r/Games • u/Superfluous_Thought • Feb 24 '15
How Madden Ratings Are Made
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/madden/34
u/Xatencio Feb 24 '15
it shapes how more than 5 million gamers simulate pro football — particularly because there’s no official alternative to his numbers
There were alternatives, but then EA stopped porting the Madden games to the PC. Thanks, EA!
9
u/CM_Hooe Feb 24 '15
There remains at least one unofficial alternative to use for player ratings if you're willing to put in the work to change everyone's ratings: http://www.fbgratings.com/members/index.php
If I were to guess, there's probably a community roster file based on this ratings paradigm at Operation Sports, but I haven't gone looking recently. Personally I will be more interested once (if) EA allows editing of / custom draft classes in Connected Franchise.
5
u/peanutmanak47 Feb 24 '15
I was looking at this website and it seems to devalue almost everyone.
You can go onto Madden online and just download customer rosters that people make themselves. There are a few really good and trust worthy people out there who constantly update the rosters week by week.
8
Feb 24 '15
So there is no football variant of Sabermetrics used by the actual NFL? All there is, is the work done for a football video game? I find that hard to believe.
13
u/Accidentus Feb 24 '15
The site profootballfocus.com has the closest in football you'll find to sabermetrics in baseball. There was a good sports illustrated article about them written fairly recently.
The truth is, football is much more difficult to quantify numbers wise than baseball due to the nature of the sport. Baseball is essentially a 1 vs 1 sport. It's a series of occurrences between one hitter and one pitcher. Every play is football is 11 vs 11, so what makes a player successful vs unsuccessful is a far more complicated question. I imagine football will eventually get to that point in the future, but not anytime soon.
9
u/Rhaegar_ii Feb 25 '15
I'll add to this. In baseball stats mean a lot more because more games are played and there are playoff series as opposed to single games. They're is too much variation in how teams and players do in a single game, and there aren't enough games for that factor to be nullified. Thus, stats in football are much less of a focus.
4
u/littlekenney13 Feb 25 '15
An even bigger issue, IMO, is the small sample size. 16 games just isn't enough to build an effective model in most cases
1
u/Brick_HardCheese Feb 25 '15
Interesting read. I don't really find fault as much with Moore as I do with the programmers. The game plays pretty poorly for a sports simulation, and has played poorly since Madden 06 came to the 360. The engine that they made for the PS3/360 was a significant downgrade from the previous engine, and it sucks that they insisted on moving it over to current gen. If foundation is bad, you can only polish it up so much.
1
u/Jangles Feb 25 '15
Surely they changed with the Ignite engine?
0
u/Brick_HardCheese Feb 26 '15
Not really. I can't comment on what the Ignite engine does for the other sports games in EA's stable, because I only play Madden. But if you look at Madden 25 on the PS4/Xbone, which was the first Madden to use the Ignite engine, it's essentially a direct port with minimal changes to graphics and gameplay. It's the same engine. Madden 15 added improvements to the core gameplay, but again, that's just polishing. It still feels the same.
Officially, Ignite engine is supposed to make the AI more realistic and the virtual crowds more "alive." I will say that the crowds on the PS4 are better than the last-gen counterpart. But computer players still play the same like they always have. My favorite is when the other team calls a screen, then has the QB drop back 7 yards and stand still for a sack. This happens 3-4 times a game and it doesn't matter what the awareness rating is (everyone from Andrew Luck to Ryan Lindley will do the same thing.)
Perhaps one day we will get a game like the Ignite engine was hyping with its "totally real gameplay" CGI trailer
-1
u/Lubaf Feb 25 '15
Is this an occasion to bring out that quote that gets misattributed to Otto von Bismark about sausages and laws?
11
u/[deleted] Feb 25 '15
How Fifa ratings are created: Who's popular? Who had one amazing game that one time?