Making Madden NFL 08 be as good as ESPN NFL 2K5

jose21crisis · Postby **jose21crisis** » Mon Dec 18, 2017 2:12 pm

I assume you all know ESPN NFL 2K5, the last NFL 2K before EA got the exclusive deal with the NFL. It is still far better than any Madden NFL game that came out so far, including 08, not going to lie. ESPN NFL 2K5 's gameplay was smooth, it was more realistic and it wasn't filled with the BS Madden has.

You could stay in the pocket without moving without fear of the D-Line suddenly destroying the pocket, running the ball was good because the blockers actually do their jobs and ... well ... BLOCK and don't simply dodge around tacklers (which is a problem in Madden, the blocker AI has a 50% chance of blocking a tackler during an outside run or screen), there were no miracle INTs, you got picked off if you really did something stupid, tackling the ball carrier succesfully took more than 1 guy ... most of the time at least and defensers always tried to swat the ball instead of seeing the receiver get the pass, and receivers actually tried to go for the reception even when the defenser could go for the pick. It was great.

Latest slider set:
Quarter Length: 12 Mins or 15 Mins*
Skill Level: All-Pro
Game Mode: User's Decision**
*You can get realistic stats with either 12 Minute Quarters and Accelerated Play Clock on, or 15 Minutes Quarters and using Calhoupe's scripts to make the accelerated play clock go down to 15 instead of 20.
**I have not found any difference in the quality of gameplay when using any Game Mode.

Fair Play: Off
Injuries: On
Pre-Existing Injuries: User's decision*
Game Fatigue: On
Offensive Catch Assist: Off
QB Vision: User's decision**
Accelerated Play Clock: On***
Auto Strafe: User's decision****
Random Weather: Off*****
Defense Pass Assist: Off
*Pre-Existing Injuries only do anything when starting a campaign. When On, anyone that is injured by default on the roster will be injured when the franchise starts. When Off, no players will be injured when a franchise is started, no matter the kind of injury the roster shows they have.
**While I have not tested this set with QB Vision On, they should work just fine.
***Depending if you use 12 Minute Quarters or 15 Minute Quarters, you will have to alter the Accelerated Play Clock in Calhoupe's scrips. Leaving it at 20 if you are running 12 Min Quarters, and setting it at 15 if you are running 15 Minute Quarters.
****Auto Strafe doesn't affect the CPU.
*****With Random Weather On, there are some weird stuff all over the place. Very hot days inside a building, extremely cold days in the desert. And anything in between. This can negatively affect player's stamina.

Injury Frequency: 102% or 115%*
Sim Injury Frequency: User's Decision**
*At 100%, Injuries don't happen very often. At 102% they happen at a decently fast rate. At 115% they might happen a bit too much, but it looks fine.
*For our purposes, this one is irrelevant unless you are playing a franchise and simming some games.

QB Accuracy: 50*
Pass Blocking: 30**
WR Catching: 60***
RB Ability: 50****
Run Blocking: 40****
*This seems about right when it comes to ball velocity. There is a problem with actual accuracy (In Madden 08), in that a QB's short range accuracy is the same as that QB's long range accuracy. A reason why the deep ball is extremely effective, and can't be fixed since Madden doesn't since to care about short and long range accuracy until Next Gen Madden.
**2K5's pockets are pretty realistic. Usually, it is the Edge rushers managing to beat the Tackle to the outside who sacks the QB. In all honesty, QBs had around 1.5-3.5 seconds in the best of circumstances, which seems pretty realistic.
***At 50, there are a fair amount of drops. Hopefully, 60 should be able to compensate for the drops and keep them under control.
****This particular stat has a HUGE number of effects. Generally, it alters Speed, Acceleration, Agility, Carrying and Break Tackle skill of EVERY player in the field. You can check my theory on how this slider scales up and down the ratings in post 10, at the bottom of this page. While broken tackles can be properly fixed altering Tackling and Face Mask, there is one thing that can't with any other slider. Big plays and Deep Bombs. Raising this slider would increase every player's Speed rating, eventually leading every QB to just look for the speedy receiver, who is now faster, running a streak or fade down the field and toss a 50/50 ball. Keeping this at 50 minimizes the amount of deep bombs. Note, MINIMIZE is not the same as eliminate, keep that in mind.
*****My main annoyance with this game is that the CPU is incapable of blocking right. So, my way to compensate is allowing suction blocking to occur. Suction blocking is exactly that, the defender is sucked into a block. Usually, you don't want this to happen. But Madden's blocking AI (As well as any other AI which is related to running into people) is not the best at this. I constantly see toss sweeps end up in loss of yards because the pulling lineman can't get in front of the back (A problem on it's own), or the biggest problem, they run PAST the defender they are supposed to block.

Awareness: 48*
Knockdowns: 5**
Interceptions: 1***
Tackling: 30****
Break Block: 30*****
*Something I hate from some slider sets is that Defensive Awareness is that it is extremely low. I constantly see top defenders lag behind receivers because they made a cut. I'm meaning guys like Richard Sherman, Patrick Peterson, Aqib Talib. With lower Awareness comes hilariously high separation in the passing game that it is not realistic in the NFL. I would like to set this at 50, but those guys above would outright run the exact same route the receiver does, but a few steps in front of him. The goal is allowing the receiver one or two steps in front of the DB. One or Two at most against top DBs.
**I saw defenders USUALLY try to knockdown the pass instead of going for the pick. And, just like in the real NFL, at times they failed. But more importantly, I also saw defenders not jumping to try to knockdown an obviously high pass there is no way they could make a play on, and just focus on playing the receiver, knocking him down (And hopefully the ball). I might end up lowering this to try and force that behavior.
***After raising WR Catching to 60, which affects every offensive and defensive player, this one needs to be lowered to compensate, or you would have 8 interceptions games constantly.
****This slider influences 3 things. Successful tackles, Hit Power (Which includes forced fumbles and Hit stick Tackles) and forced dropped passes. The Higher this slider is, the more dropped passes will occur. And interestingly enough, raising the WR Catching slider doesn't do anything regarding drops. Right here should be about right.
*****This is related to the Blocking sliders above. The idea is that the defenders can enter the pocket fast enough to keep the time the QB has to around 1.5-3.5 seconds, as well as being able to get out of blocks in the run game.

FG Length: 37*
FG Accuracy: 99**
Punt Length: 56***
Punt Accuracy: 50***
Kickoff Length: 46****
*I would have preferred to use 57, which allows a few select kickers to consider 50+ field goal attempts. There is another setting I would have liked to use, which is 46. The problem with both of those is that FG Length alters both the Kicker's Kick Power AND the defense effectiveness in general. At 57, the defense is way too effective overall. I've had games with sub-60% completion rates for QBs with this at 57. 46 seems to be the middle point between defensive effectiveness and kicking distance. However, 37 seems to be the most proven setting around so I'll use it. There won't be 60 yarders from capable kickers like Justin Tucker, Sebastian Janikowski or Stephen Gostkowski (There is another problem with him, which is next)
**Don't let this deceive you. Unless the kicker has 90+ Kick Accuracy, he won't nail every kick. Despite this being the maximum setting, a few kickers will miss chip shots or long distance FGs, as well as everything in between. A guy like Justin Tucker won't miss any kick at this, but a guy like Stephen Gostkowski does, a fair lot.
***The Punt Average is ranging from 40-45 yards, which seems about right. Punts inside the 20 are also rare, usually limited to 1-2 per game, per punter.
****This is balanced with FG Length. Kickoff Length SEEMS to have a similar effect to FG Length but I can't confirm this.

False Start: 67*
Holding: 77**
Face Mask: 70***
Clipping: 35****
Intentional Grounding: 50 or 99*****
*False Start might control both Offensive and Defensive reaction time. Hopefully at this, Toss Sweeps are more effective.
**This extends the length of blocks a fair bit and adds a few more penalties to the few the game has.
***This controls the tackling aggressiveness of the CPU, as well as the facemasking calls. At this setting, it might trigger a few more Hit Stick tackles, which in turn should trigger more broken tackles. This is balanced out with Tackling so that Face Mask + Tackling = 99
****This controls the aggressiveness of players looking for blocks.
*****This one is weird and in a bad sense. The reason I have 2 recommended settings is because I can't tell which one is better. This one controls the CPU QB's likehood of throwing the ball away when under pressure. The thing is what happens at each setting. At 50, they take a while to throw the ball, which gives the CPU a chance to find someone open. At 99, they pretty much throw it away too quickly, avoiding sacks.

Roughing the Passer: 99*
Roughing the Kicker: 99**
Offensive Pass Interference: 99***
Defensive Pass Interference: 95****
Punt Catch Interference: 65*****
*This should trigger less penalties, and less injured QBs in general. The "Roughing the Passer" QB animation is stupid as hell anyway.
**This might control defensive Pursuit of the ball carrier.
***This should allow the Offensive players to fight for the ball.
**** Higher than 95 allows defensive players to bat down WAY too many passes, leading to poor completion rates. This should fix that.
*****I'm still unable to pin down what this one does. Could mean looking for plays down field, defensive reaction to a play, among other things. It might also mean QB's likehood to scramble.

Sub In/Out: 87/92 or 88/93 or 83/88*
Pass Leading: 5**
*There are 3 sets here for a reason. 87/92 seems to give a 85/15 RB splits overall. 88/93 Makes it more 70/30. However, those cause a problem late in the game, where offensive players could sub in at defense because too many defensive players are tired. This is the reason why 83/88 exists, that doesn't happen as often, but it would result in 90/10 RB Splits. The set you use depends on what you want, realistic (For some teams) RB Splits or no offensive players subbing on defense.
**I haven't tried lowering it, but raising it definitely increases the number of pass leading the CPU uses.

Current Tested Averages (per 60 minutes, real-time (live) games. Will update when I have enough games with a single slider set):
Points Per Game:
Passing (total): yds
Passing Comp.: %
Passing Atts.:
Yards/Atts.: Y/A
Rushing (total): yds
Rushing Atts.:
Yards/Carr.: Y/C
3rd Downs:
3rd Down Conv.: %
Punts (team):
Punt Len.: yds
Punts In 20 (team):
Penalties (team):
Turnovers (team):

**Sponsor**

jose21crisis · Postby **jose21crisis** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 7:03 pm

All right, I decided to take on this more seriously. I'll try to develop a slider set that makes Madden NFL 08 resemble ESPN NFL 2K5. Now, I don't have 2K5, but with the power of Internet I can watch a lot of videos of the game, and try to recreate the feel (or at least the looks) of the game. The base set I'll use, along with the penalty sliders associated with it, is this:

QB Accuracy: 50*
Pass Blocking: 30**
WR Catching: 50***
RB Ability: 63****
Run Blocking: 40****
*This seems about right when it comes to ball velocity. There is a problem with actual accuracy (In Madden 08), in that a QB's short range accuracy is the same as that QB's long range accuracy. A reason why the deep ball is extremely effective, and can't be fixed since Madden doesn't since to care about short and long range accuracy until Next Gen Madden.
**2K5's pockets are pretty realistic. Usually, it is the Edge rushers managing to beat the Tackle to the outside who sacks the QB. In all honesty, QBs had around 1.5-3.5 seconds in the best of circumstances, which seems pretty realistic.
***The basic catching seems fine to me. I would definitely like to see a whole lot catching animations, like the very rare diving catch animation, but what can you do.
****Something that 2K5 had was called "Maximum Tackling", which M08 has ... sort of. In 2K5, if a defender with somewhat low tackle rating or a bad pursuit angle would initiate a minigame, in which you had to tap X (Or A if you play in the Xbox) to tackle the ball carrier. The ball carrier had to do the same to shed the tackle. You might remember that in M08 that happens occasionally. In general, ball carriers were hard to tackle, specially when it was something like Cornerback vs. Power Running Back. Having a linebacker or hard hitting safety does balance the field. Another problem is that, with this at 63 or higher, players move EXCESSIVELY fast. Like, sub-4.00 40 times fast. The problem with lowering this slider is that the Highlight Stick would not work, and there would be tons and tons of fumbles in a game by game basis. And raising it would reduce all of those below, but make everyone faster than John Ross. I would like to make the passing game be more reliant on route running than out-running defenders, and the running game more reliant on actual blocks than the running back's greatness, but I can't allow that if it means fumbles galore. Another problem is that there is a form of catchup in this game, but that's another issue I'll discuss in another section.
*****My main annoyance with this game is that the CPU is incapable of blocking right. So, my way to compensate is allowing suction blocking to occur. Suction blocking is exactly that, the defender is sucked into a block. Usually, you don't want this to happen. But Madden's blocking AI (As well as any other AI which is related to running into people) is not the best at this. I constantly see toss sweeps end up in loss of yards because the pulling lineman can't get in front of the back (A problem on it's own), or the biggest problem, they run PAST the defender they are supposed to block.

Awareness: 48*
Knockdowns: 5**
Interceptions: 15***
Tackling: 30****
Break Block: 30*****
*Something I hate from some slider sets is that Defensive Awareness is that it is extremely low. I constantly see top defenders lag behind receivers because they made a cut. I'm meaning guys like Richard Sherman, Patrick Peterson, Aqib Talib. With lower Awareness comes hilariously high separation in the passing game that it is not realistic in the NFL. I would like to set this at 50, but those guys above would outright run the exact same route the receiver does, but a few steps in front of him. The goal is allowing the receiver one or two steps in front of the DB. One or Two at most against top DBs.
**I saw defenders USUALLY try to knockdown the pass instead of going for the pick. And, just like in the real NFL, at times they failed. But more importantly, I also saw defenders not jumping to try to knockdown an obviously high pass there is no way they could make a play on, and just focus on playing the receiver, knocking him down (And hopefully the ball). I might end up lowering this to try and force that behavior.
***You know what annoys me? "Drops the interception.", "Almost picked off". Defenders making a great play on the ball, but not coming up with the catch. Balls thrown at them, and them simply dropping them. The real fix would be making it so that Knockdowns were more successful at defending the pass, and Interceptions weren't as effective, but you could ... well ... pick off the pass.
****This slider influences 3 things. Successful tackles, Hit Power (Which includes forced fumbles and Hit stick Tackles) and forced dropped passes. The Higher this slider is, the more dropped passes will occur. And interestingly enough, raising the WR Catching slider doesn't do anything regarding drops. Right here should be about right.
*****This is related to the Blocking sliders above. The idea is that the defenders can enter the pocket fast enough to keep the time the QB has to around 1.5-3.5 seconds, as well as being able to get out of blocks in the run game.

FG Length: 37*
FG Accuracy: 99**
Punt Length: 56***
Punt Accuracy: 50***
Kickoff Length: 46****
*I would have preferred to use 57, which allows a few select kickers to consider 50+ field goal attempts. There is another setting I would have liked to use, which is 46. The problem with both of those is that FG Length alters both the Kicker's Kick Power AND the defense effectiveness in general. At 57, the defense is way too effective overall. I've had games with sub-60% completion rates for QBs with this at 57. 46 seems to be the middle point between defensive effectiveness and kicking distance. However, 37 seems to be the most proven setting around so I'll use it. There won't be 60 yarders from capable kickers like Justin Tucker, Sebastian Janikowski or Stephen Gostkowski (There is another problem with him, which is next)
**Don't let this deceive you. Unless the kicker has 90+ Kick Accuracy, he won't nail every kick. Despite this being the maximum setting, a few kickers will miss chip shots or long distance FGs, as well as everything in between. A guy like Justin Tucker won't miss any kick at this, but a guy like Stephen Gostkowski does, a fair lot.
***The Punt Average is ranging from 40-45 yards, which seems about right. Punts inside the 20 are also rare, usually limited to 1-2 per game, per punter.
****This is balanced with FG Length. Kickoff Length SEEMS to have a similar effect to FG Length but I can't confirm this.

False Start: 67*
Holding: 77**
Facemask: 60***
Clipping: 99****
Intentional Grounding: 50 or 99*****
*False Start might control both Offensive and Defensive reaction time. Hopefully at this, Toss Sweeps are more effective.
**This extends the length of blocks a fair bit and adds a few more penalties to the few the game has.
***This controls the tackling aggressiveness of the CPU, as well as the facemasking calls. At this setting, it might trigger a few more Hit Stick tackles, which in turn should trigger more broken tackles.
****This controls the aggressiveness of players looking for blocks. Higher seems to mean more blocks.
*****This one is weird and in a bad sense. The reason I have 2 recommended settings is because I can't tell which one is better. This one controls the CPU QB's likehood of throwing the ball away when under pressure. The thing is what happens at each setting. At 50, they take a while to throw the ball, which gives the CPU a chance to find someone open. At 99, they pretty much throw it away too quickly, avoiding sacks. I'll try 99 for now.

Roughing the Passer: 99*
Roughing the Kicker: 99**
Offensive Pass Interference: 99***
Defensive Pass Interference: 95****
Punt Catch Interference: 65*****
*This should trigger less penalties, and less injured QBs in general. The "Roughing the Passer" QB animation is stupid as hell anyway.
**This might control defensive Pursuit of the ball carrier.
***This should allow the Offensive players to fight for the ball.
**** Higher than 95 allows defensive players to bat down WAY too many passes, leading to poor completion rates. This should fix that.
*****I'm still unable to pin down what this one does. Could mean looking for plays down field, defensive reaction to a play, among other things. It might also mean QB's likehood to scramble.

Sub In/Out: 87/92 or 88/93 or 83/88*
Pass Leading: 5**
*There are 3 sets here for a reason. 87/92 seems to give a 85/15 RB splits overall. 88/93 Makes it more 70/30. However, those cause a problem late in the game, where offensive players could sub in at defense because too many defensive players are tired. This is the reason why 83/88 exists, that doesn't happen as often, but it would result in 90/10 RB Splits. The set you use depends on what you want, realistic (For some teams) RB Splits or no offensive players subbing on defense.
**I haven't tried lowering it, but raising it definitely increases the number of pass leading the CPU uses.

There are a couple of problems that I can't fix with sliders alone, but this should work as a base. I'll update the OP with these sliders, and will post game logs after I record them.

BTW, the problems I can't fix are:

Poor Blocking: You already read my grumbling about blocking, so I won't repeat myself.
Poor QB Reads: This absolutely pisses me off everytime I see a CPU vs. CPU game. The QB elects to throw a 50/50 pass down the field, when they have a receiver open underneath, or force it into double coverage when receivers underneath could do the job just as fine. This becomes worse in the 2nd half. And don't get me started on Screen passes. Maybe there is a slider that can fix this, but I'm not sure which one it is.
Poor CPU playcalling: It's 3rd and 6, the obvious passing situation. Cue the CPU calling a draw play. I wouldn't mind this, if the draw consistently collected at least those 6 yards against Nickel and Dime packages. Another one, 3rd and 6 again, the CPU calls a Screen Pass. Look, I know the Steelers offense under Todd Haley used lots of those, but they didn't work as good.

jose21crisis · Postby **jose21crisis** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 10:03 pm

First game was ... kind of a mess. Let's decipher what happened here.

Making Madden NFL 08 be as good as ESPN NFL 2K5

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