s more nice to have than need to have.

You need to show traits on cards and get us a detailed accurate blog on them and thresholds. 100% this should be the top priority right now. You should do something similar with QB release times. Deep, middle and throw short should be an attribute say out of 60. Basically how many 60th’s of a second it takes to release the ball since that’s the frame rate. Make sure that blog includes out of position penalties and how much stats go down. Knowing the overall algorithm would be cool and pack odds also nice to know. But I know it’s a cold day in a hot place before we know those so it is what it is.

Are you guys doing that no stat over 99 bullshit again this year? You haven’t communicated it to us players yet so if so, scrap that and go crazy with stats after the Super Bowl. And on that, make sure stats over 100 matter. Like I don’t want my 101 speed player to be the same speed as 99.

By the way, where has Leon Sandcastle been? Why not do more fun things like that? I wasn’t around when he was in the game but people speak of him fondly. I don’t know if that’s just nostalgia or not but why not? Talking about nostalgia, why not have the backyard football kids in the game? Get me some Pablo Sanchez action.

I feel like power up players could have been done better. Like there’s no story or reason outside of an ability chem and some +1’s or 2’s. We need a better connection to these players, look at the youtubers doing adventures/story modes with these players. So instead of adding these guys just to sets to upgrade them, you should have made it like pokemon and if they got enough experience in your lineup you could evolve them to their power up form. Then if you wanted to sell, just devolve and list on the market. On that note going forward you should put a deconstruction set in the game to un-power up the previously auctionable cards.

Next, could you put customizable banners in stadiums to show off how many super bowls we’ve won? How about on the top 3 screen you show some of their achievements like the aformentioned SB wins or top weekend league placement?

To extend that further, how about something as you get into the game to show your opponets top 3 plays on each side of the ball and playcall frequency? Maybe their playbooks, and the other stats you track for the online H2H leaderboards?

How about gold shoes to players you’ve won 100 games with in your lineup? You need to have some swag that’s locked behind skill or achievement. Something to show off to others, to flex on the haters and opponents.

On that note, how about stadium upgrades through mut coins or some sort of level rewards? This might be better to start 19 with but have everyone start with a high school field with one stand for fans, then the more you achieve in game the more you can add on to it through unlocks and purchasable upgrades. Those add-ons are what generate the daily login revenue. So you go from 500 coins a day with the standard stadium to being able to get 10,000 coins a day with the maximum stadium. Something like that to replace the daily quicksell or to be the minimum threshold.

Finally Treasure goblin unlocks – In Diablo there are random enemy spawns that if you’re able to kill the treasure goblin, you get much better loot than normal. Having a random H2H game or solo ahead of time spit out something that says if you win this you get 20,000 or 50,000 coins would be a pretty nice random hidden bonus. I think the solo could be it’s own beast like instead of the regular solo, you have an option to do the treasure goblin solo instead for the 20k in place of the one you queued up, if that’s possible.

But those are my suggestions for things to look at for MUT going forward. Let me know in the comments if you guys have suggestions. Thanks for watching, call to action and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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