EA’s “most polished” Madden for many years continue to walk on a rough road. Madden 23 receive it big October headline update on Thursday, and with it lots of welcome tweaks to the base gameplay. But despite the flood of fixes, many fans still feel like EA is dishonest about the current state of immersion of the game and what they consider a priority of micro-reaction gambling over ensuring the normal modes are glitch-free.
“Today could have been saved Madden 23” Madden Youtuber Zirktober tweeted yesterday shortly after the October patch notes were published online. Towards the end of the day, players discovered a major bug. Upgrading any of the game’s “Scariest Monsters” will automatically lock players out of Madden Ultimate Team, the game’s high-paying competitive online mode.
“Do not upgrade any of the Scariest Monster Maker players as it could lock your account out of Ultimate Team,” EA announced That night. “We are currently working to fix this issue and unlock any affected players.” Hours later, the bug was fixed, and players were able to reuse the upgrades without fear of being locked out, although EA still doesn’t seem to know the exact source of the problem. “We’ve disabled the chemistry options on Monster Makers at the moment because we’re investigating an issue,” it tweeted.
While the hiatus was ultimately temporary, it has remained a perfect package for roller coaster fans ever since. Madden 23 launched back in August. Initial reviews were mostly positive, followed by harsher reviews by some players, including several NFL experts. Content creators rallied around a brief “pack strike” to protest against the high prices and poor odds of taking great players out of Madden Ultimate Team’s card packs. In early October, some wondered if Madden 23 could still be saved, or if it could eventually be remembered as one of the worst iterations of the annual money generator for several years.
First, the good news. Madden 23‘S October title update addressed a number of core complaints in recent weeks. A recalibrated slider seems to be addressing the monstrous amount of superhuman interceptions that players have previously witnessed. A disconnect issue that resulted in a lot of lost progress in Franchise mode also seems to have been fixed. CPU teams no longer randomly end up negotiating with players. Some players get new face scans. And there are plenty of ways to block, catch, and other core gameplay mechanics.
“While not all issues have been resolved today, there will be more fixes in future updates as we continue to work hard to provide you with a good experience. possible. We appreciate and appreciate your feedback,” the EA wrote. “Our team is always looking into this and working to provide updates throughout the season.”
But the story with Madden never as simple as one of total disaster or total redemption. The title update also claims to add a new replacement jet black helmet by the Jets, but some players have already received it. broken white version instead of. The franchise form is also still a mixed bag. While some players report being able to finally progress in their season after previously experiencing a wall of crashes and disconnections, others are still experiencing dreaded crashes. draft loop error that will bring them back to the beginning of the season whenever they finish a game.
Another specific pain point remains Madden 23‘S passing fielda battle pass system similar to a free game Apex Legends only added this year. Its three levels – Season, Competition and Fear – have caused many problems for players since launch. Even now, they does not always accurately track player stats, which means that players are not rewarded for completing a goal when they should. Like YouTuber This is the Popular Stranger pointed out, just opening a pass can be a chore, with some players still inundated with error messages when they try to access it. And then there are the missing rewards.
Some players do not receive rewards for Rules matches, while others didn’t get the Trophy Packs to win the season-long Super Bowl. Coins, used to buy packs without spending real money, are also missing. EA acknowledged the issues late last month, but players are still waiting to know how it will be resolved. Meanwhile, the Solo Battle, the main objective to collect other rewards, was broken for a week, causing many players to miss. That’s a big deal for a game where the only alternative is to put money into random packs of cards.
“I wonder if EA doesn’t realize what the HUGE problem of broken rewards is,” Madden streamer Kmac tweeted earlier this week. “It’s been THREE WEEKS and they’re just rolling out new ads like nothing’s wrong. No motivation to play Madden. No one can buy new cards that are dropped.”
It is the stinginess of the card packs — the backbone of Maddenits most popular online mode—combined with failure to acknowledge ongoing bugs and loss of rewards continues to fuel discontent in the community.
“Many people have asked, ‘Is the packet attack over?’ ‘Really good content, looks like things got better this morning’ – it’s not at all [over]”Popular Stranger said in his recent title update video. “The packages look better but we don’t buy them. I hope you don’t either.”
A player passes by iowaopoly on Twitter have been tracking plan signup rates and statistics since launch and continue to believe they are some worst in years. That’s even though the card packs themselves have historically generated billions of dollars for EA. It’s one of the few publishers that has continued to make big profits this year while rivals like Ubisoft and Activision have struggled, mainly because microtransactions in the chain like Madden.
“The main topic of Madden 23 are things that keep breaking and are super expensive and it takes days or even weeks to fix things in some way so players can get rewards for getting items or even playing games play so it counts as something in progress,” Twitch Content Creator Rob Lopez tells Kotaku. That moment, Madden 23 just sold. It was discounted by $20 for less than two months after its release.
