When Madden 23 releases in a couple of weeks, it will be the 42nd edition of the hit NFL football video game. While it's incredible how long the franchise has been around, fans are complaining about it becoming stale. Madden has made incremental improvements over the last few years, but there haven’t been any drastic advancements in almost a decade. Competitors have come and gone, but none of them have ever been able to compete with Madden’s high level of gameplay and EA’s massive budget.
One area in particular that Madden 23 could improve significantly is its in-season player progression. In Madden’s Franchise mode, the goal is to build a team that can win the Super Bowl both in the first season, and maintain that success throughout multiple seasons. Teams can win the Lombardi Trophy by signing, trading for, and drafting the best players available, but like in the real NFL, none of that matters if fans can’t enhance the players already on the team. Whether fans are playing solo or online with friends, player progression is the key to sustained success in Madden, which is why its current setup is so frustrating.
Franchise Mode Player Progression
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As currently constructed, player progression is based almost solely on in-game results. If players perform well and rack up stats, they get attribute bonuses and improve. However, this is completely unrelated both to how improvement happens in real football, and how other sports games have made their training systems. While some progress occurs during the season, football fans know that the real improvements happen in practice. Madden 23’s cover star, Coach John Madden, always advocated for the importance of practice, and the game that bears his name should as well.
Madden’s badge tier system could also be improved through a better practice balance. Madden gives certain high-ranked players Superstar X-Factor badges that give them abilities above and beyond what other players can do, even with their attributes maxed out. The best Madden Superstar X-Factor abilities can completely change the game. In the initial Franchise mode season, the X-Factors are decided by EA and assigned based on players’ real-life game performance. However, as fans progress into future seasons, players can earn X-Factor badges that are seemingly unrelated to their games. For example, Jalen Ramsey can earn the “Run Stuffer” X-Factor despite being a cornerback who is never defending the run.
To its credit, Madden has tried to improve Franchise mode’s training in the past, but those efforts appear to be a half-done job to placate fans. However, Madden does have a fine line to walk. Fans don’t want to spend so much time grinding through practice that it hurts to get to the Sunday night games, but there needs to be ways to help players become more invested in the progression of players. In its current iteration, Madden buffs can drastically improve a player simply by spamming plays for them. The plays don’t even have to be successful; the more a player touches the ball, the more XP they will earn.
As much as EA wants the micro-transaction-filled Ultimate Team to be Madden’s signature game mode, Franchise mode has been, and likely always will be what keeps fans buying the game year after year. If Madden wants to remain among the best sports video games, it’s time for EA Sports to start improving Franchise mode drastically, starting with player progression.
Madden NFL 23 launches August 19 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.