Ahead of the August 19th launch of Madden NFL 23, EA shared a list of changes made in response to issues such as: player feedback From closed beta. The most popular feedback was asking the developers not to change the game too much before release for players, but there have been many improvements and balance tweaks.
Another popular piece of feedback was calling for referees to return to the field, but unfortunately the developers stated that “Referees returning to the field during live gameplay is not feasible in Madden 23.” The note adds that “refs are very high on the roadmap for the future” and the EA has decided to only return refs in their refined state.
Balance changes and AI tweaks have been made across various features in response to player feedback. This includes improved play awareness, lineman extraction, pass blocking, and more. Notably, EA has also improved the onboarding process for its all-new skill-based pathing system.
Madden 23 launches on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles on August 19th, but players who pre-order the All Madden Edition will get a 3-day head start, unlocked on August 16th.
You can read the full patch notes, including beta player feedback, below. For more details on the changes he made to Madden 23 ahead of its August 19th release, check out our interview with Gameplay Producer Clint Oldenburg.
gameplay feedback
- Don’t change the game too much / Leave the reaction time for coverage as is
- Dev notes: Rest in peace, Madden community. Our vision for game balance aligns with yours, and the gameplay you experience in the beta will be what you will play on release day. Some refinements have been added and bugs fixed from player feedback to make it even better, but the overall experience is the same as when you played in the beta.
- Return the referee to the game/field
- Dev notes: Referees returning to the field during live gameplay isn’t something Madden 23 can offer, but it’s something you want as badly as a player. When the refs come back, we want to be able to return them with the same quality level as the rest of the characters in the field. This is very high on our priority list. future.
- Play Awareness – It’s all too easy to repeat the same play over and over again.
- Dev notes: Since the beta, we have made many changes to improve gameplay balance. We believe these changes will bring more variety to playcalling. But let us know how you feel about these changes when the game launches. Each of these are options for further tweaking through title updates.
- Added logic to slow down reaction time to running games when defensive backs are playing in the linebacker position.
- Removed ability to hot route TE to pass block assignment when in 2 point WR stance.
- Adjusted the corner loot for bunch formations and corner hot loot for hot loot master and slot apprentice abilities to be in line with other corner loot throughout the playbook.
- Improved man coverage pre-snap alignment and bunch formation
- Dev notes: Since the beta, we have made many changes to improve gameplay balance. We believe these changes will bring more variety to playcalling. But let us know how you feel about these changes when the game launches. Each of these are options for further tweaking through title updates.
- Too late/too indecisive to pull the lineman:
- Dev notes: Tuning and AI changes have been made to make the pull lineman more explosive in line of scrimmage. And in addition to basic improvements, you should pay attention to the pulling lineman’s speed (SPD) rating. Slower OLs can be forced to fire the acceleration mechanic while navigating, as fast OLs pass faster. Allows you to accelerate faster in play.
- Insufficient path blocking/too much instashed:
- Dev notes: as mentioned in Closed Beta Gridiron Notebookthere was a bug early in the Closed Beta that caused Super Wins to be triggered too often, which was the main cause of the feeling of being overwhelmed. Overall, I would like to share that is going to be stronger than Madden NFL 22.
Gameplay Bugs/Suggestions
- Too many fake outs of man coverage:
- Tuning to significantly reduce the frequency of fake-outs
- Added new logic to allow fakeouts to be used in superwin situations where the rating delta is big in favor of the WR.
- User interception is not always responsive:
- Adjusted catch animation to increase jump INT range
- These jumping catch animations greatly reduce the situation where the player requests “Play Ball” without showing the corresponding animated response.
- Too much fumbling:
- Adjusted to significantly reduce fumble chance for QB hits in the pocket
- Tuned to greatly reduce fumble chances on QB hits early in the throw
- Tuning to Reduce Fumbles on Hit Stick and Strip Ball Attempts by Non-QB Ball Carriers
- Greatly reduces “punch-out” fumbles by AI-controlled defenders during stand-up tackles in competitive game style.
- not enough hitsticks
- About 30 new hitstick animations added for launch
- Most of the existing animations have been adjusted for more variety
- WR should get more competing catches on mismatches.
- Adjustments to increase WR catch success in contested catch situations in the event of a mismatch.
- The logic added to include WR physical attributes such as height plays a more important role in the success of competing catches.
- Skill-based paths can be difficult to understand.
- Dev notes: It wasn’t in beta, but when you turn on the game for the first time at launch, you can play through the onboarding flow to learn more about the new pass system. You’ll also have the opportunity to experiment deeper with practice mode. Finally, some additional work has been done to make the in-game feedback system even easier to use, such as color-coding feedback text and passing reticles for different levels of accuracy. Keep an eye out for developer details closer to launch that go into even more detail about skill-based passes and what you can unlock in pass games.
Franchise feedback
- Franchise Draft Clash
- Dev notes: Unfortunately, this was the biggest issue we had with the beta, and we received a lot of feedback that it wasn’t working.I’ve been dealing with this for launch ever since
- Low-interest players are signing frequently during the re-signing period
- Dev notes: We’ve made a few adjustments in this area to make it more realistic how and when players re-sign with their current team.
- sim stats
- Dev notes: Fixed an issue where the longest pass completion in simulation was 25 yards. I also tried to adjust the simulation stats to be as close as possible to the real stats. We know these aren’t perfect by any means and you can see a wide range of results on any sim, but we hope they’re close enough to give you a realistic snapshot of what’s going on in real life.
- salary cap
- Dev notes: We received a lot of feedback about how some teams didn’t have enough salary cap space to re-sign players during the free agency period. Along with adjusting the amount players are asking for at various stages, we continue to update real player contracts as that information becomes available. , I hope the current balance of the game is a good balance between fun and challenging.
- CPU draft logic
- Dev notes: There have been beta reports of teams seeing teams drafting QBs even though they already have quality starters. This has been an important area as we have been trying to take advantage of it. There are still some cases that question why teams draft players at certain positions, but we hope this logic is much better than it used to be.
Franchise bug/suggestion
- Valuation Offers Causing Crashes at Free Agencies
- Get Offer Trade Tuning
- We made some different adjustments using the new Get Offers deal feature. There’s still some work to do in the future, but I think we’re in the right place for Madden 23.
- NFL draft flicker issue
- There were some graphical issues that occurred during the beta, but have since been resolved
- FA Featured Players
- I’ve seen some people state that they’re looking at the top tier players available in free agency. We’ve tried to improve this in a few different ways:
- Adjust player motivations to better match with their current team (if that makes sense) and increase their chances of re-signing with their current team.
- It continued to renew the actual player contracts of players who signed new contracts to remove them from the list of potential free agents in the franchise’s first year.
- Adjusted amount requested by player along with team salary cap data, as above
- I’ve seen some people state that they’re looking at the top tier players available in free agency. We’ve tried to improve this in a few different ways:
- Wrong training information displayed in Progression History
- Fixed a bug where attack and defense training histories were reversed.
- Unplaced Scout Assignment Text
- Fixed an issue where Scout region text was not visible when assigning Scouts
- Scout tier displayed 4 stars on some screens
- Fixed an issue where 4 stars were displayed instead of 3.
- We’ve received feedback from players in Madden 22 that it’s not immediately clear if Tier 1 is the best or Tier 3, so this year we’ve added stars to better describe Scout tier levels.
- Help tips
- Some of the new screens we added were missing new help tips (free agent hub, contract negotiation, scouting stage update)
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