Madden 17 Gameplay Improvements: Competitive Changes

EA is continuing to dole out information on Madden 17, and today on the blog they’ve detailed how they’re making the game better for competitive players.

For starters, Madden 17 is changing up man coverage. In last year’s iteration, man press made defensive backs would stick to receivers effortlessly, forcing players to result to the same type of motion routes in order to beat it.

That’s changing this year with an enhanced win/loss system, created to ensure that any route can get open against the coverage. The new man coverage should make the game more balanced and allow for a game more true to the ratings.

Similarly, on the defensive side, the changes to the zone coverage system should also make for a much more realistic game. The new zone coverage system was designed around thwarting some of the same old plays from the previous game, and if you’d like to learn more about that, you can check out our post on the subject.

It should also be much easier to deal with a QB scramble thanks to the new mechanics, which had previously been much harder to stop than it should have been. A number of formations have also been recreated to be more authentic to how they would work in real life. Quarter is one of the examples given in the blog post.

Offense is changing as well. In Madden 16, the double juke was too effective. It was so effective that it wasn’t very difficult to predict, making running straight forward a viable strategy. Head to head should be a lot more engaging now, thanks to a number of fake moves having been made more viable, allowing for much less predictable gameplay. If you want to get a more detailed look at that, you can check out our post on special moves.

When it comes to the playbook, audibles have been changed this time around. Run heavy sets will now have two audibles, one that attacks the inside, and one that pushes the ball outside. A number of changes have also been made to the pass blocking to account for some of the strategies that were more effective than they should have been. Turbo blitzes and looping blitzes are two things that have been addressed.

Perhaps most importantly, and one of the best things for competitive players who end up online the most, online play has been improved to allow for less lag. We’ll find out whether or not that holds up when the game launches, but for now, a reduction in lag sounds like a good thing.

Do you think these improvements will be good for competitive play? Let us know in the comments or on social media, and as always, stay tuned to SGO for the latest news on Madden 17.

Madden 17 Gameplay Improvements: Competitive Changes