Fans of EA pro sports games and Madden NFL 21 in particular may have noticed a recent backlash against the American football-themed game, which released just under a week ago. Low user reviews, performance issues, Metacritic review bombing, and lack of new features are all part of the Madden 21 controversy and a major factor behind EA's response earlier today.
Fans took to social media to express their frustration with the state of Madden NFL 21, which some view as a poor end to the franchise for this console generation. The yearly release of Madden games has resulted in largely the same game being remade over and over, and fans are so upset with EA's poor handling of the NFL franchise that they start #nfldropea trending in hopes that some other company could gain the rights to NFL and amp up the game. In response, EA is announcing three planned updates to the game, and detailed the first, coming in mid-November.
EA is already releasing the Madden 21 September update early in response to the backlash, targeting mechanics, menus, and Yard mode, which is new to the game. The upcoming November update will feature franchise mode changes to the X-Factor/Superstar ability customization, player card career stats UI, dev trait regression tuning, and the playoff bracket. The changes will focus on addressing "community requests" that EA tactfully calls very "passionate."
The first of these features is much-asked-for in the community, and allows commissioners to edit football players and assign them the Madden X-Factor when they've met the feature's criteria, and can then edit the player's Superstar abilities as well. The player card UI changes are also highly requested, and will give the player card stats more "context" for season stats and also detail what teams the player was on every year.
Player development traits are also being receiving "tuning" to balance players through years in a franchise. Finally, the update will add in a new player bracket for the Wild Card format, which will give players the ability to see the whole "playoff picture" and plan their gameplay strategy more accurately.
If this is an attempt to salvage what is currently the worst-rated game on Metacritic, this will be the first in a long series of attempts to respond to player concerns, which EA acknowledges with its plan to roll out three franchise updates. Whether these updates will save public opinion on Madden 21, only user feedback to these changes and time will tell.
Madden NFL 21 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with plans for PS5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X support later this year.
Source: EA