Why Does Progression in Sports Games Usually Suck?

If there’s one area in most every sports game that is problematic on a yearly basis, it’s player progression. Whether that’s a lack of progress, too much progress, simulation vs. real game progress irregularities, or a progression system that simply can’t handle going year to year without slowly breaking, sports games have not been able to solve how to create a realistic and fun progression system.

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It’s also almost impossible to point to one thing that causes the issue. I’ll mainly use the two football games as examples here since it’s still football season, but let me be clear that they’re not the only culprits.

For EA Sports College Football 25, there’s various issues, but the overarching progression issue is that most teams get way better over time. The balance and variety to the rosters in the launch game is diminished over multiple seasons as more and more good players end up at all positions. The ironic thing here is this isn’t even a simulation vs. playing the games problem because the sim engine — a weakness in both football games likely because they use the same sim engine — leads to unrealistically low stats for multiple position groups. So even though players are not accruing tons of stats, we’re still getting more superteams.

In Madden 24, the sim engine struggles with various position groups, but while the sim engine overrates various QBs and other position groups in terms of accrued stats, things like playbooks seem to be a big issue for player progression. A team like the Chiefs will consistently have great tight ends no matter what, so losing Travis Kelce to retirement doesn’t end up really mattering much because the Chiefs playbook allows them to have great TE stats in simulated games.

Now, I will give credit to the community by saying there are some awesome folks out there who were able to tune XP sliders to get some good results for player progression (not to mention PC mods), but roster building is integral to player progression as well, and Madden 24 still was a failure there if you didn’t control every team. There’s more than one reason why that happens, but I would say it ultimately comes back to the salary cap.

I spoke a ton about the salary cap in my deep dive of Madden 25’s franchise mode, so I’m not going to belabor that aspect too much beyond saying that the salary cap needs to matter. How you build a roster does not matter if you never have to worry about the salary cap.

EA doesn’t explicitly talk about the salary cap in their deep dive, but they do mention at multiple points how AI teams will prioritize building their roster, and they do mention player progression multiple times as well.

In Madden 24, the sim engine struggles with various position groups, but while the sim engine overrates various QBs and other position groups in terms of accrued stats, things like playbooks seem to be a big issue for player progression. A team like the Chiefs will consistently have great tight ends no matter what, so losing Travis Kelce to retirement doesn’t end up really mattering much because the Chiefs playbook allows them to have great TE stats in simulated games.

Now, I will give credit to the community by saying there are some awesome folks out there who were able to tune XP sliders to get some good results for player progression, but roster building is integral to player progression as well, and Madden 24 still was a failure there if you didn’t control every team. There’s more than one reason why that happens, but I would say it ultimately comes back to the salary cap.

I spoke a ton about the salary cap in my deep dive of Madden 25’s franchise mode, so I’m not going to belabor that aspect too much beyond saying that the salary cap needs to matter. How you build a roster does not matter if you never have to worry about the salary cap.

EA doesn’t explicitly talk about the salary cap in their deep dive, but they do mention at multiple points how AI teams will prioritize building their roster, and they do mention player progression multiple times as well.

Whether or not EA is able to nail those two areas is TBD (to the highest degree), but significantly improving those two areas would undeniably be awesome for the longevity of our franchises. They mention wanting to get more Puka Nakua/Isiah Pacheco progression stories in place, which they’re focused on doing via Breakout Storylines, but on a basic level those scenarios were something you could mimic to a degree by modifying the aforementioned XP sliders last year.

On top of that, EA wants to make sure older players like Derrick Henry are not getting more speed in their age-31 seasons. I do have some confidence in them being able to pull these two examples off because we could mostly get there last year if we put in the work tuning our own settings. So if the “default” XP sliders are just close to what some on OS were already doing last year, that’s a good starting point for Madden 25’s XP system.

I’m less bullish on EA’s ability to pull off the roster building portion to this. Even if we avoid the situations where good players are rotting in free agency after a certain amount of years, here’s a couple things EA is saying will happen:

• We’ll start with Contract Re-Signing logic, where teams will now prioritize extending their core young talent with a better understanding of positional value, depth and potential.
• Once the future of the franchise is secure, veteran players and roster depth will be prioritized.
• This mindset will extend to Franchise Tag decisions, which have been rebalanced by position and become a last resort for teams when they need to hang on to players that they want to build around.
• As a result, the strategies behind Offseason Free Agency AI have shifted. A few prized talents will be highly coveted while the bulk of the signings will be made up of veterans as teams look to solidify their rosters.
• Then it’s on to the Draft, where teams will primarily focus on selecting long-term cornerstone players early on and then shift their focus to adding depth in the later rounds.
• Refined player progression ensures that older players regress physically as you would expect, while younger stars receive more opportunities to make an impact in the league early in their careers.

It all sounds great! And, to be clear, if it’s pulled off then these are the biggest additions to the quality of franchise mode in many years. However, I have almost no faith in the overall sim engine in EA’s football games. And, again, there’s no mention of the salary cap there.

The hope would be that because these teams are all prioritizing the same things, that talent will be paid the proper amount. If every team cares about the same key positions, they’ll be paid a proper AAV (average annual value) and make roster building elsewhere tougher. That still needs to line up with how the salary cap goes up year after year, but at least the AI teams would know what players matter.

Either way, I want to believe, but there’s no chance I’ll take EA’s word for this. I will have to see it to believe it.