When it comes to Madden 25 franchise mode, some of us are still waiting for a patch that tweaks the pass-run ratios, but there’s still plenty of others digging into the game. OS user NightOwl has been working through a set of All-Madden sliders that are in a pretty good place now.
The thing a lot of us are trying to balance is the ease of passing for both teams while trying to bump up the difficulty when it comes to stopping the run. In other words, we want the run games to be more effective for AI teams, and then the passing attacks to be less effective for both human and AI teams. NightOwl has been trying to attack these same issues in these sliders, so let’s get to them.
Madden 25 All-Madden Sliders
HOUSE RULES
Play the game. I adjust my safeties. I pinch my defense. I shift my defense left and right. I press. I drop back. I pass predict. I adjust underneath, or inside, or outside, or over the top. I user a LB or Safety. I switch fairly rarely but not never. I audible. I hot route, again rarely, but not never. I fake snaps to try and get a free play or first down. Sometimes that burns me and someone false starts. I’ll go for it on 4th down in plus territory if it’s a realistic time a coach would do so in real life. So on and so forth. Things I don’t do include intentionally cheesing the CPU. First off, I’m not even sure I’d know how to cheese the CPU. Second off, I’m looking for realistic gameplay so I couldn’t care less if I win or lose. I limit my playcalling with the options for cooldown and max amount for one play, and 99% of the time, take a coach suggestion from the first three options on the first page. I do this because I want to use as much of my playbook as possible in my roughly 55 plays per game.
Skill Level: All-Madden
Game Style: Simulation (Need for AI penalties, injuries, and regular fatigue)
Quarter Length: 12 Minutes (With the accelerated clock below, there’s anywhere from 100-115 plays per game. Penalties/injuries/incompletions will be the reason for more or less.
Play Clock: On
Accelerated Clock: On
Minimum Play Clock Time: 12 Seconds.
Reason I did this: Going to 12 minute quarters and 12 second accel clock seems to help the CPU playcalling as I’m not doing the playbook workaround anymore. This is keeping the CPU from constantly audibling out of run plays. Much better pass/run ratios than before outside of the egregious pass heavy team playbooks like Cincy who were 38/12 pass/run against me the other night which is at least somewhat better than they were before.
Injuries: 25 (Having a good amount of in-game injuries. Some multi-week, some just stingers. I like it that way)
Fatigue: 90 (I turned off Progressive Fatigue in Franchise and left auto subs default. Players haven’t disappeared yet and there’s some rotations so… *fingers crossed*
Player Speed Parity Scale: 100 (Everyone is fast in the NFL. This doesn’t make everyone the same speed, there’s still separation for the fast guys, this just makes the game way more enjoyable and way more realistic in terms of speed around the field and tightens up the defenses a ton)
Physics Based Tackling Results: TESTING 58!!! — 55 (Too much boom tech for me this year. Tried 60 and it was okay also, but settled on 55. Realized after the 17 games with the Raiders, I was the one always fumbling and not the CPU so I adjusted this and the ball security sliders to try and even it out.
PENALTIES
These have a tremendous impact on the gameplay and animations. They always have. Now, most of them actually seem to be working in terms of penalties actually being called. First Madden in forever I can actually say that we’re finally getting penalties in games and most of the sliders will actually affect the number of calls. I’m going to copy and paste what I posted in another thread in a reply below instead of typing it all here again to explain these.
Offside: 70
False Start: 70
Offensive Holding: 65
Facemask: 40
Illegal Block in the Back: 65
Roughing the Passer: 50
Defensive Pass Interference: 30
Everything else toggled: On
PLAYER SKILL
QB Accuracy: 0
Pass Blocking: 45
WR Catching: 39
Run Blocking: 0 (Run game is way too easy)
Ball Security: 60
Reaction Time: 75
Interceptions: 25 (I want stats to be good and that’s it. I don’t want to throw 25 interceptions per season and I don’t want to intercept the CPU 25 times either. I can live with an ugly drop or animation from time to time if my stats look good at the end of a season. At 25, there have been some defenders with brick hands and that’s fine with me. I’m just treating them as swats and it’s good to see an incomplete pass for the CPU instead of them completing 85% every game. Through 5 games in the test franchise, the CPU is completing about 63% against me.)
Pass Coverage: 100
Tackling: 45
FG Power: 55
FG Accuracy: 40
Punt Power: 55 (The new kick meter sucks for punting but I love it for kicking difficulty. Punts were traveling like 35-40 yards with almost full or full power punts. Punts should be traveling 50+ yards with the occasional 45-65 yarder and this helps that. Punt coverage is still okay with the longer punts as well.)
Punt Accuracy: 50
Kickoff Power: 50
CPU SKILL
QB Accuracy: 0 (I know some are claiming putting this at zero is causing dinking and dunking, but I haven’t seen it correlate to QBA. In my testing, that’s felt like it correlated to Intentional Grounding as I mentioned above, but even that doesn’t necessarily feel always true either. I will say this: The average air yards per attempt last year was 7-7.5 anyway so dinking and dunking isn’t some unheard of concept in the NFL. Short passing and running are what setup the big plays and if the CPU will take 3-4 shots deep per game, (mixed in with some medium attempts too) I’m fine with that. The halftime adjustment screen that shows Short, Medium, and Deep passing for the CPU is still within good percentages for me. That’s a great indicator of whether or not sliders are affecting CPU passing depth and there is no indication in my testing that QBA at 0 is causing absurd Short passing game attempts. The CPU is still around 60-70% and the remaining 30-40% in medium and deep attempts.
Pass Blocking: 50 (I’m leading the league in sacks through 5 games with a Buccs test franchise, but in my first game of the season I had this matched with user skill at 45 and had 8 sacks on Jayden Daniels. So, I bumped it up to 50 and have had 10 through the next 4 games. It’s the only slider adjustment I’ve made in this franchise so far.) (I’d say most of my sacks are coverage sacks. CPU is throwing the ball away plenty, sometimes they just hang onto it a little too long in the pocket and my line gets there eventually)
WR Catching: 39
Run Blocking: 100 (I was absolutely shutting down and blowing up the run game on 50. And not even necessarily me as the user. The AI controlled defenders were the ones making the stops most of the time. I bumped this to 100 to hopefully encourage the CPU to keep running when they’re successful and it worked against the Eagles. They ran 25+ times for 180ish yards on me. Most games though, unfortunately, the CPU playbooks are set up awfully and they’re only running 10~ times if they’re unsuccessful early on. I’ll post my game stats below to show)
Ball Security: 40 (I only had 4 FMB REC in the 17 games with the Raiders and didn’t force many more than those 4)
Reaction Time: 75
Interceptions: 25
Pass Coverage: 100
Tackling: 70
FG Power: 55
FG Accuracy: 40
Punt Power: 55
Punt Accuracy: 50
Kickoff Power: 50
AUTO-SUBS
Default 60/80
Wanted to give the Auto Sub theories of impacting gameplay a fair shake so I played the same first half three separate times the other night. First game default auto subs, second game adjusted to some from the community, and third game back to default. I noticed no changes in gameplay, and so far I have not lost anyone at the end of games. I have seen a ton of WR rotations as I don’t have formation subs for them setup.
FRANCHISE SETTINGS
Offensive PlayCall Cooldown: 10
Offensive PlayCall Limit: 2
Make yourself call more than just your trusty go-to plays. I used the coach suggested plays anyway, but… Your playbook has hundreds of plays in it. Use them. You’re only going to get about 50-60 plays with this 10-minute/20 second runoff setup. Don’t run the same 5 non-stop.
As for defense, I still only use my coach’s suggested plays, but I don’t limit myself because many NFL defensive gameplans revolve around running the same man or zone/match defenses like cover 2, cover 3, cover 4, etc. I don’t want to lock myself out of basic cover 2 or cover 4 plays because I hit my limit on my basic defensive calls.
Dynamic Momentum / Home Field Advantage: On
I want my games to be difficult on the road and I want momentum to matter, so I leave this on. It seems like it affects the game way less than year’s past (thankfully) so I don’t have any issues leaving this on this year for now.
Practice Injury: On (I love these. It gives a good realistic feel of what happens in the real life game)
Published: Sep 20, 2024 04:31 pm