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[The Albatross]

​

I brought up the point in the Madden '12 Online Franchise thread about Madden '12 Communities, which is the new online feature added to Madden this year. Communities in Madden are basically semi-private ladders, which can host a maximum of 2,000 people, and you can set them up to be private, public, or invite only.

Here is the blog entry about Communities from the Madden team

Place Holder for Description [COMING SOON]

YouTube Video Explaining Online Communities: http://youtu.be/cLZ_XPHFWH4

Community admins set rules: minutes per game, sliders, difficulty to play on, and so on, and games match up players in the community against each other. It's not like a schedule like in Online Franchise, but just a private ladder.

To join, Go into the Online Communities mode on your 360 or PS3. Search for "NeoGaf" and click the join button.

X-Box 360
Search for NeoGaf
Password: believe

PS3 (Thread for the PS3 Community)
Search for "NeoGaf PS3"
Password: believe

Note: This thread is primarily for the X-Box 360 Community, there is a link above for the PS3 community, but it's no thang if people talk about both in this one. The PS3 community is comparatively small

The rules thus far are pretty straight forward:

• Play as close to "real NFL football" as you can. Generally, using reasonable discretion when trying to convert 4th downs... If an NFL team is unlikely to go for it on a 4th down, then just punt the ball or kick the field goal. Most people who try to convert 4th downs won't come out on top in the end, but it's an annoying unrealistic way to play that is frustrating. Avoiding use of known glitches (like NCAA '11s pump fake glitch) and cheese plays. I am not sure if "nano blitzing" is in Madden this year, but just try to avoid taking advantage of known weaknesses in the AI. It's one thing to run slants, outs, and passes in the flats, which can be counter-acted, but it's another thing if you notice that lining up 3 guys on the left side results in nearly an auto sack. Just play reasonably.
• Finish your games. Don't quit. It's lame. Nobody likes having to finish a game against the CPU.
• Be respectful in games, obviously.
• We're going to start with default sliders and rules, on All Pro. We might bump up the minutes per quarter because with the accelerated clock, sometimes games whiz by. I'm going to differ to the common wisdom at Operation Sports. We'll use default sliders for now, but probably do a bit of tweaking.
• We'll use updated EA rosters.
• 7 Minute quarter, accelerated clock, normal game speed, conventional play calling, regular speed threshold, regular fatique.

So, communities are designed to keep players out who disconnect, use cheap maneuvers, or exploit some glitch/system in the game to make online play less enjoyable. Report players who you feel aren't playing in the spirit of the game and give a reason why you feel like they aren't playing in the spirit of the game.

Reported players:

• ReaganStein: Quit / Disconnected (Post Reported)

 

[DCX]

in.

DCX

 

[DenogginizerOS]

Raises hand.

pm me for gamertag, if needed.

 

[Ferny]

Im in

kurruptt

 

[Smokey]

Leggo

 

[TheCrow]

I'm in. This might be the first time I play Madden online outside of the league. Unless madden 12 is more like 11 and not 10. I barely wanted to play league games in madden 11.

 

[The Albatross]

Here is another blog detailing Communities:

http://www.ea.com/madden-nfl/blog/online-communities-detailed

Online Communities: Power to the Player

There are always a few gripes that seem to come up every year when it comes to online play in the Madden franchise. Shady players dominating the leaderboards, no OTP stat tracking, and the big one, wanting to play at a different setting than what EA SPORTS considers the standard for ranked games. When the designers at Tiburon sat down and wanted to tackle these issues, they came up with this solution: Online Communities.

An Online Community is more or less a design tool that allows you to create a group of up to 2,000 people and then gives you all the options of how you want to play your games including sliders. The creator of an Online Community also has the power to elect moderators to help self-police it. Have a member acting up or is giving your community a bad rap? Kick him out with the press of a button.

Online Communities can become a little confusing to explain. So for this next part I’m going to break down the two ways you can utilize it: head to head and OTP. Both are accessible from within the same Community, but as you’ll see, there are numerous differences that enhance each mode.

Head to Head

Like I mentioned in the introduction, the big change here is that the creator of the Online Community will lock in the settings for how games are played. Prefer playing your ranked head to head games on All Madden rather than All Pro? Do you feel that 7 minute, no accelerated clock is the fairest way to play? Well all that and more is at your control when starting up a community.

In addition to the general settings, the creator also has access to move the sliders. So anything from increasing the pass blocking to decreasing the broken tackle chances are also at your disposal. The goal was to give you, the player, as much control as you need in order to experience the online world of Madden the way you could enjoy it the most.

There is also a separate leaderboard within your Online Community to track all of your head to head games. Rather than dealing with the normal ranked head to head leaderboards of the past, you now just can concentrate on being the number 1 player in your own community. You no longer have to worry about someone cheesing their way up the list. This will now be a fair and balanced way of playing meaningful online games that will count and you’ll almost be guaranteed of playing a legit player. One of the most frustrating experiences online can be having a guy disconnect on you or do things intentionally to frustrate you. That shouldn’t be the case in Online Communities because again, that player can very quickly be kicked out.

Online Team Play (OTP)

OTP was a feature introduced in Madden NFL 11 and it was something that I quickly became attached to. It provided an experience that hadn’t been explored online with a football game before. The first implementation of OTP did come with its shortcomings. Random games were difficult to find and not having any record or stats proved difficult to keep the desire to play long term. Online Communities is the next step in delivering a more fulfilling OTP experience.

With the addition on Online Communities, there is now a leaderboard that shows your overall record playing OTP as well as stats for each squad that you play as. So for example, it now shows you that you are 10-0 as a QB with 275 passing yards a game, 3.4 TD’s per game, etc. The one thing to keep in mind is that when you select the ‘Any’ squad, stats will NOT be tracked but the win/loss will still count.

The next thing to understand with OTP in Online Communities is that you are playing the games against OTHER communities, not games against people in YOUR own community. So where as head to head leaderboards are made up of people that are only in your community, the OTP leaderboards will show names of other Online Communities and will rank you all accordingly. This is pretty big if you are a fan of OTP. Now you actually have a leaderboard to point to and claim supremacy!

There are a few more points with OTP that are worth noting. First off, squad boost have been removed from the mode. Also, I’m happy to report that defensive cameras in OTP have returned to normal. No more of the behind the back angle when playing defense. Next, you can play an OTP game by yourself in an Online Community and your community can have multiple sessions playing at once. So for example, I can go in and play a game by myself and while I’m still in that game, another member from my community can start one up as well. When I sat down and talked with Associate Designer Anthony DiMento about this, I asked “So theoretically my community could go 2000-0 in just one hour?” “Absolutely” Anthony responded.

The last point I want to make clear with OTP is that when you go into an Online Community and search for a (OTP) game, you will only be searching for ranked games with the rules and limitations set forth by EA SPORTS. One of the big problems last year was that it was too hard to get into a random game. This was because you had too much criteria to filter through. The design team took note of this and that’s why they went this route, so games would be considerably easier to find.

Well that’s a brief synopsis of Online Communities. Keep in mind that both head to head and OTP games are accessed from the same community. The difference is when you go to head to head, you represent yourself. When you play OTP, you represent the entire community. One last important nugget that I didn’t touch on, you can join up to 5 different Online Communities. Not too bad. Well, I’m sure there will be plenty of questions and comments about this new feature. If you have any, feel free to send me a message to www.twitter.com/Jstein2469. I’ll answer everything that I can and get with the design team to help answer the rest. Madden NFL 12 drops August 30th. See you online!

 

[storybook77]

In.

 

[LiveWire]

Sign me up.

 

[Birdman02]

I'm in

 

[dskillzhtown]

In. No way I could do a league. This works for me.

This is on 360, right?????

RIGHT?

 

[The Albatross]

In. No way I could do a league. This works for me.

This is on 360, right?????

RIGHT?

Right.

 

[Nightz]

I'm in.

 

[eznark]

xbl: thekranz

 

[BigAT]

In.

BigAT4

 

[The Albatross]

When it comes out, we'll see about if I even need to add folks. You'll probably be able to search for it and join then probably get approved or enter a password. We'll find out in a week.

 

[Nightz]

When it comes out, we'll see about if I even need to add folks. You'll probably be able to search for it and join then probably get approved or enter a password. We'll find out in a week.

You won't need to add people. You just need to provide the name of the community and password and people will be able to join.

 

[daw840]

I'm in as well. This should provide a good practice for the league.

 

[-Mikey-]

xbl: CanyonBehindHer

 

[Smokey]

Shouldn't you post this on the gaming side to get a little more attention?

 

[The Albatross]

I think that this forum is the right place for the OT of the Madden '12 Online Community mode. But I'll add links in the Madden threads that come up in Gaming forum.

 

[TheDrizzlerJ11]

One more week!

 

[Smokey]

I think that this forum is the right place for the OT of the Madden '12 Online Community mode. But I'll add links in the Madden threads that come up in Gaming forum.

Well I know it'll get moved over here eventually, but I thought initially it may get more traction if it was over there.

 

[Wellington]

GT: Wellie.

I'm down.

 

[daw840]

Guess I should post my GT.

DarkQberto

 

[Smokey]

GT = dboythagr8

 

[DCX]

DCX gaf

DCX

 

[LiveWire]

GT = DJ Demon J

 

[effzee]

Nothing like this for ps3madden12gaf?

 

[Somnia]

In

SomniaGAF

 

[Franklinator]

I shall join!

My gamertag is IroncladBread

 

[Smokey]

Nothing like this for ps3madden12gaf?

Never works out.

 

[Birdman02]

GT: Birdman1702

 

[Wellington]

Nothing like this for ps3madden12gaf?

Blame PSN.

 

[effzee]

Sucks for me. Only reason I have a PS3 really is that early on I only played against my cousins and friends who all own a PS3.

 

[Nightz]

There are actually quite a few PS3 Madden players on GAF. It's the online franchises that never work out, but I think something like this community feature would be better suited for those guys.

 

[The Albatross]

Anybody get the (overpriced) season pass thing? I just got my Amazon confirmation code for the rookie teams, but delivery is tuesday. I'll setup the Gaf community then and have info for it.

 

[McNei1y]

In.

GT is my name.

 

[Greg]

Have they announced any plans for a digital release? I thought for sure since their new pass allows the full version of the game to be downloaded that they could easily toss it up on the store for retail price.

I really want it on release day, but I'd consider waiting if I could have it on my hard drive.

 

[MikeE21286]

in.

Gamertag - MikeE21286

 

[FrenchMovieTheme]

Im down!

 

[TheApatheticOne]

I'm in as well! As Sir Charles would say "I'm turrible." First two games on all-pro, threw 7 picks. Easily the most Ive thrown in the first two games of Madden in any version this gen, so I got some feeling out to do.

Gamertag same as GAF tag - TheApatheticOne

 

[U2NUMB]

I am in
GT: U2NUMB

 

[Captain N]

I got is on PS3

PSN | LAAG64

 

[DenogginizerOS]

I have it for ps3. Perhaps I should set up a ps3 GAF community.

 

[hearsaybear]

I'm in on 360. GT: ReaganStein

(I would prefer the jets if at all possible)

 

[DenogginizerOS]

I'm in on 360. GT: ReaganStein

(I would prefer the jets if at all possible)

You can have whatever team you want in community play

 

[CB3]

360 GT: ColdBlooded33

 

[DieselRainbow]

I'm in

Gamertag: DieselRainbow

 

[Nori Chan]

GT: xGeneral Ice

Ill be playing MUT most of the time though.