Here is the second part of our detailed interview with Madden NFL Connected Franchise Creative Director Kolbe Launchbaugh who gives us the inside track on Confidence, Practice Mode, and the addition of draft boards in Madden NFL 16. You can take a look at part one here if you missed it.
The Natural: That’s good, that’s great that you guys listen to community feedback and put those things in that people have been asking for. Let’s talk about confidence- confidence was a big issue that some had with the game last year, and they felt that it wasn’t tuned very well and people would lose and their confidence would tank and it made it really tough for people like us, Sports Gamers Online, who run a lot of leagues and we have a lot of people in the draft and leagues where sometimes a guy might drop off and he might lose, and we bring somebody else in, and the team is totally tanked of confidence. You know, zero across the board, so what kinds of things have you done to address that in terms of confidence issues?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, nothing, no I’m kidding!
The Natural: Alright, we’re done!
Kolbe Launchbaugh: No, so, we’ve done a lot. Josh Looman and Scott Poorman, two designers we spent all year, those guys focused on just tuning all of the aspects of CFM, and that deals with confidence, physical aggression, regression, draft classes, all of those things. So, they spent a lot of effort trying to get confidence right, confidence is a whole lot better, we’ve tuned the maximum amount that you can be affected by having low confidence way down, so the maximum you can go down is 3 OVR now. The maximum you can go up is 3 OVR now, and we’re a little bit more forgiving in the middle, so it’s like if you have a couple of bad games, you probably won’t go down, but if you’re having two, three, four really bad games, you’ll start to go down, it’ll be one, then two, and you’re affected in your most natural attributes for your position. So, it’s still very important, it’s still very much in the game, but it is still something a lot easier to manage, and it isn’t the only thing that you have to manage in order to have a successful CFM.
The Natural: Also, you gave some features in off-season where you can do things to boost confidence up as well, right?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, they’re really like training camps, type things, where there are special events that show up, and allow you to greatly boost the confidence for guys who played the season badly.
The Natural: Also, another great addition that a lot of people asked for from the community is practice. You guys added the ability to practice with your team; do you get any confidence of XP boosts doing practice at all? Or, is it just kind of a free practice?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, no, there’s nothing gained in there. There are no injuries in there, it’s like safe land, yeah, you don’t spend anything, you don’t lose anything, and you don’t gain anything.
The Natural: And it’s your offense versus your defense, I assume?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, it’s your offense versus your defense, which we did not add practice teams this year. But, it was absolutely, like coming out of the second to last community event with the CFM guys, we had them stack rank all of the things that were the most important to them, and that was number one thing on that list, so we went back, looked at what it would take to get in, at that point, we had a little bit of extra time, that was a bigger feature to get in, but we were able out bit the bullet and get that thing in. And when we came back the last time and showed them it was there, their minds were blown, they were like ‘oh my god, you listened!’ It’s like, we always want to listen, it’s just whether or not we have the time to react and do what you asked for.
The Natural: Yeah, you have a set amount of resources and developers to get stuff in, so I totally understand. But, the practice was what many people asked for, and you guys totally delivered on, another thing I heard about was bringing your team outside of the CFM, is that something that you guys are looking at? Maybe like I can play my buddy and CFM team against theirs, maybe that’s something that’s really tough to achieve, that might be had to accomplish?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: It’s definitely something we’ve thought about, it’s definitely something we’ve talked about internally, we hear the asks for it from the outside community. It’s not going to be in this year, obviously, and it’s something I hope to get to at some point, I just can’t-
The Natural: Like an export feature, CFM team, something of that nature?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: -Something like that, yeah, I don’t know what it would be exactly, but there is a lot of work that has to happen before that can happen, so it’s not like we can just go and build it right now and it’ll work, I hate to use the words ‘non-trivial,’ but it’s non-trivial.
The Natural: No, I understand. You guys have a certain amount of resources to get stuff done. The game is looking really great this year, we’re excited to hear about more CFM info, is more coming?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: We’re not holding anything back so much as we did a couple little things late from that last community, like you guys gave us, we stacked the most important, like top six or seven, I don’t remember how many it was, I think we were able to get to about four of them, so they’re smaller features, smaller tunes and tweaks that we got to, and I think you’re going to be pretty happy with a couple of them.
The Natural: Is one of those things the draft board?
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of those things was the draft board, and I explained this on Shop’s channel, I’ll try and to the really fast forward version for you guys, but basically the draft board is really more of a watch list, and it’s something that we can build on for the future, for sure, again, the future is I don’t know. I’ve seen some stuff on twitter, operation sports as well ‘well, this means that they’re really going to do an official draft board at the same time next year,’ well, in no way does it mean that.
The Natural: You guys hear that? One thing does not mean the other.
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, it means we have a foundation, we’ve made some improvements, we’re listening, we definitely want to deliver all of these things for you guys, they all take time, they’re going to come as soon as we can get them, and in the priority that you guys actually do help us set. So, it’s not like we’re not listening. But, I do think that it’s a good stop in the right direction, right? You guys get your watch list, you can’t order it, but you get the guys that you really are interested in, in a single list, without all of the chaff, that is a huge improvement in the quality of life of the CFM drafter.
The Natural: Awesome! And we love all of the new things and the additional tools you’ve given CFM commissioners this year.
Kolbe Launchbaugh: One of the things that I don’t think is getting any play at all, but is a cool little feature, is getting the list of the CFM members into the main menu, it’s actually a electable tab in the main menu, and you see the list of all the main members in your league, and you get to scroll through it right there, see who’s online, see who’s played their game, so who’s set autopilot, it’s all right there in the main menu, there’s not going to fish for it, you can invite new members to your league from that same menu, no one’s talking about it, but I think it’s a really cool feature for you guys!
The Natural: Wow, that’s awesome to hear! The more you give to commissioners, the better, we love that, and it’s really cool that, you know, you guys are focused on CFM, you guys are always focused on CFM, but a lot of guys get the wrong idea that mode is the focus of madden, but I’m glad to hear you say these things and show that CFM is just as, or more important, or equally as important as all the modes in Madden, so we’re really glad to hear that.
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Yeah, it’s absolutely important. I spent more of my resources on CFM last year than any other mode, so it’s absolutely important to me, I want to make it great, I want to make it fun, I want you guys to be super excited to check it out every year and see all of the new and cool stuff that we added. Speaking of, I’m going to tell you something, I don’t know if I’ve said this on camera yet, I may have, I’ve done a lot of these, maybe. But we actually eliminated the penalty for switching positions in CFM.
The Natural: Wow, that’s big!
Kolbe Launchbaugh: That’s one of the things that was requested but the community guys. So, there is no penalty for switching, you can switch anything, well not anything, but anything that was a valid switch last year you can do.
The Natural: Well maybe not Right End to QB. You mean, like quarterback-to-quarterback, something like that.
Kolbe Launchbaugh: No, and you can’t make your quarterback the DT either, so they all have to make sense, and I think it was by community request that one or two were added and/or removed, and I don’t remember what they were, I’m sorry, we added the ability to do that willy nilly, no penalty. However, to make sure the leagues are still good and sound and behaving correctly, we added a transition log entry every time somebody does that, so you can set up some house rules, commissioners can police it and make sure nobody’s abusing the, we’ll call it a ‘gift,’ but the ability to do that and whatever rules you guys want inside of your CFMs.
The Natural: Awesome! Exclusive, first time here, and we’re so happy, we can’t wait to get our hands on the game and CFM mode, Madden 16 is looking great and we’ll have more covers for you guys, thanks!
Kolbe Launchbaugh: Appreciate it, have a good one!
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the interview and our E3 coverage. We want to send a special thank you out to EA Sports and the entire Madden team for being very gracious and accommodating the entire time at E3 this year. Be sure to stay tuned as we will have more Madden NFL 16 info, news, tips and interviews coming. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel as well, as we always have new content posted each week for you guys.