Madden 12 passing game

There's been two or three email threads now about passing issues so I'm making a thread here for discussion.


After playing a game with Greg Food where he threw 6 painful interceptions (at least half were probably 12 related) I'd like to post my insights with 12 so far. The pass game mechanics are very different in 12. In 11 and before you could have great success passing by just mashing the pass button to shotgun it to every pass, excluding flats/screens where you'd have to feather it just a bit. With 12, you definitely have to play with the timing on how long you hold the pass button for to properly arc a ball to your receiver. This of course causes two problems. For online there's input lag and so timing is difficult to gauge (a solution I'd love for EA to do, but it would complicate the fuck out of things is press button for receiver + trigger pressure/speed for passing). The other issue is I'm not sure which stat correlates to it, but not all quarterbacks can properly pass with a good arc. It's probably a combination of throwing power and the physical height of the QB as I've played with some real genuine shitbum rookie QBs in offline franchise and some can only throw level passes while some throw a beautiful arcing pass while being rated 55F.

I've been playing a fuck ton of cpu games To__'n it up and simming to offense to learn the passing. DBs definitely cover differently this year, ignoring the suction/sliding coverage BS, I'm noticing a few things different from 11. For deep routes your receiver either needs to be significantly faster than the guy covering for a chance at a lob bomb or he needs at least 3-5 steps of lead for a chance. For example, if your outside receiver is running deep and the defense is in a cover 2 zone where the CB lined up is in a flat zone coverage, there's a window where the receiver will be open and the safety is still 10-15 yards out of coverage. It used to be you could make that pass while the safety is still 5-10 yards away, but now if you don't make that pass within a step or two of the receiver breaking the initial corner the pass will be tipped/intercepted by the safety. My point is timing is different with 12, you have to be quicker at passing and so anticipating the receiver will get open is key instead of waiting for the receiver being open and passing. I believe there are slightly different animations that help tell if the receiver will break from initial contact or if the DB will hold the coverage, but I'm still learning this one.

That said, you can shotgun it deep to a guy downfield still however, you will then need to manual control the receiver and attack the pass. Granted this is also difficult for online with lag. I'm noticing that receiver control is more important this year for passes where coverage is close by. It's preventing a lot of what would be Madden 12 interceptions. Even for posts and slants if you manual control the receiver to slightly cut in and catch it high it'll help against a db that's within range.

As far as linebackers go, it's bullshit haha. I haven't figured out how to know if it's safe to throw to a guy running a drag or short route and if a linebacker is even 5 yards away since he can suction over for the tip/interception. I'm guessing this comes down to a change in awareness/play recognition stat for linebackers. There are some games against bad LBs I can safely make short passes and the linebacker doesn't suction/slide over for the play. The leaping part of linebackers goes back to my point on passing control. I had a ton of tips/interceptions by linebackers at first but after feathering passes more when going over the middle I hardly see those now (but again harder to do for online with lag).

Where the problem possibly lies (I'm no AI coding expert so I could be completely wrong about this one) is the "improved" zone coverage AI. I think no matter what type of defense being called, the AI code is utilizing the AI zone awareness. I remember reading something about the way they improved zone coverage is that the defenders all recognize where there teammates are and what they're doing. So to me I've noticed in straight man coverage this AI zone coverage routine seems to be used and that's why it seems when you pass the whole team is swarming at the ball immediately which isn't quite realistic to an extent. This gets worse when going against zone coverage as the AI doesn't seem to count in the idea that perhaps DBs don't literally have eyes in the back of their heads. It also could possibly be affecting the over-exaggerated linebacker awareness and why they're going from being blocked to leaping for the pass. I'm sure this can be resolved with some tweaking, so it'll just take some time.

Basically my point is the passing mechanic is different (can't shotgun every pass and controlling your receiver seems to help more this year than ever) not all of the faults can be attributed to whacky defense code. That all said I am no expert and could be wrong about this all. I'm still not 100% comfortable passing in 12 as I was with 11 but that's just going to take time.