What's up with speed this year?

karmaklaw said:

I think EA had a lawsuit to search for DDA maybe 1-2 years ago (I think for FIFA not madden) but from what I recall they handed over the code to the game and ended up not getting charged, with the reasoning being DDA doesnt exist but that their game code is not the best.  All that being said, it obvious as day and night that some stuff happens game to game to cause your players to move better or worse certain games.  Usually feels worse when playing a player like 1 program behind or so.   It also feels like playing ppl in different divisions or in your playoffs.

EA has been sued for DDA but the plaintiffs basically did not have the resources to go through the billions of lines of code that EA provided (they also refused to provide server side codes)...

EA admitted that they do have a patent for DDA but stated that it was not implemented in MUT. The problem is that because the plaintiffs did not have the resources they could not get through much of the coding. 

Essentially, the case was dismissed because the plaintiffs team were not able to dig deep enough and clearly EA has almost infinite resources to fight this....they threw a lot of money and attorneys at it and eventually the case was dismissed. But it was never proven that DDA is not in the game and it was proven that it exists (meaning there is a code for it that EA has a patent for but it was not proven to be turned on or off in MUT). basically nothing was proven or disproven.

EA was sued in Belgium and China. Belgium had a forensic team that would work for basically free to go through game and server code and EA refused to hand over code to them. This is for DDA and EOMM. So you cannot buy packs in Belgium. 

Take from this what you will. My personal opinion is that if they went to the effort of creating the code and getting a patent for it, it makes no sense to keep it out of the game, especially if it can give incentive to customers to spend more money.

How this relates to the thread is-DDA evens things out between cards that have a big discrepancy in ratings - so the guy that has a lesser team and maybe lesser skill gets bailed out by EA - like a card with 89 speed staying with a card with 95 speed. This way the guy with 89 speed cards will feel competitive and will continue to play more Madden- hence increasing the chance of pack sales.

There is unquestionably RNG. RNG can easily be interpreted as DDA.

As for the civil suit about DDA, two things are evident: The coding was too complicated for the plaintiffs to interpret, and EA's recent history of bad releases and bad patches suggest that at this point EA doesn't know if DDA is in the game.

phatalerror said:

There is unquestionably RNG. RNG can easily be interpreted as DDA.

As for the civil suit about DDA, two things are evident: The coding was too complicated for the plaintiffs to interpret, and EA's recent history of bad releases and bad patches suggest that at this point EA doesn't know if DDA is in the game.

Yeah to all that, except that EA absolutely knows if DDA is in the game. I think they know exactly what is in the code even if it is terrible code LOL... Either they don't know how to actually fix game issues properly or they don't have the manpower to do it

Martyr1968 said:

Yeah to all that, except that EA absolutely knows if DDA is in the game. I think they know exactly what is in the code even if it is terrible code LOL... Either they don't know how to actually fix game issues properly or they don't have the manpower to do it

How many different individuals have touched the code for Madden? I‘m sure the true number over recent iterations of Madden numbers into the hundreds. The ability for “EA to know” what’s in the code is fundamentally dependent on documentation within the code.

Poor documentation is a viable and adequate explanation for the difficulties encountered by EA in patching issues with the game. Slow menus and glitches that are patched and then pop up again in a later iteration of the game are classic signs of bloated, poorly documented code.

If the plaintiff’s team was not utterly incompetent when it came to reviewing the code provided in discovery, a lack of documentation within the source code would also explain why the plaintiff’s team was stymied. The plaintiff’s team had the legal duty to prove definitively that DDA significantly affected the outcome of games, and thus that the game would likely cause some sort of loss requiring restitution. It was going to cost the legal team too much to drill down into the code without the benefit of adequate documentation.

(None of this is meant to suggest that EA is in fact employing DDA or some other similar mechanism. The argument is merely that EA’s own coding practices over time have obfuscated the purposes of the code‘s various subroutines.)

phatalerror said:

How many different individuals have touched the code for Madden? I‘m sure the true number over recent iterations of Madden numbers into the hundreds. The ability for “EA to know” what’s in the code is fundamentally dependent on documentation within the code.

Poor documentation is a viable and adequate explanation for the difficulties encountered by EA in patching issues with the game. Slow menus and glitches that are patched and then pop up again in a later iteration of the game are classic signs of bloated, poorly documented code.

If the plaintiff’s team was not utterly incompetent when it came to reviewing the code provided in discovery, a lack of documentation within the source code would also explain why the plaintiff’s team was stymied. The plaintiff’s team had the legal duty to prove definitively that DDA significantly affected the outcome of games, and thus that the game would likely cause some sort of loss requiring restitution. It was going to cost the legal team too much to drill down into the code without the benefit of adequate documentation.

(None of this is meant to suggest that EA is in fact employing DDA or some other similar mechanism. The argument is merely that EA’s own coding practices over time have obfuscated the purposes of the code‘s various subroutines.)

Still, something such as DDA that EA has a patent on for use in multiple games (FIFA , Madden, NHL)....I am sure EA would know if that is implemented in game code. It would be a very conscious decision made by people at a higher level than programmers/coders. This is something that would be decided upon at the Executive level if not the Board level. So someone knows if it is there or not

EA has a patent for DDA coding. If you do not think they would use it to increase profits I have an oceanfront property in Wyoming to sell you. I'll let it go cheap. 
If you do not think they would lie by saying it may have been implemented by a previous employee and then buried and "forgotten" or "unknown" as to whether it is used, I also have a bridge next to that Wyoming oceanfront property that I would package together for a real steal of a deal. DM me for more info.

The ability to do something doesn't mean you do it whenever you can. The existence of the DDA patent alone doesn't mean it's actually in the programming for Madden.

Executives generally do not program. They may direct programmers to achieve a certain objective, but it's the programmers that have to execute. Coaches and players, if you will.

Do I think DDA is in the game? I'm not sure the opinion is relevant, when there are other significant elements to the coding that obviously consistently impact the outcome of individual plays, and therefore individual games. Again, the comparison to Sunday: It's not one player or one play that affected the outcome of a game. Is it likely that some artifact of DDA or its fundamental concepts are buried in the code? I think so, but its coherence, relevance, or impact are hard to objectively define.

Finally, about executives, directors, and the other dudes concerned primarily with financial gain at the securities level: If they are so granular about the means and methods for making EA money, they're actually working well outside the scope of the definition of their role. Project management's standing mandate is presumably to generate profit, and that role is easily two or three degrees downstream from 'the guys that call the shots'. It's their job to leverage research and development, and to utilize their resources, including programmers, to accomplish their mandate.

colbyzg said:

So stats don't matter? The game is coded to do whatever it takes to drive us all crazy? That hasn't been my experience.

Simulation football? No, definitely not. Whatever you're talking about? Also no.

No man, not to drive you crazy, just to keep you playing. Imagine playing Call of Duty where its the same level of difficulty all the way through. After a while, it'd get boring because you've improved. So the game gets harder and you keep playing. Same in Madden. No one is going to keep playing a game they keep losing but just as many will stop if its too easy. 

So, yeah, just my IMO but I don't think stats do matter.

I see this in FIFA games as well. Acceleration tends to be king as someone who wants to catch up, relies on acceleration to reach max speed which can seem like a hyperboost for a player and often catches up to someone who is already at top speed. Its as if the acceleration curve is broken so you are actually running faster than your max speed while accelerating and then you actually slow down once you hit your max speed.

I'd like to think that there are other variables like stamina, fatigue, etc but that maybe giving EA too much credit to know how to code correctly...

EA is definitely keep track of "progress" in the game via the momentum meter.  So there def is a mechanism to tell player A is winning over player B by a dynamic sliding scale.   It shows some arbitrary boost on the screen "players cant enter the zone, fatigue slower, line blocks better" but that also tells me other things can technically happen if condition X is  met or at least that conditions are set in the game (player is -20 momentum vs -100 momentum or however they keep track)

Whether this is good or bad? Dunno.  They probably have done lots of research on it but as stated it makes it frustrating when things arent consistent.

Ea dda- it’s in the game

colbyzg said:

A 6' 300lb lineman with 90 speed is still going to be slower than a 6'2" 200lb WR with 90 speed.

See this is logical but it’s not how the game plays. I have d lineman chasing down “faster” HBs and WRs all the time.

By this logic 94 speed QB William Perry should be slower than he plays, and he plays impossibly fast for a big boy defying the laws of physics

Jhays45 said:

By this logic 94 speed QB William Perry should be slower than he plays, and he plays impossibly fast for a big boy defying the laws of physics

No, that's not my logic. If he's 94 speed, he should be faster than a 93 speed player. I'm saying it seems like an 85 speed player is just as fast as a 94 speed player.

Agreed the game does seem to have moments of phantom speed particularly bad corners keeping up with megatron and flowers