Madden 11 Listens to Fans, Makes Strategy Pad Optional

If you haven’t been online lately, then you probably missed the Madden 11 strategy pad chaos that resulted in a surprising amount of negative fan reaction, and even a video breaking down the concerns. It only took a few days, however, for EA to step to the plate and give fans what they wanted; the right to choose.

In a new blog post written by Madden NFL 11 Creative Director Ian Cummings, fans are explained in detail as to why the development team looked to evolve the pre-play control scheme with the advent of the strategy pad.

Ian Cummings: “…did you know that over 2 BILLION defensive hot route context states were entered in Madden NFL 10? That’s an average of more than 5 million per day. We discovered that of this number, more than 50% never called an actual hot route. So on more than 1 BILLION occasions, a gamer accidentally went into a pre-play contextual state that they didn’t mean to. As a game designer, you just can’t choose to ignore that..it’s staggering. To be clear, it’s not that we wanted to make pre-play controls easy enough for a caveman to use them, it’s that we wanted to fix a system that punished gamers for just accidentally hitting the primary button on the controller.”

While I think the more obvious solution to players being stuck would be to institute a universal cancel button (clicking either joystick for example), I think it’s impossible for experienced Madden fans not to admit that the pre-snap controls were confusing to new players, to the point that they didn’t really want to play. I’ve known plenty of friends that I have tried to convince to play Madden with me on occasion, and I know just as you do that it was never pretty. While the classic control scheme was powerful and comfortable, it was certainly a lot to take in for a new player and the only real way to learn it was with practice, as opposed to direction.

What is Old, is New Again!

As a tool for new players, we’ve contended from the very beginning that the strategy pad was a great decision, but it never made much sense to remove the classic controls completely. For veteran players, the change held little value, and in some ways was less efficient. This can be compared to the new auto-strafe, and auto-run options in the new Madden 11. Both the auto-strafe and auto-run are great ideas to have defaulted on for new players, however EA understood that this took away some of the control from gamers, and allowed the feature to be turned off inside the game options, making it a win-win for everyone. Now, we can say that about the strategy pad too.

Ian Cummings: “We do believe that this change is for the better, and that in the long run it delivers a much more positive experience to the gamers that are willing to try and adapt. Due to the overwhelming feedback however, we will be providing the old-style button commands as an option that can be enabled. We are currently targeting this change to be released around the first week of the NFL season as it will take some time to get through third party approvals. So now that it’s out of the way, let’s all try to sit back and have some fun with Madden NFL 11…after all, football season is almost here!”

While we think much of the criticism of the strategy pad being obligatory was warranted, we’re a bit ashamed at the way some of the Madden community has treated the development team on an issue that simply required some constructive criticism. Just as you were quick to belittle people like Ian Cummings on Twitter for taking his time to take in the scope of the feedback, we hope you’ll be just as quick to thank him and the team for making changes for the community so quickly. And really, for making the game so accessible for all our friends that we’ve been dreaming of getting onto the field so we can pummel them.

Now, if you don’t mind, we have to get back to playing the demo for the best Madden game ever made. Don’t believe us? Sounds like another video is in the works.