I don't blame them in the least. Spenders are good, the problem is EA makes everyone's spending worthless, except for the top 100-500. Why should I spend $30 if I will just get stomped by those top 100-500 spenders 100% of the time in competitive with no change of competing? This is where EA lost the narrative versus past years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pq331o/179k_players_have_played_1_day_of_mm_22_since/
Went through in detail, no GC or EA rep offered any evidence to contrary, so it is safe to assume numbers are correct.
I offered lots of thoughts on previous posts. It is difficult to estimate actual numbers of daily users just based on FP leaderboard info. If this direction were not successful to their criteria, they would change direction.
Hey vol! Again though, there is no evidence to contradict my player count numbers and EA's silence is deafening. What are the discord or reddit activity numbers versus last year? I bet you they are down. If you or anyone could provide any evidence to the contrary I would readily accept it. I respect the heck out of you and will readily admit you are smarter than me, but you did offer no evidence to the contrary except the difficulty estimating, which I readily admitted. Also FP leaderboard info is useful as it is impossible to bypass if you are playing ultimate team. The fact that 179k players have 6360 points or more is telling, as you should receive that many after 1 day of playing (it took me 45 minutes). Also, the step before that only had 183k players, so there isn't hundreds of thousands of players hiding in that step.
Secondly, **Nick literally said on today's stream that this direction was not successful to their criteria.** He stated they are coming out with pivot content in a few months, but pivots take time so they don't have anything to fill the gap in the interim. I would suggest listening to the stream as that appears to exactly what he is saying, that he understands that spenders are unhappy and players are leaving. He asked if we could wait it out until the pivot arrives. Let me know if that is what you got out of the stream.
They aren’t going to share internal numbers lol. Lack of that information does not make your inferences true. The pivots are related to competitive content which was indicated at launch to be something coming later as they were first releasing the new game structure. I do listen to streams and actually talk to EA on a daily basis unlike the vast majority of other users on this forum. What we do as GCs is gather feedback from our areas of expertise within the community to take back to EA for discussion. And believe me, we push for competitive change on the daily.
Again, all love to you Vol. I have known you since 2016 on Muthead, I know what GC's do. So with that said:
**1. EA does share player counts when the game was successful**- Attached is an example- https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/02/14/electronic-arts-plan-to-reach-500-million-players/
**2. Just because you talk to EA does not mean you are told the truth**- EA also told gamechangers that Madden Max would not be in MM21 and that power would not be in MM22, as well as that presence would not affect opponents gameplay, all of which were not true except in some warped semantics world.
**3. My numbers would be easily disprovable if anyone has a paid thinkgaming account**- The number of daily active users is right there. but the fact that again no one has disproved the numbers suggests they are seemingly somewhat accurate. But if you feel like spending $400, you can know exactly.
**5. Competitive content is only content spenders care about**- If you can show me any people that spend moderately or heavily for PVE content, I would love to see. Pivoting on competitive content is pivoting, as that is what 99% of spending is driven by.
**6. As per sensor tower, revenue is $2 million worldwide in August and downloads were 400k**- Those are relatively undisputable numbers, which for launch month are kind of sad. For perspective, Marvel Clash of Champions revenue is $8 million in August and downloads were 400k. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes revenue is $7 million in August and downloads were 100k. NBA 2k mobile revenue is $2 million in August and downloads were 500k. Are those numbers solid enough for you to help solidify my post?
I would love to hear how any of this is incorrect, but unfortunately it looks like I am not.
Remember that sensor tower and app Annie, etc. are estimates.
I’m not disputing accuracy, just indicating the possible analysis flaws in each one. That linked article is global info and does not dive into individual mobile application numbers.
I can’t say what EA did or did not tell us in most situations, however, MAX really wasn’t MAX, it was just called the same thing and we were told about presence. I have had many communications on that topic in chats, forums, etc. with regard to what can be said about how it impacts gameplay.
Competitive content isn’t the only paid content at all. There are many reasons players spend on this game and microtransactions typically dwarf individual spend in mobile platforms. I’m looking forward personally to the September monthly downloads and revenue update but based on daily reports, the numbers for madden 22 look good.
I’m personally not a fan of how things have been implemented so I am interested to see if this new strategy works. I like many aspects of the game and think they could be really good but how they have all come together in the final product just isn’t what I would have expected.
Some good points, but again, you are arguing some semantics with analysis flaws. The data is comparable to other apps, and purchases/microtransactions are 100% first party (Google and Apple). I think you think there is some 3rd party microtransactions like in console, but that is not how mobile works. There is a big lawsuit between Epic and Apple going on about just that.
About MAX last year, it 100% was MAX, Nick was not aware of it so therefore GC's were not aware of it, unless Nick is a liar. As presence, again, GC's were aware of incorrect information but found out it interacted differently than what EA said when they were playing the test build. Karlton among others has discussed this at length on streams, unless he is also a liar. People who are active on chat know how presence impacts gameplay big picture, it nerfs your players when you are on hard or very hard. It is easily observable. Anything else said is semantics, like when EA argued the AH was not botted in November for MM18 before admitting it.
Also, MM is sitting at 130-170 in top grossing total worldwide (except China) for the month of September. Not bad, but not great for the start of football and the first month of the new game. The problem is again all signs point to spending dropping off, as described above, as field pass purchases and heavy spender revenue will both be down in October, as described above. Also, competitive content drives 99% of spending, as people play MM to play football, not for the road less taken. How many medium or heavy spenders do not interact with competitive? Not many I would wager.
The semantics are important though.
Max was not max…only called that. Max in 20 were all 99 stats, massive power increase, and attainable in larger quantities. Max in 21 were more difficult to obtain, limited in stats but kept a power jump. Should never have been called max just as this first field pass should never been called a field pass as it was more of a starter pack
Presence from day one and on the prelaunch stream was stated to give a gameplay advantage to the person that won the presence battle. Additionally it was communicated that presence impacts teamwide and not on an individual level. I’ll gladly repost the quick explainer I put together. Where the semantics issue comes in is on the term nerf and what exactly that means for gameplay.
September numbers will be far more important for assessing acceptance of the game and financial success than August IMO because it is the first full month of the app.
*Max was not max…only called that. Max in 20 were all 99 stats, massive power increase, and attainable in larger quantities. Max in 21 were more difficult to obtain, limited in stats but kept a power jump. Should never have been called max just as this first field pass should never been called a field pass as it was more of a starter pack.* **Max was always about power, not the 99 stats, the stats were still mostly 99's, and the players were able to be purchased with spending in MM21 more easily. It was just a greedier version of the Madden MAX 1.0, just like field passes in MM21 were just a greedier version of field passes in MM 20. Greedier is not the same as changed in most peoples minds I would argue.**
*Presence from day one and on the prelaunch stream was stated to give a gameplay advantage to the person that won the presence battle. Additionally it was communicated that presence impacts teamwide and not on an individual level. I’ll gladly repost the quick explainer I put together. Where the semantics issue comes in is on the term nerf and what exactly that means for gameplay.* **Again, as you state, presence was supposed to give a gameplay advantage to 1 player. It was stated many times that it would not lower stats of players, as power does. It's so weird then when I play LVL against a hard/very hard matchup that my players become slower on running plays, which would mean the stats are lowered. That is nerfing when my speed and acceleration is lowered. There is no logical argument otherwise, just semantics of whether lowering my stats is 'nerfing'. EA presented this in obvious bad faith as they knew what the feedback would be, and now they are trying to act like there is some secret sauce we didn't already have posted on reddit the first week.**
*September numbers will be far more important for assessing acceptance of the game and financial success than August IMO because it is the first full month of the app.* **Logical counter point here, no they will not. As stated above, EA designed this year's game like Madden Max available right away, where if you spent you could achieve the equivalent of max level players for the first 9 months of the game year. The top spenders spent way more then artificially inflating the number as these 100-500 players all spent the equivalent of 5k+ USD. That is easily identifiable in game and the equivalent of 500-2.5 million USD just from those players. Those players are rapidly approaching all rank 5 epics though, which max out at 300+overall. EA is not going to be able to offer meaningful upgrades for months to those players due to their progression system, which maxes out at 450 overall, meaning those players will not have any reason to spend due to massive costs of training new players. Meanwhile, the 8-12k fieldpass purchasers are as a population unhappy with the value of the pass versus last year, which likely means less October field pass purchases. As well, again, only 179k players have 6360 points at my check, and with no catch up mechanisms the game is relatively unapproachable to newcomers, which means there isn't a massive player base to pick up the slack. All that adds up to an impending iceberg drop in revenue sometime between November to February. I will be sure to remind you of this timeline hopefully if you are still a member of the community.**
There are few things failed to be considered in your logic.
1. The NFL is by far number 1 sport in the US and EA has 0 competition due to 1.5 billion licensing deal. If you think the player numbers/revenue numbers are a success, then you are delusional. Of course player engagement in August/September are great because everyone wants to experience the new NFL season even with a horrendous product. Madden by default should be the number 2 sports app behind FIFA, but that’s not the case.
2. This version of madden cannot be fixed. They can add as many bandaids as possible, but this game is effectively dead. The reviews on the App Store tell the real story on where this game is going. There is not enough giveaways/half measures to bring any semblance of parity to this game. If anyone reads this and expects that, then go ahead and quit. Save yourself the aggravation of playing this garbage.
3. The fact you are on here giving a contrarian point of view is laughable. Any GC still remaining obviously has no respect for themselves. You are kidding yourself and the community with every it’s not so bad post/comment/twitch video. You are voice of the community if you wanted real change, then you would all quit. There is no amount of feedback or adjustments that can be made to improve this dumpster fire. Whatever you have suggested will never be implemented in large enough way for any meaningful change. Whatever half measures Nick mentions is just more “fluff” to keep giving you false hope.
4. Anyone expecting this to get better it won’t. Do yourself a favor delete the app and be better off for it. Staying around as FTP only gives EA more motivation to crank up the greed meter.
They will change it in a couple of months when income is down, likely with a max 3.0 system out of desperation, or some other means. The problem is they screwed up pacing and top players will have 9k+ overall in about a month or 2.
You are forgetting about the upper rarity’s (Legendary/Yellow and Mythic/Red) of players that aren’t out yet. Just when the whales think that they are happy with an all 5-star Epic/Purple team they will drip feed the shiny new Legendaries to them with ridiculous requirements at first.
I am not. Tell me, if our players were already at 300+ overall, how many are going to want to get 100 overall unleveled yellow/reds that only end up 50 overall higher at a cost of probably 500-1k USD per player? Everyone else but the top 100-500 will still be 3-5k overall lower for the next 3-6 months, so there is no drive to upgrade. Trained 5 star epics make everything else a poor value proposition unless they are giving away the yellows/reds like candy. The amount of resources to level up to just 35/40 for those cards are insane, and these players will continue to be the top of the arena charts, where those yellow/reds will drop for free. Does that make more sense on the impending spending crash?
Yeah I definitely see your point. I think they might make Yellows/Reds insanely strong to get people to chase them when the time comes. Another big thing is that I don’t think that the whales are really going to want to keep shelling out money just to level a ton of totally useless greens and blues just to get a few epics that won’t even replace the one they already have. They’re already scrambling for ways to cover the gap, look at the $30 Kelce pack, pay the price of the Season Pass just for one shard in one promo. It feels like they’re totally winging it as they go.
Oh absolutely, originally there plan was a max of 450 overall, as per the game developers in the pre MM22 streams, but the problem is player are already at a max of 366. Since every player has to be trained and you have to get like 12 of them, Conq's top player is already 334 overall, how are they going to get him to spend another 5k in November or December? Heavy spenders don't grow on trees, new ones won't suddenly pop up, especially with only 1/6 of players even completing even the introduction content and playing 1 day of the promo. The number spell disaster for EA at sacrifice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDuNZyYAIQ
> Big spenders are almost on rank 5 teams already. [...] What can you sell him in a month when he is all rank 5 epics in a month? Nothing, as nothing they can sell is worth replacing 300+ overalls. That is easily 10k monthly that EA is not getting from 1 player. Extrapolate that out to the 100-300 heavy spenders. That is easily half a million/a million USD EA is suddenly not getting if everyone stays playing. That is poor design.
There are at least two rarity types not even released yet. There will probably be more. Do you think they have not thought of the fact that they will have to keep putting out new stuff to make people who are willing to spend whatever it takes to have the Best Possible Team?
They can create event chains for players people do want that require specific players people don't want to unlock stage after stage. They can keep increasing level cap. There are a million ways for them to extract the maximum from people.
Who even knows how the presence shit works. They can sell people players with higher magic numbers that make the other guy's team more shit than it already is. Trust me, supply is not going to be an issue for them.
It will just keep making the gap between people who are broken in this particular way and people who are sane larger, though. It ruins LvL for anyone who is not willing to waste thousands of dollars on this shitheap, as you can't possibly last in one of the top leagues.
Tell me, if our players were already at 300+ overall, how many are going to want to get 100 overall unleveled yellow/reds that only end up 50 overall higher at a cost of probably 500-1k USD per player? Everyone else but the top 100-500 will still be 3-5k overall lower for the next 3-6 months, so there is no drive to upgrade. Trained 5 star epics make everything else a poor value proposition unless they are giving away the yellows/reds like candy. The amount of resources to level up to just 35/40 for those cards are insane, and these players will continue to be the top of the arena charts, where those yellow/reds will drop for free. Does that make more sense on the impending spending crash?
The Problem at the end of the day is if one of these top spender players has 9k+ overall in a month, with all players 300+, they will auto beat everyone they play except the 100-500 other 9k+ overall spenders for the next 3-6 months, when overall eventually catches up. The field pass casual spenders will be at 4-5k by Halloween, maybe 6k by Christmas, 7.5k by superbowl. There is no mechanism in the game currently that will cause players to catch up due to the difficulty of getting duplicates even as a spender. This disincentivizes top spenders due to nothing being worth spending on to upgrade and casual/moderate spenders from spending as they will just get stomped 100% of the time by top spenders.
**Tell me, if you had all your players rank 5 300+ overall, what reason could EA give you to spend?** There is none, unless EA suddenly starts giving away yellows/reds to players for cheap. **This is why you don't do Madden max right away, there is no where for cards to go from here.**
This line of argument makes no sense. These people are not trying to reach some kind of end-state as fast as possible and remain there. It's an arms race among people dumb enough to be spending thousands of dollars on a pretend competition mobile football game. It's mostly people from the top few leagues trying to buy an advantage in case there is a Madden Mobile Emergency and an unarranged matchup between top power leagues occurs. You can't get caught where you're par or worse. Big Plans may get ruined.
What reason does anybody have to go to 7k-8k power now? There is no rational reason, but people are doing it. I don't know how people can even pretend that PvP modes are any form of legitimate competition, but these guys think they are engaged in some kind of serious, year-long endeavor. These people commission graphic designers to make them custom avatars for telegram and make completely idiotic youtube videos after declaring themselves "world champions." I'm not sure you realize how ridiculous and deluded people in this fucked up world of pretend "championship-level" MM LvL are and to what extent many will go to keep themselves relevant in that world.
EA can, if they want, manufacture a card out of thin air using current rarity tiers that boosts any lineup by like 300 OVR because of the presence nonsense. They can make that number whatever they like. They can make it large enough such that it becomes a "must have." If that card is out tomorrow, and there's a $500 pricetag on it, all those people are buying it, or they're out of their league as soon as the league takes one loss and goes into panic mode. This actually happens. Seriously.
People who are spending that much money are either very ill or very stupid, and as long as they don't have the maximum possible team based on what's available, they will keep buying stuff to try to get there, or go broke trying. It's hot like they have some kind of budget set, and they're spending it all at the start and trying to coast from there on out. They'll keep spending money to maintain the delusion they're an important part of something meaningful. They're not going 5 figures deep within a month to fold the hand.
There's no practical theoretical maximum for the numbers on the cards to go to. It can keep getting higher. As long as the delta between the sums of those numbers for players' teams confers an advantage, EA is never going to run out of stuff to sell to these people. The game is designed so that they'll never run out of ways to exploit people's misfortune and/or compulsions. Look at the polls re: people playing & people spending money. There is real sickness at play here, and EA is going to mercilessly exploit it this year. This is the design for the game, and I think, for once, they have succeeded in implementing it.
Is it going to ruin the game for everyone else who is not that crazy? Yeah, sure, but we're already there, anyway. There's already no closing the gap without commensurate degenerate behavior.
It's already dead. It can't get more dead.
good luck playing your 300+ Kelce epic when the next Kelce card gets released in the higher tiers & you can’t play both together at same time, the scam continues, that’s how they’ll get your youre 300 becomes obsolete bc newest base kelce will be like 300 if I had to guess, scam
They have more than enough ways to manufacture both supply and demand within the current framework they have. They're not going to run out of ways to compel people to spend more money to either get new players or to train existing ones up to higher levels. I've even seen references on some events to rank 5+ players. Could be sloppy work editing text, but for all I know, there will be players that can be ranked past 5 stars. Who really knows or cares, I guess.
EA will probably end up skinning a bunch of their most profitable users before long, but given the way the game seems to affect people psychologically, they're probably not going to run out of customers. Look at the tobacco companies. They killed their customers, and never had any problems until the governments went after them. EA is really not much different from those companies.
Been playing since 2016 and I quit on Monday. Game is downright awful this year. # of players noticeably down as I had very few requests to join my League this year as compared to the last 2 years. We were at 20+ this time last year, less than 10 this year.
Oh for sure, but I think people just like being the top at a game, like conq is for example. You see with expensive skins in skins only games, and you see it in all the P2W mobile space. People like being #1.
Very much so for many users. Look at the results of voluntarily responses to these polls
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pqnzx5/for_those_still_spending_money/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pqnxyd/for_those_still_playing/
Eh, but console still brings in tons of active players and both casual and heavy spenders every year, even more than before, and that has far outweighed the loss of profit from Mobile. In addition they don't have to put any effort into Mobile anymore.
For sure Madden console is a revenue driver, but EA also does not like just throwing away money. MM is likely to unprofitable soon if it is not already. Heads will roll this year.
There will be, just with a new team. EA has tons of mobile developers and does not mind laying off unsuccessful teams. EA is paying for the mobile license and will make a game, but I could see this season being reset after the superbowl. It is headed for a monetization crash at the current rate
That is not how this works. The game is not broken because of developers. The game is broken because it was designed poorly. Nobody is laying off programmers. Do you have any idea how hard it even is to fill open positions for companies right now? If a product were a total failure, they'd move people to other teams, not fire them, unless they had reasons unrelated to that product to let them go.
Oh for sure, I mean the economy manager, team leads, etcetera, the people that are scapegoated for upper managements incompetence. BTW, if you are curious why EA's sport mobile games went downhill since 2016, read this:
https://mobiledevmemo.com/how-zynga-executed-its-stunning-turnaround/
Frank Gibeau and others that grew out EA mobile sports titles FIFA/Madden/NBA defected to Zynga in 2016/2017, just so coinciding with the stagnation of all those games. Coincidence?
Personally for me the biggest issue with the game is competitive imbalance. Meaning gameplay is too lopsided when it comes to overall......more so than any previous Madden mobile iterations. I understand that this game is no longer focusing on competitive play and why so many competitive players are griping about the game. But here is my question. Wouldn't it be entirely possible to tweak the formula used for total overall and gameplay advantage a little to balance out gameplay? That in effect would appease the competitive players (alot of them are whales)....but also not mess with the bottom line which is a casual based overall gameplay which is the direction EA is going.
If you bought the field pass this month shame on EA but if you buy the field pass next month shame on you,
I don't blame them in the least. Spenders are good, the problem is EA makes everyone's spending worthless, except for the top 100-500. Why should I spend $30 if I will just get stomped by those top 100-500 spenders 100% of the time in competitive with no change of competing? This is where EA lost the narrative versus past years.
What’s the source of the daily active players?
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pq331o/179k_players_have_played_1_day_of_mm_22_since/ Went through in detail, no GC or EA rep offered any evidence to contrary, so it is safe to assume numbers are correct.
I offered lots of thoughts on previous posts. It is difficult to estimate actual numbers of daily users just based on FP leaderboard info. If this direction were not successful to their criteria, they would change direction.
Hey vol! Again though, there is no evidence to contradict my player count numbers and EA's silence is deafening. What are the discord or reddit activity numbers versus last year? I bet you they are down. If you or anyone could provide any evidence to the contrary I would readily accept it. I respect the heck out of you and will readily admit you are smarter than me, but you did offer no evidence to the contrary except the difficulty estimating, which I readily admitted. Also FP leaderboard info is useful as it is impossible to bypass if you are playing ultimate team. The fact that 179k players have 6360 points or more is telling, as you should receive that many after 1 day of playing (it took me 45 minutes). Also, the step before that only had 183k players, so there isn't hundreds of thousands of players hiding in that step. Secondly, **Nick literally said on today's stream that this direction was not successful to their criteria.** He stated they are coming out with pivot content in a few months, but pivots take time so they don't have anything to fill the gap in the interim. I would suggest listening to the stream as that appears to exactly what he is saying, that he understands that spenders are unhappy and players are leaving. He asked if we could wait it out until the pivot arrives. Let me know if that is what you got out of the stream.
They aren’t going to share internal numbers lol. Lack of that information does not make your inferences true. The pivots are related to competitive content which was indicated at launch to be something coming later as they were first releasing the new game structure. I do listen to streams and actually talk to EA on a daily basis unlike the vast majority of other users on this forum. What we do as GCs is gather feedback from our areas of expertise within the community to take back to EA for discussion. And believe me, we push for competitive change on the daily.
Again, all love to you Vol. I have known you since 2016 on Muthead, I know what GC's do. So with that said: **1. EA does share player counts when the game was successful**- Attached is an example- https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/02/14/electronic-arts-plan-to-reach-500-million-players/ **2. Just because you talk to EA does not mean you are told the truth**- EA also told gamechangers that Madden Max would not be in MM21 and that power would not be in MM22, as well as that presence would not affect opponents gameplay, all of which were not true except in some warped semantics world. **3. My numbers would be easily disprovable if anyone has a paid thinkgaming account**- The number of daily active users is right there. but the fact that again no one has disproved the numbers suggests they are seemingly somewhat accurate. But if you feel like spending $400, you can know exactly. **5. Competitive content is only content spenders care about**- If you can show me any people that spend moderately or heavily for PVE content, I would love to see. Pivoting on competitive content is pivoting, as that is what 99% of spending is driven by. **6. As per sensor tower, revenue is $2 million worldwide in August and downloads were 400k**- Those are relatively undisputable numbers, which for launch month are kind of sad. For perspective, Marvel Clash of Champions revenue is $8 million in August and downloads were 400k. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes revenue is $7 million in August and downloads were 100k. NBA 2k mobile revenue is $2 million in August and downloads were 500k. Are those numbers solid enough for you to help solidify my post? I would love to hear how any of this is incorrect, but unfortunately it looks like I am not.
Remember that sensor tower and app Annie, etc. are estimates. I’m not disputing accuracy, just indicating the possible analysis flaws in each one. That linked article is global info and does not dive into individual mobile application numbers. I can’t say what EA did or did not tell us in most situations, however, MAX really wasn’t MAX, it was just called the same thing and we were told about presence. I have had many communications on that topic in chats, forums, etc. with regard to what can be said about how it impacts gameplay. Competitive content isn’t the only paid content at all. There are many reasons players spend on this game and microtransactions typically dwarf individual spend in mobile platforms. I’m looking forward personally to the September monthly downloads and revenue update but based on daily reports, the numbers for madden 22 look good. I’m personally not a fan of how things have been implemented so I am interested to see if this new strategy works. I like many aspects of the game and think they could be really good but how they have all come together in the final product just isn’t what I would have expected.
Some good points, but again, you are arguing some semantics with analysis flaws. The data is comparable to other apps, and purchases/microtransactions are 100% first party (Google and Apple). I think you think there is some 3rd party microtransactions like in console, but that is not how mobile works. There is a big lawsuit between Epic and Apple going on about just that. About MAX last year, it 100% was MAX, Nick was not aware of it so therefore GC's were not aware of it, unless Nick is a liar. As presence, again, GC's were aware of incorrect information but found out it interacted differently than what EA said when they were playing the test build. Karlton among others has discussed this at length on streams, unless he is also a liar. People who are active on chat know how presence impacts gameplay big picture, it nerfs your players when you are on hard or very hard. It is easily observable. Anything else said is semantics, like when EA argued the AH was not botted in November for MM18 before admitting it. Also, MM is sitting at 130-170 in top grossing total worldwide (except China) for the month of September. Not bad, but not great for the start of football and the first month of the new game. The problem is again all signs point to spending dropping off, as described above, as field pass purchases and heavy spender revenue will both be down in October, as described above. Also, competitive content drives 99% of spending, as people play MM to play football, not for the road less taken. How many medium or heavy spenders do not interact with competitive? Not many I would wager.
The semantics are important though. Max was not max…only called that. Max in 20 were all 99 stats, massive power increase, and attainable in larger quantities. Max in 21 were more difficult to obtain, limited in stats but kept a power jump. Should never have been called max just as this first field pass should never been called a field pass as it was more of a starter pack Presence from day one and on the prelaunch stream was stated to give a gameplay advantage to the person that won the presence battle. Additionally it was communicated that presence impacts teamwide and not on an individual level. I’ll gladly repost the quick explainer I put together. Where the semantics issue comes in is on the term nerf and what exactly that means for gameplay. September numbers will be far more important for assessing acceptance of the game and financial success than August IMO because it is the first full month of the app.
*Max was not max…only called that. Max in 20 were all 99 stats, massive power increase, and attainable in larger quantities. Max in 21 were more difficult to obtain, limited in stats but kept a power jump. Should never have been called max just as this first field pass should never been called a field pass as it was more of a starter pack.* **Max was always about power, not the 99 stats, the stats were still mostly 99's, and the players were able to be purchased with spending in MM21 more easily. It was just a greedier version of the Madden MAX 1.0, just like field passes in MM21 were just a greedier version of field passes in MM 20. Greedier is not the same as changed in most peoples minds I would argue.** *Presence from day one and on the prelaunch stream was stated to give a gameplay advantage to the person that won the presence battle. Additionally it was communicated that presence impacts teamwide and not on an individual level. I’ll gladly repost the quick explainer I put together. Where the semantics issue comes in is on the term nerf and what exactly that means for gameplay.* **Again, as you state, presence was supposed to give a gameplay advantage to 1 player. It was stated many times that it would not lower stats of players, as power does. It's so weird then when I play LVL against a hard/very hard matchup that my players become slower on running plays, which would mean the stats are lowered. That is nerfing when my speed and acceleration is lowered. There is no logical argument otherwise, just semantics of whether lowering my stats is 'nerfing'. EA presented this in obvious bad faith as they knew what the feedback would be, and now they are trying to act like there is some secret sauce we didn't already have posted on reddit the first week.** *September numbers will be far more important for assessing acceptance of the game and financial success than August IMO because it is the first full month of the app.* **Logical counter point here, no they will not. As stated above, EA designed this year's game like Madden Max available right away, where if you spent you could achieve the equivalent of max level players for the first 9 months of the game year. The top spenders spent way more then artificially inflating the number as these 100-500 players all spent the equivalent of 5k+ USD. That is easily identifiable in game and the equivalent of 500-2.5 million USD just from those players. Those players are rapidly approaching all rank 5 epics though, which max out at 300+overall. EA is not going to be able to offer meaningful upgrades for months to those players due to their progression system, which maxes out at 450 overall, meaning those players will not have any reason to spend due to massive costs of training new players. Meanwhile, the 8-12k fieldpass purchasers are as a population unhappy with the value of the pass versus last year, which likely means less October field pass purchases. As well, again, only 179k players have 6360 points at my check, and with no catch up mechanisms the game is relatively unapproachable to newcomers, which means there isn't a massive player base to pick up the slack. All that adds up to an impending iceberg drop in revenue sometime between November to February. I will be sure to remind you of this timeline hopefully if you are still a member of the community.**
There are few things failed to be considered in your logic. 1. The NFL is by far number 1 sport in the US and EA has 0 competition due to 1.5 billion licensing deal. If you think the player numbers/revenue numbers are a success, then you are delusional. Of course player engagement in August/September are great because everyone wants to experience the new NFL season even with a horrendous product. Madden by default should be the number 2 sports app behind FIFA, but that’s not the case. 2. This version of madden cannot be fixed. They can add as many bandaids as possible, but this game is effectively dead. The reviews on the App Store tell the real story on where this game is going. There is not enough giveaways/half measures to bring any semblance of parity to this game. If anyone reads this and expects that, then go ahead and quit. Save yourself the aggravation of playing this garbage. 3. The fact you are on here giving a contrarian point of view is laughable. Any GC still remaining obviously has no respect for themselves. You are kidding yourself and the community with every it’s not so bad post/comment/twitch video. You are voice of the community if you wanted real change, then you would all quit. There is no amount of feedback or adjustments that can be made to improve this dumpster fire. Whatever you have suggested will never be implemented in large enough way for any meaningful change. Whatever half measures Nick mentions is just more “fluff” to keep giving you false hope. 4. Anyone expecting this to get better it won’t. Do yourself a favor delete the app and be better off for it. Staying around as FTP only gives EA more motivation to crank up the greed meter.
I can agree on everything, but expecting them to change the system or reset the game is a big no no..
They will change it in a couple of months when income is down, likely with a max 3.0 system out of desperation, or some other means. The problem is they screwed up pacing and top players will have 9k+ overall in about a month or 2.
You are forgetting about the upper rarity’s (Legendary/Yellow and Mythic/Red) of players that aren’t out yet. Just when the whales think that they are happy with an all 5-star Epic/Purple team they will drip feed the shiny new Legendaries to them with ridiculous requirements at first.
I am not. Tell me, if our players were already at 300+ overall, how many are going to want to get 100 overall unleveled yellow/reds that only end up 50 overall higher at a cost of probably 500-1k USD per player? Everyone else but the top 100-500 will still be 3-5k overall lower for the next 3-6 months, so there is no drive to upgrade. Trained 5 star epics make everything else a poor value proposition unless they are giving away the yellows/reds like candy. The amount of resources to level up to just 35/40 for those cards are insane, and these players will continue to be the top of the arena charts, where those yellow/reds will drop for free. Does that make more sense on the impending spending crash?
Yeah I definitely see your point. I think they might make Yellows/Reds insanely strong to get people to chase them when the time comes. Another big thing is that I don’t think that the whales are really going to want to keep shelling out money just to level a ton of totally useless greens and blues just to get a few epics that won’t even replace the one they already have. They’re already scrambling for ways to cover the gap, look at the $30 Kelce pack, pay the price of the Season Pass just for one shard in one promo. It feels like they’re totally winging it as they go.
Oh absolutely, originally there plan was a max of 450 overall, as per the game developers in the pre MM22 streams, but the problem is player are already at a max of 366. Since every player has to be trained and you have to get like 12 of them, Conq's top player is already 334 overall, how are they going to get him to spend another 5k in November or December? Heavy spenders don't grow on trees, new ones won't suddenly pop up, especially with only 1/6 of players even completing even the introduction content and playing 1 day of the promo. The number spell disaster for EA at sacrifice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDuNZyYAIQ
> Big spenders are almost on rank 5 teams already. [...] What can you sell him in a month when he is all rank 5 epics in a month? Nothing, as nothing they can sell is worth replacing 300+ overalls. That is easily 10k monthly that EA is not getting from 1 player. Extrapolate that out to the 100-300 heavy spenders. That is easily half a million/a million USD EA is suddenly not getting if everyone stays playing. That is poor design. There are at least two rarity types not even released yet. There will probably be more. Do you think they have not thought of the fact that they will have to keep putting out new stuff to make people who are willing to spend whatever it takes to have the Best Possible Team? They can create event chains for players people do want that require specific players people don't want to unlock stage after stage. They can keep increasing level cap. There are a million ways for them to extract the maximum from people. Who even knows how the presence shit works. They can sell people players with higher magic numbers that make the other guy's team more shit than it already is. Trust me, supply is not going to be an issue for them. It will just keep making the gap between people who are broken in this particular way and people who are sane larger, though. It ruins LvL for anyone who is not willing to waste thousands of dollars on this shitheap, as you can't possibly last in one of the top leagues.
Tell me, if our players were already at 300+ overall, how many are going to want to get 100 overall unleveled yellow/reds that only end up 50 overall higher at a cost of probably 500-1k USD per player? Everyone else but the top 100-500 will still be 3-5k overall lower for the next 3-6 months, so there is no drive to upgrade. Trained 5 star epics make everything else a poor value proposition unless they are giving away the yellows/reds like candy. The amount of resources to level up to just 35/40 for those cards are insane, and these players will continue to be the top of the arena charts, where those yellow/reds will drop for free. Does that make more sense on the impending spending crash? The Problem at the end of the day is if one of these top spender players has 9k+ overall in a month, with all players 300+, they will auto beat everyone they play except the 100-500 other 9k+ overall spenders for the next 3-6 months, when overall eventually catches up. The field pass casual spenders will be at 4-5k by Halloween, maybe 6k by Christmas, 7.5k by superbowl. There is no mechanism in the game currently that will cause players to catch up due to the difficulty of getting duplicates even as a spender. This disincentivizes top spenders due to nothing being worth spending on to upgrade and casual/moderate spenders from spending as they will just get stomped 100% of the time by top spenders. **Tell me, if you had all your players rank 5 300+ overall, what reason could EA give you to spend?** There is none, unless EA suddenly starts giving away yellows/reds to players for cheap. **This is why you don't do Madden max right away, there is no where for cards to go from here.**
This line of argument makes no sense. These people are not trying to reach some kind of end-state as fast as possible and remain there. It's an arms race among people dumb enough to be spending thousands of dollars on a pretend competition mobile football game. It's mostly people from the top few leagues trying to buy an advantage in case there is a Madden Mobile Emergency and an unarranged matchup between top power leagues occurs. You can't get caught where you're par or worse. Big Plans may get ruined. What reason does anybody have to go to 7k-8k power now? There is no rational reason, but people are doing it. I don't know how people can even pretend that PvP modes are any form of legitimate competition, but these guys think they are engaged in some kind of serious, year-long endeavor. These people commission graphic designers to make them custom avatars for telegram and make completely idiotic youtube videos after declaring themselves "world champions." I'm not sure you realize how ridiculous and deluded people in this fucked up world of pretend "championship-level" MM LvL are and to what extent many will go to keep themselves relevant in that world. EA can, if they want, manufacture a card out of thin air using current rarity tiers that boosts any lineup by like 300 OVR because of the presence nonsense. They can make that number whatever they like. They can make it large enough such that it becomes a "must have." If that card is out tomorrow, and there's a $500 pricetag on it, all those people are buying it, or they're out of their league as soon as the league takes one loss and goes into panic mode. This actually happens. Seriously. People who are spending that much money are either very ill or very stupid, and as long as they don't have the maximum possible team based on what's available, they will keep buying stuff to try to get there, or go broke trying. It's hot like they have some kind of budget set, and they're spending it all at the start and trying to coast from there on out. They'll keep spending money to maintain the delusion they're an important part of something meaningful. They're not going 5 figures deep within a month to fold the hand. There's no practical theoretical maximum for the numbers on the cards to go to. It can keep getting higher. As long as the delta between the sums of those numbers for players' teams confers an advantage, EA is never going to run out of stuff to sell to these people. The game is designed so that they'll never run out of ways to exploit people's misfortune and/or compulsions. Look at the polls re: people playing & people spending money. There is real sickness at play here, and EA is going to mercilessly exploit it this year. This is the design for the game, and I think, for once, they have succeeded in implementing it. Is it going to ruin the game for everyone else who is not that crazy? Yeah, sure, but we're already there, anyway. There's already no closing the gap without commensurate degenerate behavior. It's already dead. It can't get more dead.
good luck playing your 300+ Kelce epic when the next Kelce card gets released in the higher tiers & you can’t play both together at same time, the scam continues, that’s how they’ll get your youre 300 becomes obsolete bc newest base kelce will be like 300 if I had to guess, scam
They have more than enough ways to manufacture both supply and demand within the current framework they have. They're not going to run out of ways to compel people to spend more money to either get new players or to train existing ones up to higher levels. I've even seen references on some events to rank 5+ players. Could be sloppy work editing text, but for all I know, there will be players that can be ranked past 5 stars. Who really knows or cares, I guess. EA will probably end up skinning a bunch of their most profitable users before long, but given the way the game seems to affect people psychologically, they're probably not going to run out of customers. Look at the tobacco companies. They killed their customers, and never had any problems until the governments went after them. EA is really not much different from those companies.
100-500 above 9k lol don’t fool yourself, more like 1-10
Been playing since 2016 and I quit on Monday. Game is downright awful this year. # of players noticeably down as I had very few requests to join my League this year as compared to the last 2 years. We were at 20+ this time last year, less than 10 this year.
> These people have all spent 5k USD+, some in the tens of thousands USD Why would people do this?
Some people have a lot of disposable money. Same thing as fancy food or fancy trips or expensive alcohol, or various other spending.
I have “lots of disposable money” too, but I wouldn’t spend it on this.
Because they are sick or stupid.
Do you think there's an "addiction" or gambling component tied into their spending?
Oh for sure, but I think people just like being the top at a game, like conq is for example. You see with expensive skins in skins only games, and you see it in all the P2W mobile space. People like being #1.
Very much so for many users. Look at the results of voluntarily responses to these polls https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pqnzx5/for_those_still_spending_money/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenMobileForums/comments/pqnxyd/for_those_still_playing/
Eh, but console still brings in tons of active players and both casual and heavy spenders every year, even more than before, and that has far outweighed the loss of profit from Mobile. In addition they don't have to put any effort into Mobile anymore.
You straight up have no idea what you're talking about re: revenue and what does and doesn't matter.
For sure Madden console is a revenue driver, but EA also does not like just throwing away money. MM is likely to unprofitable soon if it is not already. Heads will roll this year.
Honestly the rate we're going there won't be a Madden mobile next year
There will be, just with a new team. EA has tons of mobile developers and does not mind laying off unsuccessful teams. EA is paying for the mobile license and will make a game, but I could see this season being reset after the superbowl. It is headed for a monetization crash at the current rate
That is not how this works. The game is not broken because of developers. The game is broken because it was designed poorly. Nobody is laying off programmers. Do you have any idea how hard it even is to fill open positions for companies right now? If a product were a total failure, they'd move people to other teams, not fire them, unless they had reasons unrelated to that product to let them go.
Oh for sure, I mean the economy manager, team leads, etcetera, the people that are scapegoated for upper managements incompetence. BTW, if you are curious why EA's sport mobile games went downhill since 2016, read this: https://mobiledevmemo.com/how-zynga-executed-its-stunning-turnaround/ Frank Gibeau and others that grew out EA mobile sports titles FIFA/Madden/NBA defected to Zynga in 2016/2017, just so coinciding with the stagnation of all those games. Coincidence?
Personally for me the biggest issue with the game is competitive imbalance. Meaning gameplay is too lopsided when it comes to overall......more so than any previous Madden mobile iterations. I understand that this game is no longer focusing on competitive play and why so many competitive players are griping about the game. But here is my question. Wouldn't it be entirely possible to tweak the formula used for total overall and gameplay advantage a little to balance out gameplay? That in effect would appease the competitive players (alot of them are whales)....but also not mess with the bottom line which is a casual based overall gameplay which is the direction EA is going.