SkinsnCanes, did you skip through a season to get to the offseason stuff yet? If so I'm wondering how the draft looks and works this year, also, how does the player morale stuff play in? Thanks

no im going to do a 'practice' season after the game to see how that stuff works. ill let you know.

ok i lied when i said they made trench fight easier. its still impossible. Im doing the practice mode of minicamp, when i just keep trying it. im on the second level, pro, and i cant get gold. ive been trying for like 15 minutes...and it only takes 9 seconds so ive tried it a few times

and my first attempt after typing that message i finally got gold!!! you guys are great, thanks for the help, lol

[QUOTE=illdefined]yeah Madden certainly handled slight direction changes way better by having leaning, but i'm wondering about major sudden changes...

say you're on a toss, but you see an open hole inside and nothing outside... in 2K5 now, if you're running sideways and press UP suddenly, the back DIGS in for a second, plants his foot (kickass animation) then starts to accelerate in that direction. its sick. and realistic, cuz it penalizes you with time. can't do that with a juke or spin, it's just moving the stick. before in Espn they would just rotate in place 90 degrees then go with no time penalty or animation, which totally sucked. my biggest beef with it.

but like you said, 2k5 still rotates on the majority of the regular turns, when they should lean in like Madden. try totally reversing field on a toss in '05, whats the back do?[/QUOTE]

ok, just spent five minutes doing the running drill just to anwser your question. And the anwser turned out to be pretty cool. if you immediatly push the control pad in teh opposite direction you are going you look like barry sanders. your legs start to slide in that direction, you slow down, adn have to reaccelerate. This is only if its an abrupt change in direction, otherwise you just drop your shoulder and turn that way.

What would be cool, is if you tried this in the snow and you slide and fell and were then tagged down. that woudl be awesome if they factored that in.

But it seems like madden has finally done somethign about this problem. its infinitly smoother and more life like then espn, i promise you that.

weird....I just did the preseason.. Only brandon noble had any progressoin. In the old maddens only young players, 3 years pro or less, 4 or less for receiver, would progress. So thast weird that i had a guy in hes 30 go up, and only two other old players. If anyone buys a guide or somethign and has more info on this it will be helpful.

the new practice mode is kidna cool. i dont know how mcuh ill use it, but when i start making my own playbook it will help to be able to practice with you acutaly franchise team.

The position battles are great. Not so much for you, but for teh computer teams. In the old maddens a team would start a 64 over an 80 if there was a big age difference. So there was never a need for old players in the league. now the best player plays, or atleast whover has teh better preseason. All the storyline, email and radio stuff is kinda neat. it gives you more to do then just play the game. Keeps it interesting. The radio show is mainly brono asking triva questions and users calling in to make guesses. you can listen to that when you are setting rosters adn stuff, or music.

the owners box is basically the same during the season.
they added a weekly matchup option. its like the one that espn has. Shows the best players, their tendencies, etc. This was put here because espn had it, but its a nice thing to have.

they are player progressoins during the regualar season weeks 5, 11 and 15 i beleive. This is awesome!

Brunell started getting mad and asking for a trade during the season. When I play my franchise for real ill probably trade him right off the bat. only problem is hes a huge cap hit, luckily you start out with a lot of cap room.

chirs cooley is a beast on simulation. i just got to my first week five progression, hes up five already. i had a feeling he might be one of those peopel that has programmed in potential in madden!!! he had 13 receptions in five game, no tds adn went up five...!!!

as a related note to progressoin. I just noticed it still does that same stupid thing where it says one thing at teh top of the screen, and higher numbers for the players progression on the roster. It does give your player the higher numbers, but kinda frusterating they didnt fix this. why would it show two different progressions on teh same screen...

its so awesome with teh multipel progressions. I played so much madden that the regular season was boring, and i always simluated the playoffs becuase i didnt care about them. I played for progression. So my favorite time of year was the offseason, right after preseason. I never cared about the season. Now with super bowl celebreations, plalyer progressoins throughout the season, and all the other stuff its going to be so much more fun. I played 7 games in espn and was already bored and just got annoyed with the setting up that weekly thing. im simulating the rest of the season now, not going game by game anymore because the real game starts in 14 minutes!!! ill post all the off season stuff after the game probably becuae im not going to miss the game for anything!!

lol, since joe is camp reporter, i should be the official madden reporter. Ask your questions here. Ill be doing nothing else with my life except madden for the next few weeks so ill be sure to get your anwser.!!! What do you think Matty, does this site need an official Madden reporter?!?!?

well. cowboys won the division with the simulation at 12-4. skins at 8-8, as were the giants, and the eagles at 6-10...

cowboys lost to the pats in the superbowl.

Skins stadium is awesome, had average attendence but crushed everyone in revenue becuae the stadium holds 12k more then the next closest stadium. Thats huge in this game to have that big of a stadium, you couldnt even make a stadium this big in create a stadium last year in madden.

aw, they dotn use bugel or williams since they. They use our cordinators, not our assistant coaches. That sucks, we would have had higher ranked coachs with bugel and williams, of course blanche is cheaper. Gibbs rating are really high, hes a stout coach, as if there was any question.

the pats coach retired right away becasue eh got his third ring. that was the rule in madden 04, if you got three rings youd retire. lol, i hope that doesnt appy to us. acutally, i hope if you win a superbowl he doesnt retire right away and they atelast let him win three more. it would suck to lose him after a year if you win the super bowl your first year.

skins default training staff sucks for yoru first year, but its easily corrected in the second year.

the initial offseason is basically the same. you sign coaches, stadium upgrades are bascially the same. you do the coach progression and hiring.

nothing new to report here. only difference is that they have the storyline info

sweeeeeeeeeeet. theres now a restricted free agency period. . you give qualifiing offers and can put tags on people. thats awesome. so you now can get compensation for a guy you might not want to keep, without signing him to a deal. just by giving him an offer.

im watching the game with a giants fan, he has a lot of praise for c griffin

oops, that was for teh game time thread

alright, signing players is different. theres no sliders for back or front loading the contracts. not that i found yet. but its really easy to sign players. basically, they tell you what they want, if they want to play for your team. its not like the old madden where you spend forever negionating trying to get the lowest price. theres that little bar like in trades saying if they will take it or not.

man... 67 yars to over 200...no offense for us...

thanks for all the info man, I'm really pumped

lol. I was starting to wonder if anyone was even reading it. As soon as the games over ill finish the offseason.

oops, just realized i put a stat about the game in this thread again...

i put the franchise tag on k.jones just to see what would happen. he wanted like a two million dollar deal. i ended up giving him a 5.99 million dollar one year deal, lol. i dont know if anyone is going to make an offer on him but i guess we'll see. I hope they fixed the cap because i hardly ever had cap problems in madden 04 where i would need to put a tag on someone.

of course. i guess you can use the tag on a guy that wont sign with you. apparently players wont sign with your team if they dotn like you for whatever reason, so i guess thast when you would use the tag. but come on, who wouldnt want to be a skin.

ok im doing scouting now, first impression is that they added 'top 10'. Which is kinda cool. so it takes some of the guess work out of sorting though the 1st round projections.

just noticed some more, should have waited to post.

There is Top 5, top ten, 1, 1-2,2,2-3,3,3-4,4-5,5,5-6,6,6-7,7, undrafted. theres no more big ranges (4-7)

kickers are ranked now. they were all ranked 4-7 in madden 04.

theres exactly 5 top 5, and exactly 5 top ten. so if you dont have a top ten pick you probably arent goig to get a shot at them. its probably not a coincidence that there are 5 and 5 for those two projections.

the info and stuff and that gives for players is basically teh same format as before.

the draft is really cool. it scrolls the draft order on the bottom on the bottom of the screen. you can set the draft speed while your watching it. each picks takes a little bit of time. there are trades. i made a trade for the 6th pick from the 16th just to check it out. the draft is really cool. a box pops up to notify you of trades. pretty realistic. giants just traded the 15th pick in the 1st and 3rd for the 10th pick overall. id say there was probably five trades in the first round. it doesnt stop inbetween rounds so one of htos emight have been early second. I really like the way its set up.

when you sign the players you get info about them in your pda thats always on the right side of the screen. you also get a draft grade about your pick, could help in determining if you are going to keep them or not.

i didnt actually make the last four picks in my draft....mabye i was typing one of these posts and i missed my chance on the clock. not sure what happened there.

in free agency people take about 15 things into accoutn if they want to play for you, same list from when you try to sign your own guys. once people have been made offeres it shows all the teams that made them offers and the playesr interest level for playing for each team. pretty cool. makes the game more real.

man im checking my progression now. there isnt a lot of change. im assuming thats partially because there was progressoin three times during the year. but i had to tell you about cooley. hes a 78 already, and he didnt go up at all in the end of the season progression. he had 39 receptions and still went up 9!

...the only player that made the probowl was jansen......

haha. i was just reading the storylines in my local newspaper. and it was talking about how players are scared to be named on the madden cover. its cute they put that in there.

thanks for all that info Canes.

i just brought my copy home and UGH. my first reaction is, what did they do to it???

the LOD (Level Of Detail, the model detail/texture reduction that happens when players are a certain distance away) is HORRENDOUS. the players are 'popping' constantly! their facemasks and shoulder pads keep changing in front of your eyes!! the muscle textures on the big players are laughable, looks like PS1!!

and maybe it's my xbox, but the flow is really jumpy. its not slowdown, its just the players will have superfast animations then suddenly go into slow animations all of sudden. no inbetween. goes and back and forth like they're changing gears. its strange.

im comparing to '04, not ESPN.

you're right Canes, Madden DID add that cut animation!! maybe its Portis, but it goes by too fast, same with the Spin. it happens superfast then goes to the normal speed run. what gives...

[QUOTE=illdefined]thanks for all that info Canes.

i just brought my copy home and UGH. my first reaction is, what did they do to it???

the LOD (Level Of Detail, the model detail/texture reduction that happens when players are a certain distance away) is HORRENDOUS. the players are 'popping' constantly! their facemasks and shoulder pads keep changing in front of your eyes!! the muscle textures on the big players are laughable, looks like PS1!!

and maybe it's my xbox, but the flow is really jumpy. its not slowdown, its just the players will have superfast animations then suddenly go into slow animations all of sudden. no inbetween. goes and back and forth like they're changing gears. its strange.

im comparing to '04, not ESPN.[/QUOTE]

thats weird. my guess is its yoru xbox. im playing on ps2 and the animations are definitly smoother, along with the players graphics. you can see their muscles more and their jersyes look better than 04. those are weird complaints of yours. do the nintendo trick, blow in your xbox. hehe

coolest thing. i was just about to type taht i dont like the new cut animation. mainly because it makes it harder, lol. but then i sent to do it, the guy hit me while i was doing it and portis acutally put his hand down to catch him self. it was freaking awesome. acutally looked real.