Zone and route KO abilities

I’ll start by saying that I’m not a great Madden player and others might have an easier time with this, and some might see this as complaining. But I personally really dislike the way these abilities work this year. I love the idea, and I think the abilities should make players go for knockouts more, but I’d love to see them either try to really hit the receiver or physically knock the ball out. I know there are certain offensive abilities that can help, but I’m free to play and I can’t quite afford a meta ability on every single player on the field yet. Getting Substantial separation can be tricky for me, so it can be frustrating when I throw a nice ball to a pretty open guy, and they get gently pushed down a half to full second after securing the ball, making it incomplete. I’d like to see an overhaul to these abilities in Madden 25, as they’re not too fun to go against this year. What are your thoughts? And could I do anything differently?

KenFJohnathy said:

I’ll start by saying that I’m not a great Madden player and others might have an easier time with this, and some might see this as complaining. But I personally really dislike the way these abilities work this year. I love the idea, and I think the abilities should make players go for knockouts more, but I’d love to see them either try to really hit the receiver or physically knock the ball out. I know there are certain offensive abilities that can help, but I’m free to play and I can’t quite afford a meta ability on every single player on the field yet. Getting Substantial separation can be tricky for me, so it can be frustrating when I throw a nice ball to a pretty open guy, and they get gently pushed down a half to full second after securing the ball, making it incomplete. I’d like to see an overhaul to these abilities in Madden 25, as they’re not too fun to go against this year. What are your thoughts? And could I do anything differently?

I've had the same problems.  I refuse to spend money on the game and can't afford these abilities either.  No matter if I'm posession catching it, if I'm already going down to the ground, or if I have open space, the ball always seems to get knocked out with barely a tap.  I know the point of EA making the game is for money but we still decided to spend our money to buy the game initially and I think that EA should respect this by making it playable for people who don't spend money in game.

BasketballQB1 said:

I've had the same problems.  I refuse to spend money on the game and can't afford these abilities either.  No matter if I'm posession catching it, if I'm already going down to the ground, or if I have open space, the ball always seems to get knocked out with barely a tap.  I know the point of EA making the game is for money but we still decided to spend our money to buy the game initially and I think that EA should respect this by making it playable for people who don't spend money in game.

Yes I agree with you, I think this iteration of madden has quite a few gameplay improvements from previous years that I appreciate. However I must say I strongly dislike that EA doesn’t ever buff and nerf things in their games, they wait to change them in the next game so that people like us will buy it. I enjoy madden at times but I don’t love that they deliberately make any real game update cost $70. And in all years instead of addressing issues, they’ll release new limited cards that directly play into the unbalanced aspects of the game. It’s all a genius money grab for the person on top, but can be frankly quite upsetting if I ever find myself playing for an extended period of time.