Henry getting nerfed?

Woodysky said:

What are sliders? Do they change stats?

I don't know the full history of the term, but for as long as I've played modern-era Madden (08), you could adjust sliders in certain menus between 0 and 99 to affect specific mechanics in the gameplay. Think of them as modifiers to the algorithms that factor a combination of constants, variables, and randomly-generated numbers to calculate the result of an action. For example of tuning that was disclosed by EA earlier in the year, an adjustment was made to the defensive response to corner routes, which were frequently exploited early on in MUT 25. While some of the adjustments as documented by EA suggest that they were programmatic in order to make players in deep-zone coverage assignments react more properly to corner routes from pre-snap to break-on-throw, what I saw was dramatically decreased defender response and dramatically increased defender acceleration (even from a static position) when breaking underneath from a deep-zone assignment to aggressively pick off corner routes. This is a classic example of "sliders" (although programmatically, this simply involved increasing or reducing a factor that presumably calculated based on ZCV, PRC, and ACC, in addition to other variables and likely some 'secret sauce').

While tuning is essential for gameplay balance, and literally billions of plays will likely uncover exploitable features in any sports title, sometimes EA uses an unnatural approach to correcting issues that usually have a root cause deep inside a labyrinth of coded logic. Sometimes you need to tweak the frequency of certain actions (like forced fumbles), but tweaks that effectively grant literally superhuman abilities gives the game an unnatural and unpredictable feel that is disorienting and frustrating. Going back to the example of corner routes, the answer to making the game play fairly is aligning defenders appropriately before the snap (which should happen automatically based on football 101-type stuff), providing a mechanism to cause individual defenders (or all of them) to shade coverage properly post-snap (both in committing inside or outside, over-the-top or underneath), and causing defenders to break on the ball at an appropriate time and at an appropriate speed once the ball is in the air. The answer is never in making a defender that is out of position suddenly react and explode at twice the rate of an elite football player to make a play on the ball that was inconceivable when backing up the tape to the moment of the throw and given the trajectory and velocity of the throw. Sliders shouldn't break physics and make the world not make sense.

EA pulls this stuff repeatedly throughout the year, and to me, it's one of the most frustrating things. Fix it right. The fact they can't is proof-positive they don't have knowledge or proper documentation of the game's code (even in the latest generation, which in my opinion is inexcusable because it's a lesson learned and then ignored already during past iterations of Madden).

For more insight on what EA does throughout the year (mostly early in the MUT cycle, and prior to MCS tournaments), look for the Title Update articles under News on this site. Good stuff.